September 20, 2007
“You do not know how long you are in a river when the current moves swiftly. It seems a long time and it may be very short. The water was cold and in flood and many things passed that had been floated off the banks when the river rose. I was lucky to have a heavy timber to hold on to, and I lay in the icy water with my chin on the wood, holding on as easily as I could with both hands.”
You know the greatest thing of all is if anyone asks who is she?
She can answer, “I am Sev, I am Sev”, even if you answer to yourself.
And you know so easy to keep your head above the water.
“Goodbye all time greatest of all bitches for not remembering my birthday.”
“It’s going to be alright. Goodnight.”
“Nah, it ain’t ever going to be alright. But it shall be for a long long time.”
“Even stars die.”
“Silly fool, I told you that. Just the infallible law of thermodynamics. Hot leads to cold. And you’re being a stupid broad again.”
How it would have been like if we never met, I have no idea. Maybe happier.
But tonight, I remember yarrow on a tattered Moveable Feast, gift wrapped Abell books, printed sheets of Salinger, silly paper butterflies, compasses, grains of meteoric body swiped from the Sahara locked in a tiny vessel, yellow baseball cap, countless Western Union receipts, solo runaway trips and a soul held steady during times of grief…
No one knows what it would have been like if I never met Mr Pirate. Cliff doesn’t know. Neither does Kai. But even Mr Pirate, I recognise, will one day disappear the way his friend Finton did. I’d thought he disappeared a month after heart bypass. The good ones always disappear. What’s it all for in the end.
“People have come and gone.”
“Yeah but I always check in.”
What I would have liked to tell him for real was, one fine day he no longer will. Because everyone is separate lives. Friends, no doubt have stood by during bad times, but they will one day leave my side. Especially Mr Pirate. These things come at you suddenly and unreasonably. I’ve seen it happen. That’s the end of the trap.
“I don’t understand so many things.”
“I wouldn’t suppose you would. But still, wouldn’t you like it a lot if say for instance you had no place to ever to go to and you could well within your heart, you could say, well Gary would always take you in no matter what.”
I’m nearly always contemplative these days. Why is there always a price to pay for dreaming? Maybe we’re all better off living as if there are no stakes to begin with. I haven’t anything to lose. I’ve got nothing to begin with. And so Ms Red Nails will throw in wads of loot that isn’t hers and I’ll go ahead make a studio out of nothing. It’ll be a huge flop anyway. We’ll fold in 3 months and our mothers will say, “I told you so.” Then we can congratulate ourselves for having new reason for more whiskey.
Why we wouldn’t give a shit in the end. No one does. They’ve got their own tide turning. And Mr Pirate was going to take me in and we’ve got cigarettes to share and I’ll have new stories to tell. No GPS. No cameras. No phones.
“I’m a physicist. The end result will be no heat and no movement but still that is about 10 billion years away.”
I have nothing. I am morose. I’m moronic and there are ancient pig friends who’ll never grow up.
