A parking stall suits the caravan gypsy car
Cluttered with meaningless papers, velvet curtains and dust.
The cops suspect debaucheries of all sorts.
These country-dwellers wouldn’t have dreams to match.
They stare out from within – reticent in their ways.
Grit casts a darkness upon the windshield.
No one cares to notice.
Have you observed her errant sideway glances?
She’s allured.
A sardonic motive they suspect.
A mix of my thoughts past which keep haunting me because I let them.
Why not go to Sarfari Sam's tonight?
Carrick and I; teach me how to dance.
Detention for a cup of joe.
China Town.
Ask for directions and end up with his address.
Walking through the fog down the hill and back up it in the dark.
Panic- The security guard thinks I am a threat. Why won’t you let me pass?! I need to get to her!
You-talking behind my back.
Me-can't get through to you.
Us-pretending it’s all fine in the face of our mothers.
She runs into someone she knows every time.
Rockridge coffee now and chocolates for eating on the lawn grass.
The Claremont Hotel.
Meet you in Berkeley for lunch; too bad I won’t be around for the fourth of July.
Old, cracked white doors; circular shower curtains.
The father that looks like a homeless hippy free-spirit.
Let me tell you girls a little bit about fair trade coffee...
Garage sale so she can leave the foggy city for Florida.
Look- Irish coffee- "you guys are going to be alcoholics"
Blue knitted hat.
Situational opulence.
Data Rock or Date-a-rock?
Sheet cycling and pretending its fine if we just laugh.
Some Kerouac and Ginsberg to get you started.
#104 Thai dish; don't wear your shoes.
Fresh pizza at 10:30 am.
Last cup of Peet's before we leave.
Making the flight with twenty minutes to spare.
Ride along the boardwalk; lounge about at Alta.
Blonde Redhead tickets.
Frank Lloyd Wright docent.
Standing outside of piano class- waiting to talk to you; wanting to see you less.
A sweaty night to watch a movie.
Wake up at six am.
Sleep at two.
Bike ride down the hill on the hottest day only to get lost and go back up it.
Goodbyes with Goldenspoon.
Meeting the man who told me I am doing everything wrong right now.
I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.
II
I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!
The cool breeze came rushing through the window in floods, blowing the posters and newspaper clippings up into the air. Retraction brought them down slowly, as if they were angels descending from space- weightlessly drifting down to earth.
He waited for times when his room came alive. It was the only life he cherished.
He knew people, I guess you could label them friends, but his vacant enthusiasm kept distance between them. Social events were a placeholder for his body. All he could hear was silence when he looked about the room at those yapping bodies. How utterly pathetic, he thought. He didn’t try to run away; it would cause too much commotion, let alone, too much effort. As long as he showed up and gave them his presence he could be left in solitude.
He had no cares for the physicality. He thought his body not even worthy of grace.*
What should be valued, he thought, was the mind. His raced, longing for escape.
There lay a typewriter on the carpet in the middle of the room. Sometimes Mozart’s somber Adagio would filter through the window from two floors above, thus igniting a wildfire of thoughts.
He was no writer but a drifter between dreams. He’d go to bed at eight P.M. some nights, others at three, depending if inspiration struck him well enough. The early nights to sleep were escape routes into the dream world when he could no longer handle his idle presence on earth. Dreams fed him stories of magnificent oasis’s far away- intangible worlds that were beauteous and right.
Humans of his generation didn’t understand and never would. To him it was so simple. That is why he slept. His infatuation with the other reality was all he had and why he chose to live.
*Please note the difference between worthy and important. He did not think of solely himself as unworthy, but all bodies unworthy of the magnitude of grace prescribed to them. Their importance, he thought, was to suffice as containers of being.
