The Clouds Flew Away Like Birds

So where's the big jerk with the scabby arms who jumped me and said, 'I'll deliver you from all evil'? There was a metallic flash in my peripheral vision. I thought he was trying to take my picture; I did look pretty good, swaying on the train in my new high heels. But then for some reason I'm sitting, slumped against the pole near the rear door and the guy's jerking my bag away. I loved that old, garnet red bag sprinkled with beads and hated him for taking it. The twenty and the lipstick were his now, who cares? But the bag I'm going to miss way too much.

And now, there's this other guy - rather attractive - even though he's wearing a pale blue, badly wrinkled pajama suit. I guess anything goes these days. He's kneeling down in trash strewn, dusty grass, and from my vantage point I can see that he's whispering in some woman's ear. They look like lovers and the woman looks a lot like me. She's even got the same mole on the underside of her left ear.

After silence takes its' shape everyone will find a room with a view.

Is this still a southbound E train? Did I miss my stop? I'm on my way to an ex-boyfriend's birthday party where he's going to announce his impending marriage to 'Perfect Girlfriend', and not to me, 'The Dark Hole of Unreason' . I was the one , after all, who suddenly loathed the idea of impersonating a passionate person. But I really am trying to get those hormonal fires burning again. You know. Light the lights. Right this minute I'm wearing mail order panties that look like a spiderweb, my thought being that new undies might fool me into feeling friskier at this party I've been dreading. But the truth is they're riding in the crack of my ass and making me itchy. I didn't fall down again did I? Two summers ago I fell down in the middle of the street in Chinatown and hemorrhaged like hell. I just thought it was cramps from the sea cucumber in lunch special #77 but it was actually an IUD that went orbital. And I so clearly remember screaming, 'You made a mistake' in some hazy grey clinic as Dr. Gratis pried the kink of copper wire out of me while his watery voice droned on and on 'We will not discuss the efficacy of any method at this time.' I finally lost consciousness after I heard what sounded like a sump pump. What was I? A basement full of rain? After the procedure they told me that while it was too soon to know conclusively, I'd probably been pregnant. So what was that blooming in my garden, Doctor? Siamese twins stapled together with a Copper 7? Or a singleton with something looking like an old fashioned rug beater embedded deep in her head? 'No', he said, 'Highly unlikely.' As if I'd ever have faith in any of their carefully modulated assurances again. Just admit that we are the bearers of great mystery in our sweet little caverns and that your rude science is small before our myriad glories and call it a day. Okay? Would you listen to me. God, I hate people who tell complete strangers their tawdry little tales on public transportation. You don't. Really? That's big of you. Are you a reporter or something? Then why do you keep asking me my name over and over again? Anyway, since you seem so interested - do you see this faint bruise right under my sternum? No, no, don't be embarrassed. I used to model for graduate figure studies classes. My naked body is probably hanging in badly lit living rooms all over the tri-state area. Anyway, you'll have to take my word for it but when I tap my sternum just so, needled blue diamonds rise to the surface of complete strangers' foreheads and hands.

Do you find yourself thinking who will remove the mysteries? You will remove the mysteries.

Right. So this tapping I was trying to tell you about? Sometimes when I do it, it's autumn and I find myself in some Italian park with no name. The lower hills are full of turning laurel trees and a yellow light pours out of all the long ago worked walls. Black Labradors with sloppy white eyes painted above their real ones run in circles and the air smells of burnt toast and tobacco smoke. I've lost my shoes again and try to steal a drunk woman's. They look to be about my size. Twice now after tapping the bruise I was in a boiling soup pot in a tiny triptych with St. Cecilia. I kid you not, and I was an eleven year old boy in a flannel confirmation suit and a wreath of angels hovered overhead like helicopters, their wings folded as tight as young roses. Gold leaf sifted down like sand and the clouds flew away. It's all beyond my control. I mean, I love having that prepubescent penis when I'm in the soup pot but it must be affecting my ability to work. Do you think there's a 12 -step program for something like this? The foreground and background of wherever I happen to be drop out simultaneously sometimes and the resulting silence assumes shapes I can see and readily identify even though I've never seen these shapes before. Do you think I'm getting close to the ineffable? My family will have me de-programmed if that's the case. It's probably just some Roman Catholic version of a sex and ladders game I tripped and fell into staring at that focus sucking monitor in my bedroom. I've got to start getting out more. Get an office. Stop working at home in a second hand bathrobe. Do you think this could be a neurological breakdown brought on by my self imposed isolation? And another thing, right this minute? It tastes like I've eaten a mouthful of egg tempera and gluey varnish. No. It's got to be the Kevlar. That's the stuff bullet proof vests are made out of and now my back molars are spackled with it, too. That's it. It's the fumes from the poly resin putty. I must have fallen out with a bang at the dentist's when he was replacing the old amalgam fillings. This must be a serious allergic reaction and I don't even remember having an appointment. Weird. But somewhere near the beginning I'm sure it started like this: I remember a good looking guy in a strange colored suit with wrinkled pants, nice shoes, kneeling in some dusty grass and he was whispering in my ear.

