NEW PAGES FOR OLD STORIES

WHAT IT IS

 It looked out of place, but what didn’t look out of place when the place was a promise of what might unfold into a harmony of acceptance, not just a charity on a whimsical holiday night with well-wishers and do-gooders embracing the excitement that is the everyday burden of those destitute. And just who will be the new destitute is a question that will never have to be asked because grist will always fall on the mill’s floor before being cheerfully swept away to an unseen corner after the festivities are over. This tradition fabricates an immense currency measured in endowments, in pleasures, in gratitudes, in fulfilments, and a host of other human traits but the currency flows only in one direction unless one considers the plight of the receivers on the other side to be some kind of a fulfilling fantasy. This is the fantasy that carries the donation dust, propagating an endless cycle that many will fight to preserve, a twist in the human condition not easily explained. This, and other observations, looked out of place to No.1 as he squinted at what appeared to be a piece of driftwood stuck vertically in the middle of the road. Peering at the object, No. 1 mused at that which was out of place or that which had no place or that whose place was precarious and should not have endured. He thought of the far-flung place of romance novels, where a slick sort of love held court, untortured by myths and messages of profane catastrophes and oblivious to the winds of demons swirling around in the tea cups held in the loving couple’s hands. It is also held in the loving eyes of astronauts and engineers and architects as they forge withdrawals of philosophy and sprinkle the tidbits like a cyanide extract to preserve and punish those in line for a handout, an apartment, a job or a vote to uphold those loving eyes. It is as if those who are doing what they love are lovingly doing nothing. Nearly sliced in two by a crop duster’s propeller, No.1 had little time to pass judgement on circumstances boiled in petulant behaviors, but instead wished to make his way toward the strange object and peer at his final sunset. His death crawl was not that of the mountain gorilla, nor would he want it to be, because that echelon had its fate tangled in old european money, pseudo environmentalism and that nugget of christianity that both elevates you and sickens you at the same time. As a simple pollinator, No.1’s life force was to give an answer to a redundant question and then explain the knowledge of his puny lifespan into inconsequential ramblings, then being screamed at, what have you done for me lately! Nothing you would understand, he thought, was what came to No.1 as inched closer to his destination. Tiny spits of gravel exasperated his wounds as he crawled along the road’s edge, his loving eyes closing forever.

WHAT IT IS NOT

The kind of tired she felt did not evoke sleep, it did not evoke restless limbs striking at strangulating blankets and it did not evoke a brain fog that permeated the morning and dissipated in the afternoon, but instead made her pensive about the weight that never ceased to weigh. It was not the albatross of certainty or the fashionable deniability that impeded her cause, but the dilettante distractors who peddled in pious poisons designed to trigger a reaction of persecution in a world where it’s not my fault has become all too common. Unable or unwilling to free herself from the shackles of a flawless utopia, Feather’s delusion was to snatch up the con men, arrest the politicians, apprehend the billionaires and bring then all to Desolation Row for a protracted look at what they wrought. Knowing that no good could come of this conviction, did not stop her from clutching at the virtual throats of the pollyannas in an attempt to shake something substantial from the dying tree. The dying tree; was it a love never unearthed, a passion spoken of, realized then discarded, a life lived in the boxes of predictability or was it a sliver of history forever repeated and folded into new pages of old stories. Being a prisoner of her own old story, Feather’s tenacity of purpose would begin where it always had, squashed between the thin morning light of hope and the convoluted conspiracies of midnight and madness.

Feather gazed at the reflection of the fiery sunrise as it hurled itself against the driver’s side window of an old ford pick up truck. The window, speckled in dry mud and opened a crack at the top, absorbed the morning light in a most peculiar way, reminding her of an abstract. Not having the ability to just walk away, she shuffled up to the window and looked inside: a frazzled guitar, its veneer cracked and blistered, was propped up on the passenger’s seat, the word MOLLY scribbled in black marker below the bridge. A handful of picks on the dash board, a few broken spark plugs  on the passenger side floor and a stained felt fedora on the driver’s seat, was some of what Feather could make out. The pull-down ashtray below the center console, overflowed with cigarette butts and grey ash, the surplus creating an ash mound on the truck’s grimy carpet. A potpourri garland of seemingly unrelated articles hung off the rear-view mirror, a no nukes symbol, a dream catcher, a make love not war umbrella, a cow, and some costume jewelry. Looking into the bed of the truck, Feather saw the spare tire leaning against the back of the box, a large knife embedded in the sidewall, along with a message painted in army green paint on the tire’s sidewall: Welcome-Plot 82. Startled by a noise behind her, the translucent man apologized for his interruption, explaining to her that he thought the truck belonged to someone from another time. The translucent man suggested that time was the bridge that spans a couple of generations and is a down payment borrowed from one to payoff the other. The entire loan can’t be paid off at once, so piecemeal portions are doled out in the form of economic handouts, deferred environmental initiatives, convoluted tax schemes and spectacular commitments to a future that will never be seen. The translucent man reached into his back pocket and pulled out an old photo of a man strumming a guitar called Molly, a faded Desolation Row street sign hung above him. Feather believed she should find this man and willfully left the translucent man at the side of the road and walked into the forest.