Ebony Cameo
(or, “A Sinister Night in San Francisco”)
My stay in the city of San Francisco occurred during a period of my life no less faint and dubious, contrary to than the city itself, and the misty bay lying thereabout. I have little recollection of the long train ride to this locality—I had been drinking heavily—I only remember when I got to the place, got situated—(I was to be found: that is), I was perplexed, my mind disheveled (back in 1968), and when I sat that first evening by the fog-enfolded inlet that flowed out into the Ocean, its walls and wharf: now that I think of it, they were mortuary clanging sounds, I surmised that I was impending an eerie evening if not tantalizing—it was my first night in an international, cosmopolitan metropolis, I was a young lad from a Midwestern capital—thus, here I was situated, placed at the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge.
On reaching the Golden Gate, this colossal bridge that crosses the bay, from San Francisco to a sister city, I could have continued at will, on this road, leading out to a lesser troublesome city, to a remoter city, and I did set foot onto the bridge, and I saw a shadowy shape, a ebony cameo, silhouette, under the bridge was black waters flowing to and fro, joining the bay with the ocean, a silence as still as death engulfed me.
My past life at this point was dull, boring and perhaps dubious, as I have somewhat described already: all the more so, that I had to investigate this mystic silhouette—because of my need to live, be alive, perhaps for forgetfulness of those dull days, who’s to say, I mean, my perseverance, and persistence at this time, my search for oblivion, was unrecorded—only in time does one learns it is all vanity.
Anyhow, there I was, forgetting the death of my Midwestern soul, slain this very moment, I had sinned, and the deed was done within my mind, now only to be acted out with my body. And my erratic temper, my unruly tetchiness—was mild as a kitten; she was to be my lethal poison, she laid in the somber winds of the evening against an iron cool beam on the bridge, she tortured my mind, with her sleek body, I am uncertain of her age, I was twenty at the time, perhaps she was the same, or twenty-three or twenty-six, I never knew. For years afterward I had wondered lightly on this—heeding little value on it, and full of wine at the time, and she was full of agents of oblivion, and we were available, and usable, and thus, I came close to her, somewhere in this indefinite journey, San Francisco, dim as the evening was, it was well as she, had capture me.
The moon, if ever there was a moon, that evening, had been lost for I knew not how to find it, had been lost into my subconscious, but I could see every naked curve of her body, and the shadows and the mist that fell upon it. I felt that evening mist; I heard her heavy tolling, I gave her no shelter from the night—only the covering of my body, but it seemed to her to be more than enough.
So I never crossed that long bridge, and fell to sleep thereafter the act, entered the grimly yawning of dreams, and hearing the quickening of many footsteps the following morning, only to have waken me, alone on the edge of the bridge, pants unbuttoned, the noise of the city in progress, a few people were staring at me, and I brushed myself off and zipped up my pants up, in solemn haste, as if going to a funeral, an errand look, of no delay.
The streets seemed to be overhanging one another as I walked to and fro trying to get my second day in this city under control. As I plunged among the many, along the streets, sunrise in full blossom, the memory of the previous night, every step of it came back to me, but her face. For this reason, and this reason alone, I did not look for a hotel, or bar, but sat on a stool in park like area, content not wanting to lose the evening before I put it into a vault, trying to sort out the darkness and fog, dissolve the oblivion. Could I find her this day, I think my spirit, mind, my soul would be more tranquil if I could—so I told myself, less reiterate in its all clanging to seek her out.
I had no idea how far I had gone into the city, roamed among the buildings in the night, peopled by thousands of sleeping dead, then as I looked about, I became aware of how tired I really was, and felt I needed not only food and wine, but lodging. Nowhere had my mind picked up on anything of this nature the night before, so the next person that looked at me I waved too, and he came over, he was a thin man, looked like an accountant, and I asked him “Where sir can I find some lodging, and a respectable place to eat?” He pulled out a card, after checking me out, and said, “I’ll be home at four o’clock,” and walked away. He wasn’t my cup of tea, then I noticed—and it was to resolve my issue here—a sign over the head of the passer-by, it read, “Sleeping rooms!” And next door to it was a café.
Hurrying along with the crowd, my intentness to get a room at the hotel, I saw her, I think I saw her, I followed her through street after street in my futile search for her living face, but it was her body I had noticed most, at length I tried to catch up with her, actually I had made up my mind that was her, even if it wasn’t, as I bumped this person and that person, and pausing to get a better glimpse in what direction she was turning and now there was turning heads at me: scolding me for my abruptness. Then an unspeakable chill came over me, invaded my spirit, as I came a foot away from this person, a dreadful smote, breath of doom, putrid odor—emanated from her, it was as if the smell of death, a decayed body from a tomb, a smell that had escaped the rotting of death had encircled me, this all appeared to be a bad coincidence, if not a sinister psychodrama, she stopped and turned about: she was black as hell, and had an irrevocable fatality grin on her face, she said, “I’ve been dead a long time, move away, or join me in my coffin!”
