The burn victim with the scarred head and face and with a hole where his left ear should be has won the TV dance contest, beating out the celebrity two-hundred-and-seventy-one pound transsexual with a heart condition and the woman whose arm and leg were severed in an elevator accident.
I cheered along with an audience of millions. “You are the sweetest things!” Remembering it is kinder to assume they are not deficient or decrepit or damaged in any way.
“I am so tired of it all,” you said.
Back Then
People painted their houses yellow, pink, or turquoise in the hope of attracting their straying young like hummingbirds to a feeder.
And if you did something special your picture appeared on the cover of a vinyl record. You’d be wearing a blue taffeta gown and a string of pearls and be seated at a piano that was located at the bottom of an empty well.
And scientists! They were like nosy gods wanting to know everything about you. They’d take a slice of your brain using a tiny scalpel inserted through your ear. Then they’d study the slice, marvelling at the quantity of your black holes.
People back then liked to read small, happy, historical messages while sitting on the toilet and imagine a time they didn’t live in. And everyone’s dogs, even the chinless Shih Tzus, would climb onto rooftops to gaze at imaginary sheep.
Back then you’d hang out with Uncle Vern in the mornings and pick strawberries until noon. Then you’d walk along a dirt road that smelled of horse manure and wild roses to buy a single cigarette from the old guy at King Wah Grocery.
One time I ran into John heading to the store like me. John was one of the funniest guys I knew, and he wasn’t saying much so I asked him what happened. And he said, “Aw, who wants to be a comedian when there are fantastic one-off clouds to look at?”
On that particular day it was magical. Everyone was addicted to living and time was our methadone.
Nearly There
There was a competition for the job of playing myself. I saw the notice pinned to a tree. It said there’d be plenty of shifts, the graveyard for sure, and that the applicant should have a stomach for fear. It said the person selected would be restless and lean, dreamy but sober, loyal, and sane. It said forget about holidays, they weren’t in the cards, but there’d be a control on sorrow so you could stay afloat. And a guarantee of love so you wouldn’t be alone. Work would absorb you but money would not. Perks you’d invent as you hurried along. Time would be generous until it ran out.
I decided to apply. It was the chance of a lifetime.
And now for the good news! I’m on the shortlist!
Story Interruptus
I rushed from the bedroom when I heard the dog cry out. There was a giant in the living room swinging her by the tail. The giant was as tall as a beanstalk and stood rooted like a tree. His head brushed the ceiling. I don’t know how he got in the house. But there he was. I was mad because he was hurting the dog. She weighs sixty pounds and her tail is sensitive. The giant seemed to be one of those dim-witted ones so I rescued the dog easily by prying open the giant’s hand.
“Unfurl your hand,” I hollered. He seemed stunned by my authority.
Once released the dog crept into my arms and we lay together on the living-room floor. The giant stayed put.
I was comforting the dog when Manny Moss came in from the woodshed carrying his axe. He took in the giant, the dog, and me on the floor, and the way it was otherwise dark in the room. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t realize you were in a story.” He turned to leave.
“No, wait!” I cried. “You can check out that beanstalk!”
He complied and the story quickly became romantic. We lost our dignity for a few minutes in front of the giant but, oh well.
An Outpouring of Generous Abandonment
I had not guessed that Owen with his red moustache and excellent teeth would begin to afflict me with discussions of our future life together. His mother should live with us!
He could probably see by my closed eyes and my arms clasped tightly around my knees that I was going through a severe mental struggle.
We were on the beach. I was wearing a well-fitted jacket and a skirt of dull green.
A seagull passed high overhead with a loud “Ship ahoy, ahoy!”
Owen’s lips were red and full. Just then they were perched on a whine. “Don’t spoil everything, Tina!”
His frown was a little like the passing of a light cloud.
I remarked that a man whose mother likes herding cattle through the living room can be a problem for a wife. I was also thinking of Morris, who was absorbed with his series of Icelandic pictures and would not be bothered.
“What you propose would be fatal to my work,” he had said. Blood disappeared from my face then.
Later, in Merlin Wood, Owen advised me to keep away from Morris. “You’ve been made too much of,” he said, and reconfigured his mind to alter his idea of me. I was wearing my white dress, the material running to innumerable folds. I thought, Today our marriage has edges; the long-haul tingling may be over.
Come evening we absorbed ourselves with our hobbies, Owen studying cases of the sick to discover how to be well, me studying the shapes that spills make on the kitchen floor. “Look! There’s Iceland!”
What I cannot determine are a lot of things, including Owen’s mother, who is standing in our driveway with her herd of Angus cattle.
We’re Having a Foxy Time Where Everyone Gets Dressed Up
“I like to be a little bit subversive, or a little bit tongue-in-cheek, or dangerously close to being too revealing.”
“Are you humouring me because I’m an old man?”
“I’m just ticking off all the boxes in the good-person department. So, what’ll it be? The banana costume or the gorilla mask?”
“I had a hard time letting go of Linda.”