We won't be organizing a secret world. After silence takes its' shape everyone will find a room with a view; breakfast included. Now please try on this birch bark headdress.

I kind of feel like Pope Joan and he's one of the cardinals asking me to wear the mitre. I should get a dog. Why else would I dream about black Labs? Isn't it awfully cold in here? I'm cold. Then very clearly - with the most beautiful enunciation, he said that I would be living as quietly as a new moon and I said, 'But I already am. Have you checked my answering machine lately?' He told me I was going to tend the mums they grow for fun and profit and at other unspecified times I'd be writing homilies in the sand. Maybe on some nature preserve in Costa Rica?

All manner of veils will be thrown off to flap and billow from your balcony. You'll see.

No. I probably won't. All I'm seeing right now is a mound of quackgrass in microscopic detail. I'm lying face down in it with the taste of varnish in my mouth and a head that feels like an orbiting hailstorm. My stockings are shredded to bits and the sling-backs with the long box toe I spent way too much on are gone. Then I notice I'm on the median strip of the Mass. Pike south of Boston, exactly where I threw up chicken and dumplings one time as a kid . This sudden super saturated clarity does not improve the view one bit. It must have been a rough trip and what a lousy destination. This is shaping up to be worse than the time I got locked in a car in Mexico by two shallow end of the gene pool guys who were smuggling switchblades over the border in their gas tank. But right now I'm tiptoeing around shoeless, hypnotized by the timbre of that voice of his. I have no idea what he's talking about but my recall of what he's already said is really acute. I just wish there was someone to share this joke with, but it could be worse because the food is remarkable.

There are venison steaks with vodka and juniper berries in smoking cast iron skillets. Platters of that eggplant dish - 'The Iman Fainted'. Massive bowls of fish kibbe, corn and clam chowders and monkfish with pumpkin seeds. Mountains of cold sesame noodles with rice vinegar and malaysian chili paste. Escarole and arugala sauteed in olive oil and elephant garlic, plus perfectly crimped cornish meat pies. There are heaps of baked persimmons and fresh turkish figs warm from the sun, flans and fruit fools with devonshire cream and every single sort of sweet pie known. Thank god that sad, curled up slice of lukewarm pizza was all I had for lunch. I am ravenous. The table stretches one long mile of pristine ivory damask and it's easy to lose track of what's been tasted.

Repeat after me - the forms of time are variegated, the forms of time are transparent and mutable. This is an ice that will warm you.

Right. Whatever you say. In the meantime I'm eating half a pound of prosciutto di Parma one translucent slice at a time and thinking I really should start looking for a boyfriend. I never had dreams like this when I was getting clocked on a regular basis and I'm so tired of using my own little paw. How is it that I've been drinking magnums and magnums of white burgundies I could never afford? I guess it's not a cash bar, right? The caterers must have watered this wine because I'm not drunk yet although I can hear myself mumbling about where I am and how I got there. Or is it here? How I got here. Am I? Who? I was? No, I am. I must be. And one more thing, why isn't there anyone to talk to or flirt with?

