And the Blocks Came Tumbling Down

I.

I filed it down to the last remaining morsel.  Till the crumbs screamed and the dusty pile went scattering into the wind.  Till the documented evidence of his living was no longer present in physical form.  I filed it down till the file was filing itself.  All this, and still immortality was in my mind.  “Are there really no more books to be written?” I wondered.  No more biographies?  A relief maybe, but I shredded every last piece of paper that proved his existence, and still he was there.  In that apartment trapped in the walls, in my flesh trapped in my skin.  Maybe the mirror doesn’t hold the image, but every time I looked, I could see his pale watery eyes staring back at me.  Why couldn’t I have had my mother’s green eyes?

I read once that each person has a million atoms right now that have been in the body of every single being that has existed since the dawn of creation.  For some reason that made me offended, as I thought of his body being a part of me in any way.  Not to mention he was my father, which was a relationship that was more complex to deny than some abstract comment on how we are all connected.   On the other hand, I also read that humans have a new liver every six weeks, a new skin every five days and a new skeleton every three months.  This piece of information gave me hope that I could consciously deny my inherited body.  It has changed, morphed, been manipulated by conditions outside of my parents’ DNA, it was a recycled bi-product of the eternal exchange of energy.  The body that was born was dead, just like my father’s body, but it was still circulating through the universe.  I recall looking down at my arm after I had finished reading that article, and imagined the ghost of my father seeping out of my pores, freed from the burdensome shackles of deep-rooted conditioning.

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Take. Dip your foot, but never twice.  Can’t be the same water when it’s ever-flowing life.  Reach, fall upon, attain, burst upon, occur to, come to, the mind of the dawn.  To the depths of delusion.  Finding clarity, through illusion.  As lightning strikes its jagged white light through the night, clouds can’t contain the rain and all the might of the storm.  As a new notion is born.  Rising through the bars of this mental prison, is a life-force, fostering a brilliant vision.  Unchained, unnamed, through this game of liberation.  All things building upon a universe of unification.

II.

         He sat in that rotting room for years.  Creating an existence for only his living eyes to ever see.  There was never a knock upon his door, nor any company.  He sometimes sat naked, drinking whiskey - Jack Daniels - and listening to the ice clink in its cup.  “What did you say?”  He would ask the glass. “What?”  Then stagger to his desk, open his notebook, his pen cap, his stream.  His aged, liver spotted hands shook.  The years stacked up like blocks.  Teetering as they ascended.  Wobbling with height.  Threatening to fall.  He would throw his whiskey-clutched arm into the stale air with a force that caused some to escape over the glass’ clear edge.  Looking down he yelled, “ALCOHOL ABUSE!”  boisterously, and made a theatrical toast to all the silent and belligerent.  To all the poets before him, those yet to be, to all the poets who still huddled under blankets in back alleys, or in the sheltered doorways of shops now closed.  Those tramps who wrote of their woes on the back of someone else’s faded receipt found on the litter-strewn sidewalks of anywhere America.

The whiskey still burned after all these years, but it kept the fire fed.  He would write.  He would drink.  He would breathe.  He would die.  He took his quivering hand and pushed the unruly gray hair from his naked cavernous face, covered in perspiration, which oftentimes dripped off his chin and onto his paper – letters exploding from contact with the plummeting drops, as pen ink ran, leaving blurred words in its wake.

III.

With wobbled footwork, he descended the stairway into the underworld of the subway system beneath the city.  His liver spotted hand unsteadily grasped the railing, touched countless times by skin and glove.  Gathering the clanking change from his pocket, he slid his coins into the ticket machine with shaking fingers.  As he settled his weight into whatever seat he could acquire - perhaps being gifted a spot by a younger passenger - he explored the colorful world set out before his eyes.  The subterranean transportation system was alive with the myriad costumes of human expression.  He would glide along, just to listen to the teenage girl talking vociferously on her cell phone – cussing and chewing her chipped painted nails.  Just to watch the grimy middle-aged man falling asleep in his seat after a long day just trying to get by.  The old man took notice of the aggravated businesswoman whose stockings had a hole in the heel that slowly crawled up her calf with each awkward shift in her seat.  She eyed the sullied middle-aged man as his sleeping, pitiful body careened towards her, intruding upon her space.  The elderly woman staring out of the window, grasping her cane and speaking to herself in Spanish - her face bubbled and pink with age - became a direct contact into the mythical world for the old man.

His heart went out to all the mothers whose single desire in life was to have children.  Then they sat next to their creation in uncomfortable, embarrassed silence.  Skin almost touching.  The thin gap between, feeling like a black hole swallowing any attempt at connection.  He watched his reflection as night tucked its blanket of stars into the sky.  He noticed his deep wrinkles, his sunken eyes, his years fighting gravity’s force upon him to no avail.  How time touched all that surrounded him.  His reflection was hazy against the subway lighting as its structure slithered underneath the shadowed alleys and streets where the poets lamented.

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As these primitive movements dive, devour, this hour, death grows higher - establishing immortal power.  Death - always but a hair’s breath away.  Whoosh - always on the edge.  Sink.  Fade.  Aged man - bumping along on the jerking subway.   Saturating his self with the human experience.  Oblivious.   To the depth of intimacy.   As each person breathed.  Locked in the prison cell of their minds.   Shedding their organs. The marks of time.  Inhaling – haaaaa.  Exhaling – hooooo.   Exchanging recycled atoms. Sharing cells. Floating upon a mist.  A web of dreams.  Where by the human eye – they are unseen.  Son not seen in over forty-six years – these two beings shared inestimable simple particles with each other over the stretched decades.


