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Stetson Nights
September 7, 2009
“Reingold. Russo Reingold. Where? He’s the guy down on the corner there, smoking the cigarette and lying to the girl about his age.” Stoney flicks his ash into the midnight wind. It curls upwards leaving trails around his eyebrows, dust on his leathery cheeks. He turns down the brim of his Royal Stetson and gives a light chuckle to the open-mouthed gape of the permed, broken-hearted woman to his left. “What’d you expect lady? He was gone from home so often for a reason and it wasn’t to practice bowling. Now listen, I did my job, now you know and I need to get paid. I don’t got all night.” He grabs his pocket watch and slides it out his deep pocket by its gold-linked chain. The top glimmers in the moonlight overhead, an emblazoned S.E.L. shows its face. The woman, with tears in her eyes, looks over, head lowered. “How much’d I owe you mister?” she says as she slowly opens her purse, stops and lifts her head to look him in the eyes. “Normal fees, I suppose? Just a hard night’s work and another broken-hearted woman to you, huh?” He grits his teeth, summons the patience he knows he doesn’t have. Feet aching, splitting headache, all he wants to do is take a cold shower, pull on his bottle of Jack and hit the sack, forget about the day until the next one comes. Sewer rats squeal below as the infidel and his new girlfriend climb into a yellow cab, the gray sewage mist rising from the grates, pushing them gently along. “Listen lady, I mean no disrespect but I gotta get out of here. I got things to do. You hired me for one thing, you got results. Just cause you don’t like those results doesn’t mean I gotsta do anything about that. Your problems, are not my problems. Now, the money.” His eyes sag as he lights another cigarette, smoke stinging his eyes. The orange haze from the streetlights below shoots upward, slicing beams along the edges of the Brooklyn rooftop and the woman sits down on the black tar in her pink satin dress, kicking a rusty gray paint bucket filled with stagnant water on its side. “I don’t give a damn about you nor your tiredness nor your God-damned results. You’re God-damned beasts, every one last of you.” He sees her sag her shoulders and reach for her purse. “I’ll get you your payment.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a wad of 100’s. They flap like a deck of cards being shuffled in the early a.m. winds. With a crooked smile, she yanks out one after the other, holds them up in the night sky with her index finger and lets them loose. He looks at her like she’s crazy, walks over and slams a foot on each bill, a big boot mark in dust left behind and bends over slowly to pick each one up, stuffing it in his jacket pocket. “Don’t need more than I was supposed to be paid for lady. I’d suggest you keep those other ones for a rainy day. Seems like you might have a few on the way.” He starts to leave, heading for the front of the building where he’ll climb down the fire escape into that cool, free night air, one step closer to bed and the end of another dirty job. “So long, lady,” he says, turning around to catch a glimpse of her one last time. She’s running full speed towards him, head down, barreling at him like a pro-linebacker. Her head smacks him in the stomach, pulls up and hooks him under the ribs and they’re falling. One story, two, three, four…their bodies are twisted together like a pair of mating eagles, her soiled pink satin dress smacking against his body, fluttering in the silent, early morning. His Royal Stetson tips forward and somersaults upwards towards the moon, his watch sways like a grandfather clock from its gold-linked chain, and money. All that money. Shoots out of his pocket and out of her clenched fist, hits the night currents and covers the visible sky in greens and whites. Falling as the cars screech, a woman screams, the lights dim. Somewhere in the distance a cat screams bloody murder and city’s street-cleaners are on the way.

White Sheets
September 9, 2009
Dripping skin and false teeth glare at him as he walks the runway of the nursing home dressed in nothing by a toga. He had been told this was a toga party but the closest to a toga was the hospital sheet the old man at the end of the hall who smelled of urine had accidentally tucked into his diaper and decided that it was time for his daily walk to the corner and back. He pulled the spongy red nose deeper into his clenched fist. “It was a toga-turns-clown kind of thing,” his Nanna had said, “fun…for the old people”. A bald-headed, crinkly woman sneezes and Betsy, Nanna’s friend, let’s out fart that reverberates against the hall walls. She doesn’t feel a thing. He stops in the middle of the hall. Contemplates his options: a) he could see his Nanna, say hello and leave; b) simply leave; or c) convince Nanna to give him a few of her Percocet and hold the party, by himself if necessary. He rapidly decides on c. An old man stands next to him. Begins speaking nonsense about his sister Betsy and all her medications. He smells of mothballs and one of his testicles is airing in the fervent breeze of the nursing home, hanging out of his perm-pressed, navy blue pants as if trying to free itself from the confines of outdated fashion. He walks away, leaving the man to his own devices. The man continues to speak in the increasing distance.
