27 - the momentum is lyrical

Warrior, show me the way

Show me how you got to be so strong
Want you there if ever I'm wrong
Oh warrior, show me the way…

   —Warrior, Andy Caldwell

~~~

So much, too much, can’t wrap my mind around it.

Spent the morning at Pannikin reading, then ended up parked at the Torrey Pines State Reserve, facing the ocean, finishing off David Shields’s Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, beach below, memories, Maya and I for years strolling up and down, from the northernmost wildlife preserve and rocks all the way south, down to where the flat rock is, where you ascend up into the trails.

I come here often. If you sit still long enough and stare out, and this the right time of year, you’ll see whales cruising by, and always the dolphins, the playful and boisterous ones. Sometimes I get myself here without intending to, it just happens. I’m so very sad, thinking the worst, in a whirl of thought, reflection, I don’t want this to end, I don’t want to lose her, what to do? Am off the deep edge….

This book of Shields’s has gotten to me:

“I look into my heart and see a whore there, but I also see something else. The fact is, or my fact is, disease is everywhere. How we could write about ourselves or our fictional characters as not diseased is a bit beyond me. We live in a world and are creatures of a culture that is spinning out more and more illnesses. Science proves me right—the great laws of the universe, the inevitability of entropy. The illness memoir is a kindly attempt to keep company, a product of our culture’s love of pathology or of our sometimes whorish selves, a story of human suffering and the attempts to make meaning within it, and finally, a reflection on this awful and absurd and somehow very funny truth, that we are all rotting, rotting, even as we write.”  (# 91)

~~~

Sitting on the veranda at the Beach House. A coworker introduced me to this splendid patio party and its “sunset specials,” and now I’m a regular. Am fiddling with my new HTC ‘droid when Camille texts. She asks that I call her in an hour. WTF? Texted her back: “i will. am at the beach house. ordered up a brandy alexander and a small plate of sashimi, weird huh? just a craving… :-) … jesus h, what the hell’s going on?”

No reply.

~~~

Seared ahi sashimi on the way, rare, blackened, coleslaw and citrus soy, the wasabi aioli here to die for; it’s late afternoon, the patio is packed, we’re basking in the sun, ramped up and lively, jocularity reigns; it’s the middle of winter and the rest of the country is freezing its ass off, rain, snow, sleet and drizzle. The Middle East lit up, Egyptians protesting, 18 days in the streets, America’s long-time ally and clueless dictator run off by the democratic uprising, thinking of Iran, the Shah, 1978, and here we go, another radical Muslim, “death to America” state about to emerge…. But we’re in paradise here at the Beach House, and we know it, onlookers all, taking nothing for granted.

I’ve taken to writing on the backs of napkins, making notes, trying to capture it, immersed I am, and the waitress brings my brandy alexander, on the rocks, cream filtering down, but dang it, no nutmeg. “Oooh, can I get some nutmeg? It’s just not the same.” She nods, smiling, “Be right back.”

Shields praising brevity, writing of the “short-short” where theme and idea dominate, anti-linear, and the momentum is lyrical, a want of, or search for, or creation of, meaning. He writes, “I want a literature built entirely out of contemplation and revelation. Who cares about anything else?” (# 419)... And the waitress, over my shoulder, brushing me slightly, sprinkles a touch of nutmeg on the drink, oh my, so sensual; she’s Latina, ever so sultry and alluring. Jesus.

“Okay?” she asks. I wave my hand over the drink, the aroma, it’s there. I hold the glass up and tell her to do the same. She does, beams another smile. “It’s all about the nutmeg sister. Thank you.” and I Iift the glass toasting her. I think she wanted to slap me, just for kicks; this makes me giddy….

~~~

Sashimi savored and consumed, about to finish my third alexander, a stack of napkins, marginalia transferred, no more room in the book, Shields beyond the pale. This, “I know of nothing more difficult than knowing who you are and having the courage to share the reasons for the catastrophe of your character with the world.” (# 557) Christ Almighty!

~~~

Shit. Shit. Shit. Missed my appointed hour, damn it. She’s going to end this on the phone. Well, fuck you. I turn the phone off, flag Gabriela down, and ask, “One for the road, and make it a double. And can you bring some of those grilled artichokes?” I find myself imagining what Gabriela’s like close in, what interests her, what her dreams are, who she loves,… On the way to getting crocked, feeling hopeless.

The sun’s touching the horizon, a flipping sad and weird day, a multiplex of stirring thought and emotion, thinking about the last time I saw her, as if none of this is real, like my time with Maya, fading into oblivion, into distant memory, everything side by side in remembrance, mise-en-scène, mediated and unmediated experience, tweaked, conjured, imagined, altered, life lived in one long take, and I am lost in thought, there’s a stillness, I can feel the severance coming, emotion brewing, so, so horrible, Camille, damn you!… and now, remembering our moment at Cabrillo Monument, at dusk, a stroll down the path across from the lighthouse, we get half way down, and no further, into the brush like two teenagers, making out, replaying it in my mind, and I can see Gabriela approaching, and I get to thinking I shouldn’t have ordered it, should just go home.

Then this, whispered in my ear, “You didn’t call.” Camille bites my neck hard, and follows it with a kiss, and I think I squealed or moaned, don’t know, I am not a girlie-man!, and I admit to nothing but the gooseflesh, and she stays behind and leans around, intoxicating this, the scent of her, blonde hair brushing my face, the coup de grâce, on the lips….