Friday, May 29, 2009

Another Dream

This time I was in a hotel and knew the girl was in the hotel also, ten floors below me. Rides in the elevators and loiters in the lobby revealed her presence; she was coincidentally in the same areas at the same times as myself however we were forbidden to talk, and moreover I believed that she enjoyed and wanted to perpetuate this painful silence between us.

She was undergoing metamorphosis. Her eyes became tear shaped and deeply purple and her hair, which was brown and naturally curly, grew gloss-black and straight. She reformed along taller and leaner lines, her bodily contours so elastic and swaying as to suggest that she'd dispensed with her skeleton altogether. She had an air of obscure glamour; a kind of elegance that inspired intense desire and fear. Her outfits were made of silk, hovering in that twilight area between mint and beige and gray, adhering to her contours and then fading imperceptibly away to reveal long stretches of close-knit flesh.

I went to my room and resolved not to come out until she'd gone. Dream-time weighed heavily on my hands and I went mad after only few seconds' interment in that tiny plastered room. Sweating, anguished, I crawled through my doorway (contracting into nothingness) and rode down to her floor. The elevator opened on a vast plateau of glass and brass, long staircases leading to glass rooms through which one could see endless diminishing repetitions of this motif. There were vivid ferns and white furs. There were sudden cascades of warm water that ran down staircases to plunge in a white, foaming pool that underlay this terrain of cabled platforms. Her rooms were the last word, fulfilling the wildest dreams of 70's opulence. She appeared before me, at the towering window, wearing a formless shift made of that chromatically unstable fabric. On her wrist was a silver bracelet whose lines were interrupted by a metallic swelling which, when inspected, revealed a tiny holographic image of a clock. This was her way of telling me that it was too late. She had grown a dusting of fine golden hair which lay in sweeps and whorls against her skin. I turned around and began my search for the elevator, terrified lest I fall into that white boil below where, I somehow knew, she was floating at her ease.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Charming Domestic Scene: Electric Boundary

After six days of torrential rain the sun appeared yesterday, haltingly at first, peeping from behind long triangular wedges of gray and lapis which, sliding atop one another in a rapid shuffling motion, defeated the eye's attempt to find the sky. As the day wore on however sun's wan wan disc which lay so deeply ensconced began to blaze in patches of watery blue, and then the clouds, streaming up from the south, separated into long cottony furrows and the sun once again held sway.
I took the son to the beach and let him watch the surfers dropping into the big abrupt sections of gray glass. He climbed on the porous, encrusted rocks near the dunes, his little trouser seat wet with the seawater that had collected in their dents and pores. The sand was suddenly swarmed with tourists aggressively pursuing their long-delayed leisure, smearing one another with sun screen, throwing frisbees and balls, hurling their blubber into the molesting waves. My son grew bored, so we went to the the park, a shady, tree-sheltered place with tennis courts, basketball courts, swings, and slides. A pair of homeless men sat on the slides, absorbed in some earnest debate, their faithful bicycles wilting and dreaming against a nearby tree. Occasionally the men would pass a cup between them, savoring its contents, licking their lips, and under the heady influence of this elixir allowing their ragged voices to rise in passionate declaration. Then their summit was interrupted by my son's recreational shrieks and, with stares of blank disgust, they slowly dismounted the swings and wobbled off on their bicycles, leaving crinkling wrappers, empty cups, and a grimy cloth bundle on the swing set, a last memento of their debate. The anti-native Americans. Managing on every occasion, by dint of inculturation and ingenuity to produce some bit of trash. I wondered what it said about our society that even the lowest layer in our social strata pursued the production of waste with the same eagerness as the rest of us?

