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.

nature

I stepped into a field by the side of the wide gravel carretara astral.scrapers and round steel billet pounders mashed the gravel into its own juices tieing together the bottom half of chiles green valleys to the land to the north. I had to stop and look at these big stumps that where black in the green fields. stumps the size of gas trucks, or beached whales. theres different ways to make things right. by adding or subtracting. whats been made that lasted from removal. these black stumps that used to be trees, play instrumental solos that nobody could deny are eternal. thats the thing of it aint it. to make something new, that looks like its been here forever, like a lost child of the creator, orphaned on this planet, to sleep restless nights by the river alone. dont doubt it, dont justify it, dont say nothin fer it. like the man that cut her down. its all the same wheteher you believe it or not. it dont matter. “you fall in” james said. all my clothes where wet. a small price to pay really gettin close to something that doesnt need you. the girl in ny would hurt me more. my empty studio hurts more, the black bit of carbon ox, on a slip tie with red crystal hurts more than a little wet boots covered in mud. the whole mess feels like fiberglass hair ball stuck in a gator flute that cant pass.”thats what I saids james” the extra ess to show him Im stupid. to protect whatever it is I wanted to look at in the field. Ill be stupid for that stump. the clouds hang low in the road, like the green backdrop of patagonia is on fire, little cypress slugs eating stumps wedged between collared beech branches. some indian fellow walked down the road wearin a red puffy jacket with a grey stripe. probably a bundle on a ship from the red cross, probably a kids coat from michigan from before the frost, from before the big chill, or other such pop icons. useless do-gooders.there was a bit a grass and little red mushroom flowers growing in the coarse sogged wood, glucose broken down into blocks easy enouigh for a baby ocelot to eat. they got taken away by old men carrying a thirty sex inch husquy. diggin and jabbin so the cows could eat pasto.and here they are made something new thats lasted and keeps on lasting, getting better the more it goes away, cause thats just the nature of it.

On the train, New York to Boston, he barked...
>> Ive been running the lines in portugese
>> but I dont think barked translates
>> just like they dont have a word for jealous
>> but she understands when I lean into her back
>> and make her pay for the boat ride
>> where the bow dripped manzan frosties
>> and the blue shirt she bought for her son on my buck
>> slipped off the shoulder and splayed my belongings to the wind
>> this is where I slept last night, the smell of stale cigarettes on myhair...
>> not even a bed really just a pile of thoughts that cant get made
>> her knees scraped the tile pallazo
>> ah oh bar, ah chanel crumpled by toilet paper
>> ah another bathroom attendant lookin for a handout
>> my hands out and I got both her hands out rubbing my balls
>> cant ever have enough hands on the job
>> funny thing about terraces that
>> the light bulb turns me on like an outboard
>> my propeller spun my hair dry
>> I wonder if Ill ever get over a whole saturday in bed

