#other things i wanted to get into before were architecture and meteorology. if i was REALLY delusional i would try astrophysics but | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

throwinggrapesoffthebalcony · 7 years

Text

LAVENDER SOAP

France: a protracted sexual scene on a beautiful afternoon in a lavender field a woman named Cat on her knees. My hands moving gently through her soft shiny hair. My expression towards the landscape, towards the sky and down to the strangeness of her face at this angle. The sound of wind and her mouth on me. The texture of skin, foliage, hair, and clothing. That part of me, wet with saliva and cum, glinting with sunlight, appearing and disappearing into her mouth. After some time I lower myself into a complete sexual scene on the earth and amongst the lavender. The exultant sound of her voice while fucking and cumming rises then begins to fade. This scene, at least the first third of the film, represents a departure from France, which represents that part of us. Some belief that romance still exists.

Her voice, begging me not to leave, dissolves drowned out by the jet engines. Then there’s the Atlantic, a great blue shimmering void beneath with patches of darker blue where there’s depth. What a lovely abyss. The event hasn’t been forgotten, but the world has faded into yet another epoch of pacification, has gone on to other things, and has been consumed by new geopolitical and meteorological concerns; everyone has even done their best to put the event out of the collective mind. A new place of celebrity has arose, sprung up and is thriving. A magazine spread is open to a panorama of what’s left of the architecture, of the vast decimation of what’s now a ghostly city. A ‘City of Angles’, now a cruel double entendre; but publicists rarely know where good taste ends and pornography begins, when there are these magazines to sell. They weren’t all bad. And with the way the picture’s taken it nearly reflects a state of absolution of the place itself. Should we feel sorry for it. And just as anyone does when faced with the vast panorama of a place they know well, the eyes move, searching, then resting on a familiar place in the scene, even if that place no longer exists amongst the debris. I should have been there for it. I remember what was there. It’s like a chimera of a lingering love. The page of the magazine slowly becomes more and more lifelike. Then the lens begins to move in, struck with flares of sun and dust as the scene comes to life, now miles and miles walking into the ruins.

There’s a hotel in the distance, as if almost completely spared amongst the vast sun-drenched debris and decimation. Standing now, staring up at the hotel, laughing. An arrival at the foot of steps leading down into a cocktail lounge. I set a beautiful soft leather duffle bag down at the top of the few steps that lead down into the vast sunken area. Peering over this relatively large space once referred to as a living room, so it’s as if arriving home. The look on my face, both of about to rest, to fall back onto one of the dusty sofas, but also of coming here with some purpose, to dig up the dead now. It’s a ruins now. At first there’re mixed feelings concerning the timing of arrival. What at first seems ill-fated, inglorious, becomes even more magnificent and glorious. Like smelling a rose in the desert. Dressed very nicely, in a pastel shirt, the most beautiful subdued peach pastel shirt, pressed with sleeves rolled up and in shiny shoes that appear untouched or marred by the dust and fragments of debris of the ruins that would have had to have been covered, miles and miles on foot in order to arrive here. So this moment in essence is the beginning of the dream, where then after he must capitulate to the physics of the ruins. The act of ejaculating onto Cat’s painted lips, not only being a birth of this second part of the film, but also a severance from it. Then feeling the effects of the heat now, I go wandering about the abandoned hotel and grounds to the sound of nature. Humorously, I go to the front desk to ring the bell, where there’s a bowl of plastic fruit that had replaced the real fruit that they’d kept there. He goes to the hostess stand and laughingly makes a remark. Is there anything available along the arcade in all this new ridiculousness for me to sit and have a drink. There’s an objective, but an objective that’s so vague and equivocal, that he’s not sure how it’s attained or even what it is; it was only to bring myself here, as if to bring myself to ruins in the ruins. Slowly drawn to what’s required to survive here and all the momentary actions are determined by that; with a life of memories through open doors and in alcoves, of conversations and love making.

Weeds are coming up between the cracks. You can smell the musty rooms. Many of the windows are gone now, shattered in the blast; the silhouette of diners left about the place from that moment. One last quaint moment. Wished I was here. It smells of a place that’s long been dormant, like death turned into a kind of perfume. At times it feels like an act of trespassing even while there’s no one around left to care or claim that. The strange enduring little trees are still growing in the courtyard. I’m surprised that they’re still here. They’d put a reflecting pool in at a later date and it’s become a shallow stagnant dark green pond. The blue tiles are covered with moss, the tiles revealing their vivacity where the fingers scratch through. One of the first things that I’ll have to do is go about getting rid of any stagnant water so there won’t be any mosquitos which I’ve already seen and felt, a smear of blood still across my forearm. The weather here’s as beautiful as it ever was, and still isn’t conducive to mosquitoes, so it can only be the result of fountains or pools that have collected rain water and gone stagnant. Most likely in those places that remain in shadow throughout the day. I’ll have to collect rainwater if I stay a while. It’s nice to have to recall the aqueducts again, the Holy Roman Empire again, in this God forsaken place again, starting over again.

I’d had a dream years and years ago while it was still intact and thriving, where this place was besieged by sea and storm. It had been one night, when I’d been to the hotel and had had sex with a beautiful girl. It was spontaneous and unpredictable, which is what I always preferred. And then when arriving back to my apartment not far around three o’clock in the morning, upon falling to sleep I had this intensely beautiful dream, where the hotel was near a shore and something had happened. And it was such a beautiful place in ruins with the sun shinning down into the courtyard onto nature when it’s shaken everyone off. A revival not of man , but of nature, without permission, as indifferent as we are to so many callings. A whore screaming that she wants to do this for another year means nothing to nature. She only asks for another year. And I laugh knowing that that would never be enough. The days and months go so quickly. And in this dream the warm sun was coming down and with the smell of the ocean close by. And I knew where I was, but it was in a different setting, by a body of water, made more glorious in the dream, Mediterranean in nature. And I remember waking and having a very different feeling towards the place after that dream, with this other place conflicting and superimposed; here I was somewhere more wonderful than here.

The strange xxx trees go unnoticed in the courtyard. I’d never had a clear conscience sitting in the wicker chairs, inside the monastic arches. And still in the ruins, I don’t. A life ill led.

Before dark I take a walk below the courtyard looking over the catacomb of exceptional cars, some restored antiques, some beautiful modern mouthwatering machines. Anyone of them could be mine, and I feel like I’m looking over cars again to take a test drive. The only problem being that there are no streets in drivable condition, filled with debris. I’d have to find some petrol and get one back into running order and clear a path. That would be nice, even with nowhere to drive. I’ll start one up anyway and half asphyxiate myself.

Starting to feel myself again. The memory comes down like a dry rain. Two beautiful cars roaring through quiet streets, when the knowing your way around was crucial, something to pride yourself on. No directions necessary. I know this place like the back of my hand. The love was getting cold and we had to scream to wake ourselves up again. She was this sort of tenacious competitive woman. In conversation she always had to be right. We left together. And I thought it was perhaps another one of her tests. When I said love, did I look her in the eyes? But when we left, we left in separate cars and she told me to follow her. She was waiting down the street. The rear tail lights of her Mercedes glowing, suspended in the darkness. I got into my car and pulled around and when she saw my headlights come up behind her, she began down the hillside. At first she was driving a reasonable speed. And then she began to drive like a bat out of hell. And I sensed that she was playing a little game with me. It wasn’t the greatest of tests, if only because I knew where she lived. Our tires screeched as we went around the turn. And she pulled away a little bit, and I chased, my headlight beams pulling in, then her rear lights pulling away. I’d nearly lost sight of her along what I didn’t understand. We were approaching what felt like a hundred miles an hour at times. And all I could think was, where in the hell did this woman learn to drive? It had to have been some formal training on a serpentining track. And we went through the blue neighborhoods, lit as if entirely by moonlight. My god this place is beautiful at those strange hours. Still, it would divulge nothing of itself. We raced down a service drive, then cut screeching back onto the street. Any man who couldn’t out drive her couldn’t have her. She cut down another service drive, that would have been a nifty shortcut only you can’t open it up down such a narrow street. She’d have to slow down or end up taking out one of the huge blue trashcans.

Later, she wants to know how good it was? She asks, “Is Rome and Paris still calling for you?”

“No, not right now. Not tonight. Tonight you take the place of every destination that I’ve ever had.”

“That’s what I thought.” She said, ”I have plans for us.”

"No, I can't." I pleaded with her, feeling like I would have fallen

dead if I left her house at that hour. What she'd said was crawling up my neck like a line of ants.”

"I'm sure that pretty girlfriend of yours will keep you busy. I wouldn't hold it against her.”

“It's Babylon here.”

“Is Paris still calling?”

“I feel like I’m dying, dying in such nice clothes.”

“At least that.”