After my son went down for a nap I decided to bury the dog's electric wire. It is a simple but ingenious device consisting of a central transmitter into which a loop of wire is plugged and a collar which, encountering the radio signal sent along this loop of wire, will chirp in warning and then deliver an electrical shock from two metal posts. The dog, beside herself over the wildlife that had been evidencing in the wake of the rains, had already broken free twice and was hardly comporting herself with the dignity one might expect from a 10 year-old grand dame. Putting out the wire itself is no great trouble; it's getting the wire underground for the entire circumference of the yard that can be laborious and problematic. I drew a simple schematic, a simple plan describing the path the wire would take, and then it was time to get to work digging the two-inch trench into which the wire would go. I positioned my old, flat-bladed shovel against the sodden earth and pressed down with my foot. Nothing. I jumped a bit. Nothing. I jumped higher, landing violently on the top of the shovel, and was rewarded with the loud crunch of root. I'd forgotten that Florida grass is one big tangle of runners. Digging through this layer was like digging through a woven welcome mat. It would take one big push at a time, one shovel blade at a time. Two hours later, panting and dizzy, I was done with the trench. Then, crouching and sidling, I shoved the wire with my fingertips into the warm body of the earth, one small section at a time. When my legs gave out I would sit panting in the grass, watching the clouds slide and twist above me. I thought that if I worked hard enough I would get some peace, both within and without. I thought that if I could finish this task and demonstrate the working barrier to the dog, things would get better.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Charming Domestic Scene Regarding Aldous Huxley

Was recently complaining of no book to read, and so was given Point Counterpoint by Aldous Huxley. Hadn't read much by Huxley, like every other college student I'd devoured Brave New World and his essay on Perception, but I did recall a few years ago I'd picked up a volume of his short stories at a library sale and been appalled by their shoddy construction and pedestrian characterization.
Still, I had opened my mouth, and here was this book in my hands. So, I launched myself into Huxleyland, my spirits buoyed by a dust jacket that proclaimed it a "Modern Masterpiece by Modern Master", or something to that effect.
Imagine my dismay to discover that Huxley the prose stylist was even worse that I'd suspected, the worst sort of pedant! Here was an essayist trying to write fiction, which inspires in me the same sort of dread one might experience watching a nurse perform open-heart surgery. He blunders about, writing everything that comes to mind in hopes of hitting on a good image or simile. And he occasionally makes contact, but of course by then you're too exhausted to care. Just one example, and I won't get this exactly right, but paraphrasation will (trust me) suffice: An old laboratorious gentleman pauses amidst his beakers to capture a faint melody, identifying it as Bach, charmed, transfixed. And there's a passage preceding the precious groaner (which still I withhold), something about the melody tracing itself on the air, which is nice enough, but then Huxley follows with, "The hairs in the old man's auditory canal were washed about like seaweed in a heavy sea."

That's all I have to say. I rest my case. Anyway, suffice it to say I was not making very good progress on Huxley's opus, and it was suggested by the good lady who gave me the book that I found it distasteful only because it had been her suggestion. To which I replied (and humor me, poor reader, as I so rarely get the good lines, as I so rarely get the zinger): "I don't like it because it's a bad book."

One thing I didn't mention: Mrs. Dalloway (a masterpiece) was published in 1925. Huxley's book came out in 1928. Did Huxley (oh did you, Aldous?) get swept away by Woolf's genius? Did he fall prey to the anxiety of influence? I must know the reason for this book's grand ambition and monumental badness. It shows every sign of loving care, of immense devotion and grinding toil, all details lovingly rendered. This is not a careless book, just a horribly misguided one. How did it come about?

Friday, May 22, 2009

The Lighthouse

Recently changed the son's daycare to a place less than eight minutes away, a cute little place on the island that pops hopefully out from the backside of a curve and is denoted by sign upon which a smiling orange fish is followed by five multicolored minnows. It's a brand-new daycare run by two sisters and maintained by their vigorous retiree father who can always be found with some implement of mechanical remediation in his hand. The old man greets my son in the morning wearing the same forest-green polo shirt and wire spectacles, his gray curls in a state of dishevelment which he occasionally tries to address by dragging his palm across his forehead. He has the charming tendency, peculiar to certain grandfatherly types, of beaming with incredulous approval as my son hangs up his backpack and removes (with a wrench and a grunt) his shoes. The old man would clearly trade his wrenches and brooms for a chance to play games with the children, and conflict between duty and dalliance always leaves him a bit confused.
The two daughters, Masters of Education or Masters of Development (although I see the diplomas on their office wall every day I can never remember later the exact contents --the ornate font and the sunburst seal defeat my comprehension), are dismissive of "pop" and through the careful control of tone and glance direct him back to his list of chores before he gets himself invited to playtime.
The last week it has rained every day from sunrise to sundown and then on into the darkness, the quality of the precipitation ranging from prim gray slants to monsters of moisture that tried the windows with spongy hands.
I often ask my son, as we are driving to school, when he can see the lighthouse. At a certain stage in our journey it becomes visible over the treetops, and in response to my query he rocks in his child seat, craning his neck, struggling to see past the automotive obstructions. When he sights the lighthouse he is very proud. I then ask him what color is the lighthouse? And for the first sunny week he always responded the same way: "It's white and black and red."
This was true: white and black spirals running up its length, a red metal cap. However, when I asked him the same questions on a recent rainy trip, he (after the obligatory craning and rocking) said, "It's brown and gray and orange."
And so it was! Behind those gauzy curtains of rain, its stark coloration transmuted, the lighthouse screwed into the sky above the vivid foliage of the park. And then, as we rounded the turn that would bring Jonathan's daycare into our view, a trick of perspective made the lighthouse withdraw smoothly back into the treetops, as if it had never existed.
Sometimes just for a moment or two I imagine that I can see the world through my son's eyes -- massive, magical, infinite in power and promise.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Brett Settle

