Wednesday, June 27, 2007

A pirouette down empty streets.

Where in bloody hell
have my words gone?
I really don't know.
It's getting
worrying
distracting
irritating
disturbing.

Seriously, it's fuggered.
Honestly, did you know that I have notes? That I have a collection of half-words and possible sentences skritched down in notebooks and on envelopes, on torn corners of sales receipts, all in the hopes that something might catch on and give me a structure for which to regale you with?

Well, I do. Half truths. Half baked ideas. Half pages full of nothing that goes nowhere, which forces me to toss it all out and hopefully start all over again, start fresh in a place that might help me along. Sometimes, it makes me wander.

I mean it, too. I step out into the world of Los Ang-I-lezz at 4 in the morn, and take a breather from the scent of my sweat-stained air to walk out in the open, twirling pirouettes in the very center of streets bring forth images of Charlton Heston being the last man on Earth. Even if he would never come out at night, it fits. Hell, at least something does. You can find a whole world of definition out in the empty streets.

It’s happened for me, on past days. Days where I’ve stumbled down the exact, the exact center of that God-forsaken shitstorm that is Hollywood Boulevard, being all alone at an hour where even the prostitutes have stopped barking, if only so that they could go inside and partake in dalliances of play-acting with a line of sweaty bald men named “John”. All alone. In there in the rooms, out there in the streets. I can see myself from a distance, I can watch the way I skip and sing while still clearly in a haze from whatever indiscretion had managed to find me on those rare occasions that they manage to latch on for the sake of memory, even if I pretend to be an amnesiac. Sometimes, I pretend.

Most of the time, I just forget. It’s infuriatingly simple, watching things fall away from you like Studious Jane making her way towards the vanishing point, while all you do is stand out with an outstretched hand, listening to the monotone choking sounds that are all that your -- normally fairly serviceable -- throat can manage to make. Seeing that, day after day after day…it gives a person a crushing sense of the inevitable, which weighs on awful lot like defeat. Forgetting the things you want, and remembering the traces you won’t ever need. Like right now: I’ve forgotten how to write. How I write.

How I keep myself sane, amidst all the clutter of my brain.
That’s all that I’m trying to do. I’m trying do something, even if it’s worth nothing. So that’s why I walk in circles around my nighttime neighborhood, nodding in solemn understanding to every person who crosses my path, because out their we’re a part of a different sort of world. So that’s why I occasionally stop under the humming fluorescence of a spectacularly unkempt 24 hour doughnut shop, so that I might buy a two-bit cup of coffee and sit in the back corner. Always in the same corner, always staring at the same patterns of doughnuts and pitchers stamped in fading yellow all across the walls. So that’s why I try to be quiet. So that’s why I try to make contact with the people who revel in the morning hours, if only so they might help me smile. So that’s why I try to shout. So that’s why I try to sweat. So that’s why I try to think. So that’s why I try to be something of worth; why I walk down flat expanses of land, feet on four-lane blacktop, getting people like you and I and me nowhere fast, but still, still, still; the motion giving a wee bit more breeze to tease the hairs on the surface of our exposed skin. The hairs remember, and they are grateful. I think they are, anyway.

I’m trying, that’s all.
That’s all.

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