“Forget about Linda.”
“I want something evil.”
“A wasp? A zombie?”
“I’m not dead yet.”
“Attaboy!”
Local Gossip
I’ve lost my mind! I’m certain I lost it on the path through the woods. It’s dull black and frayed at the edges. It must have slipped out of my head while I walked. I want it back for sentimental reasons. It’s comfortable and keeps me sane at night.
If you have found my mind, please return it. It’s of no possible use to you. Leave it on the big rock next to the tree where the eagles nest. I will ask no questions. Wearing someone else’s mind is a damn scary thing to do. It’s like having a ghost in your house. Like being a dishevelled man in conversation with a dog. Like being a dwarf speaking of the world with sick wonder.
Her Advice
On the plus side she says she no longer fears the thoughtless remarks of others, says she’s too old to care for another person’s indiscretion, that she’s heaved herself out of the seduction of general worry, and that she’s enjoying the long-awaited fun of jumping down the neck of any fool who might open his or her mouth.
She’s also removed any stepping stones she can find because there is no longer anywhere to go. She feels especially good about slandering the damned. Hell, she says, is a cardboard box filled with dated opinions.
Lately, looking in the mirror, she’s noticed that her eyes are the same colour as the firmament.
An Interesting Woman
Pearl says she’s finally become an interesting woman. She’s eighty-six years old and writing a play about two dead heroes having a conversation. Prometheus is one of them. She says we don’t remember much about our lives, nobody does. But the dead, she says, remember everything.
Audrey is helping with the play by transcribing for ten dollars an hour. She’s sixty-one years old, has a husband, a farm, and two pug dogs. Audrey says Pearl’s I.Q. has become egg-yolk yellow and that this is the mark of a brilliant mind.
Pearl says, “I thank you, Audrey, for keeping my red essence going, something I am crazy about.”
> This gives us cause for optimism. At the end we hope to flutter like Pearl. Like monarch butterflies escaped from the net. Prometheus remembering all it meant.
Private Life
In the basement there’s a grove of handsome men in low-slung pants and a seven-foot fat man in a cheap suit who keeps bawling, “These gentlemen will amplify your darkness!”
An old guy sitting in a plastic deck chair acts as a guard. He reads books, too.
By midnight he’s touched up my thinking. One becomes interested in the tiny dancing man who never tires and in the row of living heads lining the basement walls, each one representing rebirth should I be so inclined.
I am inclined!
Pretty soon the moment backs up and finds me dancing with a svelte man in the moonlight. Then we are lying on the long lawn of summer, the place where every man’s lips are with their girlfriends.
Bulletin
You’re in some little kind of mood. Your lady friend, Gina, wants to go abroad, view a pond with swans, speak to a young intelligence about castles. And it’s a real kick in the pants to realize your life is at home with Rose. But neither of them seems to understand your position. You’re getting old. In fairness this means a significant amount of crying about there being not so long to go.
So, oh boy, you are there, but, okay.
A woman told you the way to stop crying is to focus your eyes on something near at hand. It could be anything, she said, the edge of a table, the inside of a flower, sunlight on the carpet, the chewed fingernail on your own hand. What happens, she said, is that you return to the present moment. It’s not this particular moment that is giving you grief, she explained, but something else – a thought inhabiting the past or the future. In the present moment you will find there is nothing to cry about.
Over
We found a beach where you got out of your eager face and into something tanned. There were boaters whizzing by and we waved at them like everyone else. From one of the boats my ex was looking good and he also waved, which pleased me.
I was sitting on the shore beside your moneybelt and my coat of hope watching you swim. Your dimples and cupid lips were on show, leaving smart, sexy, and beautiful to me.
Later you referred to woe caused by your wife, and promised rainbows over our future back deck.
That summer we drank too much. Our pleasure happened regularly and was not afraid of hard work. But in the end it was the idea of rainbows that sank the affair.
Things Blowing Over
One week into the three-week visit bad guest exchanges were multiplying like some cruel something. We tried hanging garlic from every doorway to clear the air, and when that didn’t work tried making spectacular football saves off a pile of pillows hoping to impress the guests with our lighthearted spite.
After that there was the souvenir windy night, which we thought they’d admire but it, too, was a bust. In such an environment why would anyone expect my nervous collapse on day fifteen to entertain the guests?
Fortunately, the god of day eighteen showed up. He’s a wonderful mechanic and good at making things blow over. It rained so light on day eighteen that we found hope enough to take the guests to visit the universe. That’s where they snapped pictures of the god of swans brandishing her warning trumpet. The pictures turned out rimmed in silver. A success!
When the guests finally left we exchanged padded coat hangers and playing cards from Cairns, Australia. At the airport we cried and said, “Farewell and be kind.”
Back home we put on tuxedos and jumped up and down. We drank champagne on the deck and watched the bubbles drift towards the blameless sky.
