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[ Mind Warp - Volume #4, Issue #08, File #063 ]
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[ "Midnight Blues - 1st Solo" by Dark Horse ]
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Midnight Blues - 1st Solo
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[Dark Horse]
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Smoky cafes. I always loved those smoky, empty cafes that canvas Europe and
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congregate boisterously at every plaza, especially Pedante, in the heart of
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Paris, fenced in on three sides by plaza and boulevard, where I spent every
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evening of the best summer of my life. By July I had a "table of my own,"
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where at six every evening I would dream over coffee and pastries, enchanted
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with life and Paris and living the prototypical dream of the Young American
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Traveler. From my table I could see the small plaza, nothing spectacular in
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the scheme of the glory that is Paris, but my own special spot in a way, my
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own little corner of the city and my own ancient bronze statue complete with
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fountain. There were others who worked day in and day out by the fountain,
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but it was my own in that back home no one would have remembered it like me,
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back home no one would have even know it was there. The Lourve is public,
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but this, this was my own private postcard memory to snatch and savor forever.
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One day near the end of July a soft rain drizzled down onto the plaza and
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into my hair and into my coffee. I was a poet then, and over my coffee that
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summer I scribbled lofty words in tattered notebooks, but in that silky rain
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that clung to my hair and cooled my face I realized how much I hated those
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words, each and every one, indivitually and totally to the depths of my soul.
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They were so empty, false, contrived, idealized. One word or a million can
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not sum up an instant of human thought, no matter how elegant or exquisite.
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The absolute spiritual power and glory of that misty rain in the gray plaza
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in Paris put all my tender thoughts into perspective: how could one
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communicate in a million pages the beauty of the momentary glance, meeting
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yours, of a girl who quickly passes out of sight but lingers in the mind for
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days? Of course there have been words smiths, such as Kerouac, Cooleridge,
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Poe, prose painters who could weave a story into a net of words so beautiful
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and enthralling you would never want to escape its grasp, but no one, and
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especially not me, then, could capture a full second of life on paper.
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***
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They say you're not supposed to eat apple seeds - natural arsenic they
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say, like it'll kill you or something.
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***
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So there I was in that cold dark morning, basking in the twilight that
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precedes any sign of sun, just sitting there on my front porch
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(and may I remark how cold it happened to be - fifty seven degrees as
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it turned out to be - compared to the warm night before when slick
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seventy degree air floated around me like fog-and-a-lighthouse) crouched
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against the door, that air chilly and prickly like grass (but inside let
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me tell you I knew it was pretty warm as far as nights go since i've seen
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some pretty cold ones in my day and some days it doesnt get up to fifty
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in the DAY even so I was right thankfull for my warm summer night that
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morning) and me there waiting for nothing and digging everything (and
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digging for those not aquainted with the hipster slang of the fiftys and
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sixties and, gentle reader I make no accusation that that you are less
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than hip to it all, but just for the benefit and common understanding of
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all that peruse this sacred text digging means to some the complete and
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utter understanding and agreement with whatever you may happen to "dig",
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and this is not to say that there are not other deffinitions, but this is
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all you need to know for now), just digging it all and soaking myself in
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existence.
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***
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I doubt, as things stand, that I'll ever become a writer. I have a
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decent vocabulary and a grasp of grammar and every other bit of
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information needed in one's mind to write. I have nothing to write
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about. I have no devils to exorcise. Without something unresolved
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within the writer a story is nothing but just that, a story. Basic Plot
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plus Frills here and there. William S. Burroughs would never have
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become a writer without the aid of the "ugly spirit" (that entered
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him the night he killed his wife in a bizarre william tell act and did
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not leave him for decades)(The Native American medicine man who exorcised
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the demon called it "One of the toughest" he had ever been up against.)
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I have no such spirit to battle with words. Just a silly little life,
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short, with a few ups and downs. I'm basically satisfied with
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everything, and that presents a problem: I live a life much without
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yearnings and dreams.
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***
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The sea was tired that night, and the air empty-smelling. No salt, no
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nothing in the air but emptiness. It was impossible even to breathe
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enough, the air was so thin and vacant.
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Jim played with a rock in the moonlight. The rock was round and light,
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shaped roughly like a triangle: an excellent skipping stone. Everything
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in his life had skipped out on him, his father, his girl, his dreams of
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college, and he was left with nothing but a backpack and a barren bit of
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beach, warm and shaded and invisible from the shore where grumpy young
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cops patrolled for hours for bums and lunatics (who are the rightful
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owners of the sea) to keep the place safe for tourists.
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Every night until four or so crazy teens, drunk on freedom and security,
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would roam the beach playing guitars and lighting fireworks and drinking
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beer. They would finally collapse, tired and wasted, and emerge fresh
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and giggly the next morning. Jim took notes on them each night, long
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sad descriptions of the color, curves, and character of each one, the
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indescribable intricacies of their speech and style. It would be his
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first great novel someday and take him away from the beach and into a
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dry house and to everything else those kids had and that he remembered
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from his youth.
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==============================================================================
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Call Omniverse, the Mind Warp WHQ - (301) 718-0225
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==============================================================================
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