“Hiii Nanna. So good to see you,” he says, his toga bunching in the back. “Thought this was going to be a party. Doesn’t seem like a party to me”. “Oh but darling, it’s always a party in here, don’t you know? I’ve told you that, right? People may not be wearing the togas yet but they will. Oh, they will my boy. We wear clandestine togas, don’t you know?” She says this with great conviction and for a second he believes her but soon remembers that Nanna’s nuts which, he thinks, he probably should have remembered before donning the toga. He woes the barmy infirm granny into giving him some of her ‘candy’ and downs 3 Percocet. Begins getting jittery, a little vivacious and soon hits the roof. He is running across tiled floors, grabbing old women and tangoing with them and those hips of theirs are moving, those feet like little lobster claws. Cha-cha-cha. The old men jump in at slower speeds and pretty soon, everyone is dancing and all the smells of the universe are joining hands and knocking those that can smell them still in the face. Urine, feces, mothballs, cough syrup, oil. The smells vibrate through his nostrils like the chug-a-chug of a slow moving subway train. His toga gets wrapped around his body like a wrung out towel, everyone is laughing, false teeth are flying and life is good. The beat goes on and on and people that haven’t danced in years are shaking off the dust and reveling in their feet, nurturing their legs, hugging their souls. Hair-clips and wigs, crowns and glass eyes: they’re all a part of it now and the floor is littered with year upon year of age and daily wear and tear and they step on them defiantly to the beat of tango master, Roberto Chanel. The nurses arrive, start in as well and little white dresses and gowns bounce wildly upon the makeshift dance floor. “Don’t stop dancing,” he yells. “The night is still young and we have so many more moments to live!” They all let out a wail and increase their speed. He throws a kiss to the crazed dancers, grabs the corner of his toga, spins around and marches down that nursing home runway and out the door. Another damn good day.

To Teach
September 2, 2009
The stringy professor with dangling locks of auburn hair strides in to class, slamming down his copies of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Rimbaud’s, A Season in Hell. “In 476 A.D., Romulus Augustulus is deposed by the Germanic barbarian named Odoacer. In 1000, the Islamic world was experiencing a ‘Golden Age’, establishing the Arab world as the world’s leading extensive economic power. In September 2009, Brittany Spears debuts her new Circus fantasy fragrance. And I ask you, what have we come to? What has happened? What are you doing?”. He glares at each student with contempt of the heart, as if they have let him down, his secret children born to an imaginary wife in his imaginary life.
“We often state that we wish to live. To live. Doing what, I ask? For if you are to tell me that by living you mean buying things, consuming, or working to consume, I will tell you that you are clinically mad. To live. What does this mean?” He scans the room with a vacant stare as if he knows the answer which is that there is no answer. His mouth twitches on the upper right hand side, his yellowed teeth peep-show performers. “I ask this question only on the first day of class because I consider it to be perhaps the most important question of your lives. To know, even temporarily, what type of life you wish to live, with what type of people you wish to surround yourself with, doing what types of things, with what kinds of results, is the key to not being a leaf. A LEAF!” He yells this suddenly as if the last thing in the world he would want to see right now is a leafy tree waltz in to the classroom and plop its wooden ass into the cushioned seat. “A leaf blows this way and that. ‘Oh, that looks pretty’, ‘Ooh, I’d like to have some of that’, or ‘Wow, that profession which is the same as my father’s and my father’s father and yes, his father sounds like exactly the thing I want to do for the rest of my life’. A leaf. If there is one thing I hope to emblazon in your minds and bodies, it is this urgent need for all of you to ask yourselves, ‘What is life?’. For to answer this now will prevent you from being taken advantage of for the rest of your lives, will lead you down pathways that may not be permanent but temporarily, they will be yours. Even if they last two seconds, these minor diversions which you decide to leap upon with a faith unbeknownst to many will be yours. And to know this is to accept failure when it comes, learn from it, and move on but it is also to know success and a happiness and contentment that no Circus fantasy fragrance will ever give you. To live. To forge blazing trailways down your messy, complicated, but stunning and beautiful roads to self.
