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Apr. 9, 2007 Balcony Sights The rich hotel was across the way, and it was more a palace than a hotel. The ceilings were so high that nobody bothered to look up much. Outside young couples sat and smoked cigars because in some circle this was fashionable. They were tanned, and often dripping in silver, and there talk was easy and open, like when they mentioned how they fell in love with the place, and were coming back in the springtime to get married on the beach. They wore denim, and white shirts, and only experienced, through some providence, the so-called best that the world had to offer. What was less expensive though, than their diamonds and silver and ways, was the local scenery. The stray dog by the street, or the average traveler, could see this, as from a balcony. It was the smell of the tropics that was best, and how it would enter your nose and clothing. It seemed to be in the leather strands of the chairs, and in the thick lawns, and of course by the palms and in the soft wind. Up high stood the yellow stucco building, a palace, but down low was the villa, and the birds didn’t discriminate or bother with boundaries. A truck came by every morning, full of workers, sitting in the open-air back, and the watchers from the balcony did not understand their talk. Someone sat there in the late evening too, when the sun rested, and drank local beer. In the mornings he went there, and lit cigarettes and pulled deeply on them, then exhaling the smoke out to the balcony sights, as the moon took its turn at slumber. Rimbaud’s Apprentice/Clouds Through Windows He thought that he would be like Rimbaud, and that the critics, wherever the critics were, would one day discover his notebooks, and then he would be exalted, explained, and immortalized. He couldn’t type, but wrote in regular blue ink, and his mother sometimes typed out his poems. He was both schizophrenic and manic-depressive, and for those reasons had become very socially isolated. Now and then he could try and make a friend in the coffee shop, but there was more than one thing about him that eventually made people shy away. He was kind, and interested in things, but he had to fight tooth and nail to stay engaged in any kind of regular reality. It was easier for him to stare out windows and get lost in clouds, and he thought this was romantic, not seeing the sadness in it, not understanding that those that were once his peers had long ago moved on to more constructive things. He had become obese, and did not understand how to start a relationship with a woman. He was not a good poet either. Sometimes he would socialize, like the time an old friend, a woman writer, brought him to a party, but through nervousness and a rotted stomach he spent much time on the front lawn vomiting. If you talked to him, his eyes looked unfocused, like some truck had just hit him, or that he was in some kind of shock. But Rimbaud was some kind of a God for him always. Unlike Rimbaud though, he had never been a runaway, or really done much else. He mostly just looked at clouds through windows. Sand For Salt He kept having the dream, or the desire, to go deep into the earth, to go under the water, or at least under the cold ground, and feel what it was like there. The regular life above the earth did not appear to him, and he never thought of the sky either, even though it was infinite. The earth was not infinite, not under there, and surely if by some magic he could go through it, like a phantom or spectre, he would eventually come out the other side. He wondered where the urge had come from and what it meant. He wanted to go through the sands, below, and still more down, down, down, where he thought there were salt mines, or salt caves, and that the intensity of salt was too much to bear. But he would bear it, or die trying, and the salt would cleanse, no matter how much pain it took, his body and his soul and his mind. He would erase, through this salt, every mark, every pocket of darkness, dread, confusion, or doubt. He would attain to his self, the self he thought existed, just knew existed, before the world kicked his spirit this way, that way, and every which way. Down. Down was the word, where the salt was, somewhere in the earth, where mortals had never gone. He had become sure that this was the secret, a link to heaven even. People had been looking the wrong way, by looking to the sky. As he plummeted, it would become quieter and quieter, and he would continue, because that what had to be done, no matter which way the cards fell, and only the real would remain, and the truest true truth, he thought, even if lacking in any small or large way, would be better than the smallest small untruth. The salt would make it so. Tables Cantaloupe, and the bright sun or the Dairy Queen Blizzards, strawberry. The old trees, where not many people walk, and around there are rough dogs, with centuries of toughness, chained and foaming, black, taking the sun, taking the heat, absorbing everything, shining coats in the summer Sundays of victory. Tools for working, and big eighties trucks, or low riders, or Mars Bars by porches, where the Virgin Mary statue is, and she steps on the snake, because you’ve got to keep the devil underfoot. Wild K-mart skateboards or pellet guns, and the back roads, where sometimes oil drums go to die. Cookies and earrings and silver, shadows and wild dreams, or valiant rainbows in the afternoon. Gateways and the churches, or the old priest by the air conditioning, and outside the crickets. Indigenous snakes, and rafts floating. Tides. Up in the big trees, no monkey sits. Up in the big trees, ants travel. Tables with tablecloths. An old woman, one hundred, and she said Jesus had been good to her. She always ate her big meal in the afternoon, and then prayed. Cantaloupe, on tables, shaded, and out there, the bright sun and the rest of the world. Anchored Bending the wildflowers over, and the wind mixes with the rain. The reason for the old farm lady’s calmness was because she had seen many disasters. Since she lived there alone now, there was no reason to get excited about strong rains and winds, because they would do what they did to the outside, and that would be that. There were times when the hills might have fallen down, or so she had thought when younger. There were times when barns did fall down, and were rebuilt. There were lives lost, and there were lives not lost. It was as simple as that. She now sat and watched nature take its course. She thought that her calm was well earned. Other women, that she only saw now and then, were more worried, and would fret about this or that. A sociologist or urban planner, or even a historian, might have grouped the women of that time and place together, thinking their experiences could not be that different. But they were, because the lady had seen more tragedy through the years. She had lost not one, but two husbands. She had more livestock perish than the others. She had more equipment stolen. But she now knew something that the others didn’t, but it was not easy to define. As outer events through the years threatened to shut down the farm, or bring other kinds of troubles to her, some psychic root within her grew deep into the ground, and she was anchored. The wildflowers might bend, but she could no longer be swayed. Round by the Urban Grid I am a ghost in the city, seeing subway tokens, and the old marble floors, seeing brunette walkers, and old dogs by benches where the libraries sit in the sun. The dumpsters blue, and green ones too, or alleys even more south, by the guts, by the old dirty brick guts, where the water is polluted, and the graffiti happy sad bright fading new and mildly glamorous. I am a ghost in the city, and the learning places have no hold on me, because I roam and float and merge, or fly down escalators where the dust is moving, where riders carry books in bags. In the middle of the days of the afterlife, the rains fall on urban liquor stores, and the streetcars move but are slow. Lofts, old brick restaurants, and poor women, almost turned to stone, the heart has to be hidden to even have a chance to live. I am a ghost in the city. I know secrets, and I know where people go and what they do. There are umbrellas left on trains, and the lost and found fills up. There are lost souls too. I was one of those in my time. Now I am a ghost in the city, by the church bells, the traffic lights, the stairways, and the crowded corners. ------------ Email Brian Michael Barbeito: Brian1750@Hotmail.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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