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[ Mind Warp - Volume #4, Issue #08, File #063 ]
[ "Midnight Blues - 1st Solo" by Dark Horse ]
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Midnight Blues - 1st Solo
[Dark Horse]
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Smoky cafes. I always loved those smoky, empty cafes that canvas Europe and
congregate boisterously at every plaza, especially Pedante, in the heart of
Paris, fenced in on three sides by plaza and boulevard, where I spent every
evening of the best summer of my life. By July I had a "table of my own,"
where at six every evening I would dream over coffee and pastries, enchanted
with life and Paris and living the prototypical dream of the Young American
Traveler. From my table I could see the small plaza, nothing spectacular in
the scheme of the glory that is Paris, but my own special spot in a way, my
own little corner of the city and my own ancient bronze statue complete with
fountain. There were others who worked day in and day out by the fountain,
but it was my own in that back home no one would have remembered it like me,
back home no one would have even know it was there. The Lourve is public,
but this, this was my own private postcard memory to snatch and savor forever.
One day near the end of July a soft rain drizzled down onto the plaza and
into my hair and into my coffee. I was a poet then, and over my coffee that
summer I scribbled lofty words in tattered notebooks, but in that silky rain
that clung to my hair and cooled my face I realized how much I hated those
words, each and every one, indivitually and totally to the depths of my soul.
They were so empty, false, contrived, idealized. One word or a million can
not sum up an instant of human thought, no matter how elegant or exquisite.
The absolute spiritual power and glory of that misty rain in the gray plaza
in Paris put all my tender thoughts into perspective: how could one
communicate in a million pages the beauty of the momentary glance, meeting
yours, of a girl who quickly passes out of sight but lingers in the mind for
days? Of course there have been words smiths, such as Kerouac, Cooleridge,
Poe, prose painters who could weave a story into a net of words so beautiful
and enthralling you would never want to escape its grasp, but no one, and
especially not me, then, could capture a full second of life on paper.
They say you're not supposed to eat apple seeds - natural arsenic they
say, like it'll kill you or something.
So there I was in that cold dark morning, basking in the twilight that
precedes any sign of sun, just sitting there on my front porch
(and may I remark how cold it happened to be - fifty seven degrees as
it turned out to be - compared to the warm night before when slick
seventy degree air floated around me like fog-and-a-lighthouse) crouched
against the door, that air chilly and prickly like grass (but inside let
me tell you I knew it was pretty warm as far as nights go since i've seen
some pretty cold ones in my day and some days it doesnt get up to fifty
in the DAY even so I was right thankfull for my warm summer night that
morning) and me there waiting for nothing and digging everything (and
digging for those not aquainted with the hipster slang of the fiftys and
sixties and, gentle reader I make no accusation that that you are less
than hip to it all, but just for the benefit and common understanding of
all that peruse this sacred text digging means to some the complete and
utter understanding and agreement with whatever you may happen to "dig",
and this is not to say that there are not other deffinitions, but this is
all you need to know for now), just digging it all and soaking myself in
existence.
I doubt, as things stand, that I'll ever become a writer. I have a
decent vocabulary and a grasp of grammar and every other bit of
information needed in one's mind to write. I have nothing to write
about. I have no devils to exorcise. Without something unresolved
within the writer a story is nothing but just that, a story. Basic Plot
plus Frills here and there. William S. Burroughs would never have
become a writer without the aid of the "ugly spirit" (that entered
him the night he killed his wife in a bizarre william tell act and did
not leave him for decades)(The Native American medicine man who exorcised
the demon called it "One of the toughest" he had ever been up against.)
I have no such spirit to battle with words. Just a silly little life,
short, with a few ups and downs. I'm basically satisfied with
everything, and that presents a problem: I live a life much without
yearnings and dreams.
The sea was tired that night, and the air empty-smelling. No salt, no
nothing in the air but emptiness. It was impossible even to breathe
enough, the air was so thin and vacant.
Jim played with a rock in the moonlight. The rock was round and light,
shaped roughly like a triangle: an excellent skipping stone. Everything
in his life had skipped out on him, his father, his girl, his dreams of
college, and he was left with nothing but a backpack and a barren bit of
beach, warm and shaded and invisible from the shore where grumpy young
cops patrolled for hours for bums and lunatics (who are the rightful
owners of the sea) to keep the place safe for tourists.
Every night until four or so crazy teens, drunk on freedom and security,
would roam the beach playing guitars and lighting fireworks and drinking
beer. They would finally collapse, tired and wasted, and emerge fresh
and giggly the next morning. Jim took notes on them each night, long
sad descriptions of the color, curves, and character of each one, the
indescribable intricacies of their speech and style. It would be his
first great novel someday and take him away from the beach and into a
dry house and to everything else those kids had and that he remembered
from his youth.
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