Those people over there by the table? Parading around in their willow branch hoop skirts and jackets that smell of wormwood? Mopping their high, virtuous foreheads? They look like they stepped out of a cardboard Breughal painting from Sears but if I examine them more closely they might be familiar to me. They might be the people who lived next door when I was 10 or 11. They had an electric organ with a chacha button and their only baby was born with a heart the size of a dime. When he died a week later they buried him in the garden under the rustling, murmuring corn. Did I dream that? Maybe I'm dreaming this, too, but if so what about that effortless cognition we're supposed to have in dreamtime? Why can't I understand one word anybody says besides what's his name in the wrinkled pants? And why don't the little dun colored birds ever sing? Why? The light doesn't change and the shadows never shift their shapes either. I'm sure it's still midafternoon. Has it always been midafternoon? The traffic never lets up. Filthy, belching trucks go barreling by in both directions with their horns screaming. The roadside trash eddies like dervishes but the tablecloths at this endless supper remain immaculate. How can that be? And these people I've never laid eyes on before keep circling the table with their plates piled high. They are radiating a blue, milky pallor and they look sickly to me.

You mustn't let their color alarm you. Please stop shaking your head so violently. You cannot dislodge the sound of my voice. There is really nothing to fear.

Okay. So I fell asleep on the train and I'm dreaming and witnessing it simultaneously. That's got to be it. But why am I so exhausted? I don't fall asleep in public. I can barely sleep in my own bed. Please let me wake up before my stop and don't let me sleep with my mouth open. It's disgusting when I drool. What if somebody takes my bag? How much cash do I have? 20 for a cab after and a couple of crumpled singles. Petty cash. Isn't all my cash petty? People probably think I'm homeless. That's stupid. I'm wearing a very expensive pair of shoes. The dress was marked down but the shoes cost a bundle. My mother would be scandalized. What if somebody steals my shoes? I must be dreaming but what happened to all those people in the Breughal painting with the blue diamond tattoos? I gave them those tattoos. And did I tell you when I was a boy in that triptych with St. Cecilia the clouds flew away like birds?

I'm going to tap that bruise again and see what happens next. Wait. Maybe I am drunk after all. Why are all these badly dressed people sweeping the dishes off the table and strapping me down like some kind of mental case? Okay, maybe I was a little standoff-ish but I didn't know a soul here except the ex and I never even saw him. Whoever heard of throwing a party on the median strip of a major U.S. freeway anyway?

Now here comes Mr. Pants again and he's jamming a needle in and there's a drip that looks like a ziplock bag of liver swinging violently over my head . Who knew it was going to be this kind of party? Ick. I should have stayed home and reread The Waves again. Please please please just don't let me have sex with anyone here. I will hate myself in the morning. The wine is finally hitting me. So hard. God. I'm going to be sick. Let me lie down and press my face against those little grey and white octagonal tiles we had in the hall bathroom when I was small. There were red squirrels on fire up and down the oak grain of my closet doors and I'd crawl out of bed and lie down on the cool tiles and all the squirrels would be gone when I got back into bed. Just let me lie down. Please. Now he's feeding a mile of plastic tubing up my nose and I see it getting tangled into 'S's and '8's on the plush red floor of my belly. It looks like cheap wall to wall after a spring flood down there. Uh oh there's the sump pump sound again. Is Dr. Gratis back? Get him the hell away from me. You tell him I've been using condoms ever since and not very often at that, not that it's any of his business. And I am not hemorrhaging again so just go and stuff your hematocrits and systolic BP due to multiple wounds to the upper thorax and all that other specialized vocabulary you're throwing around like rice. Okay? I am not some TV show. I refuse to bleed out like road kill on the shoulder of some stupid, quaint country road. Look, I never memorized the entire table of elements. I never learned to speak Italian. I haven't read Herodotus. I never got to make a baby with anyone I really loved. I never had the time to find the little peagreen cottage with the purple clematis covering the windows and even if I had it was too damn soon to move away and live quietly. And what about a 3-way with two beautiful boychiks? I've wanted that for such a long time. It never seemed like too much to wish for. I want to wake up again with the smell of smoke in my hair from a well built fire and remember that someone's ardently intelligent tongue had followed the bridge of my crooked clavicle and later shared another bout of luscious sexing. That's not so much. It's everything. But those bright, small beads that stick fast and make us gleam with an ordinary sort of grace they're falling far away now and spiraling out of my reach. It's like playing jacks again but I don't seem to be winning.