And now the memory fades to the present ruins, now that the bathroom’s clean enough. I’ve spent hours washing it down. I set the duffle onto the counter to place everything in its proper place. I organize the shiny world class future-modernistic toiletries, shampoo, conditioner, hair gel, zinc sunblock, razors, etc etc. Nail clippers, tweezers, and a strict shiny silver pair of scissors that will last years and years if it comes to that. The name on the scissors means something. There’s nothing like a well made pair of scissors. I’ll try to stay as well pruned here as I ever did in the modern world, for you never know when she might come walking in. And to imagine that that’s still possible in the ruins makes me laugh. But with my luck she’ll walk in on the day that I let myself go.

And the rest of the day goes well, without much misery to speak of, possibly because of this new state of mind, that’s euphoric, silver and shimmering, like water in the sun. Now with just a threadbare expression towards the whole place and anyone I might have known here before. The hatred, not for anyone in particular, but towards the entire event, like the vague bitterness in a receding plague. There’s no individual to take vengeance on. There’s only to scream into the ruins. And it would be a waste of time to try and squeeze publishing rights out of someone already dead. (They’d gone about trying to prove that every place that was ever thought to be important, wasn’t. Was just a place to play games on. Just as we’d gone about trying to prove that every surface was a perfect surface for dancing on. But it has nothing to do with the structures themselves, but the energy that lies within the ground. It’s a place that’s connected to an energy spout from where I’m originally from. Connected from below the ground and in the atmosphere. In fact there are a few places that I’ve come across that have had that effect on me. Another being that place in France where I’d eventually decided to live for a while. The feeling of course from a previous life lived and future tense.)

And the time of the day and the light has become so stark that the cypresses have become like black flames, these wound concentrations, what always held the darkness into the day, lent mystery to the sidewalks sunstroked. Fashion, what would it ever be without black and white stripes. It gives humanity something to break through. The cypresses have survived the blast, the sudden pruning, and again express their verdure in sunlight. It must have stripped the leaves but left them living. I become overjoyed, standing amongst the long shadows laid over the courtyard. Dancing in them, between them. I look out over the rail. Sea at death. Departure departure departure! I remember screaming as a young man standing here. I feel an energy coming over me that I haven’t felt in a while. As if, at any moment I could express the touch that I once had, one of these jubilant little flowers from the alluvium, whether in its enlightened or dissolute form. Conjuring with hands and arms and wriggling fingers for the black spires, the twirling flames of the Italian cypress to dance with the wind. The twirling black flames, to dance in the post-apocalyptic setting. But it’s only us in the ruins. And we’re again, such a beautiful picture. The sun disappearing into the top of then reappearing below the billboard sign and its girders along with the haunting sound of angels singing. The entire place turns golden, before it disappears again. It being like revenge for the abandoned drive-in.

It’s taken me more than a couple of days to make this room livable. It’s a small flame, but I feel a bon fire coming on. (there’s some ambiguity as to the actual nutrition being taken in, with the frequency of memories taking place. And they’re such abundant and fruitful memories, down to the seeds, with even a flash of Nicole in there somewhere.

I raise my hands like a rifle. Pow, then laughing as a bright green vibrant parrot flies off. Probably of the same flocks of parrots that would streak by squawking years ago in what I’d begun to refer to as the city of parrots. And I don’t know whether they’d escaped the blast, or have had to find this place again, just as I have. And I’m pretty sure that to all the wild little animals, this state of ruins isn’t a catastrophe. But a celebration for all. More little nooks and crannies to play in. They’ve gone on unfazed in flight, in search of a meal and quiet little sanctuaries in which to land eat sleep and breed in. Still the great example of the simplest of pleasures in life being bliss, as high as we can ever build.

And the most miraculous and inspiring part of the first walk that I take in the ruins is the view. In my opinion many buildings had been mistakingly built along the south side of Sunset that blocked the view, and thankfully most of them haven’t withstood the blast.

I found it and dusted it off. The record player and its continual groove spiraling inward towards provenance. The piezo crystal, Rochelle salt, etc. The contemplation of the record player in terms of tension, centrifugal forces, resistance and friction. The contemplation of isolating the pickup from all other disturbances. Constant velocity/ inertia/ surface noise. The marked edge and the stroboscopic effect as a form of measuring this perfection or imperfection of the rotational speed that’s measured in RPMs. The magnificence of the sound from modern speakers and an ancient record player amongst the acoustics of the ruins, is a sound unrivaled, something that can’t be bought or synthesized.

Remembering what it was like to bring the fork to my mouth with morsels of food on it and drinking freshly squeezed orange juice from a sparkling diamond etched glass.

(The sex scenes take place both amongst the grounds and rooms in their current dusty and ruinous state and also in their earlier venerable state. And with some closeups you might not even know which is which. But there’s some question as to how opulence changes the act of fucking. Or how despair does. I’d always noticed that girls would perform more on a bed of roses, than they would on a modest apartment bed. So it could be said that opulence always creates more of a dramatic play; a girl making more squeaky squeezed doll like noises. That sometimes would stop me in the midst of the act and I’d say, if you’re an actress you’re a really good one.)

Looking over notes that feel ancient now concerning the place at a very different time of my life and a very different time in the history of the place, BE (before event). At first there’s a frustration that arises at this desk that’s been cleaned and set near the window with a view of the vastness of the ruins. Of course, they’re not thorough renovations that I’m attempting here, but the clearing of paths and pruning and sweeping and cleaning to make it somewhat livable. Maybe send a pigeon off for Cat, although I know she wouldn’t like it here. She needs civilization at least within an hours drive. But this frustration arises, that’s horribly also like a relic of the past. Here I am again having digressed into a self-induced struggle. The notes take me back to those sensations. I can almost remember everything about the day I’d written them. I’m dwelling, wallowing, having come here merely to edit all that was left up in the air. So then it’s a somewhat spiritual and somewhat masochistic sensation to float some pages of old work in the reflecting pool, pressing them with my fingertips below the surface of the water. Watching the rectangles of paper and ink slowly turning to pulp as the days go on against the shimmering blue tile.

I have a nightmare that the pages are no longer there in the reflecting pool, but instead a girl’s singing with a beautiful voice dancing along its edge. I wake in a cold sweat and hurry down in the middle of the night through the darkness and shadows casted over the hallway walls rushing down to the courtyard. I’m overcome by a tremendous relief, to see the decomposing pages still there in the moonlight, as still as death in the reflecting pool. Tomorrow when the sun’s at its height I must remember to throw a penny in.

Today’s excursion is for something that I’m sure will be even better now, if there were no drastic fluctuations in temperature that might have effected the composition of the wine. And sure enough, having to pass again through plenty of dust, this place is a treasure of wine cellars buried in the blast. It’s an etched glass again, that I pour this gloriously translucent red liquid into from a twentieth century decanter. That I’d set to breathe like a sundial in the late afternoon sun in this courtyard. This is decadence! This is refinement in the state of nature. This is the best that we can do! This is our limitation! It’s what we’ll be returned to again and again.

I lay back in the tub in the unblemished porcelain, with a glass of clarified red wine in hand, at its finest hour. This is the recollection of the first sexual act, that gave birth and death to the rest of the film. There is all the language, but to say simply, that I wished she were here. There’s the small ball of soap, so beautifully wrapped, each individually wrapped in a piece of wax paper, the sort that you might find a piece of candy meticulously wrapped in, with this miraculous little ball of handmade lavender soap inside. I dip the little faint purple ball beneath the water, then lather it as I move it about the palms of my hands and fingers. I let just enough water drain to expose myself. I lean my head back and close my eyes. I think about Cat, the sound of her voice, the shape of her eyes. I become an object to the lens, now the observed, no longer omniscient, a stranger to the observer in a protracted masturbatory scene, as if again, an attempt towards the oracular vagueness of absolution. I don’t want to come because it ends the act, the connection between her and I. It’s also the contemplation of man and this burden; that he can never be considered in any context without the consideration of this, cock. And like a girl had told me, when I was naked in her arms and miserable, that I should appreciate being a handsome man with a beautiful cock. So many never get to enjoy so many beautiful women. And it was a problem that I wanted an untainted woman that doesn’t exist. Context, just as a woman can never exist in any context without the considerations of her committing an act of adultery, of infidelity. And in every man’s mind, when separated, runs every plausible scenario of her degrading acts with another man. Is it that man that she looked at in that sexual way one time? Or is it with an ex-lover, so that it will come second nature, like remembering an old combination of the lips together, of the tongues, of the genitalia. Or is something new and spontaneous already going on in my absence? Cat. Someone who she’s purely, without love for, fucking. So it means nothing. It comes, preceding or in tandem with the ghosts of the past to haunt me. There’s no phone here that’s working, there’s no crackling carbon to scream through, to plead and beg like an adolescent for her not to. You feel it happening like a painful ejaculation. And there’s no way that I could ever return in time to keep it from happening. I scratch at the wallpaper around the tub that’s already peeling and in disrepair. If I leave and can’t tell her if and when I’ll be back, she has to go on living, she said.

