Somewhere a magician is getting booed off stage

It occasioned one night in early spring, he (who is not the aforementioned magician) decided not to go the theater, but to stay home instead. The weather was chilly and the film could wait until tomorrow. It hadn't occurred to him yet just how exactly he would occupy his evening, but his chores were numerous, among them: run speaker cable, finish reading magazine, remove pile of clothes from couch, unpack another box of books. Any one or two of these would form a productive, if not particularly story-worthy evening for our young man.

His girlfriend was admiring all the details of the night stroll, relishing, it seemed, being out of the apartment and away from the computer screen. A computer screen glowing incomplete homework into the darkness of her empty kitchen. The urgency of her homework made her abandon her plans to visit the theater, but it wouldn't interfere with her walk and all the inconsequential observances that beckoned. There was a warning taped to a bicycle rack, newspaper faces cutout and pasted on a window, a dolls head in a shrine, printed dinner ware in the style of entomology, a pencil portrait of a wrestler who may or may not be famous though nobody present knew, and numerous other things it would be a shame not to notice.

* * *

"Let's walk to Dolores," she said.

"Ok," he replied, realizing that she probably wasn't all that interested in the dream he was recounting for her, though she politely pretended to be at least. This convenient extension to the walk would give him time to finish the retelling without skimping on the elaborations. Dreams, after all, aren't about what happened but what seemed to be happening. This, of course, requires quite a lot more explanation.

"...because the camera was automatic, you see? This made it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt, this doesn't make any sense now, but, at the time, that I was the murderer, I don't know why, but I knew it and the investigator knew it, but he didn't show like he knew it, he kept being casual, smiling, not letting on, but I knew that he knew and I knew I was fucked because all of a sudden everything that didn't make any sense, like that guitar plug in my room, and a whole lot of other random things, pointed invariably to my guilt. And I had no alibi I realized. I didn't even know anyone in the house. You know? Then when I realized how complete the evidence was against me that when I started to doubt my own innocence and my memory, maybe this was actually my camera, and that was the really scary part. So I asked the people who owned the house where the party was if they knew everyone at the party and they said no way, there was tons of people here..."

"Let's go back."

"We just got to the park."

"It's cold. Let's go back."

"Of course, it was a huge party, they didn't know everyone, so I asked if they knew anyone there that was acting strange. I just needed anything. Well there is Harry and Sex. Harry and Sex? Harry and Sex. Harry and Sex? Yes, Harry and Sex. They told me that they were a dark couple that constantly dared each other to do more and..."

"I want to look at that chicken."

"Chicken?"

"Back there."

He turned and behind them about thirty yards, centered on the path they had just been walking along, sat what in the dark appeared to be a very white hen. She walked back towards it. He followed. She walked right up to it and squatted less than a foot away. It didn't move at all. She reached out to touch it as if that was the most natural thing to do, to reach out and pet a chicken, which was actually not a chicken at all, but a pure white dove, that was sitting in a park at night in the center of the city. It took a step away from her. She took a step forward and reached towards it again. It took a step away. This simple dance continued for ten minutes. She followed (or chased) the dove off the path and down the grassy slope. He watched, amused. An encampment of homeless men with shopping carts sat under a grove of trees and also watched, presumably amused as well.

Eventually she desisted. And, smiling, returned up the slope to where he stood. Whether she had hoped to capture the bird, simply touch it, or engage in this simple gameplay, was unclear to him.

"Did you touch it?"

"Yeah."

Now, immediately after this, the narrative gravity of this encounter struck each of them as overwhelming. They could not bring ourselves to leave the bird. It was evidently incapable of flight, though not clearly wounded. It seemed, undoubtably, to be a gift or an omen or a symbol or something they could not name handed to them and to them alone. And where could such a creature come from but from heaven? They settled to please the gods they must catch the bird and nurse it back to health. Besides, the homeless men might kill and eat it.

Without much difficulty he subdued the bird. It didn't struggle much, and soon acquiesced to the cage of his grasp. No one paid any mind to the boy carrying a dove down the sidewalk.

"Maybe it was a magicians and it escaped."

"Probably."

She emptied out a couple of crates, which they used for a cage. They made a cup out of paper in which they placed some bread crumbs and sunflower seeds. They gave it some water in the cut off seat of a plastic bottle. It never struggled, but moved to the far corner of the crate and watched them.

