I?m alone in the room they gave me for the night.
The salmon skin walls don?t drip blood. They don?t thrash like a fish with a spike through its cheek. The flimsy wood-stained door isn?t wrought like a prison, it doesn?t groan when it swings, or shudder with the wind.
They told me I would be comfortable in here. Sometimes it gets hot, they said, but I can open the window if I want. I thanked them for the hospitality. It was wonderful seeing them. We hugged. I?m leaving early in the morning, they probably won?t be up.
I stand next to the lamp in the corner. It?s tall and slender with copper stains. Two-thirds up its shaft a dark flower blooms. Grotesque brown paint covers a groping arm that grasps a light bulb casting fevered shadows through the piss colored lampshade.
?Dearest lamp, won?t you be my friend?? I whisper.
The light doesn?t flicker in response. Nothing happens at all. The floor doesn?t open into a pit of snakes. Sharp metal spikes don?t fall from the ceiling. I flip the lamp off then settle onto the couch.
The couch is soft like a woman?s hand. The pillows are like fingertips caressing my neck. No paintings or plants hang ready to split my skull as I drift into thoughts of tomorrow?s clouds coasting below my elbow resting on the tray table, and the screeching descent, and the short drive home, and the moment I arrive. A shudder convulses through my stomach and shoulders. I begin to feel lightheaded. I breathe through clotted lungs. The couch shakes in response. I open my eyes and stare through the darkness at the lamp.
***
The plane is not going to crash. The belly of the ship will not crumble. The oval windows will hold their shape, and even if ice crystals form they will not crack. The air vents are not infested with hepatitis. None of the tires are flat. The stewardess will not jump out of the plane. I will not need to use the white doggie bag in the seat pocket in front of me. The dozens of heads jutting from the seats will not implode from too much cabin pressure.
The takeoff is smooth. I sigh. The shadow of our plane shrinks into a speck. We lean and the sun pops into the window. We straighten out and I can see the desert littered with green golf courses, carved forests of ponderosa pines, pie-shaped fields of wheat, and farther off a group of hills rumpled like a blanket. And out where it?s all brown and cut apart by canyons, I see a salt and pepper smattering of homes filled with people doing what they do. Eventually it?s all a mess of green hills. Some of them have been shaved, and others torn apart.
I sleep. I wake up. The stewardess hands me a beer. She is plump and appealing the way women are during fertile periods. I can only think of one thing when I look at her and so I press my fingers into my thigh until it hurts and I throw back the beer, making sure some of it slips down the wrong tube.
I choke into sleep. I dream the plane begins to shudder and then ripples like water and then explodes like a river crashing into rocks ? some jagged and some smooth. I wake up and we?re falling towards trees so green and we?re falling and falling towards not-cold not-bleak trees and then they?re gone and then smack, smack, screech, glide ? we roll.
***
The terminal is crammed with people walking, running, pacing, frowning, sitting. The seats around the gates are filled with evenly spaced people. No one wants to sit next to a stranger, and yet they don?t want to be so far away that they will look like outcasts. They sit and avert their eyes, or stare into the intricate array of steel beams crisscrossing the ceiling, or watch the stream of travelers rush by ? all going at different speeds the way the water in a river runs at different speeds. I slowly walk through this stream of people. The weight of luggage rips into my shoulders and I struggle to keep my neck from staying slanted.
I pass a man pacing like a tree trunk possessed by a backhoe. He?s listening to self-help tapes and chanting the word ?success.? I imagine his roots are in conference rooms where he looms in front of people, proclaiming his obsession for success is the true path of success and that success is better than piss colored lampshades.
I wonder what he would do if I slammed my steel toes into his jaw, rammed a fist into the back of his neck and cracked his knees into jigsaw pieces on the floor. Focus on success and success will come to you, he would say. Stay your path even when obstacles arise. His feet get pureed. He starts saying something about mommy. I crush his hands and he asks for a cigarette. His shoulders go next and he yells success is the bitch that makes you live. I knock out his teeth. Grandpa?s dead. Where is he? His elbows are floating in his stomach and he wants to tell me he loves the kids he never had and his wife died when he was three.
He can meet up with them on his trip back. My feet are sore from traveling.
I hurry to exit the airport through revolving glass doors and am confronted with the ramifications of sunlight. I?m surrounded reflections of the seamstress I love, and her mouse, and the lavender soap, and my heart on a tripod in a field of broken arrows.