Where I once was lost, laughing, I’m the one to ask them to put the reflecting pool in because I imagine one there anyway. So you might as well, to feel the distance I’m drifting from anything or anyone that I ever loved. So how far is this? But I’ve learned by this point, that the world isn’t full circle never drifting into that channel again. Laughing over a piece about love. It’s sanctuary to go on seeing everyone and everything in the way that you remember them. The words, the courier type, wavering just below the surface, and my desire is still to retrieve them. To reach in and rewrite it all. But I wanted to drown it here. This would be the only place to bury the memories. I make my way back through the dank hotel and enter my room that I’ve fixed so nicely now that it’d be a joy for anyone to stay in. Well, anyone who would appreciate kind of roughing it, and doing without the usual amenities of room service. We could pretend. But the fabrics are plush, washed and beautiful, smelling of lemon zest. It’s luxury without modernity. I’ve already decided on the areas that I’ll devote time to and those others that I’ll leave to continue degrading back into the soil. A soil that strangely, as if by the compost of the degradation, depravity and the sin cooked by the blast, is extremely rich and fertile. Every flower that sprouts from it, vivid, vivacious, edible and nutritious. I lay back in this courtyard that I’ve made beautiful again, with no antagonism to ruin the basking. People. And as far as missing Cat is concerned, I’ve not begun to, or at least I tell myself that I’m not missing her. The pen will keep all of the love affairs close to heart, until maybe one wandering through the ruins crosses this path. On one of those pages, as I gaze down reading over the text wavering beneath the silver webs, becomes a woman in a beautiful skirt and pewter silk blouse and string of pearls, her beautiful face and limbs sinking gracefully. I lean down as if to look at her face, into her green eyes, then with gentle fingers pressing against the sternum bone between her breasts as if to sink her further down into the reflecting pool.

I’ve never sat back and felt a place more beautiful than this. There’s a place for roots and vines amongst this look that I’m trying to create here now in the courtyard. They asked me in France, after I’d found peace and contentedness there, why I would ever want to make my way back here, to a disaster area. Why, with such a fertile life, a woman that was perfect and loved me, would I ever want to make my way back into a barren ruins, even risking life. And I could only say, that there were excavations to be made. And I wouldn’t be going back to uncover some emeralds and rubies that I’d buried away years before. And I wouldn’t be returning to look upon the skeleton of some miraculous, obliterated ficus. But it was like the bulb to a butterfly that it had been to me as a young man. So in the sinking of the notes, of the pages, of my long held prized possessions, it’s as if sinking myself. And it was not just a trip that I would return from.

I’ve filled the cistern partially with containers of water that I’ve brought from a distance. The rest will be filled with rain water channeled into it. But for now I have enough to fill the tub with fresh crystal clear water. If my stay her is to last, I know that I’ll have to start making everything from what’s readily available. The toiletries in the duffle bag, even while used sparingly will run out, with every drop being agonizingly coaxed and squeezed from the bottles and tubes. It will take time and experimentation, but surely there’s nothing better than all natural ingredients anyway. Nature provides us with everything we need, and what we have, we’ve merely synthesized from nature anyway. And the soaps and lotions and sunblock that I create will be even more exquisite, in some way. Crude really, probably. I’ve never taken any interest in chemistry. I will not be a chemist or a biologist here, but the fashion designer of a revival. I will not try to look past a certain molecular level. Beyond the optics of the human being. At some point I’ll leave the mystery and the depths to God and live on that plane that we were meant to dwell on. It’s never enough for us and we’re never happy. We want to inhabit other planets while we still don’t understand how to inhabit this one. We’ve already learned the hard way, that to know too much is too much and at a certain point begins to degrade our existence. Something critical that we were not aware of, had been progressively lost in the synthesis of what was synthesized. The furniture had been moved about and not in the same arrangement that I’d remembered it being in. I go about in the dust, rearranging the furniture so that it’s arranged in the way that I remember when I’d slept in this room, almost an oval nature to the arrangements of the chairs and coffee tables. I’ve taken one piece of furniture at a time out into the fresh air and beat them of dust and wiped the wood, the balls and claws, meticulously wiped with oils, making every nail nice and shiny. At the same time in fear and they’re mine.

Sitting in one of the chairs still dusty, I lay my head to the side and feel that same posture from so many years before. The torso, the arms, the anatomy of a young man playing an elegantly anguished part. Taking notes on something called ghosts, a story about what followed me from that body of water where I was from. Slumped into one of the wing-backed chairs, with all the time in the world I rang that doorbell. I ring that little doorbell again, waiting for the waiter to appear. Why are you here again?, he asks politely. Because dreams are the last things that we dispense of and I won’t be dispensing of them tonight, if that’s what you’re thinking. That’s why I’m here. What a genuine human being I thought. I remember thinking, how could I get from this point to that point. It's so beautiful. As if I'd never seen the simple beauty in it before, this kind righteousness. He knew and couldn’t believe I was sitting there. At times dawning on me, I couldn’t either. Perhaps it was the blithe of exhaustion that was causing the admiration. To want nothing more than an honest living and a wife and child. I peered at him with eyes full of tears as if admiring a prettiness that this waiter possessed nothing of.

They’re going about like spritely little nymphs again in the rays of sunshine, playing the parts of angels as a cloak of their depravity. In the aftermath, the smelly little crotches of their elastic acrobatic pants, sniffed and savored by a man who isn’t fooled by the illusion of purity. All sexual desires purged in their humanness. Like my dying in their young wombs. Cumming again into her electric little crotch. The pornographic image of a little angel, naked but for her wings, struck by this magnificent sunlight, illuminating the faultless quality of her skin, the silken hair, the iridescence of her wings. Cumming onto the angelic face. Her precious eyes and perfect lashes blinking then peering unwaveringly upward in adoration. Left in my hand, left in my head, in memory, like a little slightly disconcerted statue in the garden. Why do you look so frozen?

We’ll return cinema and the arts to the cycles of nature. I’ll rid this ruins of stagnation. With a paint scraper and with a long handled garden spade and with my own claws, I’ll rid a radius around this ruins of every last remnant of tacky billings that survived the blast, even partially. Blanking them for the sprouts of this revival. There’ll be no greater sight than my little darling performing some scene in the ruins. Like the first ever routine performed on earth.

Wanting to have that Chamomile in that memorable way again, I’ve set up a cup and saucer with a little silver spoon as if treating myself in a five star way. I’ve made a strainer out of a woman’s nylon stocking. Tearing them apart takes a little strain. I set the little bundle of what flowers I think will make a nice tea into the hot water and let it steep. I close my eyes and try to enjoy what tastes more like a dull strain of potpourri, hoping no variety’s poisonous. In flashback, the beautifully painted toe nails of a woman below the nylon now. I feel over her toes admiring them. It’s a long ago foreplay, when I was the type of boy who would get on all fours on the carpet to admire a woman’s feet. But it feels wonderful and lively to remember being like that. Her feet and legs go walking off over a huge area rug that had not yet been faded by the blast, a blast that was like a thousand sunny days in a single moment. Like a comet with coordinates. Her toenails painted with smooth red enamel playing under the nylon in the bright sunlight could go on for hours. The colors and designs on the area rug, vibrant and alive again as I get up to follow her. The only vibrant colors now being the clothes that I’ve brought with me and the fabrics that didn’t fade even in the blast. The bathtub becomes one vivid color after another as I try to dye some things. A montage of the brightly unnatural colors in the foliage and flora that you see sometimes springing from bare soil and the fissures in brickwork, slate, and masonry. A neon little flower nearly aglow against the grey, has me say, you’ll end up in my basket, there’s no question about it. I’ll never make any claims over nature. It was at first chance already propagating itself in the warmth of the aftermath. New life with the pollinations of stigma, like the carpets, sad and faded too. Let me catch you before you all become whores again and become dead to me again. It’s futile, at least for the time being, to scrub the bathtub of the pigment left in the porcelain after dying the pieces of fabric in it, and I’m able to laugh at the stained lower half of the tub when laying in it to take a bath.

I've dragged the mattress out into the sunlight and have scrubbed it and poured hot water through it to rid it of its sinful past, crying for all of humanity. The soft plinth of a past era with its sinful stains here and there of blood and piss and placenta. And one can only guess as to all that has gone on on this particular bed and what’s been left on its fibers because of it. Rented through the years to anyone with money. Sins stripped with ammonia, it takes something as potent as this. The fabric, the threads rinsed, anointed, glistening anew in the afternoon light. The ghosts of all the misery and adultery and ill-repute released, holographically expunged into the afternoon air. The orgies, the crestfallen masturbations, the innocence of the joyous couplings as prescribed by god. Honeymoons tainted by a tainted mattress and a tainted room. When I’m married it’ll start on a mattress that’s just been bought. Her hopeful face, doomed by the depth of the mirror. The cacophony of all the fucking that had taken place there before, all at once, it sounds like hell on low volume. The forced whispering of a girl, a girl compelled to do something that she didn’t want to do amongst the wedding flowers. With the promise of stardom she just lost her mind. Ejaculated on and stardomized. The heavenly demonic sounds of her orgasms as she’s turned, forever cast into a prism of her own regrets, every move or impeachment of anyone else after that becoming like an instantaneous laugh into her own face. A girl with that letter can never hold high ground. The look of that moment on the expression of her first born. Its first cry, the orgasmic cry on the bed of her capitulation. Like pulling a newborn from a garbage heap. She screams she did it at the behest of the reptile. Just embrace the darkness and stardom will be yours. She was promised. But what kind of a promise could she expect to be kept that involves that. The newly christened mattress drying in the sun with the buzzards already circling high above like some horrific foretelling, circling this new place of life and birth in the ruins. I take a nap on the damp mattress drying in the sun. Does nature await, laughing at this humble and hopeful revival? Have they too found beauty in the ruins? Is it to them, what the bright new basking of fruit is to me? For every bite that I take of the nectarine, does nature take its bite of me? Has it the juices of her running down its chin too, and feeling the same pleasure? Do they know what love feels like? Seeking only what gives it pleasure.