They named it Harry Houdini.

I fought in the wrong war. I fought in the wrong war. I fought in the wrong war.

Semper fi... do or die.

A short, black man with a graying handlebar mustache and a wooden cane called aloud without any apparent purpose, but in the direction of the parade.

Between me and the marching band, that is a gang of high-schoolers much shorter and much smoother skinned than anyone I ever saw in high school, thumping drums strapped to chests with cartoonish bravado, marching nearly in rhythm down Market street in the meagerly attended Veteran’s Day parade, stood a staggering balding man with long, curly greasy snakes of hair licking his shoulders. His clear blue eyes bulged as a took a step, nearly a lunge, towards me and grinning said:

I fought there two years and this. THIS is my reward.

He gestured broadly towards the bony kneed, metal mouthed, four eyed child musicians, marching like an ill prepared army, like a children’s crusade.

Thmp. Pshooooooosh.

Semper fi... do or die.

His arm arched upward over his head. He ducked his head as his eyes followed an invisible trail through the sky.

Know what that is? It’s a... grenade. Shrapnel every fucking where. Too, too, too. All over my face, my legs.

Semper fi... do or die.

I killed... four of them. They killed six of me.

When he realized that I was listening to his rambling speech, he slowed down. He was terribly drunk. His eyes turned glassy and his gaze distant. He rocked slowly back and forth on his heels, trying to maintain balance.

I was eighteen and a half years old. Fresh out of Colorado Springs, Colorado... I didn’t have any fucking idea where I was. Dropped out there. South Vietnam... Two years. For two years!

I took part in the wrong war... I took part in the wrong war... I took part in the wrong war. And I took part hard. Hard. Hard as I could.

Those little Vietnamese deserve their freedom... just as much as you and me.

And with that he stumbled off down the street, away from the parade.

Semper fi... do or die.

Later that evening, as I was returning from the art supply store, I spotted the same Vietnam vet walking along the sidewalk toward me with a cup in hand. He recognized me, though I had the impression that he wasn’t sure where he recognized me from.

Spare a quarter?

He addressed me with the flair of an actor on stage. The way your friend might behave when you arrive at Starbucks and find him behind the counter. Acting out a script, but since both you and he are aware of the scripted nature of the forced dialogue it becomes a shared joke. And though the words spoken are the same, the message shared is of an absolutely different nature. The words “welcome to starbucks, how can I help you?” is roughly translated to “you sly old bugger, you came here because you know I’m working and you expect to get a free drink, and you will too, you know, because we’re friends, and honestly I’m terribly glad that you stopped by, regardless of your motivations,” and “yes I’ll take a double shot capuccino please,” could be understood to mean, “isn’t it great to be friends in this world and to find you working here on this day, we’re both here and can enjoy this moment where I order my coffee as if I was just another customer, but I’m not, but isn’t it fun to pretend like I am, like it’s our little secret.”

I dropped a quarter in his cup. He took a Shakespearian bow.

Our hermetic alchemist; A flattened cardboard box

He would retreat outside the stone wall of the village into a world of his own devising. Like arms in deep river sleeves withdrawn to luminous caverns of glowing mind matter. Bearded, hooded, veiled in darkness. Our hermetic alchemist. Mixing minerals to alleviate the death pangs of a suffering world. A world of his own devising. Mountains from molehills and breath from clay; a universe of particularly subjective order. Lead did not transform into gold. No. In our alchemist’s laboratory lead was gold. For reality is language is reality. He who can shape definition has dominion over all. No longer is there any need for gold to remain static, unattainable, exotic; for our alchemist has no need to change the form of the object if he can change the form of the language, the form of the world in which the object is defined.

•

I have a bed now, of sorts. The kind Japanese woman at the store didn’t stock any three inch futon mats, but I could not imagine sleeping upon anything thicker. Four inches, good, she said. But in my gut a voice without lips or lungs insisted again, three. Even this depth seems a luxury reserved for the reclined, the worshiping narcoleptics dozing prostrate before the alter of life, the eternal slumberers. Perhaps, I fear beds. Symbols, as they are, of commitment, location, permanence. I have nightmares of bed posts. They are fence posts, no, twisting black iron columns supporting a wrought iron gate towering over me. Thunderclouds and claps of bright blue light above. When the downpour is too heavy and the wolves are snapping at my heels I will test the grounds within, and warm myself at the hearth in that enchanted castle of the beast. I’ve had beneath my body while it dreams these last three months of daily nights, a three quarter inch blue foam camping pad and a flattened cardboard box.