IV.

         He had a small family who drifted from his consciousness like the dusty pile of filed sediments.  He knew his son was a traveler – a gypsy of sorts, who never knew his whereabouts.  Nonetheless, he traveled with his father from time to time in the old man’s writings, and they would have magical adventures upon golden elephants and feathered camels.  He preferred to interact with his son via stories.  Where he could conjure up the dialogue, he could set the scene, he could manipulate the storyline – it proved much easier that way, especially after talking over the details with Jack, who would respond by clinking the ice against the glass.  Jack always knew how to handle the situation.  The helping hand of Jack was the only help the old man would take.

His wife had run off to Cape Cod to be with another man.  She had abandoned her family, her son, for another understanding of love.  Due to this tragic event in his son’s life and the further alienation felt between father and son, he had left home at thirteen years of age to discover another understanding of family.  Which lead to the old man creating an existence for only his living eyes to ever see, no knock upon his door, nor any company.  He developed another understanding of being alone, which he realized could be created even when surrounded by people.

V.

Pulling a single match from the book, he lit the stove to heat water for his tea, waiting for the sulfur scent to greet his nose.  He enjoyed that smell and looked forward to it.  Standing with his face over the flame and rubbing his hands together, he placed the kettle on the burner and waited for the water to hiss its way to a whistle.  And again, like a thousand times before, he made the trek to his desk.  Opened his notebook, his pen cap, his stream, and recorded life through his dying hands for only his living eyes to ever see.

***

Emancipation.  Be careful what you’re chasing.  Or what’s chasing you.  When it catches up, what are you going to do?  When your time is through?  What’s chasing you…you?

IV.

         I found the swollen manila envelope with my name scribbled across it in the only drawer of my old man’s desk.  It wasn’t hard to open, since the glue had crusted with age and no longer held up its end of the deal.  I began to pull out the papers with a slight apprehension, not sure if I was interested in discovering any depth to a person I never really knew.  I suppose I knew him better than my mother, but again, I didn’t know which was worse.  When they were halfway out, I decided to slip them back in as I recalled the statement that there were no more books to be written.  No more biographies.  There never had been anything to cling to.  I pondered the theory of the past being merely a dream, or in my case, a nightmare.  I forced myself to accept the fact that no matter what I did, however deep I tried to sink myself in the numbing waters of denial - my father was a part of me no matter what.  He was a part of everything he came in contact with and everything he never experienced in his entire life, and would continue just the same with his death.  The spine of the story may disappear, but it weaves the storyline of thread through life eternal.  I was no longer interested in the tangible words left behind, as they were just a reminder of the continuous transformation.  His ghost was the ghost I created in my memory and I had no idea who my father was, but at the same time, I knew it didn’t matter in the manner I had projected on it in past times.

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It is only us, here, now, the living, the reading, the writing, who bother ourselves with these sentient questions.  The dead no longer care.  They are gone.  No more desk, notebook, pen cap, stream.  The burden of making meaning out of this life has died along with them.  They don’t know Jack anymore.  It is the breathing that are left with the immortal.

V.

I walked over to the paper shredder I had just purchased.  Pulling it out of its cardboard box, I searched the room for a plug.  When I spotted one, I fumbled with the direction for insertion and upon success, reached for the power switch.  Balancing the shredder over the wastebasket, I flinched as I nervously wedged the first ink-filled pages through the shredder, causing it to belch and groan momentarily.  I, too, let out a groan. I stopped and looked at the thin strips which hovered above the wastebasket. What am I doing? I said out load to the paper. What I feel needs to be done...sorry. I have already made up my mind, and besides, what would I do with all this paper anyway? I lived in my van. Tension gave way to release, as I turned every paper in his apartment into thin strips.  Everything.  The garbage bag was stuffed to the brim as I tied it closed, throwing it over my shoulder and lugging it down the two flights of the sagging building’s steps, which were burdened by the weight of generations of narrative.   I turned the corner and headed into the alleyway of the apartment complex, having to step over a despondent young woman lying in fetal position passed out, a fist gripping receipts, breathing shallowly. I felt a drop of rain fall on my forehead, then on my hand. Opening the black plastic lid of the graffiti-strewn dumpster, I heaved the weight of words inside amongst the other unwanted evidence of life, some call waste.   A rancid stench billowed forth as I let the lid close with a slam, which was then mimicked by a rumble of thunder off in the distance.  Pivoting on my heels and stepping once again over the forlorn woman’s body, I made the trek back.  He was still there, with each creaking step, as I ascended.  Immortal.  His voice became the groaning stairs as I imagined him dragging his drunken physique up those same steps just days prior.

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The file. The last remaining morsel.  The crumbs.  The dusty pile.  The wind.  These were the whole thing.  These were nothing.

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A yellow and black butterfly flitted by the swollen grimy window, which I was unable to open from its time-warped contours to let in some fresh air renewed by the rain.  The butterfly’s movements were spastic yet graceful.  I stood there breathing in the middle of the living room where his bare, exposed desk rested with nothing on the surface but a pen cap.  I was intimately sharing the shedding of my skin and bones.  I was constantly renewing my cells, and listening to the poems being spoken from his speaking walls.  His biography.  His book.  Everything speaking its story.

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Skin stretched across canvas.  Bones are poems.  But only when alive. Death, like a dream.  No one here to read these words.  There is nothing to leave behind.  Only for living.  Sitting.  Standing.  Walking.  Lying.  Breathing.

Clouds sagging with stories.  Raining down for the belly of the sky.  Drenched.  Impregnating myths to be birth in the Earth.  No one here to read these words.  Only when alive.