I bathe this girl that I love out in the open sunlight. Trying to remove the act from her heart skin and hair. In daylight it feels like it’s worked. For that moment I don’t feel horrified. She’s immaculate again and dancing with the exultant lightness in this redeemed state. The flowers in her hair match the designs painted on her skin. It washes off, we’re laughing again. Our faces touch, I’m caressing silken ribbons of hair behind her ears. No mistakes scared into the heart left. And almost silly, she runs into the hotel. I remain laughing in the sunlight before rushing in after her to play a game of ready or not.

Later, I make the bed with the faded but fresh lemon colored linen. Like a commercial in the ruins, bringing it to my senses. Bringing it to my face. The day and the scents and memories has me softened up. In the ruins, there’s more reason to go on living than I felt in society. A stray cat only wants to bask in the sun and the birds only whistle, as of yet, with no malice in their eyes.

Performing a French polish on the pieces of furniture in the room provides an immediate sense of gratification. It’s not maddening, but with Beethoven playing, it may appear like a maddening task is taking place. So many layers. The surface becoming more and more lustrous and reflective. Again, with traditional methods that have remained unrivaled. With sweat blood the finish made pristine again, so then my reflection has returned to its previous glory. I’m young again, my future self peering into the same surface that I’d admired myself in. She’s speaking to me from the bathroom. The voice of this woman that I might have even fallen in love with. I’ve given her my prized possession to read. She lays in the tub while she reads. At that moment I was feeling like everything had already begun for me. I sat patiently in another room, like a man with everything going for him, dressed nicely, or as nicely as I could on a waiter’s tips. And there’s this verdict that I’m waiting for. She finally came into the room, threw her reading glasses off onto a counter and stretched herself out like a cat in the sun coming down through the window. She said nothing, absolutely nothing about what I’d given her to read. I have a lot to learn, she said. And I just didn’t know what she meant by that at the time. I looked over her skin, still shapely and full of life. Her body next to mine, was like a grand change of subject. I preferred the lovemaking to my expectations of receiving an offer and so lost the need to even mention it again. I had a feeling that she loved it but for some reason did’t want to say.

And was there ever saving this boy, who with the sight of party girls became watery eyed, nearly cries with the sight. It’s an excruciating beauty like seeing one’s own child. The extreme ephemeral potency of it, that effects you. It’s fashion. Let me fall, while I wipe the tears away feeling human, alive, sad that I can’t have each and every one of them. Life is so horrible. Nature’s models are beyond us, what they project beyond themselves at the time. It shines too bright and ruins me. But ruined I can do anything. They’re an ephemeral master race. Facetiously I’m clamoring after the clothes and the skin and the hair and perfume. Beauty diminishes like this. I wasn’t ready. I had no nest with all the niceties in it. And even before getting one of them home, she asked what direction we were going in. I thought you were rich, thought we’d have to walk uphill a little bit. It’s when I gave up blazers. They only confuse the situation. It’s too bad, I looked good in a life like that, she said. And why do I remember so perfectly what saddens me.

The clouds in the sky today remind me of that other place. It’s on the warm side with these gigantic white cumulous clouds boiling high up into the upper atmosphere. I keep my eye on the cloud activity towards the mountains throughout the afternoon, but it’s not moving into this direction. Just there, alive and consumed by the mountain range. The afternoon, like a time lapse that leaves me just as it left me before. High and dry. I’m looking forward to a nice torrential downpour to fill the cistern and settle the dust. I’ve spent hours clearing the rain gutters of dirt and dried leaves and have had to do a little repair work to the roof tiles. Many were broken, but there were plenty of houses around that used terra-cotta and so I’ve been able to salvage plenty of unbroken tiles. They’re heavy, but it seems like the beams are still structurally sound enough to continue supporting a roof made of such heavy material. The creaking that I hear when the wind blows hard through the structure is natural for a building like this, so it doesn’t worry me.

Along one of my walks in the hot bright sunlight I stop at the stark sight of a lime being devoured by ants. I could watch this all day. It’s another world of decisions and instincts, as important as the decisions made in this one. As I watch I wonder if it’s a mindless task? And if I was to take some time today to follow this orderly but discordant line of them, I might be able to find the mound and the Queen. She sends them off with such dumb and such horrific instructions. I place my hand in the dirt and they crawl over my fingers and hand, continuing towards the lime. The devouring of the lime goes on with the scene of a young girl being gang-raped in an elegant room, superimposed, over the current task of the renovations and the ants and the lime. And the voice of a stupid woman, saying it’s okay, that’s just today. Like a woman whose mind holds no memories. A woman who comforts me when the demons devour me. Who was she? Did she just go on living the next day? She rubs my hair like a child’s, “Just pretend it was like a movie.” She says.

They’re the more ghostly scenes, even more so than the presence of human beings that once dwelled here bleeding right in front of you. And it should be hilarious, as to what amazes me, and what doesn’t. I have to laugh at the saddest situations just to keep my mind, separate from all the death. Don’t worry she wasn’t as pretty as you thought she was, we’ve got something even prettier for you. And as I toss and turn in an apartment tainted with that period of time, I’m reminded that there are a thousand views as perfect as this one.

I find a silver platter in ruins, glinting amongst the rubble. How convenient! And all I can think, is that this’ll make a perfect platter for my birds. I always kept a plate of black oil sunflower seeds just inside the window for them. They would come and go as they pleased. And in such close proximity you see that they’re really amazing little creatures, most of the time finches and morning dove. And I would really like to do that again, and this silver platter will be just perfect for that. I’ll set it up and look for some suitable seed for them. It’ll be much harder now, than just going and buying a huge bag of it at the animal supply store. I’d run out of it sometimes and the days would pass or even weeks with them looking sadly in at me. They’d know somehow when I finally went for a resupply and they’d follow me back to the apartment with it tossed over my shoulder and they’d all be along the sills before I climbed the stairs and made my way in to tear the bag open and pour them some more. It made me happy to see them happy, but they weren’t of my world. They could keep me company in that other sense, but ultimately couldn’t of course satisfy what would have cured the loneliness. Even though in my mind she had wings too.

The line of them is dwindling. Pulling the thread tonight on another. I must use the little lavender balls of soap sparingly, I tell myself again. It’s tempting to keep using them for masturbation though. If only because it reminds me of the scent of her hair. And not that there aren’t other things that I could lubricate myself with, but those other lubricants wouldn’t allow me to picture her face so clearly, so perfectly. And right now I’m feeling like I’d give up this whole experience to be with her right now. The purposely naive images of lavender fields and sex with her; if only to laugh at and contrast with the realities of life, or this isolation. In the film it’s some attempt to maintain the sense of life during these desolate scenes.

The way to express happiness isn’t to sit down and try to perfect the descriptions of it, or to try to define it. True happiness doesn’t allow one the time or temperament to do that. It can’t be defined anyway. It’s mysterious and illusive. So while I’m trying to describe her and the love of her, even when a thought might bring a smile to my face I know that I’m not happy. I throw the pen in anger and leave the hotel for a walk. After walking amongst the debris for a couple of hours, I arrive back to my room and I’m startled to find a young man standing at my desk perusing through what I’ve written. He looks to have been on a hike through the debris of the city himself, his clothes covered with cement dusk. He’d seen the vibrancy of the curtains that I’d hung from a distance away. That were like some kind of a beacon for him. He describes how they were emerging from the window in the wind and were so beautiful that from a mile or two away he’d made a beeline for this chateau, for this room. I act as if I’m not upset at all by his presence there in my private space. Perhaps he thinks that because I’m the only living human being around for such a distance, that that in itself is an invitation. And I try to calm the trembling in my hand and mouth over the sight of his fingering through my Moleskines. “It looks like you’ve been getting some work done.” “Yeah, I have.” I say, with that kind of smile that’s verging on being wiped off. “I was going to, but now I guess I’ll ask since you’re here, if I could take a bath. I didn’t want to just take a bath. I knew there had to be someone living here.” I look at him, thinking about all the work that went into channeling water to this room, in the form of aqueducts. And it took an entire day of sorting through rubble to find decent quality soap for everyday use. And I’d definitely have to hide the lavender soap that I’d set in a line on the shelf as if the supply of it was counting down the days until I returned to her. Finally, “Okay.” I said. He’s already talking about setting up one of the other rooms just like this one. Perhaps I could help him and then we could work together on whatever needed to be done. I notice, while he’s droning on about a possible prolonged stay here at the Chateau, that one of my moleskines is missing. Then looking around I see his filthy backpack propped against the wall down the hallway. I find it and leave it in the backpack. I don’t want to confront him right now about it. He won’t get far if he wants to make a quick escape with it. I turn on the radio, asking him if he’d like a little music to play while he bathes. “Yeah, absolutely.” He says. “Wonderful. I always enjoy some music at this time of the afternoon.” I say. “I think I’ll definitely stick around here for a while. It’s peaceful.” “Yes, I know.”

