The many fallen blossoms
from the crape myrtle leave traces like a patina on the stoop in front
of my apartment. They look planned, they look like art. I hose the
blossoms away several times a week in a ritual that seems to serve no
purpose but for the satisfaction of the ritual itself, maybe for the
feel of the splash of the water on my bare feet, sometimes cool,
sometimes warm, maybe for the sound, maybe for the act of doing
something while doing nothing at all.
This pattern, this patina, painted, stained on the canvas of my world, leads up the stairs to the bricks of the front yard which find themselves impervious to the lingering memory of the tree that shades them. Here the blossoms rest and rot and the bricks find them irrelevant other, perhaps, than how they get stuck in the cracks between the bricks like popcorn does in my teeth at the movie theater. These blossoms, too, I beg away on a water ride of unparallelled excitement that takes them to the sidewalk, to the curb, to the street, where their adventure takes turns that leave me behind, watching. They're my kids on a bus on the first day of school. They're my parents driving away after a visit, my cat wandering away to experience all that which it can't find indoors. I feel good. I have done what I can.
It's August, but at 2 am the bricks feel cool as I sit. I'm not supposed to be sitting outside writing; I'm supposed to be asleep. But this city around me is calling to me in so many ways, reminding me so strongly that there is beauty everywhere, in everyone, in everything, that I don't think I can go to bed until I've tried to alert everyone. I'm on the deserted island and you're in the plane flying overhead, and I need you to see me, to see the beauty I've found, see me waving.
I don't know what the soundtrack to city life is supposed to be, but in my now, at 2:23 am on a Wednesday morning, I hear mostly crickets. Every once in a while some people walk by, wondering why I am on the stoop with my laptop, I think, walking, purposefully, maybe home from work, maybe home from a date, giggling, holding hands, talking earnestly but maybe insecurely. Every 10 minutes or so a car drifts by, excited, heading home, eager to rest finally and maybe bask in the glow of its day, its night. Sometimes though it's a cab, creeping by, hunting, predatory, moving too slowly. I feel like the cabs see everything and yet see nothing at all, certainly nothing that I see. Once though I got into a cab in Chinatown and Jimi Hendrix was on the radio. "Nice music, " I said. "You know who this is?" asked the cabbie, challenging, almost confrontational. "It's Jimi Hendrix," I said, "the greatest guitarist the world has ever known." "My man!" said the cabbie, to me, not about Jimi. That cabbie liked me a lot. I think maybe that guy sees things that I see.
In the midst of it all acorns drop here & there, intermittent and unpredictable like shooting stars, dropping onto cars, dropping onto the street, bouncing, "ker-plunk"ing, rolling away, a fraction of a second of hostility followed by utter silence. I'm not sure how the acorns feel about dropping onto asphalt. I'm thinking they must feel sad or maybe useless, directionless. Maybe we've all fallen onto asphalt before, metaphorically I mean, found ourselves feeling out of place and sad and useless and directionless. Maybe the acorns are supposed to remind us of this. But maybe they are just seeds that drop and they're not supposed to remind us of anything at all. As I sit, I don't really care. But the acorns, they "ker-plunk" repeatedly, regardless.
Mostly though it's crickets, steadily chirping away, and trees, and leaves, and a moon like a homing beacon staring at us through a haze of clouds too restless to stay. If I were a cloud, I'd stay, and watch, and listen.
This pattern, this patina, painted, stained on the canvas of my world, leads up the stairs to the bricks of the front yard which find themselves impervious to the lingering memory of the tree that shades them. Here the blossoms rest and rot and the bricks find them irrelevant other, perhaps, than how they get stuck in the cracks between the bricks like popcorn does in my teeth at the movie theater. These blossoms, too, I beg away on a water ride of unparallelled excitement that takes them to the sidewalk, to the curb, to the street, where their adventure takes turns that leave me behind, watching. They're my kids on a bus on the first day of school. They're my parents driving away after a visit, my cat wandering away to experience all that which it can't find indoors. I feel good. I have done what I can.
It's August, but at 2 am the bricks feel cool as I sit. I'm not supposed to be sitting outside writing; I'm supposed to be asleep. But this city around me is calling to me in so many ways, reminding me so strongly that there is beauty everywhere, in everyone, in everything, that I don't think I can go to bed until I've tried to alert everyone. I'm on the deserted island and you're in the plane flying overhead, and I need you to see me, to see the beauty I've found, see me waving.
I don't know what the soundtrack to city life is supposed to be, but in my now, at 2:23 am on a Wednesday morning, I hear mostly crickets. Every once in a while some people walk by, wondering why I am on the stoop with my laptop, I think, walking, purposefully, maybe home from work, maybe home from a date, giggling, holding hands, talking earnestly but maybe insecurely. Every 10 minutes or so a car drifts by, excited, heading home, eager to rest finally and maybe bask in the glow of its day, its night. Sometimes though it's a cab, creeping by, hunting, predatory, moving too slowly. I feel like the cabs see everything and yet see nothing at all, certainly nothing that I see. Once though I got into a cab in Chinatown and Jimi Hendrix was on the radio. "Nice music, " I said. "You know who this is?" asked the cabbie, challenging, almost confrontational. "It's Jimi Hendrix," I said, "the greatest guitarist the world has ever known." "My man!" said the cabbie, to me, not about Jimi. That cabbie liked me a lot. I think maybe that guy sees things that I see.
In the midst of it all acorns drop here & there, intermittent and unpredictable like shooting stars, dropping onto cars, dropping onto the street, bouncing, "ker-plunk"ing, rolling away, a fraction of a second of hostility followed by utter silence. I'm not sure how the acorns feel about dropping onto asphalt. I'm thinking they must feel sad or maybe useless, directionless. Maybe we've all fallen onto asphalt before, metaphorically I mean, found ourselves feeling out of place and sad and useless and directionless. Maybe the acorns are supposed to remind us of this. But maybe they are just seeds that drop and they're not supposed to remind us of anything at all. As I sit, I don't really care. But the acorns, they "ker-plunk" repeatedly, regardless.
Mostly though it's crickets, steadily chirping away, and trees, and leaves, and a moon like a homing beacon staring at us through a haze of clouds too restless to stay. If I were a cloud, I'd stay, and watch, and listen.
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