Your assignment for next class is to live. See you next week.” He walks out of the room 15 minutes early. The class remains for 20 more.

Media Frenzy
September 1, 2009
The vortex of information, news, podcasts, blogs, streaming videos, tweets, Facebook updates and notifications, mechanical requests for my time and energy fixes me in its sights and I sit on the edge, an individual overwhelmed by the worldwide barrage of typeface linkages. “My name is Pete and I’m a Facebook addict.” “My name is Debra and I’s a tweetaholic.” “Benny here. Can’t stop reading the news, crave RSS feeds and I’m in love with Wolf Blitzer.” I imagine them all standing up, fellow fallen comrades in the fight against the great electronic challenge of our time. “My name is Jake and I suffer from uncontrollable bouts of anxiety brought on my friending, de-friending, taking care of my virtual pets and…and…oh my God, someone grab my pills for me.” This would be me and I would be falling over on the waxy wooden floor of the high school gym brave enough to be the epicenter of all grievances against all that is web-based.
The way I see it there are two ways we can look at this news and media frenzy: either a) the sturdy individual, the knowable yet mysterious self, the ‘I’ is standing tall, hovering like a halo above the vortex of information, choosing when and how to participate and in fact, has much more information than ever at his or her disposal; or b) the vast international sea of information spirals downwards, boring multiple tiny holes into the mind of the individual, confusing them until they resemble the bedazzled Blackberry of a privileged teenage girl, ultimately overwhelming them and leaving them with little more information than they had before but ripping apart any semblance of their sanity, causing them to shrivel up into a ball in the corner of their room crying because Jonas just de-friended them, a person they met once in a coffee shop on 14th and 5th ave. I have made illustrations:

After experiencing B many, many days, I now choose A. To battle the incessantly returning anxiety, I now don a golden, sparkly halo I stole from my little sister and repeat “tra-la-la, tra-la-la” paying homage in my befuddled mind to the days of the Gutenberg press, solid stacks of newsprint and the beauty of one book with a set number of pages, a countable number of typeface characters, and a smell other than burning plastic. Then I turn on my computer.

Dust
October 29, 2009
The ringing won’t stop and he’s heard it all before. She moans about his lack of integrity, the longing she has for different days, the hopes and dreams of that better life that she imagined herself living as that small girl curled up in her attic near the frosted windowpanes. That snow has fallen outside and blanketed the neighborhood in silence. The droning of the baseboard heaters rumbles beneath their feet, disrupts the dust-bunnies, sends them flying. The floorboards creak in the silences between her words and within his deep sighs. He looks over to the fireplace, sees the film of dust that has settled into the grooves of the bricks. The matchboxes of their favorite restaurants, the log from the last fire that was lit two years ago, the fancy dinner with white linen napkins and both of them intertwined on the couch. Sandalwood candles, darkened oak, heavy red wines, the brie from the Italian store a few blocks away, the smell of musty books. They dance through his senses and the traces of his memory bank, fall closer to the ground with her every word.
His heart screams through the backs of his eyes. The pressure builds high, he wants to save it all, sees the cards folding as she plays again, and again, and again. And it’s nothing like it used to be. Her words leak from her mouth with garbled everyday nonchalance; as if she’s said it all before a thousand times. She holds her hands in crooked, sharp positions of indifference, fingers dangling like slaughtered mackerel. Outlines the many facets of their finish line with foppish breezes of whittled facial expressions and inconsistent gestures. The wallpaper was always too yellow, he thinks, and the walls too thin. They let in the cold, release the heat, never could hold anything worth keeping. He notices it peeling in the upper right-hand corner of the room and the wallpaper glue reveals weaved webs of decline.
