A Man Returns to Nothing

I will start here; with this little maddened tone of mine. She did it to me- if I had the words! Well, I have memory at least and will record as precisely as one can the whole debacle.

This is better. It is raining out, the first storm of winter and comes at an appropriate time.

Who am I again? I am now sipping dark rich coffee as the sound of rain patters the roof in front of my paper here. I am preparing.

If it weren't for her I'd be out enjoying myself. As it is, it's either getting more order to these memories or putting a bullet in the head. Well, I really don't have the courage to look at guns much less buy one. Besides, I don't believe suicide is the way out. I don't see any camera's on me so what's the difference? What would be dramatic about doing myself in? After all, what would it be but a kind of satire on my condition?

And now that winter is coming on I have an excuse for staying inside. I can imagine masses of fellow creatures doing the same so it's all right. I can stay inside and get self-indulgent with this maddened tone of voice. That's come about because of her, the one who is enjoying herself at this moment; I can imagine with some ungodly joy.

It would be appropriate if I looked out the window this instant and saw consecutive memories strewn among the trees. It'd make a nice picture. But I see nothing but trees; pine trees glistening now and trembling.

I've always had this philosophical bent; this predilection for solving problems of myself. It was fine for a time but now that I'm alone even this bent has become a menace.

Now, come on, come on. Well, it's enthusiasm. A childhood story about running away or playing among cattle in the hills. Or, a nice set of images from the age of, say, seventeen to the age of twenty-eight, all with efficacious spores inherent in them so the audience gains a small portion of itself.

It is guilt slowing down everything to gain some time for itself to change cleverly into imagination and win out.

Or, over-developed awareness brought on my multimedia and pain. God yes, there's been plenty of it all around.

But after what I've been through one desires not to run at the mouth.

Besides, there is a kind of survival instinct in me that senses that this is what people want when it comes down to it. A speech, not a lecture. A long conversation on the mistakes made and suffering felt. How else can one talk to another? Through fables? If it were only true! If it could be done I'm sure it would be. How much destruction that would entail! It's really frightening to think about.

It seems unfair that it gets so complicated. Now, there are all sorts of decisions to be made. Does one remain faithful to himself and reveal all? Or is it too boring? Off the top of my head I'd say it would be too boring; not only that but it'd become highly ironic since a shrewd, modern world would realize I was trying to speak over them and they'd have to catch up to me. And the back of my hand to them!

Isn't it over-indulgent? Of course it is. I'm ashamed of myself. I wish I were a writer of mysteries or science fiction.

There has been a spate, the last decade, of highly self-conscious, satirical novels written with the hidden desire to find a center of being, a center of feeling that could enthrall a few isolated folk into themselves. Ah, beautiful thought. One that apparently hasn't caught hold yet.

Why is it so difficult to conceive a plausible story? What has reality ruined? Why is is easier to turn the television on rather than conceive a story for oneself?

Ah, there was a period of indulgence if I remember right; so much pleasure sipping cognac from the side of a pool while swimming nude. It was night and we were at a lawyer's house. The lawyer's wife put a bottle of cognac along the side and we indulged ourselves with the mania of laughter until a huge Texan next door leaned over his balcony and let out a rebel whoop.

"You people is naked crazy...bob!"

"Come on over and have a swim."

"No sir," the cowboy yelled, "you got wimmen in there with you."

The lawyer pulled me to the side of the pool and handed me the bottle of cognac.

"Old Billy is one of those gauche cowboys filthy rich in oil. He has Brahma bull horns hanging over the entrance to his living room and drives a green-pink Cadillac."

I had no response to this. Oh no, I did laugh but it had no meaning.

It's a pity dredging up old memories.

Things have changed. People assure me of this. Man on Moon. China. BinLaden. Mass Entertainment. Computers. Psychological Man. Wasted Man. Wretched Man. The list is endless.

What is a poor half-barbaric fellow to do? He could pretend, that'd be appropriate.

What is more indulgent than listening day in and day out to oneself and others and what others have made? To listen to them, without a tool to fight back?

How beautiful and pleasant it would be if one were allowed to use classical allusions to bring an idea into being.

Oh, country of birth! You ponderous, powerful child with heavy burdens. Self-indulgence. And then silence except for business. Or, a secret talk about our favorite fetish. The price of being an American is that the good person must rap a stick on his head.

I walk out the door and there they are; the refugees. One day I feel pity and the next I feel great bursts of laughter.

The central question to ask is, "when will they rampage?"

When I was not alone the person I was with would always dump the ashtrays and then I'd come in and fill them again with smoldering butts. It was a redundancy. She expected it. And after awhile I could feel her long, omnipotent gaze watch every stroke of my fingers as I crushed the cigarette and without a word spoken I felt horrible. It did not stop me.

This goes on everywhere; they say nothing. What would they say? What point of reference would they begin with? What resources would they conjure to do battle?

Questions are often like calisthenics; bend from waist, hands on hips, feet forward. Bend low, stiffen back. Breathe deeply. Let sweat run from brow without feeling it. Now, to the ground on all fours! Extend arms, lower, push-up, keep back level to ground...again...

I loved to enter a stadium from its dark portals among the buzzing anxiety. I was a child then. The swoon! Then I knew I was in the modern world.

She did it to me and I'm furious. How could I have let it happen? And it went very swiftly as if it was ordained from the beginning that it would be so. Oh temptress I have fallen for the oldest trick in the world! And you now have my best self, the only one I cared about. So, I am left with this...thing. This heavy and sad thing that hangs around me wincing at every shadow that flits along the wall of a stately building. Ah, the old bank building with its burnished pillars and leafy artifacts at the top, smiling, with huge clear windows so when you stare into them you see the people inside busy at their jobs but, too, it is you, standing there half-nutty, a colorful outline of yourself as if you were passing through the glass into a world more real, more tempting than the one you know.

And I move on, again, perhaps down to the airport this time where the windows are harsh and one looks as one believes the rest of the world looks and sees. I felt myself moving along the crowds of the airport, transported on the back of cigarette smoke and glances at my reflection on a long series of windows where I spotted jets and trucks. "Ah, another world," I thought. And frankly I could see myself flying through the clouds at 600mph with nothing between me and the rushing air but a window. I knew something about flight; that airplanes manipulated a deft change in pressure from low to high or was it high to low and it got me thinking that we are all sports of nature dealing with these shifts in pressure. Good. I will relate that to my pal who is worse off than myself. We are men-wanderers through the dark valleys of ourselves having been stripped by the good woman who loved us. Or, said they did who knows. He and I visited this old man out in the valley who lived in a cardboard box but was very wise. His teeth were yellow stumps but he laughed heartily at our tales of woe. "She is the source of all delight and woe, she will take you high and low," and he neighed like a wild horse.

I believe it is very possible that the camera came out of the female imagination. All good people fear the camera because it will steal their souls. Yes, it made sense now. Women were getting revenge through machines and odd gadgets men thought they were making for themselves. No, this woman is a clever beast who knows much more than men could ever know.

You will see me, then, in the rat rooms of this world, scurrying across the streets where the porno shops are, the old, transient hotel, the fast-food place, sometimes with a cane or a cigar dangling from my mouth, cursing the night, cursing the black night and wondering how to get back to where I was.

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