I like this name. It sounds like a coin spinning to a stop.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

The Dream

A simple enough dream, really. Nothing too outrageous or illogical about the plot, this dream did not demand the extreme credulity of some (I am a fish, time is strapped to a spacial axis, powdered donuts with pulses and tender feelings), but played out in smooth, logical fashion: I was a member of the Detroit Red Wings whose success on the ice was matched only by my failures in my personal life. I was in love with a woman who, tiring of my inability to make commitments or decisions, had ceased to love me. Each time I went over the boards for my shift, the heavy syrup of this romantic disaster sloshed about in my limbs, gumming my movements. My skate blades hacked at the ice (the dull sound curiously isolated) to little effect, the hockey equivalent of dream-quicksand, as I tried to join the action.

Then, I woke. I think my son cried out from the other room. I'm not sure. Two cats were fighting in the street below me, and to my disoriented brain these sounds registered as police sirens, a party, a woman in prolonged ecstasy, a baby crying. I got up and paced, then came back to bed.

When the dream resumed the woman I had loved and lost was sitting in the stands, eating popcorn. I went over the boards and, stealing the puck at the blue line, glided in on short breakaway. I went high, the shot practically vertical and finding the top of the net just inside the post. The crowd went wild. My heart hammered in my chest as I scanned the roaring arena, looking for her, but she was gone.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Holy Working Man

Work van. Through the back windows one could see steel shelves loaded with various tubes and small gray motors. Spools of wire hung from hooks on the ceiling. Grizzled driver, paisley bandanna swaddling skull, sunrise illuminating the filamentary hairs that stood out evenly from his bare shoulders to his forearms. As he stopped at a red light the driver turned on the radio, then reached down and retrieved a bowl of cereal. Three quick spoonfuls, his rose-red ears flexing with each chomp, his head nodding to some song on the radio. The light turned green, the bowl was replaced with a last reluctant glance, and the van lurched forward, switching lanes so quickly that its payload wobbled and rolled, and then it shot forward with a carburetive hiss and was soon out of sight.
I thought to myself, "that man is having a good day."

Thursday, May 14, 2009

In the Cabin

In that cabin of shellacked log, with Mary Jane Masters quivering below me, a certain diminutive glazed forelimb which had been heretofore camouflaged against those piney walls suddenly revealed itself as the missile of my ecstatic lust.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Katie

Oh, Katie, Katie. She of the baggy sweatshirts upon which Mickey Mouse danced, from which the airbrushed faces of her cats regarded the world with crosseyed suspicion, she of the pixie haircut and the practical sneakers with the thick soles, she of the pink doilies on her end tables, of the printed pajama bottoms which she wore tucked into her snow boots. Katie who meekly awaited her unalterable destiny. Her pinkness, her dewy eyes, her malleable limbs were all captivating but from the first Claude was aware of her haphazard construction, he had read in her lineaments the chain-smoking crone who yanked slot handles while rubbing, for luck, a picture of two grimy grandchildren, who crowded her house with collectible figurines. Katie’s shift from youth to old age would be practically instantaneous, dictated by genetics and the insalubrious lifestyle of her social class. However (Claude raised a mental and actual forefinger) she had the makings of a good mother.