“I’m always ready,” he said, in a voice caked in the residue of his birthplace in exile. The glint in his eyes peaking through a hedge of thick facial fur the color of autumn tree bark, was somewhere between flames, tears, and hope. He nodded. And nodded again to be sure. “Everything I need is here.” He gestured towards his rucksack. Already packed, always awaiting dilegintly the secret word, the emergency code, the thick welder’s hands to grab hold and hurl it atop that two legged vehicle. He unzipped it and pulled out two metal rods and began to assemble a dual paddled oar. He showed me how a folded mass of black plastic could transform into a kayak in moments. “How long? Ten minutes tops. Yes. Ten minutes tops.” Smiling, he patted his faithful canvas companion. I began to cry because I loved him very much and I knew that as long as that rucksack was packed, he could never escape

Each instantless instant in it’s purity defined

Like I stepped into my skin. Naked before, I half moment behind, straining to hear the rhythm, ear pressed into a rotted rubber tire, squeezing every nerve to recognize the mechanical assurance, the maternal heartbeat of the machine, the clock ticking quietly buried beneath banana peals, teeth worn bone steel axles, disconnected eye socket tin arrow gauges measuring death pointing earthward, kneeling atop the mile high waste mountain junkyard.

Now, threads of everything, visible like the edge of a cloud, sparkling like Easter tinsel wrapping, connecting, but never binding each egg with the next. Discovered, nestled in a patch of tall grass, beneath the drain pipe, brushing aside the crisp autumn leaves with a Thanksgiving palette, the realization that I had already been aware, had found before finding, before searching. Known without knowing, without knowledge. Cradled where my brow meets, a quiet sound, like exhalation. The future draws us onward just as the past pushes from behind. Strapped between these two cords we find ourselves in the present moment. Yet, what is it but a measure of our experience quantified, manifested as a drop squeezed from a syringe pulled from a reservoir? All things have already been done. Only yet to be experienced. These streets, these people, they are not new to me, nor I to them.

I hear someone say once again:
You remind me of someone... I just can’t think of who.

This clock is not real, nor is this junkyard.

There’s no Kimchi in Chinatown

It’s September 11, but I’m not thinking about burning towers, I’m thinking about Chuseok in Korea, how unpatriotic. Everyone will be going to the villages and making and eating sungpyeon. A year ago I was in a rental car driving towards Seoraksan, the northern mountain, with David and Jenny.

I didn’t know I would miss it so greatly; that my ghost would linger there; that it would not be mashed potatoes or hamburgers that I crave any longer, but kimchi. I searched the alley markets in Chinatown, but couldn’t find any. Only a small market in Japantown, sells in mason jars, that putrid, vibrant, stringy, delicious substance.

Mist in the mountain
for dinner we will eat rice
time moves so quickly

Art Galleries and Barbeques or when it was Summer in San Francisco

Her nose hung up hooked by some invisible fisherman above the rafters and down the shaft of her nostrils she glared at me and said, “yes, they teach appropriation at those institutions.” The word hung about her upper lip for an instant like a glove held in the hand that she metaphorically slapped across my presumably deflated ego. “Not one of us has created anything original,” I replied. But, as a machine constructed with mouths on her ears, her diatribe complete, she had no use for dialogue, so allowed herself to be pulled onward by that invisible line.

So I turned to a piece of generic art, for a living room with pale white carpet, for a restaurant tasteful in its restraint, neither with or without flavor, and I dove into it. For the simplicity, the solitude, the outright rebellion. For here was someone who did not deign enshroud originality. Here was a blank canvas, brush strokes perfected to be rendered voiceless. Upon this canvas I thrust my voice and listened to it return. Alone at last where no one would judge my care or carelessness. There, in the gallery of the office art, I sang the praise of the cliche.

* * *

One weekend, two barbeques. At each barely present; a tangent attachment to merrymaking; a parasite on the corpse of borrowed meat, borrowed fun, borrowed beer. But each growing, something like familiarity. Faces recognized, becoming friends. Surprised to see you here. With each encounter, chance or intentional, a thread woven into this fabric, a tapestry or community. I won’t step out though. Or sew my own thread. Allow the threads to be sown. And ask now and again, to let the loose ends hang looser.

