Three
sticks of jasmine incense stood in the brass burner on the short table near his
bed. Light was dappled by the leaves of the aspen trees next door, breaking the
eastern sunrise into slivers of dust motes. While News was cool with it, today
would be a hard day to leave the morning bed.
Downstairs,
coffee was on in the kitchen, the strong aroma of a South American hillside
translated through the roast beans in a way as clear as the blue glass that
waited on the shelf for his morning orange juice.
News
lifted his eyes to the doorway, where an open window was cocked and set with a
hook and eye latch, and along with the dappled light, the open air was cool and
refreshing, and the outdoors mingled with the incense wafting through the room.
His eyes roamed from the open window down the wall to the floor, where a rug
made of hundreds of votive ribbons in a Bangladesh factory lay expectant of
morning footpads.
He
would not be News if he did not listen and read the News every day. As News, he
was always in the know, always on, always the one his friends knew would have
the word on whatever it was they might need concern them on any given morning.
Of course, it was not his choice to be called News, in fact, his name wasn’t
even News, it was Peter, but he had been News to so many for so long now he
might as well forget that Peter had ever been here, let alone, walked the
streets with a newspaper beneath his arm. As the New News made his way, into a
New Year, at the very least true to his new self, if not to Peter, he let the
name stick to him, and could barely be bothered to wash it off, like an acquired
layer of lacquer on his body armor.
“News?
I have the coffee ready.” That would be Martina Louise, his companion of the
past two years, a
strawberry blonde brunette, who had her fair share of hard chances herself
before they met. And that was for another tale. In this early morning light of
aspen and jasmine, News was grateful he had her there, there had been so many years
without her.
Now
she was calling him for coffee. He pulled aside his blanket, and grabbed for
his robe which lie beside the bed on the floor. Shaking the dust from his head,
he wrapped the robe close and began walking toward the door leading downstairs,
and then the parrot went off.
“Motorbay!
Motorbaby! Yea Yea Yea Yea!” screamed the parrot. News resented the time he had
taught the parrot the words to his least favorite of an old friend’s original
compositions, but at the time, it had been fun. Years of “Motorbaby!” had led
to endless explanations to guests, what the hell was that damn bird squawking about?
This
morning, the bird was just squawking to squawk, and soon shut up when Martina
had fed him chunks of
canteloupe in a ceramic bowl. The bird then went about his day, generally
perching on his hat rack (it had once
been a hat rack, but now it
was Comte De Flotte’s personal grooming and all purpose reconnaissance
station)- and since a day when De Flotte was quiet was always a blessed one,
this one would be about the same.
News
sat at the table now, running fingers through his uncombed hair. He could do
with a shave but decided against it. The sound of eggshells cracking against
the side of a hot skillet, and the smell of the eggs and of fresh bacon frying,
snapped him out of it. He took a sip of the coffee Martina had called him for,
and said an inner prayer of thanks. All was well. Take stock of the situation.
They
had had a good year. Citations and returns had been numerous, and consultant
fees and lecture honorariums collected. Articles published, and interviews
granted. At times, he was lonely for the days when a bottle of wine was just a
bottle of wine, and a moment with a reporter was a moment of intention. Now, all
there was were press clippings, crumbled note pages, littered stock tickers.
Everyday the red tape grew higher and higher around subjects and stories, until
a wall of correcting tape could not break down the wiry bonds of nonsense and
creation. He was glad for that!
Martina
now moved the eggs and bacon onto a large serving platter, and they picked
their way through them until a glass of orange juice interposed itself like a
comma upon the morning repast. When the meal was done, they had toasted each
other for their many graces, they removed each other from sight and News went
for a walk in the fresh wet dew, taking with him Gorby the dog.
Gorby
was bright but not always cooperative. If he had the mind to lie in a puddle,
that he would do no matter what the cost in spattered clothing. He would race
after squirrels in an eternally losing struggle. He would snap at blackbirds
who approached him too closely while roped to a sidewalk café table or chair.
He was a good dog. Only his master could fathom his strange and devious side.
They
walked across the field across the street from the little house on the corner
he’d lived in for forty five years. They entered a small grove beneath an
umbrella-like oak tree, where a creek trickled through, and where sunlight
shafts spoke of fountains, a thousand shades
of green and a sky of cerulean blue- like the blue in a paintbox he was given
one year… Vines trailed off from the upper limbs of the ancient oaks and the
dog and he walked all the way around a small circular valley.
When the
sun was still at about eleven and the shadows of the cow pies on the far
hillside had turned to the east, he
made his way into the living room, the dog lay down on an oriental rug, and
there was a flurry from the parrot, who now wanted milk. “Milk Milk Milk! Milk
milk milk!” He had to laugh. He sat down at a card table which had an enameled
white top, inlaid into a table structure of yellow spruce, varnished to a
bright yellow. Inside a drawer of the table he kept a small chess set. He set
up the pieces and began to daydream.
