Who
You with that newspaper over your head, a peaked shuffle of damp pages, insufficient coverage: the whole world is leaking. You, drunk on everyday ills. You overboard. You with scorched fingers, melted tallow, a candle that can't be held to her. You the flattering lamplight. You, chink in the china, hairline fracture, tiny reminder of all the ways we won't fit together later. You the cudgel – do we have a pinata for you! You, scrambler for scrapple, bedraggled bird shedding crepe and candy; you, oblivious crowd. You, yes, yes, you too. You in your mangrove, your tower, your black cloud of bees. You, hero, mired, dressed in your stone habits; you, muckraker, drinking your bitters down. Poor you, lucky you, all of you.
What
A celebration. A potlatch party, if you will. We'll get this monkey off the table: no more rinky-dinky chat, no more inky-kinky tit for tat. Come shine the silver plates and polish the best inscriptions, come pile them high, come burn the feast! Potato eyes. Brie bloom. Sausage casings. Shrimp veins. Cherry pits. Outsiders, insiders, all of us, toast: here's to lint, here's to dust, here's to hairballs in our drains!
Where
On a picnic blanket in a ditch by the side of the road, near a junction far from everything but the shell of what might once have been a convenience store, lacquered in layers of graffiti and neglect. We can hear that old stop sign shimmying when the wind changes direction, bringing us the minty smell of rabbitbrush along with fine gold grit from the tops of distant mesas. It is a place so close to nowhere, we might as well be anywhere: in a cave accessed only at low tide, just a suggestion of surf surging through us; out on a limb in a forest of contradictions, canopy barely visible in coastal fog, the trunks below us charred by fires no one remembers; on top of a skyscraper, hundreds of stories above the one we have been telling ourselves, the one about how we've been here before, we recognize this place, it's that lot behind the amusement park where pigeons wheel in dirty flurries above the painted horses going round and round. We might as well be there. We might, as well, be here.
When
Now, between time and time again, while we're wandering through this bazaar, not sure whether we're buying or selling. While merchants wink lasciviously at us, advertise their special. They will kill, carve out more, make neat bloodless packages we can open whenever we find ourselves hungry. Now, between overdue and underdone; now, before we're ready but after it's too late. Now, among bolts of fabric sparkling with live stars which, if we were to purchase a swath, would wink out, one by one, leaving us in the dark. We have come to accept this. Quality or quotidian, any time we might buy will turn out, eventually, to have been an illusion. These traders keep real time for themselves, skimming it from every transaction, each stashing away the excess until he has accumulated enough for a double life. Between one life and another, so the rumor goes, there is a time slot, a deep canyon of possibility – and this interim is what we want, this alone would be worth what we spend here.
Why
Because fate may be determined, but she's also distracted: I can feel myself slipping through those callous fingers. Because, cast from the garden, I choose which reasons to grow in this springtime ditch by the side of whatever path we will cobble together from junk we find lying around. Because I choose your company, and choose to believe I choose what's been chosen. Because it's dark in the nick of time, and lonely.
How
The way an uprooted gardener moves through his new garden, wondering which are weeds and which are native flowers; the way he feels a blister on his left palm with the fingers of his right, almost unconsciously, hesitating, then opens the back door of his new house and goes inside, where he does not yet belong. The way he turns on the tap and checks the water for rust before he drinks. The way he plans to go back outside, later, and walk these new streets under chipped stars, looking for the warmer lights of a neighborhood cafe or bar, some place that will be open late, where he will be welcomed as a newcomer and, after many years have passed, an old-timer. The way he'll take tonight: unfamiliar, overgrown with the as-yet-unknown. He will have to walk with his forearms up, protecting his face as if from the lash of eager saplings or exuberant nettles, he will have to push through and take care, he will have to notice what there is to notice, think to himself, look, there's a dogwood, a redbud, a coffeeberry, there's one of those strange night-blooming vines that remind me of the way I appear to myself in my mind's eye, surrounded by foliage and bits of blue glass. Such naming of sights is deliberate, though not without delight, the way a man lost in the wilderness of his own soul will set each rock and tree ablaze, burning to see his way more clearly.