His patience wears pantaloons of aired consent, her words spill outwards in messy splatters. Time’s unending gaze unfolds along their trials of years untouched, gazes never met. On two separate planes, they stare inward gazes to pasts imagined, nostalgia-imbued.
The strangers waltz plainly in the company of forgotten dust.

Chagal: Palais Garnier
October 14, 2009
The red velvet seats, the gold trim, the cherub statues, marble-lined staircases, brightly-light chandeliers, the rounded corners, subtle details and he looks up. A cacophony of color, an explosion of dreaming images, slumbering characters of women and horses, village scenery reminiscent of Chagal’s home village of Vitebsk in la Russie. The cube, the symbol, the Fauvistic, the surrealist: flowing, syncopated madness through the innards of the frenzied palate. The painting screams within the walls of the 19th century Palais Garnier, livens the sterile air, evokes chaotic and sporadic yearnings from above, lining the worn stage with fattened strips of buoyant agitation. Pictures are snapped, tourists come and go. Communion is held.
Quiet. Listen as Mozart’s “Jupiter Symphony” leaks from the images 70 feet above. The ghostly shadows of the corps de ballet continue to dance upon the walls. Singers and musicians, dancers and artists everywhere sway to the movements as Chagal’s paintbrush conducts the piece to our moment in time. Wagner and Ravel, “Der Ring des Nibelungen” and “Bolero”, peel themselves from the chromatic dispositions, lay themselves comfortably within the strings of Apollo’s lyre and play stringed accompaniments to the Parisian’s roaming far below.
The chandelier dims, the skyward musings by Chagal are quieted. Muted scuffling as the players resume their posts and composer’s batons are locked in cases of gold-leaf and ivory. French oak doors creak close, the marble sighs antiquity, Chagal smiles, reposed. Till another day they wait, scheming prismatic brilliance.

Armadillo
November 11, 2009
Jeraldo wanted nothing more than to be an armadillo. He had seen them on their family’s trip from Mexico, through Texas to Oklahoma where their mother’s brother, Papillo, lived with his four dogs, two wives, Eline and Enerva, and three shotguns. Jeraldo’s mother had stopped at the first sighting between Austin and Round Rock and they all sat there, amazed at the armored creature as it used its extended claws to dig a hole ten times its size near the side of the road. His sister, Adalia, at only three years old, sat perplexed at the two foot long alien gracing their presence and not being able to hold it in any longer, screamed at the top of her lungs with roll upon roll of gleeful laughter.
“Look at how it moves,” his mother had said. “It knows that it is safe with us so it keeps digging as if we are not even here. But if it is scared, do you know what it does?” She had asked this with an upward cadence at the end of her question, turned completely around in the front seat to see her children’s faces. Seeing that her children did not know the answer, she quietly told them. “You see, if it gets too scared and it can’t run away, the little armadillo tucks its head and its legs into its shell, places its tail next to its head and pulls itself into the tightest ball you can imagine. That way, no one can get in and hurt it, you see?” Adalia had squealed with excitement. “Mami, I want to see the ball animal. Can we make it ball?” Her mother had said no, but not accepting that as a viable answer, Adalia had rolled down the window and thrown a plastic cube at it, smacking it right on the back of the shell. “Dios mio, Adalia!” her mother had yelled but the creature simply looked up, smelled the cube that had fallen to its side and continued digging. Jeraldo just shook his head, looked at the creature. Sensing something, the armadillo had paused, looked up from its ever-expanding hole, its nose covered in dirt and torn roots. For a full minute, it met Jeraldo’s eyes and they sat, watching each other, communicating child to creature, the kind of communication that adults have more often than not lost in the ridiculous toil of taxes and 8-5 workdays. Through eons of time they traveled, creature leading child through the phantasms of moments when man lived in unison with his surroundings, through the soil burrows of the armadillo past and present, across dens where their children lay awaiting their meals, into the depths of the Earth where only silence reigns and the warm bodies of armadillo mothers wrap themselves tightly around their babies. Safety, warmth, history, love. Jeraldo had sensed all of it, caught it and sent it coursing through his veins. The armadillo had lifted its head higher, curled its lips into a tender smile and all the days when Jeraldo felt alone as if no one understood him were gone, all the days of crying in the back of the school yard because the other boys were teasing him melted away, all the moments at home when he hated his father for leaving him, for leaving them, disappeared. He had put his palms to the window, pressed them tightly against the glass, wished that it would burst, that he could leave and live with his newly found friend and just get away. The armadillo had shaken its head and begun digging again.
