pretty thing
I woke up just like any other day. the room was cold cause the heater pipe that went through the front of the room was damp and off. james was there in the other bed just like he was last night when I fell asleep. the tv was still on from the night before, and the sky through the white lacy curtain was grey, like it had been for days, not raining just dark. I woke up and thought about her, the girl I had kissed in the cab. I thought about the 10 thousand dollars that I owed the bank, the wreckage from gambling debts over the last year. I thought about this mythical place patagonia that I was running through, running like I couldnt stop, that I couldnt see, a drift pin unable to lock. I prayed right there, not a hard prayer, not a death defying prayer or a prayer that you do in what they call a fox hole, just a regular one, the kind I had gotten used to saying in the morning. the kind that a man who has kinda given up says. asia looked like another road ahead, if anything like patagonia I wasnt gonna see it anyway. I had written to pj in la “Im in patagonia, but Im kinda lost, I dont know what Im doing anymore” thats what I wrote in the letter before I went to bed. I looked at the sweet rose cotton border on the wool blanket around my chest. the wool was red and white, and had pictures of lanterns on it, the kind of lanterns like they got on old english wall paper, the single color kind, the burgundy against cream, and the blue on white, the ones that show narratives of people doing country things, the kind of wallpaper that makes you feel at home. but I wasnt home, and I didnt know where I was. I got up outta bed, and went and dressed quickly, and brushed my teeth and went downstairs to get a cup of cofee and wait for james. Maybe Ill try and go by uruguay where I know my friend is going to be in april building his hostel in punta diablo, or maybe Ill go to cartagena and see if I can get some job at the boat yards where the stahlratte is going to have its masts changed. I thought about a red steel drift pin, with chastes for cable, holding the white porcelain and cast iron flower to something else that I never made. I thought about my studio in rio, and bob, and the homeless girl, and what that hill felt like at night, looking down at the harbor at the boats entering and leaving the port, at the favella and the mongrel muts basking on cement ledges by returnable beer liters. and I felt alone. I didnt really think about her again, I tried not to, I just thought about ny and that it was probably where I should go and try and make some money. I was afraid that Id get stuck there, that I would never leave again, but when I thought about leaving it felt the same as coming, which felt the same as the dark diningroom. I scooped more nescafe into the cup and looked at a bad console with a burgundy and gold lamp base and a tv playing a loud morning novella. me and james paid the lady and headed out towards the airport, I was leaving, getting on a plane heading to calafate, the end of patagonia at punta arenas, the goal when I set out in tijuana a year and a half ago, so many plans ago, so soon, still with nothing.
we headed out onto the road. it was long and flat and laid out in front of us like a brown bandshell. it was such a contrast to the rainforests and the gravel of the carretera astral that we had been banging against for days. i played squeeze, and there was a song that reminded me of high school, the double lane paved straightawat seemed connected to the sky, stich like a hemline and I felt light ,lighter than I had felt in a while. I could hear the music, and I saw the sun burning a white line into the blue clouds that held the sky over the rock ballasts like a frying pan. something felt different, it was nyc, it was there inside me, and it felt like a good thing. I thought of my shop, and the 2 inch thick hot rolled plate that I had laid on the floor when the forklift couldnt lift it or do anything else with it. it had been the last bit of my shop that I dismantled before I left. it had taken me 8 years to make that table. it had taken me eight years to have a place for a table like that, a table that couldnt move, that you could push against, that you could bend against, that you could clamp to and jig on, it was ten by five and it was 2 inches thick, and it sat on w12 legs and a w12 ridge, it was built like a ship, it was flat and true. it was square and level, and when I tried to take it apart, I couldnt, it was too big, so I just laid the plate on the floor of the building, and it stayed there like a part of the place. my boot felt like a lead pipe against the temple of the car, digging into the accelerator linkage like a child. “escarpment” james said. like the way he talked, out the window, like a captain talks, slow and humble. like how I thought a prisoner talked beaten, but james wasnt beaten and he wasnt stupid, and he wasnt a prisoner. “whats that” I said, racking my brain for words that he mighta meant that I knew. he spoke out into the glass where the sun kept burning a hole into the brown blue. he pointed past my head to the horizon out the passenger side. I had been looking over there just a minute before. there was a wall of rock that took up the hole left hand side of the car, it came right up out of the fields like a wave. like a solid sheer wave of earth. it blocked out the land behind it, and it elevated the horizon so that the clouds didnt really float or hang anymore in the sky, they just lay flat like a tired back against the sheets, I felt outa breadth, and I wanted james to keep talking, I wanted to hear what he was going to say, because I had the feeling it was important. “thats when theres a crack in the earth, and one part goes down and one part goes up. where the earth splits, thats what made that rock I think. they got it in ontario.” I thought about the manhattan bridge and how the skyline used to make me want to fall like a bat to earth, with big black wings and a hairy rat like face with bloody teeth, but also soft like a furry dove, a kind of mixed animal, half carniverous half like a nurse. I heard the beatiful beat of diesel and the chimp bump of the siccor connections where the manhattan bridge is seemed together over the hudson. all of a sudden like in that bowie song about a crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me. oh you pretty thing, ny was back, it was mine , it was home, and I knew, I believed that I had been restored.