One
of the rooks became a watchtower, then a knight took Queen’s pawn. The black
bishop and the white King were at pains to avoid each other and danced a minuet
counterpoint against one another in rococo double-time. Soon the blue jays that
perched on the backyard wall would scream, and another noon would be announced,
sunlit and shadow on the gnomon of the garden sundial.
Then
it was a salad, and a sandwich before him. He dipped into a plate of spinach
and arugula leaves topped with tomatoes, pomegranate arils, diced pears and
feta cheese, and chased it with the sandwich, made of fried bread,
mozzarella, tomato and basil. The afternoon also sat well with a glass of red
wine, and he sat down to write. What more would do, for such a glorious day?
Gratitude, again, of course.
His
companion wrapped an arm around him as he wrote, and she spoke to him of things
she wanted for them to regard together. Like many of the people around him who
wanted good for him, she had known the trials and the frustrations of being in
situations where the will of others preceded his satisfactions. He was not
going to let those things rewrite his drama for him. Life was too short for the
editing to be left to others, who might not understand.
And
by the time he stopped typing, the blue sky with a little white puff of cloud
wisping its way east. The dining room window sat on the east side of the house,
with the piano (its keys had stuck fast from years of neglect) and the early
morning garden, which opened with French jalousy doors right into the wall
between the dining room and kitchen.
White
ceramic tiles broken by that same cerulean blue borders lined a U-shaped
counter top, the middle panel which was set with a sink. And beneath the sink
was an amazing jungle of pipes which led down down the dark ladders, into the
snakelike and plutonian mystery of plumber’s nightmares. Such it was, usually,
but only in the winter.
The
dining table had been set by Martina Louise- with blue glass goblets and brass
candlesticks above a solid red tablecloth. Orange napkins rested beside
placemats made of Sunset Magazines. “This is about as close as we will ever get
to being in it” he liked to joke with her. But it was hard to argue, the
magazines did sop up a good deal of spillage which might have been disaster for
that solid red tablecloth. They sighed, and life went on.
He
stared at the white tile and remembered an afternoon as a twelve year old when
Tapioca had gone to war with Bosco during a duel fought over a staggering
peanut butter and banana sandwich. The Gravy Train had come and gone, leaving a
stale taste of old Hamburger Helper behind. That was an old wrinkle. But again
Martina Louise had saved the day, handing him a jelly doughnut full of dark red
cherry fruit and syrup, she had baked a whole rack of them, and for this again
he was grateful. She placed a teacup at his side, smiled, and lit her own
cigarette, blowing the smoke somewhere off toward Fremont.
Outside
the garden door were cool brook stones creating a path through winding
nasturtiums, sweet peas, and hydrangea. Bright scarlet flowers announced
themselves with bright yellow stamens, purple pistils and even tiger striped petals.
The parrot hopped onto the table and began dancing around a candlestick. He did
this with a pure theatrical zeal, he had been encouraged at this and had taken
it up as an afternoon’s pleasure, dancing around the tabletop for his human
caretakers.
News
knew the dance, and he knew the whole neighborhood better than the back of his
own hand. It was almost as though the map of the area were indelibly carved
into some neurons up there, or something. But he watched the changes in season,
the grass which yellowed in May and came back green in November, the wild geese
that drew their v’s against the autumn sky and winged south along the ridges
and valley that ran behind the foothills near his home, the way the rain always
wet one wall of his house a certain way each year, and not even roofing
renovations could change it…
Each
year the new green broke through the widening cracks in the asphalt of the
driveway and the pines and oleanders grew taller and the eucalyptus left their
red shreds of last season’s bark in long sheets that clogged the unpaved edges
of the main street, running north-south, along the west side of the house.
Looking
out the dining room windows he had a far stretching view of the East Bay Hills
and Regional Park District, and lights from SFO-bound airplanes lit up the
dusky twilight each night with their steady oncoming progress… planes made
their turn a bit further south over the foothills of Stanford University,
headed north near the slat flats, the ever shrinking pile of Leslie’s table
salt that sat at the base of the harbor – (San Francisco Peninsula’s one excuse
for a harbor!) and brought their flaps down as they pulled over the rocks and
trees of Coyote Point…
Afternoon,
and so, now was time for tea. While News forsook tea for the morning coffee, it
was Martina Louise insisted on both his presence and his participation. She
liked to make the tea in an informal way, not completely or severely Japanese,
but casual, calm, collected, and if she could hazard it, as English as she
might make it. She preferred Darjeeeling or Oolong, but had been recently
converted by the green tea propagandists, so she felt if only News consumed a
cup- of her green tea- per day, he was doing more for himself than a lot of his
friends. But at this age he hardly cared. Some risks were more worth taking
than others, and he certainly wasn’t sorry for many of the risks he’d taken on
the way- he’d survived the rapids, and was ready now for some long, slow,
stretches of lazy waters.