The moment had evoked the vainly wish I had ever met that person, and I now was being pushed here and there by the crowd, feverishly trying to get around me, as I was frozen in my step. Nobody else seemed to see her, nobody bumped into her. Nobody inquired what the matter with me was, just told me to get out of their way, bewilderment had filled my cerebellum.
I made it to the hotel, the building looked very old, its upper floors had thin hallways, and few lights glowed indistinctly down the corridors, I found my room 302, and locked and bolted the door, that evening the odor of that very woman came back to me, a musty odor of antiquity, of the crypt, it mounted the hallways under the doorways, it didn’t seem to attract the attention of anyone but me. Then there was a silence, and after much delay, the doors down the hallway were being opened and shut—it was all a cadaverous moment, I opened the door and peered down the entry, and then there she was again, looking at me with that ugly frowning of hers, with pompous gravity as if the wind could pick her up and bring her forth like a flying demoness.
I slammed the door, “What do you desire?” she asked outside of my door, “for you,” she went on to say, adding: “just a room for the night!” Then it came to mind, she was a lost spirit of some sort, and she found no one drunk enough to bed her tonight; evidently, the night I met her, the night before, which I accommodated her, she couldn’t find an available room either, and thus, stood down by the bridge waiting for anybody male with a drunken spirit, and low morals, and perhaps female would also do.
I had slammed the door so hard and quickly, I heard someone coming up the steps—thank goodness I thought—although the person was grumbling “Who’s making that confounded noise up there!” It was the caretaker. I wouldn’t open the door, I didn’t say a word, I didn’t respond to him, or her, matter-of-fact, I pert near held my breath.
My heart beat a hundredfold that night, and she is a menace of memory for me now. A live dream from the tombs—or better yet, a nightmare, poured out into reality; I have cursed the hour I have met her a thousand times over, and now at sixty-three years old, yes, forty-three years later, she has kept this sinister circle alive, she has somewhat entombed me—she shows up sporadically, in the frightful vitality of present things in my life—during events; always as a shadow or shape in the crowd, a outline in the side of a window: the reason always, or the reason I think she shows up is always for preparation for me to go back to that bridge, and duplicate our first meeting—god forbid if she thinks she’s found a soul mate, and I’ve stopped drinking.
No 702 (10-30-2010)
(or, “A Sinister Night in San Francisco”)
My stay in the city of San Francisco occurred during a period of my life no less faint and dubious, contrary to than the city itself, and the misty bay lying thereabout. I have little recollection of the long train ride to this locality—I had been drinking heavily—I only remember when I got to the place, got situated—(I was to be found: that is), I was perplexed, my mind disheveled (back in 1968), and when I sat that first evening by the fog-enfolded inlet that flowed out into the Ocean, its walls and wharf: now that I think of it, they were mortuary clanging sounds, I surmised that I was impending an eerie evening if not tantalizing—it was my first night in an international, cosmopolitan metropolis, I was a young lad from a Midwestern capital—thus, here I was situated, placed at the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge.
On reaching the Golden Gate, this colossal bridge that crosses the bay, from San Francisco to a sister city, I could have continued at will, on this road, leading out to a lesser troublesome city, to a remoter city, and I did set foot onto the bridge, and I saw a shadowy shape, a ebony cameo, silhouette, under the bridge was black waters flowing to and fro, joining the bay with the ocean, a silence as still as death engulfed me.
My past life at this point was dull, boring and perhaps dubious, as I have somewhat described already: all the more so, that I had to investigate this mystic silhouette—because of my need to live, be alive, perhaps for forgetfulness of those dull days, who’s to say, I mean, my perseverance, and persistence at this time, my search for oblivion, was unrecorded—only in time does one learns it is all vanity.
Anyhow, there I was, forgetting the death of my Midwestern soul, slain this very moment, I had sinned, and the deed was done within my mind, now only to be acted out with my body. And my erratic temper, my unruly tetchiness—was mild as a kitten; she was to be my lethal poison, she laid in the somber winds of the evening against an iron cool beam on the bridge, she tortured my mind, with her sleek body, I am uncertain of her age, I was twenty at the time, perhaps she was the same, or twenty-three or twenty-six, I never knew. For years afterward I had wondered lightly on this—heeding little value on it, and full of wine at the time, and she was full of agents of oblivion, and we were available, and usable, and thus, I came close to her, somewhere in this indefinite journey, San Francisco, dim as the evening was, it was well as she, had capture me.
The moon, if ever there was a moon, that evening, had been lost for I knew not how to find it, had been lost into my subconscious, but I could see every naked curve of her body, and the shadows and the mist that fell upon it. I felt that evening mist; I heard her heavy tolling, I gave her no shelter from the night—only the covering of my body, but it seemed to her to be more than enough.