we headed out onto the road. it was long and flat and laid out in front of us like a brown bandshell. it was such a contrast to the rainforests and the gravel of the carretera astral that we had been banging against for days. i played squeeze, and there was a song that reminded me of high school, the double lane paved straightawat seemed connected to the sky, stich like a hemline and I felt light ,lighter than I had felt in a while. I could hear the music, and I saw the sun burning a white line into the blue clouds that held the sky over the rock ballasts like a frying pan. something felt different, it was nyc, it was there inside me, and it felt like a good thing. I thought of my shop, and the 2 inch thick hot rolled plate that I had laid on the floor when the forklift couldnt lift it or do anything else with it. it had been the last bit of my shop that I dismantled before I left. it had taken me 8 years to make that table. it had taken me eight years to have a place for a table like that, a table that couldnt move, that you could push against, that you could bend against, that you could clamp to and jig on, it was ten by five and it was 2 inches thick, and it sat on w12 legs and a w12 ridge, it was built like a ship, it was flat and true. it was square and level, and when I tried to take it apart, I couldnt, it was too big, so I just laid the plate on the floor of the building, and it stayed there like a part of the place. my boot felt like a lead pipe against the temple of the car, digging into the accelerator linkage like a child. “escarpment” james said. like the way he talked, out the window, like a captain talks, slow and humble. like how I thought a prisoner talked beaten, but james wasnt beaten and he wasnt stupid, and he wasnt a prisoner. “whats that” I said, racking my brain for words that he mighta meant that I knew. he spoke out into the glass where the sun kept burning a hole into the brown blue. he pointed past my head to the horizon out the passenger side. I had been looking over there just a minute before. there was a wall of rock that took up the hole left hand side of the car, it came right up out of the fields like a wave. like a solid sheer wave of earth. it blocked out the land behind it, and it elevated the horizon so that the clouds didnt really float or hang anymore in the sky, they just lay flat like a tired back against the sheets, I felt outa breadth, and I wanted james to keep talking, I wanted to hear what he was going to say, because I had the feeling it was important. “thats when theres a crack in the earth, and one part goes down and one part goes up. where the earth splits, thats what made that rock I think. they got it in ontario.” I thought about the manhattan bridge and how the skyline used to make me want to fall like a bat to earth, with big black wings and a hairy rat like face with bloody teeth, but also soft like a furry dove, a kind of mixed animal, half carniverous half like a nurse. I heard the beatiful beat of diesel and the chimp bump of the siccor connections where the manhattan bridge is seemed together over the hudson. all of a sudden like in that bowie song about a crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me. oh you pretty thing, ny was back, it was mine , it was home, and I knew, I believed that I had been restored.
posted by bigworld06 at 6:26 PM
1 Comments:
Brilliant - its just one long passage of rich description - excellent - I will try and run down the roads of your narrative landscapes...
SHR3
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