later when the kid offered me a cookie I remebered it was just a couple of years ago, they nabbed that dartmouth new england clamchowder money belt that had fallen for a peruvian drug runner, who used her arraignment to spout some kinda sept whatever date propaganda cheer. I was not willing to end up on the back of a cereal box, or in an editorial collum of the new yorker. “tienne conflicto” I said loud, and angry, enough to scare the kid in the backseat, and make the older brother, the good brother, the public enemy number one rethink the gringo in the white fiat rental car. the tomato stands kept coming,little pine slat scabs of bark, tacked onto fruit baskets and bmx huffys leaning on trousers made of wool and training wheels. “tranquillo” he said
I got hungry and pulled off onto the vegas diner, next to the tepic station, that had a beef backbone soup with a huge nugget of corn cob bobbing in the pink doily dish. the two kids stayed outside under the twig shelter where I had parked the car. obviosly pennyless, playing fetch with a black and white mut, that was too low to the ground and to fat to have been made on purpose. they passed a gingerale bottle full of bug juice back and forth and kicked rocks into the dust made by farm trucks and buses that passed on the road in front of the petrol tanks. eventually they came sulking up all shy to the door by the table where I was eating, I said “venga” but realized after I invited them in, that I was gonna end up paying for there lunch, that it was gonna be impossible for me to explain I was looking for just a little talk over backbone, that I didnt want to take over there moms job, or correct the national deficit. I had only a couple extra pesos that got swallowed up by the ten year old who unabashedly had seconds on a plate of boiled beats and cabage that set me back a buck fifty. thats the last time I invite kids in out of the dust, let em play with dogs and kick rocks, and suck fumes, let em be what they are, poor and penniless, let em make there own way,hungry if necessary out down to the reservation.
I decided I was gonna get my buck fifty worth and go with them to the little town they where heading to, and sleep in the tent with them. so I changed my loose plans from spending my first night at some remote scrag of rock coast to, sleeping heal to head with the kids in a four man popup, 25k on a dirt road south off the five in a town called ralco. I figured Id save the 6 dollars that a guide book said a young california couple charged for “cute as pie cabins a stones throw from crashing waves”, Ive had enough california couples to last a lifetime. we got to the turn off in ralco late, it was farther than I had figured, los angeles aptly named for its barren grid of dirt lanes was the landmark town on the five where the small road to the reserve began. we missed the first leg, and ended up backtracking following multiple directions first, from a hot chick passerby in a pink sweater that turned out to be incorrect and then more succesfully from a fat cab driver reading the paper next to his vacant black and yellow opel. the kid woke himself up by releasing gas, which i usually dont mind if you got money in your poket, I mean what are you gonna do right its a function of nature, but some how cause I paid for his lunch his fart seemed more derelict and a larger imposition. I rolled down the window and let some of the night air in, it smelled like a mix of fresh cut pine, and cow shit. I hadnt seen any animals since the sun went down, and I was glad for it. I dont want to die colliding my little two stroke into a steer, on the granite tumblers and roll down the cliff. I can just see it now, my back broke into me, my legs flatly laid between the detroit flanged leafs piercing ucoiled spring struts, the 2 inch ridged twelve gauge sandwiching my foresaken spleen, my peeled tattoed arms and my flambayed constricted septum. car crashes, death by metal not a way to go. I saw a little brown woman in a blue coat bent over on the gravel shoulder pulling up her socks with her back to the lanes, it was a blur that my mind unfolded into the 100 feet of road as we past. I turned the car around, looking for answers, looking for a place to stay. a word to the wise, looking for whatever it was I was incapable of finding. I rolled down on my side, and the older brother of the two, leaned his neck forward so that his eyes could view past the sightline of my head, out through the open driverside door window his little fat lip bulged down onto his chin like a pregnant icycle hangs above a door, a benign danger that is easily sliced. the little brown woman raised her head and she looked like a painted witch, when she ran over to the car waving her hands above her head screaming the lip flexed and I thought I heard tear, but maybe it was tear with the intonation on the soft e, the one that makes the sound of pants splitting when a car rolls onto itself. I looked out through the windshield at the splattered bugs that where a creamy yellow mucus stuck to the glass and was absent for a moment in the acute delirium.

I was hauling bags up and down the steps yesterday. “adjudar” a skinny little kid following in my steps said it twice. he had on a pink t shirt without sleeves and his arms jutted out where the pit should be. I fired the kids yesterday after they did nothing but carry a bag take a break, carry a bag, dissapear. carry a bag, not come back. I decided that if I was gonna help wivona, I would do what I could. if she was going to kiss me at night holding her school books, I was going to carry bags. I swiveled my shoulder in towards my chest, the 50lb bag straining my neck, because a soldier in black fatigeues pointed a slim stocked 16 round barrel at my head. I held my breadth and leaned the soft part of my skull against the rotten brick wall down by the road. the kid with the pink tank top, was nibbling the heals to my addidas with little brown curled toes. his legs bent up the wire sandals over the road. there where signs alerted your attention to a black van with thick armored plate and a turret where monkeys made a spectacle of themselves for bits of glass and other land fill. winova stepped into the house with no wall yesterday. I was sitting on the veranda looking at the harbor. happy the german hadnt talked. didnt say a fucking word. thats what I miss about being filthy. about working with your hands and having the cuts and soil to show, men dont bother you. My heavy hand fell on the siamese cats head. his big black furry balls stretched out behind him streaking the favella in a pink missile glory shot. actually I think at this time of day they call it the martini shot, or maybe its martini time. it definately would be, tired sweating and dirty. but I was having a soda, trying to catch my breadth, proud of myself that I had finally figured a way to keep the germans quiet, when winova, came and sat down next to me. she was talking about money. about fifty dollars for brick, she brought egor with her, the 8 year old kid with big teeth that I loved at first site. I spent 120 for a dangerous fuck at the whore house last week, and 50 bucks for brick seemed reasonable. “damme un bessito” I said to her, I wanted to own her, I wanted to own the love that she was about to give before she gave it, I wanted a meal that doesnt end until I leave the table. I wanted it all to be like a surprise, like a dear eating scrub in the tall grass, with a pink macrelel free until I kill it. martini time was over and the blue bulbs that turn the veranda into a jazz disco at night made sugarloaf dissapear, a lone cable car scratched up the braided cable onto winovas goddam good behind. when her tongue went in my mouth , it was hard and mechanical and I thought of high school dances not mothers of good sons, but this is rio I guess. what am I going to do here. what does anyone do here?