So I never crossed that long bridge, and fell to sleep thereafter the act, entered the grimly yawning of dreams, and hearing the quickening of many footsteps the following morning, only to have waken me, alone on the edge of the bridge, pants unbuttoned, the noise of the city in progress, a few people were staring at me, and I brushed myself off and zipped up my pants up, in solemn haste, as if going to a funeral, an errand look, of no delay.
The streets seemed to be overhanging one another as I walked to and fro trying to get my second day in this city under control. As I plunged among the many, along the streets, sunrise in full blossom, the memory of the previous night, every step of it came back to me, but her face. For this reason, and this reason alone, I did not look for a hotel, or bar, but sat on a stool in park like area, content not wanting to lose the evening before I put it into a vault, trying to sort out the darkness and fog, dissolve the oblivion. Could I find her this day, I think my spirit, mind, my soul would be more tranquil if I could—so I told myself, less reiterate in its all clanging to seek her out.
I had no idea how far I had gone into the city, roamed among the buildings in the night, peopled by thousands of sleeping dead, then as I looked about, I became aware of how tired I really was, and felt I needed not only food and wine, but lodging. Nowhere had my mind picked up on anything of this nature the night before, so the next person that looked at me I waved too, and he came over, he was a thin man, looked like an accountant, and I asked him “Where sir can I find some lodging, and a respectable place to eat?” He pulled out a card, after checking me out, and said, “I’ll be home at four o’clock,” and walked away. He wasn’t my cup of tea, then I noticed—and it was to resolve my issue here—a sign over the head of the passer-by, it read, “Sleeping rooms!” And next door to it was a café.
Hurrying along with the crowd, my intentness to get a room at the hotel, I saw her, I think I saw her, I followed her through street after street in my futile search for her living face, but it was her body I had noticed most, at length I tried to catch up with her, actually I had made up my mind that was her, even if it wasn’t, as I bumped this person and that person, and pausing to get a better glimpse in what direction she was turning and now there was turning heads at me: scolding me for my abruptness. Then an unspeakable chill came over me, invaded my spirit, as I came a foot away from this person, a dreadful smote, breath of doom, putrid odor—emanated from her, it was as if the smell of death, a decayed body from a tomb, a smell that had escaped the rotting of death had encircled me, this all appeared to be a bad coincidence, if not a sinister psychodrama, she stopped and turned about: she was black as hell, and had an irrevocable fatality grin on her face, she said, “I’ve been dead a long time, move away, or join me in my coffin!”
The moment had evoked the vainly wish I had ever met that person, and I now was being pushed here and there by the crowd, feverishly trying to get around me, as I was frozen in my step. Nobody else seemed to see her, nobody bumped into her. Nobody inquired what the matter with me was, just told me to get out of their way, bewilderment had filled my cerebellum.
I made it to the hotel, the building looked very old, its upper floors had thin hallways, and few lights glowed indistinctly down the corridors, I found my room 302, and locked and bolted the door, that evening the odor of that very woman came back to me, a musty odor of antiquity, of the crypt, it mounted the hallways under the doorways, it didn’t seem to attract the attention of anyone but me. Then there was a silence, and after much delay, the doors down the hallway were being opened and shut—it was all a cadaverous moment, I opened the door and peered down the entry, and then there she was again, looking at me with that ugly frowning of hers, with pompous gravity as if the wind could pick her up and bring her forth like a flying demoness.
I slammed the door, “What do you desire?” she asked outside of my door, “for you,” she went on to say, adding: “just a room for the night!” Then it came to mind, she was a lost spirit of some sort, and she found no one drunk enough to bed her tonight; evidently, the night I met her, the night before, which I accommodated her, she couldn’t find an available room either, and thus, stood down by the bridge waiting for anybody male with a drunken spirit, and low morals, and perhaps female would also do.
I had slammed the door so hard and quickly, I heard someone coming up the steps—thank goodness I thought—although the person was grumbling “Who’s making that confounded noise up there!” It was the caretaker. I wouldn’t open the door, I didn’t say a word, I didn’t respond to him, or her, matter-of-fact, I pert near held my breath.
My heart beat a hundredfold that night, and she is a menace of memory for me now. A live dream from the tombs—or better yet, a nightmare, poured out into reality; I have cursed the hour I have met her a thousand times over, and now at sixty-three years old, yes, forty-three years later, she has kept this sinister circle alive, she has somewhat entombed me—she shows up sporadically, in the frightful vitality of present things in my life—during events; always as a shadow or shape in the crowd, a outline in the side of a window: the reason always, or the reason I think she shows up is always for preparation for me to go back to that bridge, and duplicate our first meeting—god forbid if she thinks she’s found a soul mate, and I’ve stopped drinking.
No 702 (10-30-2010)
No comments:
Post a Comment