%%% %%% %%%% %%% %% %%%%% %%%% %%%% %% %%%% %% %% %% %% %%% %% %% %% %% %% %% %% %% % %% %% %% %%%% %% %% %% %% %%%% %% %%% %%%%% // // //// ////// ////// // \\ \ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ // /// // //////// ////// ////// // \\\\ \\\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ /// /// // // // // // // [ Mind Warp - Volume #4, Issue #08, File #063 ] [ "Midnight Blues - 1st Solo" by Dark Horse ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Midnight Blues - 1st Solo [Dark Horse] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Smoky cafes. I always loved those smoky, empty cafes that canvas Europe and congregate boisterously at every plaza, especially Pedante, in the heart of Paris, fenced in on three sides by plaza and boulevard, where I spent every evening of the best summer of my life. By July I had a "table of my own," where at six every evening I would dream over coffee and pastries, enchanted with life and Paris and living the prototypical dream of the Young American Traveler. From my table I could see the small plaza, nothing spectacular in the scheme of the glory that is Paris, but my own special spot in a way, my own little corner of the city and my own ancient bronze statue complete with fountain. There were others who worked day in and day out by the fountain, but it was my own in that back home no one would have remembered it like me, back home no one would have even know it was there. The Lourve is public, but this, this was my own private postcard memory to snatch and savor forever. One day near the end of July a soft rain drizzled down onto the plaza and into my hair and into my coffee. I was a poet then, and over my coffee that summer I scribbled lofty words in tattered notebooks, but in that silky rain that clung to my hair and cooled my face I realized how much I hated those words, each and every one, indivitually and totally to the depths of my soul. They were so empty, false, contrived, idealized. One word or a million can not sum up an instant of human thought, no matter how elegant or exquisite. The absolute spiritual power and glory of that misty rain in the gray plaza in Paris put all my tender thoughts into perspective: how could one communicate in a million pages the beauty of the momentary glance, meeting yours, of a girl who quickly passes out of sight but lingers in the mind for days? Of course there have been words smiths, such as Kerouac, Cooleridge, Poe, prose painters who could weave a story into a net of words so beautiful and enthralling you would never want to escape its grasp, but no one, and especially not me, then, could capture a full second of life on paper. *** They say you're not supposed to eat apple seeds - natural arsenic they say, like it'll kill you or something. *** So there I was in that cold dark morning, basking in the twilight that precedes any sign of sun, just sitting there on my front porch (and may I remark how cold it happened to be - fifty seven degrees as it turned out to be - compared to the warm night before when slick seventy degree air floated around me like fog-and-a-lighthouse) crouched against the door, that air chilly and prickly like grass (but inside let me tell you I knew it was pretty warm as far as nights go since i've seen some pretty cold ones in my day and some days it doesnt get up to fifty in the DAY even so I was right thankfull for my warm summer night that morning) and me there waiting for nothing and digging everything (and digging for those not aquainted with the hipster slang of the fiftys and sixties and, gentle reader I make no accusation that that you are less than hip to it all, but just for the benefit and common understanding of all that peruse this sacred text digging means to some the complete and utter understanding and agreement with whatever you may happen to "dig", and this is not to say that there are not other deffinitions, but this is all you need to know for now), just digging it all and soaking myself in existence. *** I doubt, as things stand, that I'll ever become a writer. I have a decent vocabulary and a grasp of grammar and every other bit of information needed in one's mind to write. I have nothing to write about. I have no devils to exorcise. Without something unresolved within the writer a story is nothing but just that, a story. Basic Plot plus Frills here and there. William S. Burroughs would never have become a writer without the aid of the "ugly spirit" (that entered him the night he killed his wife in a bizarre william tell act and did not leave him for decades)(The Native American medicine man who exorcised the demon called it "One of the toughest" he had ever been up against.) I have no such spirit to battle with words. Just a silly little life, short, with a few ups and downs. I'm basically satisfied with everything, and that presents a problem: I live a life much without yearnings and dreams. *** The sea was tired that night, and the air empty-smelling. No salt, no nothing in the air but emptiness. It was impossible even to breathe enough, the air was so thin and vacant. Jim played with a rock in the moonlight. The rock was round and light, shaped roughly like a triangle: an excellent skipping stone. Everything in his life had skipped out on him, his father, his girl, his dreams of college, and he was left with nothing but a backpack and a barren bit of beach, warm and shaded and invisible from the shore where grumpy young cops patrolled for hours for bums and lunatics (who are the rightful owners of the sea) to keep the place safe for tourists. Every night until four or so crazy teens, drunk on freedom and security, would roam the beach playing guitars and lighting fireworks and drinking beer. They would finally collapse, tired and wasted, and emerge fresh and giggly the next morning. Jim took notes on them each night, long sad descriptions of the color, curves, and character of each one, the indescribable intricacies of their speech and style. It would be his first great novel someday and take him away from the beach and into a dry house and to everything else those kids had and that he remembered from his youth. ============================================================================== Call Omniverse, the Mind Warp WHQ - (301) 718-0225 ==============================================================================