RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,298
(five million years of nothing)
'The wave, breaking against your feet?
As long as you're standing in the stream
fresh waves will always be breaking
against them.' That was Bertolt Brecht,
writing that, or saying it, I can't here
remember. Will the seasons ever be
new again? Will there always be a
draft by this window?
-
I dragged a chair across the room.
Not wishing to mar the floor, I first
put that chair on a piece of carpet.
Everything artful changed, and it all
then looked so artificial. ('The rugs,
all skewy now, looked like creatures,
a mess of dogs asleep in random
places along the floor').
-
It was some year of jubilee? I hadn't
heard, nor did I ever understand any
of that Papal stuff. Jubilee? What jubilee?
Some patron saint of nothing getting
scratched and pawed-over by pilgrims
dropping crutches? Our Lady of
Czestochowa, again? Or that pilgrim
site in Serbia. I forget that name too.
But it will come to me. God guarantees
such things for free. [Yep, there, it
just came to me, and thank you Jesus
for that - 'Our Lady of Medjugorje.'
-
I knew a girl once who worked in a
workhouse laundry. She was Irish.
A real screamer too; small, petite, all
things so, if you know what I mean.
It was always a pleasure conjoining
the seams. She sewed! She said that,
in the workhouse, two things never
mattered : Birthdays, and 'Mortality' -
which is what they called Death.
She said that three words along were
what they called a baby - an 'Item of
Mortality.' I thought that was very
strange, and man those nuns must
have been something.
-
I never even was sure what a workhouse
was. Poor people? And they all seemed
to be doing laundry, for hospitals and
such. I guessed they were doing time?
Holding babies in their arms, within
tjhis world of sorrow? Say a fond hello
to your new item of mortality?
-
She also always said 'Time heals all
wounds.' I usually added, 'In this
world of sorrow, yes. But even a
broken clock is right twice a day,
so watch out.' I used to think about
those children - was being named a
proof of survival? Without a name
would something live less long?
Was naming having to do with
survival, and were both naming
and survival both also having to
do with time? Baffling questions,
to which I merely just ended up
making my own answers.
-
I read the Meditations of Marcus
Aurelius three times. I read The
Consolations of Philosophy three
times also. Grateful reading for a
beleaguered soul. 'Live you life
as if you were already dead.'
-
The ghost was standing in the
doorway. It coughed. Why would
a ghost cough? I thought to myself.
Is there such a thing as mild ghost
phlegm? There's some folklore
about not giving the dead food. I
remembered that. No matter how
dense the Eighth Street chimeras
were, I was determined they would
starve by me. Black ghost eyes again.
Black eyes to me. Five million years
of nothing.
-
At the tobacco shop, the silent man
was wrapping tobacco - Metroshian
Shag, I think the label said. For people
who rolled their own cigarettes, back
then. No one does that any longer, and
I probably have the name wrong too.
Shag was a kind of gay tobacco, nothing
a real guy smoked. I remember Warren
Gustin, the guy I farmed with in Columbia
Crossroads. he's be hand-milking a cow,
any one of 36, and with the other hand,
on his crouched knee, he'd roll a cigarette
in about 15 seconds. The guy was some
amazing maker of instant cigarettes. All
glit and glimmer, and it burned down
real smooth.
-
The girl told me she was getting a tattoo.
Words from her favorite author, mis-spellings
and all. Jane Austen. And damned if she
didn't - Pride and Prejudice. Sense and
Sensibility. Nope. Something earlier,
called 'Jack & Alice.' If you read the
paragraph she used, the two words are
mis-spelled : 'beautiful' with two l's, and
'friend' with the i and the e the other way
around. Here's the paragraph itself. -
"The perfect form, the beautifull face,
& elegant manners of Lucy so won the
affections of Alice that when they parted,
which was not till after Supper, she assured
her that except her Father, Brother, Uncles,
Aunts, Cousins & other realtions, Lady
Williams, Charles Adams & a few dozen
dozen more of particular freinds, she loved
her better than almost any other person
in the world."
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