I hear him go on bathing, babbling to himself, even whistling. “I noticed you had coffee there.” I hear him say. “You sure did get a good look around. Yes, coffee. Of course I have coffee.” “That would really be nice.” He says. And the eyes I make is all the future casting you need to know about the fate of this lost man. He must imagine that I’m extremely lonely here like this. “I crush the beans by hand with a pestle. Let me get that going for you. It’s really incredible that I have some company. I was hoping someone would stumble through. Oh, and wait till you see the bar area I set up. It’s amazing how liquor survives a blast like that. One time I remember when I was young and we went on a hunting trip. And we got to this old dilapidated lodge, a little house really. It was musty, mildewy and full of cob webs and I opened one of the cabinets and there was an almost entirely full bottle of Jack Daniels on the shelf. It must of been there for years and years, I don’t know how many years. It was covered in dust but still perfectly drinkable.” I say, sitting for a moment staring out the window thinking about that place in another state, “Another white wing shot down.” I say, thinking. “What was that?” He asks. “Nothing.”

I’m starting to worry that he might have reached for one of my balls of lavender soap already. I hear the water as if a child were playing in the tub. I go to the threshold and see that he’s still immersed in filthy soapy suds. “Hey, what are those for?” He says, gesturing to the line of perfectly wrapped balls of soap, which I knew he’d have his eye on. “Don’t touch those. Those are special to me.” “You can stay in here and talk if you want to. I haven’t talked to anyone for days.” He says. “I’ll start on the coffee. You’ve come like a man carrying a flag. I only wonder which one.” “You’ll have to guess.” He says. “I don’t have to guess anything.” I say to myself, having learned years ago, just to avoid guessing games, they’re never worth the energy that they take.

I go and sit at the pool while he finishes accommodating himself. Beauty’s like a beautiful animal, like a pet at your side dying in the slanting sunlight. The oval pool doesn’t make us perfect. It never did. I hear him calling for me. After some time he comes wondering towards me, looking overindulged fresh and clean. “Didn’t you hear me?” I try to pretend like he’s not intruding on my life. He’s already made himself a drink and I think he notices my staring at it in his hand. “I went ahead and helped myself.” He says. I show him around the abandoned grounds. We laugh that it’s in this condition when he finally gets here.

“When I came here, it was very much the same way in a way, like a ruins.”

“How was that.”

“There was still a sense of the place and its nature with nothing else on it. They hadn’t turned it into a theme park for an extra dollar yet. It wasn’t completely a pornographic spring yet. But power is a funny thing. A few baited, became a thousand baited, and it all became a game that no one could win. But those needing to save face, drove it forward like naive Generals leading others into war, when they had no idea what the war was even about. It’s even harder for a beast of many to ever let go of what gives it life. Everybody who sees through it is an enemy. All the backwards games gone awry. Oh, humanity, we’re such an amalgamation! Or love to think that we should be.”

“How long did it take you to fix up that room like that?”

“Weeks, maybe it’s been months now. I don’t know, I’ve lost track of time.”

“Why that room?” He asks, “There are a lot of rooms here. It does seem like it’s in a special place.”

“There are a lot of things that could have gone into me choosing that room. Its direction which is extremely important, its height, the view, how it relates to the rest of the architecture. Is it facing into a courtyard? Is it facing onto an expanse of land that you can live with?”

“So which of those reasons is why you chose that room?”

“It wasn’t for any of those reasons.”

“Then why?”

“Not for any of those reasons. And why is it important for you to know why I personally might have chosen that room.”

“If I end up having to do that much work to a room, I’d like to choose a room that I’m not sorry I chose.”

“Well that’s for sure.”

“Do you have any of that paint left? And I think I might end up wanting that room that you have.” He says, laughing, “It’s so nice.”

“It’s the perfect room for taking a nap in.” I say, making those eyes again. I can feel that look of despise run through myself.

He sits back and takes a drink. “You’ll probably never be leaving that room and choosing another to fix up?”

“Probably not. It’s not my intention.” I say, trying to keep a sourly disgusted look off my lips and pretend that it’s the sip of whiskey that’s created such a sour look on my face.

“I feel like I could have so many great ideas in that room. I see that you’re a man of words.“

“It wouldn’t matter if it’s buried with me.”

“Well I was just saying. I’m a man of words too.”

“Oh really. I’m sure you are.”

“And something I saw there. Orpheus. What’s that about?”

“It’s about a composer and a writer. It’s about a tick and its host.”

“I feel naked without my guitar. I might leave for a few days, or maybe not even that long to go and see if I can find a guitar.”

“I already know where they are.”

“Will you show me?”

“Maybe. I was looking for wine cellars and there’s a house where someone collected them. Real gems if you’re into guitars.”

“This might be a great time to make some music.”

“Oh, what will you sing about? Will you be singing of Orpheus in this garden of eden. Moonlight. The black spires twisting in this new breeze. Where man can begin again. Have you stumbled onto the ruins of another man’s mind. An unbitten apple still hanging there like the great temptation again. But we’ll steady her hand, and have her leave it for the centerpiece this time and take a bite out of her instead.”

“He sets his head back. You know, I think I love you.” He says, laughing.

“Well that’s wonderful to hear. It’s not too far to find that guitar.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to be here with a guitar in my hands. Probably a rare one too.”

“Yes, you may have stumbled onto your most prolific period yet.”

“You might be right. It feels like that already. I’m glad that you love music too. Do you play an instrument?”

“No.”

“That’s okay.”

“The pen is an instrument.”

“Well, not really.”

I go and fix myself another drink. Writing a song as I stand over the array of spirits. Here we go again.

“When we go looking for the guitar we can wrangle up a couple of models and bring them back. Musicians are always a magnet for hot girls. You do love woman don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you love most about women?”

He thinks for a moment. “I don’t know.” He says. He sees the ruins as a chance for revival. I take a long sip of my drink, laughing to myself, that revival’s the title of one of my Moleskines, and he’s already at it, and it’s that quick and effortless. How easy it is to commandeer another’s life, as if those strings give them the right. To drink the blood. So omniscient, not to be judged themselves.

“Maybe you’ll leave the ruins with everything you need to make an album.”

“That’s if I choose the right room, facing the right direction. Because that’s important.” He says, giving me a wink.

“Oh, I’m sure you will. And I’m sure it’ll be a turning point. The album of all albums. The great American album. Should I go and get us another round of drinks, to celebrate this new arrangement. This new convenience.”

“That would be nice. While I’m meditating on my great American album.”

“Ha Ha. I’m sorry that I don’t have any ice for the drinks.”

“Oh, don’t apologize. I couldn’t ask for more.”

“I wish I had that machine that Harrison Ford made.”

“What machine is that?”

“The machine, this giant monstrosity that makes ice, in the mosquito coast. Did you ever see the movie, mosquito coast?”

“No.”

Don’t come my way in the ruins. Don’t come near me in the ruins. You’ve heard at least the echo of what I’ve said. It’s slow motion and elegant as I make my way down the arcade, the long curtains flowing in and out of the windows in the moonlight now. I fix one glass for myself, looking at how much is left in the bottle. I make my way to where I’m keeping my tools. I strike a match. In the ruins we are one are we? It’s always extremely important that the right tool is used for the right job. It feels effortless, like revenge and redemption to lower the ballhead hammer into his skull. The distant sound of opera resonating out the windows and through the hallways makes it even easier to do. The arcade has never felt more peaceful. Blood-spattered. “No I won’t.” I say, and perhaps that will be what I’ll call this new album. Human nature finally rests in the wicker chairs. They took it until I just didn’t understand. Until revenge was the only emotion that I came to care about. Enough of human nature, it’s come full circle now. One man’s claiming human nature, gives another the right to get back what they got.

Later tonight when making my way back up to my room, I do what I never thought I’d have to do here, and that’s to put a fucking ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ sign on the doorknob. I slam the door shut. In the fucking ruins! I’ve left him in that position, having had my drinks sitting next to him for the last couple of hours or so. I’ll give the maggot a burial tomorrow and sponge down the blood of a sponge from the arcade and the wicker chair. I’ve learned that future terror should be nipped in the bud. And perhaps that’s the bore of life after and just takes all the excitement out of it.

