Liberty in the Age of the Storm
****Something More in the Works on this post*****
I am free. I sleep and eat. I get up to move and sit again when I feel the blood in my head. It is there for a bit and quiets.
It rains outside and the streets are mirrors and the trees and the lights go on forever in the space. I walk outside onto the sidewalks and it is dark and I watch the lights and the trees that go on forever. I like the rain because I am free. It lays on me and soaks into me and it feels like love or sex laying into me.
I smoke a wet cigarette and it hisses and the smoke comes out. The strands wrap around the lights like ghosts of flies and they fly away because they are free. I can see them go out and I picture them look down. They see me and they are free.
I walk to the store in the rain. The people on the sidewalk run with their collars around their necks and the front to their face until they are blue black brown eyes peeking out. I look at them and look down then up again. I do not wish to be a voyeur. I imagine them stepping into the street. They move through the trees and they pass into the lights and their shadows fly away like the ghosts of a host of flies and they swarm around the Baltic and scoop up the sea with their mouths and breathe. Or they fly up further than the ghosts. They are ether around the Sirius star and the hydrogen burning around the sun and the essence of an equator radiating life and they are fingertips and they are bone.
I go into the store. It is blinding from the rows of lights. The people take food and boxes of medicine from the shelves. It is late and I take a coke from the refrigerator and a beer. I walk outside and I drink my coke. It is cold so I hold the collar to my neck and I whistle something because I am happy from the rain and the coke and the people I stare at look away.
-Matt! Wait – here’s Matt.
I am at Kate’s house. She lives close to me and I drink my beer. I am uncomfortable because there are many people here and they stay when I turn my back.
-Hello Kate.
We hug but I am tall and I am uncomfortable because she is pretty.
-Thanks for coming. There’s plenty of stuff so grab something when you’re finished with that. So how are you?
-Good. It’s cold out.
-Oh god I know. Well I’m glad you could come.
I walk outside and rain in tiny streams walls up. I throw my hand out to catch a drop and I smoke and drink my beer. I do not want to seem rude so I go back in. I try to be the life of the party. I drink more. My knees hurt so I sit on the couch with a thread coming out of the cushion twisted into beads and I wrap my fingers around it and it twists thicker. People are dancing. I’m not drunk enough for that. People say I am a good dancer but I look at photos and I feel sick with shame. I like being quiet because I am free. But I feel bad and try to be the life of the party and I drink more.
I picture a scene from a movie. The woman is sitting on a bench by the ocean. The man walks up but I do not see his face because he is too far away. He stands behind her and they talk but they talk in Italian and I do not remember the words so they speak to each other. They are in love so he sits by her on the bench and I see their backs. The waves sound out to the people on the bench. They hiss and pound at them.
I will drink when I write. I will be drinking now.
-It’s like the Mastodons of the North.
I think I am drunk. I look at Kate because she is nice to look at. She is dancing and I do not look away. There are lights around the house on the walls and strings of them are falling around me. A person wraps the lights around their legs and arms and they glow red green. I shake my head and the light wraps around.
-Come dance with me.
Kate grabs my hand and she pulls me up. It is a jazz song and I like it. We spin around each other and I laugh and she looks at me.
I am sitting on a bench. Snow is on the ground and I am holding a book. It says (Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass). The earth is covered with snow full of holes and long lines where the sidewalks are. I sit closer to myself in the cold. My breath comes out in clouds. I picture myself as a noir anti-hero with a cloud of smoke coming out. He is standing in the rain or the snow and his collar is covering his mouth. He is a dot of darker color under a streetlight or in the corner of an alleyway. He is unobtrusive and he is dangerous. He is free and beautiful. Women come to him and he accepts and they try to kill him but he knows this – he knows them and he stops them with a twist or a trigger and a sharp crack. Or they love him and he accepts because he wants to free them as he is free.
So I imagine Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and Robert Mitchum and Gloria Graham and Mike Hammer and Philip Marlowe and Jean-Paul Belmondo and De Niro holding a bloody finger to his head and the perfection of the phrase ‘the asphalt jungle’ and how it is an air-conditioned nightmare and a skyscraper national park jutting out of an island whose life and ghostlife and ether are destroyed by a slow pounding of machine parts and arms entwined like shackles. And like Grass with his two old men wandering a broken city with a broken wall I am too far afield and I want her.
I am tired of dancing so I walk outside again and smoke and drink more. I like these things because my hands shake and they like to move. I move them from my side to my mouth and they are hinged this way. I speak with my hands because my body speaks when my words are quiet and unreasonable. I can see her through the window. She is bright and her cheeks are red and she is talking.
-So what’s someone like you doing in a place like this? – I say
-That’s a bit old-fashioned. Maybe start with ‘what’s going on’ or ‘having a good time’. – She says
-stock questions don’t you think?
-Yeah but I am having a good time
-Evidently. – she is laughing.
Kate has her arm wrapped around mine. We are walking through an alley and the walls around us are covered with pictures of actors. They have their arms stretched out and groups of people are looking up and their eyes are shining and the actors are wild and impetuous and trapped in stone. She is an artist so I point to them.
-Look.
-Those are terrible.
-Very but what do you expect
-Lascaux I guess.
-What’s that?
-Prehistoric wall paintings.
-They’re not that bad – she laughs and I like the sound. It is low and bursting from her.
We are going to a play. I am not used to seeing one with someone else. I like to be alone at plays so I can look at the people and feel I am on the stage. I am disappointed because the people are less real than my ghost moving through them. The building is dark when we go in. There is a hallway and two people look at us and our tickets. We sit down at our seats. Our legs touch and I look at her neck. I cannot remember the play. It has boxes that the actors are moving and changing. The boxes are chairs and buildings and guns and rooms but I look at her and I do not see them.
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