***
Turn the wheel and the wheels turn. Spin the knob and beams of light shoot out ahead. Lower the clutch and all I get is the rush of the silent engine. Medusa lurks around the corner and I churn. The car is me and I hurtle. Steel, plastic, luggage, rubber, dust, flesh and mitochondria ? we zoom over dilapidated roads, through hissing wind.
This is not what happens: I pull into my driveway surrounded by many-splendored trees basking in the silence of no axes or chainsaws. I disconnect from my car. There isn?t anyone to greet me at the door. My foyer is covered with dust and I sneeze, then laugh and run my fingers through dust. I remove my shoes and prick my feet until they bleed. I walk around the house, yelling at the eggshell walls. My neighbor visits and I tell him he is anathema. He is malediction. He is the fleur-de-lis that clogs the toilet and overflows onto white tiles every few weeks. He is the space in the eye of a needle. He is titanic?s last survivor.
But he isn?t reality bending around the corner like an eighteen wheeler truck on a two lane road surrounded by sheer cliffs.
What if I get home and opals spring to bloom like autumn flowers in my lover?s eyes as she greets me at the door? I lean inside my house and hand her all the unfurnished rooms inside a dozen roses. By chance she trips on stairs and we find the nightly savage in a trance.
No. When I get home my actions will be set in steel like a trolley and my thoughts will be split across the horizon. I will not seek wisdom, or learn from my mistakes. The mystery of how to get what I want drives me to the edge of a cliff and I plummet like an avalanche of dandruff and I?m too embarrassed to buy the proper shampoo. None of this is true.
But it is.
And the moment of arrival is like the day medusa stared into my chest and I became a walrus trapped inside human flesh, unable to breathe the massive breaths required to sustain my body. And so I wasn?t able to live and medusa died. The world became green like it always does and my vision became two snakes twisting around a branch, and I became convinced the branch was my savior and the world was not round.
A can of tomato juice. A mug of pennies. Three photos on the wall. Garbage scattered across the floor like the aftermath of a midwest tornado. Broken bits of dried up bread. My luggage. The fedex box. The grotesque lamp. Salmon in the fridge with his head still attached. My lungs. My breath. My life.
Where I am going?
Eighteen wheels on top of me. This was not supposed to happen. The agates in the road were too distracting. I was pulled by the skin on the billboard? This is not happening. The road is smooth like any other day. But I?ve already arrived. I can?t tell you what is happening. I can?t tell you where I am.
The salmon skin walls don?t drip blood. They don?t thrash like a fish with a spike through its cheek. The flimsy wood-stained door isn?t wrought like a prison, it doesn?t groan when it swings, or shudder with the wind.
They told me I would be comfortable in here. Sometimes it gets hot, they said, but I can open the window if I want. I thanked them for the hospitality. It was wonderful seeing them. We hugged. I?m leaving early in the morning, they probably won?t be up.
I stand next to the lamp in the corner. It?s tall and slender with copper stains. Two-thirds up its shaft a dark flower blooms. Grotesque brown paint covers a groping arm that grasps a light bulb casting fevered shadows through the piss colored lampshade.
?Dearest lamp, won?t you be my friend?? I whisper.
The light doesn?t flicker in response. Nothing happens at all. The floor doesn?t open into a pit of snakes. Sharp metal spikes don?t fall from the ceiling. I flip the lamp off then settle onto the couch.
The couch is soft like a woman?s hand. The pillows are like fingertips caressing my neck. No paintings or plants hang ready to split my skull as I drift into thoughts of tomorrow?s clouds coasting below my elbow resting on the tray table, and the screeching descent, and the short drive home, and the moment I arrive. A shudder convulses through my stomach and shoulders. I begin to feel lightheaded. I breathe through clotted lungs. The couch shakes in response. I open my eyes and stare through the darkness at the lamp.
***
The plane is not going to crash. The belly of the ship will not crumble. The oval windows will hold their shape, and even if ice crystals form they will not crack. The air vents are not infested with hepatitis. None of the tires are flat. The stewardess will not jump out of the plane. I will not need to use the white doggie bag in the seat pocket in front of me. The dozens of heads jutting from the seats will not implode from too much cabin pressure.
The takeoff is smooth. I sigh. The shadow of our plane shrinks into a speck. We lean and the sun pops into the window. We straighten out and I can see the desert littered with green golf courses, carved forests of ponderosa pines, pie-shaped fields of wheat, and farther off a group of hills rumpled like a blanket. And out where it?s all brown and cut apart by canyons, I see a salt and pepper smattering of homes filled with people doing what they do. Eventually it?s all a mess of green hills. Some of them have been shaved, and others torn apart.
