Rosie

First posted 4-18-04

No quote tonight. None that fit.

A meloncholy night, the clock in the corner reads 11:59, seconds away from the parting shot of a weekend. Just returned from seeing a movie with Theresa, and the lights are off. The computer kicks a morgue-ish light into the room, and the death of a cigar is thick in my nostrils. Sweet-aroma cigarillo, Orient by way of Paris, Chicago, Athens. Blowing smoke in the cool April air into my fingers. My fingers coated with smoke like soap, the scent will be there in the morning.

Strange night, a prose night. Driving down Baxter to Beechwood, the air whistling through the window, car lights like sailing ships hoisted to a downtown Saturday night. Feral, voiceless screams from each carseat. Memories so thick in the night air of that street, like moths. Jimmy Johns, there on the left, a green and red sign. That Jimmy Johns, where I had sun-drenched lunches in the heat of Friday afternoons, outside with Kat. A long entry that. Someday, I'll put that down, that explanation of a strange life, my foolishness, and a stupidity. Someday.

Memories alive and buzzing along Baxter tonight. The streetlights ghosts, spun in steel. Each houselight a soul, nailed to the cross of an outside wall. The warding of evil. People going places, strangers wandering down the medians. The downtown off in the distance, felt in the buzzing of its neon. Live wire under the floorboards, I can hear it, feel it in my toes.

Leaning over the railing, watching the lights across the street highlight the trees in jungle sense, growls of students on the prowl, heading to fun and excitement. I am reminded of my old apartment complex. The Christmas I spent there, taking my Christmas Eve walk, climbing back up the hill through the forest darkness, cresting it to the complex and I can still see the full length of the building, each outside light starry and distant. So much it looked like an ocean liner through the fog. Long and light, bright, riding low in the forest green sea. So much wonder of that sight, this new place misses that charm. Best I get is leaning over the railing, watching the trail of my cigar spit hit the grass below. I get the feeling of height, and I want to perch in the high places of the world. Crouch on the branch of a cloud, hang off the spire of a mountain, nest in the tree at the end of eternity. Isolated and pure, watching the world spin below, as distant and understandable as a star.

I saw Caroline's band last night. She changed her hair. It used to be in pigtails in my lab. She shortened it, bunched it, caught a bit of the seventies in the pins. She looked attractive, more so than in my memory, which is a feat given my memory of her. The smile of her face, the smile of her midriff. She sang in a higher register than I expected. I don't know exactly what a I expected, maybe something akin to a husky german cabaret. I think she screams a little too much in the songs, but that's the opinion of a man with little opinion. Spoke for a few minutes after the set, but I could see she had people to talk to. But she did kind of find me out and talk for a few minutes. Strange that, attention. Probably to help with promotion. How'd you like the show, how's classes this semester, next gig coming up, make sure to bring people. I don't mind being a mule. Hell, don't mind nothing. But I will write her to give her my thoughts, simply because I can express better in the email. Guess I'm just an awkward funk.

Heh.

Tom Waits playing low on the stereo. Right kind of music for the night. Beat generation, but from the LA side, not the Greenwich Village Beatnik, not a hepcat but a hipster. Five-star Reverand of the Saturday night. Weekly pastor of the Ivar Theatre burlesque. Mourner of the Empty Bottle Sorrow. Representitive of Our Lady of Drunkards. Testimony, 2AM death of bar rooms.

Christ, why is that I feel most comfortable with any generation but my own. I could live with the glint, glitz and glamour of the 30's. Lost man for a Lost Generation. Patriotism and showmanship of the 40's. Working man, meat and potato man of the 50's, minus the sexism. Listening to this music I could love/understand the 2 AM steam-drenched streets of LA in the 60's, stumbling from one bar to the next, piano men and jazz quartets grumbling to drunks and lost. But I feel no home in my generation. There is no there there.

These words are a parody. They are poetry in my head, silly fool lines in the illusion of my screen. They are jumbled, jangled on the way from eyeballs to fingertips. I should give up on my story, on any idea of writing. I have not the wit for it.

Memories thick like white-winged moths tonight. Meloncholy moths. The gliding, the sliding, the beat beat beat of wings, slick against my face. Brush them away with my hands. The chilled booze calls in a horse, throaty hum from my fridge, and the CD is changing. Clock reads 12:30, it's the sabbath. This song is crap, I have to change it. I've got to sign off. A futile half hour has died on the keys of my keyboard, and I'll bury it on the server. Just a headstone to a deranged mind, the synapses buzz and burst like a wire on the fritz. Tomorrow will bring a day of...nothing really. Just a stall until the semester ends, and I have to start work in earnest. I just don't want to work until this nightmare month is put out of its misery. A night of alcohol and vomit awaits me, and I will happily toss my body into its jaws, if only to have one night blocked from memory. Just a night I don't remember, where anything could have happened, so long as I don't remember it.