142.01...And so, day has gone down to twilight, tempered by a pewter sky and a light rain, not unlike a goodbye caress... that last time tracing of a cheek by gentle fingers not to be felt again, ever...
I promised you a story. Here's a story about the death of love, the death of California and the death of a special thing...
The Death of CaliforniaCalifornia died on March 1st, 1973, on the beach at the end of Avenue G. Everything you owned was packed in your car, the apartment over the luncheonette emptied out, hollow and melting like a jack o'lantern on a late November front porch. No ghosts could live there, it was a place too sad for haunting, we carried our ghosts out with us, quietly as always. We met up on the chilly beach just after noon, when the fog had been blown over to try out Japan by the landward breeze. I couldn't talk. You wouldn't. Not that we ever did that much, our conversations were mostly visual. You stuck your hand out from under the red and white striped blanket you wore wrapped around you and took mine, only for a moment and then let it drop. You turned your face into the side of my arm and cried. I could only look down at your always bare feet, so tan and so tiny and watch the sand crush up between your curled toes. It half covered your pink nail polish and made your toes look like lost bits of coral. You turned away from me and walked away and, although I should have, I didn't watch you go.
And so it ended a block from where it began, with a late night cup of coffee and a meeting by chance.
It was real quiet when California died. I was never party to the death of a place before. It wasn't nice.
That was real. Really, really real. Looking back in time, it seems that things were more real then. Life now is not such a real time event, it's more like some grey funnel, down which pour memories of days past and half believed plans for days yet to come, some blurred swirl of emotions that churn their way down that maelstrom, colliding and mixing as they disappear into some colorless blend, but nothing distills out the other end of that life consuming infundibulum, it all just fades away...
I've been trying to rectify that loss of all that, trying to sort it all out, in some order, and put it all down on pages. I want to pass it on. But, I can't. Every time I try to put pen to paper, something breaks. I have developed some psychological condition that will not allow me to translate these thoughts to written word. It's almost as if these thoughts do not want to be read, they paralyze my hand, they refuse to be written, as though laying them down in ink will somehow remove the very essence of them, like some scrivener with a vampire bent might do... It's as though the very act of giving them life will kill them. They fight me, yet they taunt me. They scream at me to be saved, yet shun all efforts to pull them from the sea of memory and swim further out, into the dark frothing ocean, where they beckon for redemption, yet turn away from the actions of any saviour. Cursed be these thoughts, they do haunt me so... And they do not realize that they won't live forever. When I go, do they. Silly, stupid, impetuous things, they are. Ah, well. Perhaps I should seek out a ghost writer to employ, one who can listen to my endless ramblings and transcribe them into some way that can be understood. Maybe that's part of the problem. Thoughts are not all black and white, orderly lines of letters and words, they are scenes from a life, to be played as if on a stage. Really, do any of you think in such a sterile manner? I don't. Every thought, every memory, every yet to be laid plan is cloaked to fit in some tableau, presented, performed and represented, again and again. Memories are refined, plans are rehearsed. It's like trying to take a performance by some gilded actor and put all the emotions evoked back down on paper as mere words, which is what that only were to begin with. It's in the emoting they come alive. Perhaps I shouldn't try to write this damned book. Maybe I should go on tour with a series of one man plays... gah. I need another beer and a cigarette, I'll be back.
Ok, I'm back.
So, where was I? The thought train has derailed, I think. It's still lightly raining, but off to the West is a break in the cloud cover, the dark violet of the dying strain of twilight is peeking through. Quite pretty, actually. I don't mind the rain so much in the warm months, it's distinctly different from those cold Winter rains that beat down from the sky and strike the ground full on, drumming loudly and causing a mist to rise from the land as the drops explode on the cold hardened earth. Now the rains are tempered by the leaves on the trees, where it collects and drips down onto the soft grass. The sound is so much different, as is the effect. The world is softer in the Spring and Summer, the sounds of the rain are muted by the veil of living things, by the verdent canopies of the trees and the masses of flowers and plants that fill the gardens that in winter are barren patches in the frozen lawn. There is nothing like a Summer rain shower. There is no sadness in a Summer rain, save for when it rains on a long awaited backyard party or other such outside time. A Summer rain is a bringer of life, a recycling of water wrought from the land by the sun, given back to nourish and nurture. A Winter rain, no matter how light or short, seems to throw itself at you, with ill abandon, to rub in your face the cold by making it worse with it's dampness and it's wet, sodden chill. It takes days to get over a Winter rain. It lingers in your bones and numbs the mind. It pervades the house and makes everything smell of wet and damp, in spite of your fight against it with furnace or stove. Even the bed clothes seem to need wringing out. I'd rather it snowed. Yes, there is nothing like a Summer rain...
One more cigarette. I'll be right back.
Well, I saw the first firefly of the season just now. It's hanging out in the potted asparagus fern just outside the back door. It's a female, I can tell by the two quick flashes, then a few seconds, then another two. She's signaling for a mate. I wish her luck in her amorous adventures...
I think I'm going to call it a night. The rain has stopped and there's a grand haze laying on the land. I'm going for a walk in the woods out back, then off to the Land of Nod for me. I'm beat from all the lawn mowing, trimming and weeding I did today.
I bid thee all a fair eve, my fellow wanderers.
Fare thee well.
Gregor
spew accordingly below...
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