It loses its warmth slowly. I laugh thinking how it was a lot harder to remove a hammer from a skull than I imagined it would be. But this is a perfectly good ball-head hammer and I’ve lots of work to do with it. I won’t give it completely away to who in the future might excavate. What was that? Perhaps I’ll commemorate his grave with a beautiful guitar. He appeared much too soft-spoken for me to place a stratocaster on it. I’m sure there’ll be blue grass growing in his place. So well-meaning, and already using that word love, he gave away the gig. Well-meaning always in the name of fame and getting what you can get.

The hands on a larger piece of fabric, looking it over. The sound of fabric being torn on a peaceful afternoon. (Here’s the ellipsis) Then opens to wavering fabric and the sound of a flag flapping in the wind. The sight of a beautiful rectangle of white cloth alive in the afternoon sun and breeze with the words, Fuck Off!, written succinctly on it. And that’s the crux of it after so much has happened to the heart. The way it moves in this wind, wavering, settling, then wavering again, is such a beautifully lulling sight. And I’m only hoping that the birds can’t read it. I’ve had the silver platter set for a couple of days now with seed on it. In the ruins, it may take a much longer time for them to find it. But once one little finch finds it, it’ll be a ridiculous sight again, with so many flocking to it. It’ll be a chore, but it’ll be nice to have them around. I love the way they look at me so strangely, as if a platter of seed is just too good to be true.

Forget self examination when compared to the excitement of a crucifixion. The intestines stretched from their talons to their mouths is what keeps them taught. They know no other way. I’ve put one of the rabbits on a small cross in the courtyard, its legs intwined, its little arms outstretched to the side with its perfect fuzzy little face fallen, its eyes peering downward into the sparkling reflecting pool. Tools used: ball-head hammer and anchorfast ring-shanked nails onto scraps of wood from the remnants of the Hollywood sign. The display is illuminated by the noonday sun beneath the blue sky and the birds of prey. Sitting back, smearing honey on my lips again in this courtyard, laughing and kissing a beautiful girl with them. And maybe one of these gorgeous vivid honeybees darting in and out of the sunlight will land to give me a big fat kiss. The sight of the glistening honey comb, this symbolizing this new found purity, then a dissolve to an area of honeycomb tiles and a scene that had taken place over those tiles many years before, that is wrought with stress, complexity and jealousy. But again, the head falls back in fond memory. (A conversation, only partly audible concerning the arts, money and politics. One of them apologizing, but not apologizing.)

Quick brisk steps over the ruins and along the paths, the pushing open of a door onto those honeycomb tiles. It is another area that I’ll clean and renovate. In essence, restoring the memories of past happenings. The pieces, like the small tiles that have been displaced, loosened from the grout, put back into place by fingertips like a puzzle of the past being reassembled.

In the long rectangular room, with the gatherings of antique chairs and couches and people again, upholstered with thick enduring fabrics. Tough skin sin and fame really is. Each area with the chairs turned and couches arranged to create its own private space in the open space of the rectangular room. At their centers, small dark marble tables or wooden tables lit by the lamps adorned with these huge lampshades made from our dreams. All perfect again. So placid again. I press the horizontal door bell again. Here, used to call the waiter in his creased pants. There’s no electricity running to the wires now, so when I press it, no one comes. Then again, when it’s pressed there’s finally the faint sound of a buzzer in another room. This little black door bell is shiny again and the finger is of a young man, the young man of my future self. A very polite waiter appears. Another demure nod of recognition. He returns less than promptly with my tea. But if patience is a virtue, I’m the most virtuous boy you’ve ever seen.

He returns with my drink. A single glass on a tray.

“Charles Bedaux would be very disappointed in us.”

“Who is Charles Bedaux sir?”

“Among other things, he wanted to see if he could cross the impossible Canadian terrain with a convoy of Citrons. He took his help and his servants with him. And everywhere they would stop along the way, they would set up tents, and put out the silverware, and perhaps even had figs, and would fuck and drink champagne and eat the best of everything, as if they’d remained in the womb of civilization all along. In these spurious moments, as if they hadn't left the thrill of the Capital at all.”

“Why?”

“Oh my God! Not to promote the Citron! A man can remain gluttonous through everything.”

I sipped on the amber alcohol, my Jim Beam laced water, gurgling it through my teeth.

“Why do you sip your drink that way, as if it were hot?” He said.

“So I taste it.”

I sip on the amber alcohol.

He smiled largely, looking at me, then disappeared into the entryway.

Yes, it’s true I’m a savoror. This no one’s savior, is a savoror. I gave them the means of their own destruction. Have you ever seen a star lap up poison.

Does a cigarette and a balcony rail love you more than I do? Down and up. The skies swirl. These seas have become rough. I can see. But it's for the all of us. Does it love you more? You want me to jump? Does it love you more than I do? …I didn’t think so. Remembering a cool crisp wind blowing through me. Before the sun. The reflecting pool is clear and reflecting the enduring sky with every possibility. It’s populated again with the highly dressed and acclaimed. They are beautiful and every conversation that was ever had, is perfected tonight. It’s like recollection, but it’s not.

And a table of girls far enough away. She sees me pouring it into the glass. I see her with her body leaned forward and face pushed in my direction. She laughs. Oh, then legs before me. She catches you while you’re scribbling things down onto the back of your mind. Words for her, dialog for the masses. A version to balm my heart. She wants no explanation. And she’s back when she gets a chance to sit next to me. And she’s dressed from the high street. She likes the things I say. I like her ephemeral qualities. Made more beautiful by what will never last. Some bathroom like in a house at three o’clock in the morning, trying to rinse it from your face with cold water. Head tilted back on a checkerboard bathroom floor peeing into the ice, laughing. My memories of green wooden paneled walls, and the face of that girl, so gorgeously repressed. She waits outside, staring at herself in the glass. I stand next to her and we do that together. She takes you by the hand and you’re up the tiny elevator, she hates it, like riding up in a coffin. Are we dead? It has us feeling so dead at this hour. No honey, it’s just begun. You should take the stairs if it bothers you that much. Not in these shoes. Well take them off. And what glorious shoes. I’ll carry them for you. The doors open and we’re like a resurrection. We go, released down the hallway, very much alive again. Then an antique room and she’s this modern figure in it with such a pretty face, and shear fabric over small breasts that are so vital and supple and soft, with like the nipples of all salvation. You don’t know if she came, and don’t really care. It’s amazing how girls can fake it nowadays. The line between living and acting has been crossed. I leave it to mystery. They all want to be pornographic stars now, with these constant incessant noises over and over again. And if there’s the memory of any noise to haunt me, it’s that one. Like a sexual wound up doll that’s gotten caught up in the fad. Then recording herself into some little porthole again. Explaining again to her, that it’s an illusion to have that many friends. But when we looked each other in the eyes, everything was fine. Her little face given up and it was up to me. And you barely know this girl, but oh my god, we’re so close so soon. And that risk feels so good, but at the last minute I pull out. And maybe because she looks nothing like her. And you take a look at her. You take such a hard look at her because you’ve come in her a little bit, and now you’re wondering what it might be like to be with her for the rest of your life. But she likes you, and you’re lucky and you’re used to that. And you appreciate it more than anyone. There is some potent appreciation for it within you. And you adore her. She’s my star. And she’s part of this destiny that you were never supposed to have or ever have shined onto you. And you want to tell her that. Pressing your head hard against her forehead and chin and collar bones. Smiles in the haze of alcohol and fucking. Nothing matters. One thing that you hear clearly, that peaks your attention and you become more lucid to, sober up to, is that she’s had her heart broken too. She claims to be very intuitive. And she must be. And she’s human enough not to want to turn it into a charade or a game. She’s human, with cum on her stomach and outside of her couture lavender dress. How much I’d wanted to have her quivering like this outside her ballgown. Would it have changed me as a man? I might have. We can never really know. Chances are, we would have never met.

There was a horror in the otherwise still time of the late evening, or even early morning. Something subtle in the light; this time between living and the pressures of life. They’re unable to enjoy the beauty that surrounds them any longer. Life struggled in my arms like that rabbit that I was wanting to hold onto, but that wasn’t content there in my arms. Words mean nothing and it’s the futility of persuading an anxious hare to stay forever. I’m back to square one in the ruins, making my way up laurel canyon to go rabbit hunting. Running through woods with a childlike rush of excitement running through me chasing, then with a rabbit hanging from my hand by its hind legs. “Rabbit is on the menu tonight madam.” I say, laughing while skinning the poor thing. And after so many, I’ll have a royal blanket and vest jacket and whatever I might make of it. It isn’t exactly angora but it’ll do. If I’m to stay here for a long period of time. I’m sure that the moths will eat up my sweaters again and I want to give up the way that we’re used to looking and feeling.