Their mother had started the car again and Adalia had fallen fast asleep. “Are you okay, hijo?” she had asked, looking in the rearview mirror. “Si,” Jeraldo had curtly answered but he hadn’t been. He had watched the armadillo one last time, taken in the claws, the pink snout, the furry belly. Most of all, he had studied the shell, the nine lines across the top, the dark grooves.
As they had driven away towards Round Rock, he had begun constructing his own armor and had looked back to his friend one last time who had stopped digging to watch them drive away.

Midnight Trade
November 10, 2009
Fog rises from the subway grill, rolls across the face of the icebound midnight moon. Smells of old socks, mildew and burnt chestnuts from the lone vendor a few blocks away on the corner singe his nose hairs as he traverses the lonely streets of the old financial district near Gold and Liberty streets. Spotty lights shoot forth from the silhouettes of the sordid emblems of capitalistic endeavor where the legal crimes take place: the Nordic pillaging of villages unseen, the trades of people’s livelihoods, the desire for more continually unsated. He tips his fedora back, lifts his head upwards towards that chilled night sky and watches through the windows of the first few floors as the immigrant workers clean the cubicles and conference rooms, hallways and offices of those that have much. He shakes his head, looks down at the soiled concrete sidewalks below, the gum and trash, the homeless people bundled up and sleeping in the recesses of the wealthy’s playground, the layer after layer of dirt and grime in the shadows of the pristine corporate headquarters, lifts his head back up to see the workers still toiling away and walks away slowly, subdued by the numbing indifference of it all.
A dusty yellow cab pulls up, “On Duty” shines golden through the mossy air. “You need a lift, mister?” The cabbie looks at him with a sideways grin, pulls his hat back towards his neck to open us his face. He shakes his head, tells the cabbie there’s no time for joy rides. “There’s too much work to be done,” he adds and continues traversing the bowels of New York City.
Right on Liberty and up to William street, he turns left, heads towards Pine and Wall Street, Exchange Place, the belly of the beast. All is quiet. He can hear the scuffle of rats in the black bags of garbage left out for collection in the morning, smells the always-pervasive smell of shit that seeps through the darkened cracks of the city and settles down for a good, long stay. Sees the security guards sleeping at the New York Stock Exchange, the ghostly figure of Washington lit up like a Christmas tree watching over the center of capital trading. The wind rips through the cobblestone streets, lifts the giant American flag on the face of the Exchange and yanks at its ropes, bends it to its will, threatens to snap it off and send it flying into the dirtied Hudson. He pauses for a second, takes in the filtered light of the lampposts, the recognizable hums of vacuum cleaners, the violent whispers of the icy wind. Looks down and sees that here at the junction of Wall street and William street that the sidewalks are spotless, knows that the filth here has moved fully inwards to the weaknesses of man encased in stony structures. A couple approaches, the man in a navy blue suit, slicked back hair, a silk pink tie and a clean, pressed white shirt. His loafers click in step with his companion’s six-inch stilettos, shiny ebony lost in the shadows of the capital-rich calluses. Her flowing watermelon dress, her white sash, her soft blond hair and thick, catty carvings of makeup on her baby blue eyes. They move in sync, robotic marching at a midnight hour, pay no attention to him and walks right past, pauses at the door of the latest luxury apartments around the corner. With a twist of the key, the woman enters. The man pauses, looks back at him and scowls. “You are trash,” he transmits and enters. And they are gone.
The light from the nearest lamppost begins to flicker. He turns to face it, looks upwards. Smoke curls upwards from the subways in droves. The light expands, blinding rays shoot outwards to the murky intricacies of that baleful junction. A high-pitched emission and the light explodes. Shadowed curtains fall, he hears the menacing whispers of those all around him, sits on the soiled corner and pulls his coat in tight around his shoulders, flips up the collar to protect his neck from the increasing winds.
The dimly-lit carcass of the American flag on the Exchange looks on, bemused.