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Hookey In The Park
Well my 21st century east coast tenure number one is about up, I just emailed someone that I was finishing up here and getting ready to leave next week, which now that I say it, I guess I need to contemplate my movements a little. Okay, done. I'll just do what work I can do and then pack my tools and stuff the day before I leave, and then leave. Assuming nothing weird happens, I'll probably come out this way again in the Spring.
You know, I think it is precisely that place between assuming that nothing weird will happen and knowing that something weird is going to happen is what gets me out of bed in the morning.
In bed this morning I did briefly contemplate that nothing weird was going to happen, ever again, and that we were all (sorry to include you) cardboard cutouts haphazardly positioned and repositioned and sometimes pasted to the manilla paper background drawings of a sweet but slightly demented child. A child with generic talent keeping it all inside the lines.
Yesterday was the first day in a week without snow on the ground and now they are calling for more snow and/or freezing rain off and on over the next week. I guess I've had a fairly good taste of real winter (not Montana or N. Dakota severe but still...), even though I'm leaving two days before winter starts.
I haven't talked to any of my New Orleans bosses in five months. They will be angry. They may not let me work with them. I may not care.
Another fence board blew off in the night. I may fix that later, after I get done playing hookey in the park one last time.
One last thing. I have seen that mountain to the north glow red in the morning but right this minute it is glowing purple. Purple mountain majesty, dig?
The Missing Ballerinas
Queen Noor was in Little Washington the other day. She signed her book and had tea with prominent locals at the Inn. I was not aware of it nor did I see about town members of the Washington (DC) Ballet, who were also here, at least partly to entertain Queen Noor. In retrospect I do remember the day though because a person (that would be me, I don't have a title, nor am I bitter about it, much) could not park to get his mail from the PO Box what with all the limosines and that tour bus lining the street on both sides of the only stop sign in town. The limos were parked tight like very expensive sardines.
The thing about sardines is, despite the fact that they may be associated with hobos and low end snacking, really, they are pretty damn expensive if you price them out by the pound. Of course a pound of sardines is more than a person needs, three or four ounces will usually suffice. I like the golden smoked variety from the Reese company.
Once, a more youthful me, staring at the warm glow of gas flares in the distance, shivered while eating sardines and oranges with a hobo in the El Paso train yard in January. We spent two and a half days together in the El Paso yard waiting for the right train but eventually succumbed to the idea of warmth and community and followed a psst in the dead of night to join some other hobos, who, cliched as it seems, were identifiable only when the sucked on ends of their cigarettes offered that most meager illumination.
Not that I had ridden on that many boxcars previous (or since), but that was the most fucked up boxcar ever constructed. We tried to bed down ("always leave your bag unzipped in case you have to move fast, " he instructed me) shortly after the train started moving but the suspension was all messed up and the car rocked and shook all night long, and into the next day, and however long it was before we arrived in San Antonio, where I saw the I-10 and bid my friend adieu, lowering myself properly and running before my feet hit the ground. I waved standing up and proud to his diminishing outline.
Before my success came my failure. Arriving in El Paso from Yuma he said we had to get off because if we got caught riding in those cars we would be in deep shit. We had boarded a slow moving flatcar in Yuma that was carrying a version of the Chevy Camaro, this would have been the '78 model, and we had broken into one, found the key in the glovebox, and started that bitch up. Cranked up the heat, played the radio. Not that comfortable to sleep in but warm.
So I just jumped, was on my feet for a split second, and then the right side of my face was scraping the gravel.
Which is to say, back on that other rocking boxcar with all those unidentifiable men, I was not so scared because I knew the glow of my cigarettes was offering up to the curious a pretty scary picture of a possibly very bad dude.
After my hobo friend consoled me a bit about my landing he said he thought I had done this before. I told him, no, I hadn't. That's when he told me about lowering yourself and hanging there with your feet just above the ground and then to start running like mad before you acually put your feet on the ground.
The day before the psst in the night we had found a half bottle of tequila lying on the ground next to a cold,dead, campfire. I was the only one of us who had money, I hadn't told him this until we found the tequila, but then I offered to walk to the nearest store, where I spent some of my six dollars on the sardines and oranges. The tequila buzz on top of the mild concussion, at midday eating oranges and sardines while shivering and staring at the distant gas flares, is a memory locked in good and tight.
I wish I had seen me some ballerinas the other day. I am capable of loving that look of practiced gracefulness.