Quick One...

I've been listening to Astral Weeks and Veedon Fleece, by the man who sits above, on repeat for the past few days.  I'm just trying to get into a zone so I can write about how each album plays out in the greater sphere of things with enough passion so that it will all make some sort of sense to you.  I'll be posting all of those thoughts either tomorrow evening or Wednesday evening, depending on how this whole week goes for me. I also want to post a slight editor's note to the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Darts Club" post that I put up last night.  I forget to mention how that movie's blatant stupidity fits in with the transcendant "stupidity" of a movie like Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, which obviously this world needs to have discussed.

No, tonight, I've just been listening to those Van Morrison albums and thinking about what I want to see.  I keep getting visions of tree lined streets in the sun and street-lit fire smelling streets in the dark.  It makes me want to write Wolfean eye-burning prose and then Joycean dewy-soul soft swooning prose afterwords.

In any event, I had to post another installment to share with you all - the void.

More to come this week.

Ben

    I’m on the floor.  I’m laying on my stomach on this soft carpet.  It’s green and tan and brown.  It has all sorts of patterns on it.  I think they’re Indian – Native American.  Or maybe they’re Spanish, or Indian – Far East – or African.  Who knows, but to me it says ancient, some old world where people worshipped the sun and the air and made patterns to try and fill in the space of the unknowable.
 
    I  like lying on the floor.  I feel like that’s where I always belong.  I’m most comfortable there, its my cradle and my womb.  And this carpet just makes me want to sleep.  She picked it out of course.  I think I’ll take it with me to the new house.  Maybe I’ll get a dog who’ll roll around on it.  A dog with white hair that will fall in tufts and collect on the edges.  We never had time for a dog did we?

    I prop myself up on my forearms and feel the strain, the lactic acid beginning to collect.  I reach over and pick Cutty Sark up.  I turn the top off and drink.  Galup – the liquor drops down and makes waves upon the Hart Crane Sea , the East River.  I put the bottle back down.  I see it it on its side with the orange at an equilibrium.  So I spin the wheel.  The friction of the carpet keeps it slow and it slows to stop, pointing capwards toward the desk.  I drop to the floor on my stomach and exhale.  I kiss a stairway looking Aztec pattern and feel soft fabric on my lips.  I close my eyes.

    “Ben, it’s Erin.”

    “Hello, Erin,” I said.

    “I just want to say how sorry I am.  How sorry we are for you.”

    “Thank you.  And tell my brother that too.” 

    “Of course,” she got quiet.  Like she was thinking about Connor and I. “Is there anything we can do?”

    The idea to sell the house came to me once I said outloud to myself, “My wife is dead.”  And I’m stubborn and I’ll stick to an idea.  So I said, “Yes.  Any listings for a small place good for a bachelor.”

    “Ben?”

    “Still.”

    “You…you want to buy a place?”

    “I want to get out.”

    “I don’t think that’s something to think about now.  I mean the kids and you.  Rose is…”

    “This would be best for all of us I think.”

    “What about the…”

    “You could sell it for me.”

    “That would take time.”

    “That’s all I’ve got now.”

    “I’ll see what I can do.”

    And she did.  God bless her.  Sark bless her, she found me a place and I put the money down.  My brother and I both married good women and if he comes tomorrow it will be because of her and not because of me or Rose.  That makes me sad in a way but much happier, much much happier for him because I knew what that felt like.

    I’ll go there on Monday.  I’ll step around and sit by the water.

    I open my eyes and can almost see myself on the floor.