I sleep. I wake up. The stewardess hands me a beer. She is plump and appealing the way women are during fertile periods. I can only think of one thing when I look at her and so I press my fingers into my thigh until it hurts and I throw back the beer, making sure some of it slips down the wrong tube.
I choke into sleep. I dream the plane begins to shudder and then ripples like water and then explodes like a river crashing into rocks ? some jagged and some smooth. I wake up and we?re falling towards trees so green and we?re falling and falling towards not-cold not-bleak trees and then they?re gone and then smack, smack, screech, glide ? we roll.
***
The terminal is crammed with people walking, running, pacing, frowning, sitting. The seats around the gates are filled with evenly spaced people. No one wants to sit next to a stranger, and yet they don?t want to be so far away that they will look like outcasts. They sit and avert their eyes, or stare into the intricate array of steel beams crisscrossing the ceiling, or watch the stream of travelers rush by ? all going at different speeds the way the water in a river runs at different speeds. I slowly walk through this stream of people. The weight of luggage rips into my shoulders and I struggle to keep my neck from staying slanted.
I pass a man pacing like a tree trunk possessed by a backhoe. He?s listening to self-help tapes and chanting the word ?success.? I imagine his roots are in conference rooms where he looms in front of people, proclaiming his obsession for success is the true path of success and that success is better than piss colored lampshades.
I wonder what he would do if I slammed my steel toes into his jaw, rammed a fist into the back of his neck and cracked his knees into jigsaw pieces on the floor. Focus on success and success will come to you, he would say. Stay your path even when obstacles arise. His feet get pureed. He starts saying something about mommy. I crush his hands and he asks for a cigarette. His shoulders go next and he yells success is the bitch that makes you live. I knock out his teeth. Grandpa?s dead. Where is he? His elbows are floating in his stomach and he wants to tell me he loves the kids he never had and his wife died when he was three.
He can meet up with them on his trip back. My feet are sore from traveling.
I hurry to exit the airport through revolving glass doors and am confronted with the ramifications of sunlight. I?m surrounded reflections of the seamstress I love, and her mouse, and the lavender soap, and my heart on a tripod in a field of broken arrows.
***
Turn the wheel and the wheels turn. Spin the knob and beams of light shoot out ahead. Lower the clutch and all I get is the rush of the silent engine. Medusa lurks around the corner and I churn. The car is me and I hurtle. Steel, plastic, luggage, rubber, dust, flesh and mitochondria ? we zoom over dilapidated roads, through hissing wind.
This is not what happens: I pull into my driveway surrounded by many-splendored trees basking in the silence of no axes or chainsaws. I disconnect from my car. There isn?t anyone to greet me at the door. My foyer is covered with dust and I sneeze, then laugh and run my fingers through dust. I remove my shoes and prick my feet until they bleed. I walk around the house, yelling at the eggshell walls. My neighbor visits and I tell him he is anathema. He is malediction. He is the fleur-de-lis that clogs the toilet and overflows onto white tiles every few weeks. He is the space in the eye of a needle. He is titanic?s last survivor.
But he isn?t reality bending around the corner like an eighteen wheeler truck on a two lane road surrounded by sheer cliffs.
What if I get home and opals spring to bloom like autumn flowers in my lover?s eyes as she greets me at the door? I lean inside my house and hand her all the unfurnished rooms inside a dozen roses. By chance she trips on stairs and we find the nightly savage in a trance.
No. When I get home my actions will be set in steel like a trolley and my thoughts will be split across the horizon. I will not seek wisdom, or learn from my mistakes. The mystery of how to get what I want drives me to the edge of a cliff and I plummet like an avalanche of dandruff and I?m too embarrassed to buy the proper shampoo. None of this is true.
But it is.
And the moment of arrival is like the day medusa stared into my chest and I became a walrus trapped inside human flesh, unable to breathe the massive breaths required to sustain my body. And so I wasn?t able to live and medusa died. The world became green like it always does and my vision became two snakes twisting around a branch, and I became convinced the branch was my savior and the world was not round.
A can of tomato juice. A mug of pennies. Three photos on the wall. Garbage scattered across the floor like the aftermath of a midwest tornado. Broken bits of dried up bread. My luggage. The fedex box. The grotesque lamp. Salmon in the fridge with his head still attached. My lungs. My breath. My life.
Where I am going?
Eighteen wheels on top of me. This was not supposed to happen. The agates in the road were too distracting. I was pulled by the skin on the billboard? This is not happening. The road is smooth like any other day. But I?ve already arrived. I can?t tell you what is happening. I can?t tell you where I am.
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