Again that face of a man that has died and been taxidermied, whose had his eyes placed back into their sockets with glue. Now dead green eyes, sometimes blue, fixed on nothing. The memory of you. As dead now as shiny glass marbles. I couldn’t make a sound. I couldn't have cried out if I'd wanted to. And why have the emotions, the love, not been severed? Not by time, not by catastrophic event. The memory it’s like dying all over again. It was not wiped by the solar flares. I think I loved her with every part of me that mattered.

I’m sitting at the desk quietly dying over the moleskines when all of a sudden I hear this noise that I felt like I hadn’t heard in so many years. I look over and there’s a single finch, sitting amongst the seed quietly cracking open sunflower seeds with its little beak. What a joyous sight. I don't make a move, so not to scare it away. After a little while it flies off. I stay in the room for a little while, anxiously waiting to see if it returns or maybe another. But there will be no other birds feeding on the silver platter on this afternoon. I go and look over the area that’s been turned to an area of sunflower seed shells. You’ve missed the plate. I pick them up, rubbing them between my fingers, letting them fall onto the floor again, thinking that it will probably end up like that apartment carpet covered with shells that I had.

I became conscious of my laughing, a short burst of what seemed like laughter. As if I were laughing for the first time in years. But it was a laughter, vacuous, with no one around to hear it. A laughter devoid of all happiness. And to have died the way she died, not looking both ways, while pulling down onto the serpentining boulevard. Holy fuck! Everything in this world goes in two directions. What a shiny new machine, to be reduced to a royal junk heap. I fix a drink take a walk one night across the terrain to the place where it happened, as if to pay homage. What a brilliant twist of fate it had been. A spotlight over a dusty place in the road. A narrow street that I remember running upward towards the mansions nearly consumed by the overgrowth of pine and eucalyptus and banana trees. I masturbate, ejaculating onto the spot of her death, wanting to take a left going to a party; perhaps she’ll come again, in some ghostly form, back up to greet me. God knows she went to hell. And would the ghost of such a bitch still be so wet. Perhaps another petty war in the ruins. Blood spilt for a dream fuck.

Everything that I’d grown to love in this world is dead. It’s left these images and ghosts, these memories that begin to populate this dilapidated affair. Now I’m dancing on the ruins again. Catastrophe is built into us, this model of the human race that can only go unfolding forward like a whore from one week to the next, to her every act erased; condemned from the very start by a whorish strand in the genetic code. And she couldn’t help herself. The bright light, was like the opening of a rose is to the seed. Archetypes, this is how we fit together, we are the doomed tessellations. The ancient depictions is us depicted, exactly. And who would have ever thought, while we were dancing over such pretty designs. What we thought was decoration, was all along the clever-but-charming, cruel-joked warnings of the past.

Oh, how it turned me on, those girls with money. My anxious breaths on the edge of the lounge chair next to her tonight, I remember my forearms resting crossed on the tops of my thighs. Will she? I want her more than ever. She leans her head back and takes a drink from her champagne flute, laughing, almost mocking my desires. By this point, I had the idea that she had read a long distinguished book about pavlov’s dogs. Or else, she understood intuitively, inherently that if she does these things, that I would respond positively. She’s in the mood for a little chivalry, for gentlemanliness. I’m not in the mood for another night of shivering alone. I’ve fallen into a period of time when what’s trendy wins the day. The aqueducts are archaic. I assure her that what I’ve said will come to her in time. She leaves her last bite at the end of the fork, for a kiss that can’t wait, it never reaches her mouth and is dropped down onto the plate.

The silver platter full of lively little finches has become a usual sight now. Too many to name. I love the sound of their bird language and the beautiful color of their feathers. At times a cacophony of whistling jubilant little birds. They’re just as mischievous as they’d ever been. And just as it was then, I can see, when I’ve been gone for a while, that they’ve carried seeds deep into the room and even into the bathroom, to perch and crack the seeds in their beaks, dropping the shells beneath wherever they were perched.

The sunshine doesn’t allow that sensation to come across completely. But with the fog creeping in in the evenings, there comes a certain quality that allows me to feel certain things that I cannot feel in the sunshine. The settled dust nearly makes me feel what my life’s become. And I’m not a piece of furniture, but a living thing on the pieces of my past broken apart. Will Cat have me on this shattered mirror. When I go back I’ll tell her everything. About the sun.

And perhaps these curtains will be a beacon for my little darling, even while she’s been long dead. All that I ever wanted, is still all that I ever wanted. I was no closer to having her then. Too many years of auditioning girls that looked like her in bed has left me disillusioned, even cynical. And that face like hers, came on bodies of all shapes and sizes. Would I rather have that face on a girl fit for the catwalk. I can hear the distant sound of one of them coming in one of the other rooms of this empty palace. It temps me. I go off though the cobwebs looking by mag-light, following the wonderful sound. Please let this phantasm tonight let me have her in any which way I’d like. The desire to fuck is still so sincerely in me. Let me prove my loyalty. The young little cunt before my eyes, I love. I have not my own nation anymore. Young girl, tonight, you are my nation and my god. My goodness, my goddess, can I touch it. It’s not a surprise to this ghostly young girl that I above all things, ask her to piss on me. If it’s to be a revival, it will be the likes of a revival that nobody’s ever seen before. Such a young lubricious little bitch. It sickens me. Cum and feathered. I can almost not even hold the thought of it. I’ll sing and dance if you want me too.

The next day. Another balancing act, as she’s showing me how she can balance books on her head. It is love, or something like it. Can we kiss like that? What if she was able to go about the whole night long like that and not spill a sip. And to arrive back here with the balancing act still intact. We are amazing and funny. And there is no life outside of this. There is no suffering world to ruin what we’ve got going. Love, true love, just you and me. I loose my balance watching her keep hers. And in the ruins, I’m back in the groove. She, slowly making her way towards me. I try to tell myself that the end of the symphony will not represent my death. But it’s a perfect afternoon and there’s no more perfect way to project sound than vinyl.

But history, it holds much too much weight. Everyone owes everyone else for past misdeeds. It’s not in man’s nature to let go. Mans’s ideals are nothing to the nature of bitterness and revenge. I myself will be weak to one of these. It is the only thing that I can be absolutely sure of. And love is no path of convergence. Neither is song or fucking or bon fires. You must go numb to evolve now. I understand that I’m condemned, only to grow uglier and uglier under the stress of this vile revelation.

I go through a narrow driveway that opens up behind some shops, an open rectangle of asphalt, a parking lot under moonlight that’s hidden from the street. The memory of fucking a strange girl there. Not a strange girl but simply a girl who I’d met only hours before. I never even knew her name. And maybe it’s that mystery that leave it in me, a potent perfect little moment in the chain of events of my life.

Is it too late for the revival of my greatest sins? Who gives a fuck about fading light falling over a fading mind. I’m renovating the ruins while still able to recall the illustrious polished possessions of the past. Forgetting what it was like is surely death. It means nothing without someone to share it with. I look out wondering, not a young man anymore on some rich woman’s terrace, but from this terrace none-the-less.

She was so perfectly cradling the champagne flute on her lap - the tiny bubbles still rising in her glass. Let go of my arm. She stood. Come on. Come sit back down with me. And again, I’m torn between the love sofa and the arm rest. And how could I explain, it being morning and the sun completely risen when I crawled into bed with her. Quiet ambitions that here, take us on our individual unspoken adventures. That regardless of anything, you’re doomed to failure. While here there was an imperative that was more sacred than fidelity or self respect, or even than the sweet love that had been extinguished between us. How could I explain. And because of her own ambitions, she wouldn't even ask, only turn to look at me, wondering where either of our lives were going. That beautiful look in a woman’s eyes while she’s putting questions to the both of us. And even while she contemplates that world, it’s obvious that I will never be in it. A divorce in that world will not necessarily leave a part for me in her life. There are other rich men that she will run to. So I’m waiting for nothing. When considering those amber eyes struck by the early sunlight. A potent normalcy. The eyes of a doll. A beautiful shade of brown blasted with infinitesimal gold flakes, really like the eyes that you'd see on some doll. Not that of a human being. Milk for blood, and a debilitating sense of stasis. Evolution and its carelessness concerning the fate of the individual. We are all like one night stands in its prodigious pursuit. It’s a careless young man in a place exactly like this.

Modernism and the sight of a girl’s primordial little bush throws me back. My god is that what one looks like not shaven? It’s a rare occasion now and I’m only wondering what’s wrong in her. I’m almost getting her, with the strange experience, with the strangeness. You little weirdo, you’ll have to trust me with a straight razor tonight. You must trust me in this contrasty light.

Diplomacy is archaic. Who in the hell still believes in such a charade. It’s always like the slow dance of one devouring another. And yes, that takes some technique. It also takes language, this thing that we’ve been cursed by.

I wanted to speak to her. She was asleep. And left the hotel in the early morning and didn’t want to be there when she woke. When she was sober and could digest those things that I'd told her the night before even more clearly in the morning, when women can be so reflective and cruel. A son?

