Fugue #149

- Still nothing, Neil?

Pause, a patronizing look down the street from the balcony, an eye roll, and a head shake.

- No.
- Nothing?
- You need to relax.

Zig Ziglar sits in his favorite chair. The afternoon sun streamed into the apartment through the open doors to the patio. May, New York City - fresh air, and everything is coming to life again, finally convinced that summer is coming.

Neil Marbell paces the patio, then stops for another look down. There are pigeons on the wires; they’re waiting, too.

- It just seems like they’re late.
- They’re not.

Two voices, over the city’s sounds, laughing. Marbell turns to Zig, who walks onto the patio, leans over the edge of the balcony, whistles and waves.

- They’re here.
- They’re here.

Fugue #148

From the back yard and in the back door. Through the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and the hall. Out the front screen door and onto the porch. Deep breath, hands in your back pockets, finished business, but nothing is ever really finished, you forgot something (or maybe you meant to), and you lean back toward the door to say goodbye.

Down the steps and across the lawn, the street, the lawns across the street. By neighborhood houses (this is like a Family Circus Sunday comic), streets and streets. To the edge of town, near the high school, and past it.

From a distance, and this is late afternoon early fall, you can hear the marching band practicing under the lights of the football field. It sounds like they’re playing an old rock song.

...we’ve nowhere to be...

You look over your left shoulder, and wait for a car to pass slowly on the gravel road. And you keep walking. Into the fields, into the land.

Fugue #147

Emily came from the right side of the tracks.

Not right in any normative sense, though that’s certainly possible to infer from the grand entrance to the subdivision near her family’s farm. Monumental stone gates anchoring a stone archway bearing wrought iron gothic letters announcing So-and-So’s Estates, flanked by cypress trees that dwarf it.

Right in a directional sense. Stand at the intersection of 5th Street and Main. Look north (that’s back out of town, toward the stop light, and the highway). One block to your right - so East - are the railroad tracks. They bisect the town: half the town lies on their left, including Gene’s father’s office and home, and half the town lies on their right, including Emily’s father’s farm, miles away.

The farm sits on a hill just beyond the subdivision (actually, the house is part of the subdivision), and like it, overlooks the town in the valley below. The house is new, white cedar siding, and it sits on the crest of a hill: two stories in front, three in back. There’s a raised deck behind the house, and below it a patio. The barn is older, also white, and it sits at the base of the hill, a quarter mile away. The outbuildings are more modern.

Fugue #146

Il y a des nouvelles ambiguités.
There are new ambiguities.

(White words on a black screen, a distorted and ominous voice reading them.)

Zed agrees, and nods at the television. He’s watching a documentary about Jean-Luc Godard. There’s interview footage from 1968, shortly before he took his well-publicized turn toward more radical politics. He’s talking about his process, and he’s at his cryptic best.

Dark sunglasses, a cigarette, a dismissive (dismissive in that particular Gallic way) gesture, and a quote:"Having an actor is not just having a person who has to act. His real life belongs in the picture, too, and you have to use it."

Then, "A lot of people cease to exist - or think they do - between two points, traveling. To me, what exists is mainly between."

Zed is rapt. It’s not the destination that matters. JLG explains, sort of: "It's not where you take things from," wink, "it's where you take them to."

And the familiar drums of a Rolling Stones song begin.

Fugue #145

Art and artifice - and let’s not hide from the truth. Let’s stick to facts, objective facts. What do we know?

Much of our history ends in elegy (pace Robert Adams), but this isn’t an elegy. This isn’t a sweeping panorama. This isn’t majesty or wonder.

(this all just happened, see the crane over there, holding the camera? we’re memorialized, immortalized)

This is people.
Each and all of us:
a face and a face and a face -
her hair, his nose,
her eyebrows, his lips.
Each and all of us, together,
and everyone.

(look up and wave)

This is real. Art is real. And our history is only as objective as we make it, only as true as we want it to be. Everything isn’t memorized, and it’s our job to decide what gets written down, and how. The fixed idea isn’t fixed until after the fact.