The Smart Jam Is in Finance
The busy children are slinging rocks at passing seagulls, cut-off dates at each other. They’ve dressed the dog in a sweater, wrapped buttered bread around the cat’s tail.
A withered woman with a hands-off approach runs for the exit. That would be me, their mother. Excuse me, but I want to beat them with a hard malacca cane!
At this juncture you lose your mind. Then the dad returns with sanity. “Tame them with money!” he says. And waves a wad of twenties, telling the children to say please.
They pause in confusion but something is working. “Please,” they say.
To the dad I bow in reverence. Thank you, a thousand thanks, and thanks again.
Now I am thinking of when we no longer have them. When I’m living isolated, a kind of hermit, with twenty-one goats and a sweet little horse. This thought goes a long way.
The Logic of a Dream
The dream in charge of clerical gestures winds toilet paper around my neck and says it’s time to perform the ceremony. Naturally, it’s a Sunday. On the count of three the naked day steps forward, trembling, unsure of being seen.
As usual I have been somewhere else, adrift in the effluent of my mind, most likely.
But then a scroll unfurls from the office wall, telling me to look outside through the window.
That done I will now record what I have seen. A cloud field made orange by the setting sun. A garden scene with a yellow watering can. A naked collection of trees. But no rain from our western regions. No woolly mammoths.
The Prayer We Prefer
Give us the special, spiritual helmet that protects us from panic whenever we feel vulnerable and alone.
Give us treats such as two bottles of Merlot, or more! We’d be excited with that.
Give us bucketfuls of hurled-in-your-face money and a strong dose of never mind when the money’s gone.
Give us a steady run of parties even if most of the parties are with the dog.
Give us each morning a sunrise to dazzle as if we only had three and a half hours to go.
Give us ideas that don’t roll over and play dead.
And everything that is not, like, thump-thumping to nowhere and then it rains.
Above all give us a crack in our spiritual helmets so that Leonard Cohen can get in.
The Americans Will Not Save You for Christmas
Greetings, large black person.
I have captured you by the short rabbits.
I’m sure you will not mind if I remove your toenails and leave them out on the desert floor for ants to eat!
Take my advice or I’ll spank you a lot.
Quiet or I’ll blow your throat up.
Darn, I will burn you into a BBQ chicken!
I have been scared silly too much lately.
I have knife scars more than the number of your leg hairs.
How can you use my intestines as a gift?
Gun wounds again?
You darling, lousy guy!
You always use violence.
† From English subtitles used in Hong Kong films.
The Rockets of It
I am lucky to have had my moments; to have been moved by word of mouth; to have grown up with people who preferred stark awareness. This for me is the rockets of it.
Furthermore, no one has yet appeared at my door holding a gun, which counts for something.
Overall, my position is that things coming to quits are actually things moving nicely along. Living is the everyday prize, and wonder at the baby who somehow knows how to.
The Next Story
For the longest time our stories were about Jenny on her front steps, about her patience, her heart and stroke, and the bees she kept as a hobby. Then Jenny died. Now there were hundreds of people in our front yard chanting my name, “Louise! Louise!” Ralph came out of the bath and stood beside me grinning. “You’ve produced one onion, one son, and one daughter,” he said. “It looks like it’ll be your story from here on in. Congratulations!”
But one onion, one son, and one daughter? It seemed so little. At first I thought the crowd was early-morning carollers. It was like they were giving away attention: you didn’t have to earn it, pay for it, wish for it; it was free.
I noticed the entire Loud family from up the street were there with their balloon art, balloons in the sha
pes of waterfalls and alpine fluff. Others in the crowd had packed up their troubles in old kit bags from the First World War and were smiling, smiling, smiling. Everyone believing the next story would get them to their eighties. What pleasure! Georgia O’Keeffe was there with her new boyfriend, sixty years younger and handsome as a rake. And Federico Fellini linking arms with a pair of dolled-up fat women. “Louise! Louise!” Leading the chanting was Ed English, the local butcher.
I realized I was now a block from home, in some kind of procession. Kids and wheelchairs lined the route. Women in cycling shorts waved flags, a troop of Boy Scouts saluted. This was phenomenal and breathtaking. Ed English in his bloodstained apron pointed out the direction of the podium.
We were moving east. Beside me Ralph carried the red thought blanket. It had belonged to Jenny. Her husband in his bee outfit had stepped forward with it earlier. The Raj Quartet was accompanying us playing Gershwin. Ingmar Bergman was there having a laughing fit by the Wintons’ bird bath, the first ever. I began to feel handsome. There was turmoil, tears, and congratulations from well-wishers.
Ralph, still damp from the bath, draped the red thought blanket over my shoulders. I was being anointed. The blanket trailed on the ground like a bridal veil.
Mick Jagger’s family from the big hectoring sixties were there and more bare breasts than you could ever imagine. People having famous intestinal problems came into view – Charles Darwin, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Anaïs Nin. A feeling I recognized as I own the sky overcame me. I could die happily now in my slippers and red thought blanket.
The World Afloat Page 5
