"Think there’s anything out there?" I asked.
Markus picked up a handful of sand, dropped it, picked it up again. The ocean, you mean?
Yeah, the ocean.
"Then Europe, I suppose, though we already know that."
Though maybe I should have been asking if there was anything in the ocean,
some great, hulking secret, a bloated originality of Mother Nature, in hiding. It was ignorant of me to personify the planet as a woman. In all likelihood, if the planet were a person, it would be a hermaphrodite, both mother and father, impregnating itself, to feed the trees. In all likelihood (barring the hermaphroditic), there were very few who wanted to hear that.
"Maybe I should have said "in" the ocean," I said.
"Then I would have to say water," Markus answered.
"Yeah," I said, "I bet you’re right."
::::::::::::::::::::
I’d come to climb a mountain, which would make me a mountain climber, if I relied on statements of position. Cold streams gurgled in the breeze, frothing against the sides, to carry me home. Were there trout in there? Did they feed off wholesome current, fishlike, their scaly frames, their aquiline contribution? All streams lead to the center- all streams lead to the ocean- deep and blue, deep, infinite as unending, to land, to land. Jet-steams, sea-currents, the mountain was the intersection of mediums, crustial. The horizon split like a wire.
So here, I was here and I was really here, to feed the breeze. Winter gusts tore me. God abandoned me in cold wilderness. The desert began here, the mechanical desert: apple cores, paper wads, blots of ink, a wasteland of dimension. Hot, tumbling mounds of sand, I climbed them, holding a knife between my teeth; made ascendance up spiraling stairways, grit and pebbles, destructive.
The mountain fed me the remains of old bones. Somewhere near the top I might find an altar, the zenith point. Where you left the earth, making shots to moon, the firmament embrace. A-contextual, an exit to cancel place, to exit bleeding wounds, all in a single burst of energy. Somewhere near the top the world began. The mountain fed me the remains of old bones.
::::::::::::::::::::
Markus held his skull, shaking. Sickly sweat berated him; whole vortexes of names coerced him. Despite living in a patriotic world, he was still unhappy. (Laughing.) As if (selfless) the world still had room for patriots anymore, not here in the un-person, the neighborhood brigade. The days of kin are over, the days of sign language and slaughter.
"Are you okay?"
"Maybe," he said.
"If you had a problem," I said, you could tell me, because (sometimes) I really
am good a being (something) like a friend, so it’s okay- if you say it is- I keep secrets, and I have very little of the kamikaze in the me, the asylum poet, the bourgeois revolutionary; that’s not who I am- or not now, at least- so if you had a problem, "you could tell me."
In life, much of what is spoken goes unsaid.
::::::::::::::::::::
— I’m not sure, he said. It’s just that sometimes…
— What?
— You know, those times you’re doing homework (or you would be, if you
weren’t so busy putting it off) or you’re washing clothes at three in the morning. I picked up some money yesterday, for free, so I guess I picked up a donation, and I gave it to my mom because she wanted to buy something off a cereal box. I said Mom, seriously, you don’t have to do this, really, but she said Shut up Markus, I’m your mother and what do you know about wisdom, you don’t. She always brings up the fact she was alive before I was. She’s so cold.
— And?
— The other day I got off the bus late (I’d fallen asleep late, you know, the way I sometimes do) and on the way home some kid almost ran into me with my bike. I carried my books and dropped them once. It embarrassed me because I thought I might have been forgetting something. Quick interruptions always make me stutter.
— What else?
— I’ve been hearing voices.
::::::::::::::::::::
(Markus speaks out loud but he says very little. I don’t know how
he puts up
with all that feedback racking.)
::::::::::::::::::::
"What do you think they mean?" I asked. Without realizing, I’d stood. I paced the room, from side to side, returning. Ghastly pictures assailed me, old wrappers, videogames. Markus was a real hero at guitar, but very few people knew. There were curtains by the window. If there’d been a wind, it might have blown. Neighbors are a waste of time. They need to rake their own leaves; mow their own fucking grass.
"I’m not sure," he said. Of course he wasn’t sure.
"Are they trying to tell you something?"
"Maybe."
"Like what?"
"That…" he trailed off, "is just something else I don’t know.
::::::::::::::::::::
Veronica held my hand.
She breathed, working hard in the city.
As if.
"I think…" she trailed off, in sequence, "I think I’m leaving today." "Where are you going?"
Somewhere better." She sat with one hand tracing patterns on my shoulder,
another holding me there. Grabbing her wrist, I thought of telling her I didn’t want her to go. We could run away to the desert, to bathe in radial flame, tracking pathways through a sea of superheated dust, hot and lifeless and ours, where the water came once a month, and blossoms bloomed rapturous in tune, a blush, of embers in rebirth.
"Yeah," she said, "somewhere better."
She held my hand. I felt emasculate and possessed. Ashamed.
"Do you need any help?" I doubt the streets take kindly to letting go of beautiful women. She shook her head. I wondered. If she didn’t get away either I would see her again (tomorrow, a week from now) or no one would ever see her again. If she got away everything would be exactly the same.
"I’ll miss you," I said.
"You’ll be the only one."
I thought of laughing, but it wasn’t funny.
I never saw her again.
::::::::::::::::::::
I went with James to an empty lot on the outskirts of town. Someday, I realized, he really might hurt someone. I think James’ goal in life was to become a statistic, the personification of the contemporary urban youth, striking out with steal bats and sticks hastily sharpened near the end. James was the spirit of the city, in touch. Someday, his time might come.
He passed me a can of spray paint, cylindrical, a concentration of message, bright colors, jagged sketchings, language. For seeming so confident, James worked curiously quick, wanting to leave. Someday, I thought, he wouldn’t be confined to dank alleys. There were no police here, though he was afraid of the police. I told him to relax, but he was still too nervous.
It’s no use making statements that muffle themselves. Society the crusher has already disposed of artistry. I say that but I’m a liar trying to call myself an artist. Art changes very little, and I know that too, but sometimes I’d like to pretend the internal really does reflect the external (as if!), and I’d like to pretend we don’t live in a protean ghostworld of statistical semiotic shadows; representation to the imaginary people, the proletarian sea. All things rise out of the ocean: starfish, octopus, our sick, organic ancestors, they’ve taken the sea with them (to land, to land!) tracking pastures in the highest mountain, planting flags on distant stars. All things are infinitesimal in nature. Of them all, the artist is the very smallest.