Fugue #144

You’re quiet, tired from a long week. It’s evening. The sun is low, and reaching back to Manhattan from the West. You’re not going to talk, not right now. If I asked, you’d tell me that you’re not upset, just quiet and tired, and you don’t have anything to say.

A penny for the private thoughts of a pretty girl, Ana.

We’re sitting next to each other, but we’re farther apart than that.

- You ok?
You nod.
- Really?
Another nod.

I lean toward you to whisper something funny, you smile but don’t laugh. A breeze sweeps across the rooftops, and your hair is everywhere: in your face, mine - one strand, twenty, a hundred, a thousand. The wind catches it. The falling sun catches it. It’s the color of clover honey.

You’re wrong, you know. Facing the uncertainty of the future with fear, instead of wonder. And I might tell you that tonight.

Fugue #143

THE MONOTONY OF WIND

The monotony of wind in your ears, in your eyes -
tears fall then run then flee down your cheeks,
as it changes pitch,
briefly higher then lower
again.

Inside, you can hear it:
The wind buffets the house,
and whistles through cracks in the storm window seals - whistle high then low then so monotone it disappears.

Think about this, with the wind as background music:
sleep sweet sleep,
the wind like waves washing over you,
your ears, your eyes, and now
your arms feel heavy, and your legs feel heavy
(whistle high, whistle low).
Your head feels empty and hollow, and
sleep sweet sleep,
let it come washing over you,
washing - and you can’t.

Sleep is not that sweet when you’re so tired,
it’s painful.
Help, whistle - it nods yes.

Fugue #142

Sit with me, here in this place.

The hill slopes down to the road, and the road leads back into town. To the left, shading a ravine, there is a line of trees, some of them old. And that’s where the swallows live. You can hear them - they’re not quiet; they’re talking, planning. And then they’re in the sky.

The birds group and rise together, they pause (or seem to), then bank left and right, then fall and rise again. Together. A rolling mass, a single mind (or so they say), against a fading afternoon’s deep blue sky and a line of near-perfect clouds, stuffed and lolling over our heads.

There is an unsteady poignance. This is beautiful, but it can’t last. It’s balanced on a pedestal, and it’ll fall, eventually. We’ll fall, eventually.

(Think about Tintern Abbey. Remember that line "almost suspended" - what did Wordsworth mean, if not this?)

Let’s enjoy it while we can.

Fugue #141

Smiles.

That’s how it started for Gene and Emily. With smiles.

Back up...here’s the story:

It was after school, midweek in September. She was painting pep club signs for Friday’s football game, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the hallway outside the library. He was in the classroom of his English teacher, talking and walking backwards out the door. He swung his stuffed backpack over his left shoulder, turned to his right, and stepped squarely into the middle of a large wet red W. As in Warriors. As in whoops. And he tracked that paint across the blue A and the R, before finding a way to get off the paper.

- Oh, man, I am so sorry.
- It’s ok.
- It was a really nice sign, too.
- Well, thanks.

Gene crouched down and tried to wipe the red paint away. It didn’t work, but it did make a smeary mess of everything. Emily smiled and laughed nervously. She wasn’t happy about the sign, but she was happy that this boy she had seen and thought about so much was actually talking to her. He reached out a wet hand.

- I’m Paul.
- I know. I’m Emily.

She smiled again, and nodded at his hand. He smiled, too, as she handed him a paper towel. Small pleasures.

Fugue #140

The tone of Gene’s voice, and the look on his face in the fields yesterday, told Paul what he already suspected: His brother was burned out inside.

He sits on his brother’s bed and stares across the room. The desk is immaculate, but on the floor, there is a sheet of paper that had escaped the waste basket. He reaches for it. A poem, a fragment, more like a song:

and until morning, there is a time
even a little time
even a jammed time
all we need is a fraction of time

Time. Paul knows that he doesn’t understand. He’s too young, and it’s surprising that he’s even reflective enough to realize that there are knowable things he doesn’t know, but his brother does.

Gene knows. That nobody is immortal, that days are short, that things change. Things end. They’re here, and then they’re gone. Some day, one of them would be the first to leave, and it would probably be Gene.