He
sat zazen on a cushioned mat for the next hour looking inside himself as well
as the outside manifestation incorporating itself as sound in the Now. This was thought thinking
how not to think. Slowing down the train, stopping the river. Like one pebble in
the stream.
When
he came down from his zen cloud he put Echoes by Pink Floyd on the stereo and
allowed the limpet green submarine of BritPop to massage his jaded and
Balkanized braincells. For twenty minutes more, loud and soft -both dynamics-
rose and fell and reminded him: ever-present all is illusion even as it is
manifesting as real I am here I am not here I am there I am nowhere.
At
the dinner hour when the clouds and geese had flown by and the sky was a purple
folded orange sunset.The new bell ringing was the one hand clapping sought for
amongst the folds of grey matter. No mind, no matter.
She
motioned to him that there was food again on the table. Dinner would be a pizza
with smoked salmon and it was hot and it was good and it was right out in front
of him a whole platter of steaming crust not too hard not too soft just exactly
right of course there were vegetables- green peppers and mushrooms- and the
wonder of pizza being a pizza is so much like life itself- all your main ingredients
satisfying daily nutritional requirements a meal-in-one a score a real specimen
of la dolce vita taken with a glass of red wine all the better to cheer the
heart.
That
was a satisfying end to things and more gratitude of course for having had the
chance to experience such a wonderful presence in Martina Louise, everpresent
eversteady everkind. As evening came on the sound of crickets in the tall grass
of the southern hillside rose from the dun-colored dried up straw and the air
quivered in summer heat ever so slowly cooling as night broke. Some called this
earthquake weather. It might as well be.
She
led him by the hand to their bed and the bedspread was of a Pondicherry print
with borders of curling green bough branches and an inner repeated pattern of a
tree, an elephant, and a tiger. She pulled her robe up over her shoulders and
unfastened his shirt and they were again like a pair of seagoing fish swimming
deeply in an embrace like a star cloud she enveloped him her inner expanses like
a hot hydrogen star ignited by an inner passion. Gratitude such a goddess had
passed this way…
All
consuming in the Now their orgasm the light in the southern sky the moonlight
now falling in silver beams reflecting off the surface of the leaves remaining
green on the aspens in the yard next door and the red blinking lights of a far
off satellite tracing across the deep dark constellations of the night sky the
leaves quaking and shivering like their sighs together a final surge of
protoplasmic manifestation of desire and they collapse like spent otters remaining entwined as they drift off to sleep in the
kelp beds of the cosmos.
But
that was only one moment not the end of evening there were still the nightly
returns to the world to be got to- News answered all email at night and only
when he felt like it- he also checked to see what had happened round the wide
old world through the day. He lived for the ideal without going out of his door
he could know all things on earth so being wired in was not to be disregarded
no matter how set against nonorganic foundations he was expecting one day the
world would get wise to itself once everyone was plugged in and turned on and
that self expression would no longer be the privilege of those granted status as
modern day princes but the property of one and all a means by which all voices
could find a way to reach out and connect with strange Others.
Most
of what the world takes for news, News had decided, was always some result or
other of the chaos of Evil breaching the general Goodness of All Things.
Something goes sour here and there, and more because the forces which establish
it are always seeking a disruption of the calm everpresent in the Now. Those
forces are all about how Next, not what Now. It’s easy to tell the people who
need them most, they have the most objections to things just flowing along without
interference. The more interference and static in the line, the more stationary the
obstinance becomes in resistance to the Flow that these people usually end up
living a lot like rocks. News knew better than that.
From
their bedroom ceiling hung a lamp which had a blue and a red bulb on either
side and this lamp was suspended with a retractable cord allowing its height to
be raised or lowered. Sometimes he signaled a neighbor friend by flashing it
against the windows. A small wooden nightstand held a small ceramic jar in
which he kept those discreet herbal pleasures, and on the window ledge one
night in a playful mood he had scratched a line from a Bob Dylan song: Oh Mama can this really be the end to
be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again. On the outer side of
the window he had scraped into the woodwork “Come All You Roving Minstrels and
Together We Will Try To Rouse The Spirit” giving the effect of engraved
woodburning with only a penknife. That was in his adolescence though- these two
legacies had long ago been Still,
he enjoyed the fact he’d been that taken by both songs at one point early,
early in his time.
In
the Winter, when cabin fever would cover them like a thick bank of snow and the
seemingly unceasing rain dripped from the outer eaves and seeped
its way into that one wall and the mornings always began with smoke-like steam
rising from the beams atop the fence posts, they would sit on the back porch
swing together and listen to Van Morrison and Sandy Denny records. The little
house had been his shelter, cave, and retreat for the better part of his life-
what more could he need?
Down
the road he heard a robin singing.
