Welcome, brother comrade, this I think a goy says as he shuffles toward me: thrush’s egg eyes, strawhair, straw coming also out from his shirtsleeves, bulging from the waist and legs of his pants — my name’s…today, I’m not sure; an escapee much like yourself.
He frowns when I don’t say what.
Here, give me a moment, and he goes to search through his pockets, their flax, to find finally a wipe of newsprint, a whimper of magazinestock.
He holds it up to his eyes, reads aloud.
Boris Borisovich Bourgeois, that’s the name…but you can call me Bobo if you have to.
And me, what can I say?
Or Bibi, B.B. or B., up to you…and then, silence, interrupted only by his perk at the wind: interesting that you should ask that question…if you’ll only follow me, and he leads on with confidence, that’s what he thinks I think but I follow — the conviction only to be found when dealing with the negligible, the middling, the though we’re all equal essentially unimportant…leads me as if to the one stall he knows how to find.
This Kapo, he says as we go, he asked me was I dead yet, and so don’t doubt I answer him sure, whatever you want.
I’m no, how do they say — putz.
I fled for moons, you with me — until I come to this moat.
I’d always known about this place, that’s how it feels…but myth’s what I thought, collusion or women’s gossip, impertinence, superstition, a nightmare in which I’m trying to dream. I know how it goes, it’s a merging like water, how all the systems or even, I dunno, dialectics opposed, they eventually flow themselves into one. And so I crossedover, no regrets. I’ve been here ever since, trying out this Bourgeois thing month to month. As far as identities go, it’s as good as any. Tells me how to live. What’s expected, what’s to expect. We pay with our lives for this life, so we’re told. I’m enlightened now, illuminated like you wouldn’t believe. I know what I’m worth. Exploitation of value as a generational thing, forget it. Inheritance has been gotten rid of, maybe for us, maybe by us; we’re remaking ourselves from the ground up, rib by rib, and all of them iron. I’ve lost my chains, my mind withered away with them — I’m crazy united.
By the way, love your horns.
Here’s what I’m thinking: get involved with the masses, go under — you’ll end up discovering yourself. Among others, as others, who not. You’ll be told who you are, who you want to be, all you need. If it doesn’t work out, refunds are refunds — they’re always for sale…as are sales. Call it a revolution, or not, call it whatever you want. We’re trying to figure out what works next. Think about it and get back to me. I’m changing my life, but I’m open.
The explanations seem simple enough, though classless and Forbiddingly capitalized…Spinoza Street’s an infinite street, not that it stretches forever, no, I’m pacing it and myself with these thoughts, stretching afternoons long on metaphysical wander that still call for feet and cold toes: simply, it’s a ring, a street that serpentinely swallows itself, without crossstreet or throughway, and a moat that keeps it an island with its safeguarding freeze. And, as it’s said, if you end up staying here long enough, schnorring what’s necessary to afford your identity, maybe you sell some things of your own to afford yourself others’, the ring ends up seeming so wide, though its width’s strangely as if honestly narrow, that the street seems almost totally straight. Easy, should be. How straight does it seem? Give it up. And of course, the only presence of Spinoza Street is its infamous Market, fairied and storied as the convergence of all cyclical systems: legendarily, how there are no homes here, no schools, neither synagogues, hospitals, cemeteries, nor God forbid churches, just shops, only, stores, really stalls, unremarkable, with the effect that everyone sleeps out in the open, out on the street, in the Market, as the Market, though even then, at night, through its gusts emptying of pocket and heart, and suffused with trashflight, with whirlwinded discard — with a sky entirely dark except for the rise of a lovelost, in the red moon — the Market surely stays open. Forever. But as for the bell hollowly rung time and again, who knows how it’s kept: it signals nothing, is only a bell, merely tolling. Just as advice is the only thing that’s free in this Bourse, the bell’s the only thing that’s not, if that makes any sense…not for sale, not for rental, no money down — though Whose it is, no one knows, even guesses.
People says it’s lawless, without governance, says this Boris Borisovich if that’s still his name the goy he’s still suspectedly talking, and it helps, of course, that I can’t talk back…but I say no, that it’s the culmination of all governance, of all society’s laws, every one — unified at last in a compromise, if you’re free, if your freedom’s amenable. Watereddown, I’m saying. Smelt into One. Either way, the individual doesn’t exist, whether as class or consumer; whether as a true believer impoverished in ideology, or as a cynic whose purpose to keep sane is to keep spending large. Take me for instance. I began as an amateur, a hobbyist, a weekend dabbler in a new doublelife. Traded in to be a professional, then traded up again to become an expert, an expert what, I forget, an expert nonetheless; I was regarded, you know, vetted, peerreviewed and respected, a mind — you don’t believe me? and he produces from his pockets again a forge of documents to prove (relevance, utility) their straw, then asks me to sign for something or other, don’t ask my ask, beseeches then begs me, with the promise of utmost respect for any identity I might manage to organize for myself, to deliver this sheaf of Xs he’s waving in my face to a woman who she’d find me, don’t worry.
Forget it, he’s gone.
And so, nu: old, gutyellow wart draped with a flag repurposed to kerchief what must be a skull, do you think, peeking inflamed and plumped pussy from a gray dress trimmed in arachnoids of widowed lace also gray; she takes the papers from me and tosses them, filing them in the air, a wind’s document, the contract of clouds, mottled white slabs to flit amid the Market stalls then fall, to wet themselves into pave: apparently, I’m hers now, thanks to my signing or having failed to sign a brief counter, not sure, with Bobo getting his percent, if Bourgeois’s his middle name or last, if Boris and regardless of true patronym, hymn, he’ll identify himself as the agent involved upon the unlikelihood of any return, wherever he went and as what, even if. She leads me to a stall (at the Market, any stall’s as appropriate for any transaction as another, as long as everything’s kept official, which is approved only by ignorance, amid the tacit flux of the shade), walking me a step behind her, then two, on allfours with a leash cut of her hem cinched tight to pain at my neck. No deal, however, can be sealed for all of unutterable perpetuity — eventually, every resolution dissolves…like the paint from the prices, the dye from the uniform flags, the official kerchiefs and scarves in every color of blood. Soon she tires, loses interest, turns me loose, with the reminder, though, that she still owns me until someone, if ever, might own another ante up. Gets a better idea or its backing. Keep near. Stick around. It’s that I don’t have the resources with which to redeem myself. It’s not that I’m totally insolvent, no — I still have my youth…it’s that I never seem to have enough of such assets to better her bid, and if you can’t compete it’s a shanda of sorts but you’re over, you’re done with, you’ll be bought and sold at the whim of any interest with anymore of nothing to lose: how anyone can just stuff you down into the deepest stuff of their hind and so hiddenmost pocket, there to snout around for lint, dust, keys, or sweets, to hunt and gather for an offer ever greater. One day, though, or so goes the local lashon hara, gossip sold from mouth to ring in the ear as true as a shekel is true, as true as a shekel is said to be true: one day, is how it goes, and lo may it be soon though he tarries, a mensch will arrive here with a few new ideas, a handful of new dreams, and, profanely important, the wherewithal to holy them real…the mind, the will, what not — how we won’t miser away moneyed time anymore on this or that investment shortterm, the opportunity to make good on turnarounds in shortorder, thinksmall, no; this mensch He’ll go all out, forever, redeem not only everyone here, but also, in so doing, the Market itself, the entire street and its stalls, repave, revamp, remake its take, reimage the whole: out of pocket, He’ll bet out of the box, then shove it all down into a suitcase, take us with Him to ever newer, evermore innocent worlds.