* * *

Summer is over. It was a pleasent week.

Two Hasty Lists on San Francisco

I still haven’t written on the subject of San Francisco. There are still so many places/things I haven’t seen/experienced, that I feel like I haven’t yet earned the right. But until I feel justified to write an actual post on the city, for those curians (those who are curious) who prefer not to or are unable to ask me in person, due to disabilities physical, mechanical, digital, or otherwise, I present for your consumption, two lists, which will, I hope, appease the impatient.

Things I like about San Francisco:

1. Coffee shops with eclectic couches and free wifi
2. Bicycle lanes
3. All the people riding bicycles
4. The Zen center
5. Donation Yoga class
6. The public library’s movie collection
7. Golden Gate Park
8. Delores park
9. Yerba Buena Park
10. All the skinny people
11. Chinatown
12. The Mission district
13. Wall murals
14. Random pieces of sculpture
15. Ocean
16. My room cube
17. The curious, inexplicable things that I see on a daily basis
18. The burritos
19. Tu Lan Vietnamese Restaurant
20. Bookstores
21. Amoeba Records
22. Good tunes being piped everywhere
23. Farmer’s markets
24. The remarkable number of conversations regarding abstract ideas with people of which I otherwise know very little
    

Things I don’t like about San Francisco:

1. The outrageous price of my room cube
2. The locks I needed to put on my bike
3. The look people give me when I say I’m from Texas, but not from Austin
4. Stepping over homeless people on my way home
5. Ignoring the homeless people shouting profanities into the cosmos
6. Avoiding the homeless people fighting with each other
7. Feeling guilty for being a complicit animal murderer and being OK with it

A Hard Bed to Sleep on

There’s a place in downtown San Francisco at Market and Sixth that rents live/work lofts designed for artists. They have a kitchenette, shared bathrooms, fresh paint jobs, friendly staff, great location, high ceilings, cheap rates, and no furniture. So this night, my first night in a place of my own in over six months, I will be sleeping on a folded up cardboard box and a bath towel. If you, my faithful reader, could do me a favor and ask all your friends to close their eyes and focus real hard on a mattress appearing at Market and Sixth, I’d really appreciate it. That’s Market and Sixth.

* * *

I got off the phone with David. He’s in paradise. That is Hawaii. And he tells me about the mountain hikes and the morning dips in the beaches and the six shades of blue in the sea and the breezes on warm days in the valleys and the beautiful girls who wear bikinis to summer class. And I tell him about the homeless guys outside and the trannies and the free wifi and the screaming fire engines. And I begin to split right down the middle.
Nathan A:
I drift back like a fog over Sokcho and the jagged rock teeth in the emerald sea on the east coast of South Korea, back to the dusty highland motorcycles in Central Vietnam, back to dirty towns with dirty roads and dirty feet. I don’t give a damn about free wifi or downtown lofts or soft mattresses or graphic design or internships or the future or any of it. Give me a quiet alley in a distant country. Give me surprise, give me the simple things like morning frost and child laughter and the sound of snow melting in the forest.

Nathan B:
I move in to a new territory. Unknown, unmapped. Take me far from my comfort, let me find comfort anew. Embrace risk, move towards the future, step boldly. The world is now. Can be what you make of it. I can be more, see more, do more. The country is the key, but the city is the door. And elsewhere, the room.

* * *

There was a fear I had as a child that the everything would overlook me. That I did not belong in the everything. That the everything operated in bigger places, among bigger people, in other rooms, behind closed doors. It was this childhood fear that emboldened me, when I got lost time and again, when I was afraid of something strange, when I was lonely in a foreign country, when I first stood embarrassed before a classroom of Korean kids. It emboldened me to seek the everything in anything. To peer into the cracks of existence, into death and fear and shame and even joy. Until finally I began to believe what I had always known, that I cannot be apart from the everything. I am always a part of the everything, though I cannot always remember how. Now that I am, what is there that I could want that I do not already have? What is there I could be, that I not already am? You see? Surfaces change, locations change, but I already am. Someday perhaps I am rich, but I already am. Someday perhaps I am married, but I already am. Someday perhaps I am a fine painter, but I already am. These can be nothing else than manifestations of the am that is within me.

I am a ball of clay. I am a stone. I am the potters hands. I am none of these things.