Now I am knocking and laughing with a sense of humor at a dusty door. I want nothing of the modern world. Let me in! You were older then, you’re bound to be even older now. But with what’s out there now, I really don’t care.

The Phyletic Rising. To tear it down between the phyletic and the modern contemplations. As intelligence and instinct are separate, at times converging and others, diverging. Let me think about my instinctual self and let me grunt about intelligence. I knew it had been infidelity. Not even a death, could cause someone to scream why! So many times in a row without breath, in such a horrific way. It’s all at once, betrayal, the death of love and the knifing of the ego. Every admission, is the admission to this sad show, of hours and hours of wanting to know how good it felt. “Did you cum! Did you let him stick it in your ass, this is really truly the end!” I scream at her. The convulsions of love when you already know it’s over. But with modernity, we will never have to feel like this again. Our hearts are safe in a technological fucking. It has a wonderful sense of humor. The word love having taken the place of love.

It was the only sanctuary. These moments, while fucking some girl you’ve just met, before you come. When all the hatred, and the confusion, is suspended during the the still hours. The world stops and you hear your hearts beating, and you hear her heart beating. Those few moments while we defy everything, in the apogee. Then cumming again as the metaphor of death and a new beginning, completes the act.

And there are stretches of time, hours, days, when you’ve completely forgotten that you’re living in this ruins. And then remembering, it may happen at any time. While you’re bathing, while you’re walking, while you’re laughing. Keeping in mind, that lightning never strikes in the same place twice. I should have never dwelled back into the ruins. My reserve of balls of lavender soap is disappearing and I want to see Cat more than ever. Her face in lavender fields. There’s this point where one can rub too long and far on the patina, where then the reflection becomes dull, and the pain becomes real again. They’d mistaken my masochism for asceticism. So why not claim asceticism? It’s more respectable.

Have I captured someone’s attention in the courtyard tonight. “And they’ll always betray you with a shadow. Not to be trusted.” I know, “Hey man, let’s keep the whole place naive and not speaking of the truth. So it goes on infinitely. They wouldn’t listen.”

So far past the point of desperation has me call an ex girlfriend again. Hello, you god forsaken whore. Where history and intuition has already told us. We must for the love of god, fuck again. If only to prove that we’re not missing anything. It’s in the way that we can separate ourselves from ourselves. Where there in place of the real thing that’s kept somewhere under lock and key. Like the necklace a woman wears when she's got the actual jewels in a vault somewhere, so she feels safe and invulnerable. It’s a pasty existence. But they don’t know the difference and will rape and kill you for the fake necklace anyway, you clever whore. It’s funny that she fucked civilization over, insisting on the most primal state. She loved the feeling of decadence clashed against the risk. Clasped with the risk. When they told you she wanted it, that she asked for it. I couldn’t argue, because I remember that look on her face in the presence of any of them, that look that said it all, that saddened me, while there was just that word love between us. So I knew I couldn’t trust her with love any longer, with her PROPENSITY TOWARDS DARKNESS, a sad story that I wrote, remembering why I’d walked away. They were telling me the truth, they loved me enough to tell me the truth, while she was lying to me about what she was up to. My god I screamed, this god forsaken age. Try everything to make this love impossible for heaven sakes.

She’s a young girl walking along the sidewalk, I rush to her and say what I might have then, “I want you to come to my apartment and disobey me.” We walk, laughing, and she’s so pretty. “I’ve got a room. Wear something bright and tight. Do you have a pen or a marker? I’ll write the number on the nape of your neck. I’ll seal it with a kiss. What beautiful hair you have.” I’ll never be so spontaneous again. The after burn of the event, of youth. I used to be the emperor of this place. An emperor over it. Now an emperor over it. In the ruins, I think I’ll rattle the chains again. They’re such fucks, I just can’t resist. A calm sip, another broken pick.

I arrive back to the desolate room, as if tossing some girl I’d picked up onto the bed. I had my favorite movies, the flicker of the cathode tube going on infinitely in the ruins that you can see from miles away. And you might ask, is someone there in the distance, watching that television, that flickering light, alone or with a lover. I’ll have to excavate most of what I need from the ruins. And it had been nice that the catastrophe had occurred so suddenly. And thank god it wasn’t during rush hour. But I do love the look of the sudden end to a speed display. I’d always laughed, claiming that a speed display was a work of art, this beautiful expression, a demonstration of our yearnings. An attempt at what we can never attain. A beautiful sports car in the sun, still gleaming. Did this driver, this person, this corpse, on that day, while driving such a beautiful machine around, ever think that they were going to remain at this intersection forever. Probably not.

I make my way to an area that I’d known well and was relieved to enter an area of some shade in the taters of an awning still fluttering in the breeze, where a magazine rack used to be, where I’d waste an hour or so now and then. I stand for a little while feeling the coolness before I start digging around. I find one useless book after another. Then I see something glimmering in the rubble, and at first I think, no, it can’t be. My fingers like claws dig faster and harder through the debris. Yes!, it was cellophane with a glossy picture beneath the filthy plastic of a model. I move into the sun holding it, blowing it off, brushing it off with my fingers. I’m overjoyed, screaming with ecstasy. Then get back onto my hands and knees and continue digging up this stack of fashion magazines. Huge and glorious. Fashion magazines, with models in them, not celebrities! Real models! Real fashion magazines. This was a rare find, as much as a wine cellar. Magazines in bright color, in all their glory, unfaded! I make my way back towards the hotel over the bright rubble, as happy as can be with this stack of magazines cradled in my arms. They would motivate me to fix up yet another area, that will be designated for sitting and having a drink and fingering through this redeemed beauty one glossy page at a time. I couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel, nearly salivating over the thought of all the glossy images. Like an archeologist of beautiful pictures.

I tilted my head back and stared up at the black blue sky, with those tiny black specks swarming above, that I’d always imagined were tiny indiscernible birds flying very high up, so tiny as to seem like pinpricks against the sky. It’s an illusion onto the blue sky. Falling into, with these strange trees, into dusk in this courtyard that I’ve always loved.

A woman saying, enjoy it while you can, held for so long in the walls, just waiting for the right thunderous night full of electricity to play again.

And here is this beautiful girl shivering deep inside this fabric that makes her a goddess. And one wonders if she could withstand the desires, the onslaught of desires that the image of her provokes, that the sight of her provokes. My heart racing. It’s as if by some cruel joke a picture placed into the center of this vile nature. In a cruel way, to see if she survives, wrapped in couture and thrown to the wolves. And it being even more cruel, that the gown isn’t a suit of armor, and provides her no protection whatsoever. The grand invitation to the softest parts of her anatomy. A bait and test and taunting of man. On one hand her face reflecting the rapture of being civilizations most precious centerpiece. On the other, the excruciation of that position with patience for the photographer. She goes about the peach trees that are still giving; and in fact, given the time away from the interferences of man and all the second guessing that we do of nature, is producing fruit again, that appeals to all the senses. Like it once had. It’s no longer a synthesized piece of candy that holds the recollection of what peaches used to taste like, or tasteless pulp. So half way into the last, or what could be considered the first photo shoot of the new epoch, she puts one to her mouth and revels in the juice. It’s as if with the backdrop of ruins, civilization's being born anew. And I’m as lucky as Adam to have the first ruinous fuck of the new era. Always intrigued by the pinkish blood of a virgin on my cock. No longer second guessing nature, or even the nature of another human being.

A butterfly flutters about the pile of fabrics and leather purses. It’s the very same color as the pastel shirt worn when arriving here. It’s landed on the memory of a designer handbag that she had. Just a vivid butterfly on the ruins, taking flight.

A knock at the door, and she’s dressed like I’d asked her to dress. It only took a little reflection on her part to find me. Some strange girl in the ruins again. Then in the morning the strangest thing happens. I awake very early, with the room still only very faintly lit. I looked over and there was this tiny bit of movement that caught my attention in the still near darkness. It was the silhouette of a solitary little finch snuggled onto the seed on the silver platter, as if adjusting itself on its little bed. They usually never feed after nightfall, and I had never seen one sleep there like that. The light continued to grow, that steady luminous blue-purple light, and as it did the little bird slowly woke. I watched, leaned over her warm body. Slowly she woke too and saw me staring towards the window as still as a bird dog. What are you doing? “Shhhh.” I whisper, “One of them slept there all night in the seed there on the silver platter like it was a little nest. Something must have happened for that to have happened. A family fight or something. And it knew this place and it was comfortable here and so it slept here all night.” “Like me.” She says, laughing. “Yes, like you.” The little finch suddenly wakes and darts out the window fluttering into this incredible purple sky with a horizontal reddish-orange slit beyond the expanse of rubble that’s the break of day.

Another little spy to love. I sit at the edge of the garden, gazing over at her, absolutely content, watching her as she drinks freshly squeezed juice from a sparkling etched glass and flicking through the fashion magazines. And love in the ruins all of a sudden makes it not so ruinous anymore.

THE END

-Alan Augustine

Los Angeles 1997-

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