The Indian was dying. It gasped and wheezed like a TB patient in a New Mexico sanitarium. Artie had been determined to cross over the Sierras before snowfall. Like the Donner Party. Yet a mindful lethargy was slowing all progress.
As the sun sank beyond the purple Divide he wheeled through a melange of juniper and pinion, climbing toward the Pleiades.
He pitched camp upon a ledge several thousand feet above the sandy escarpment. As more stars appeared, the firmament pressed down upon him. Gazing into the Great Spiral he felt a mild vertigo. He feared the breaking of tether and whirling off into deep space.
A wind imp stole a handful of sparks from his campfire.
Artie watched them swirl away, just as an owl called out one of God's many names.
*
In case of rain he had a neoprine igloo. For warmth he had a sleeping bag.
For a while he subsisted on boxed raisons and canned nuts.
He read his William Cullen Bryant. And Walt Whitman too.
Two witchy days passed without a desire to move. The spell Endor had put on him was stronger now. He had not fled far enough from that enchanted hollow and the thing that dwelled there.
*
Downhill, a stone chalice collected crystal water from an underground rill. This was Eden.
First the booze and pills gave out. Then the food.
Not to worry. I will fast for forty days and become purified.
Each day as he went down to drink he felt increasingly light-headed. Strength ebbed as the sun rose to its zenith. Nights were spent howling into the bonfire. A vision grew lucid and he began seeing a woman tied to a stake amid a roaring holocaust. Her comely hair singed away. Blisters burst with blood. As her face blackened with char he recognized the archetype.
Morning would find him curled like a fetus, his bluejeans greasy from slumber in ashes and dew.
*
Voices were coming up the trail. Laughing like snow-melt streams.
The first one had a soft furry rasp. "Oh, yes, in the desert air at night you can see for miles. I remember driving south toward the Chisos Mountains in Texas. A light began shining ahead like the Christmas Star on high. A half hour and ten or fifteen miles later, I arrived where the road had risen a thousand or more feet. Guess what I found."
"A spacecraft from Area 51." The second one had a lilting choir-girl giggle.
"No, silly! It was a Coke machine."
"You're kidding."
"No, I'm not. That tiny fluorescent tube had shown me the way."
Artie opened his eyes and saw two golden-haired angels in hiking boots.
He heard the choir-girl say: Oh, look! There's a man on the ground."
"Must be hurt," replied the one who was called Leah.
"I'm all right," groaned Artie, smelling of starvation.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
artie 1
As soon as October rolled around Artie's mother began asking if he was still planning to perform a mikvah on the eve of Yom Kippur. In her mind the purification rite was obligatory. Artie replied: "Yes, Momma. But listen to this. I am going to perform it outdoors!"
"That's crazy. You'll catch your death with cold."
"Nah."
"Might I ask where?"
"Somewhere up the Hudson."
"Oy, veh."
His heart still felt like roadkill. Solange had hinted many times that she was not satisfied, and now she was gone. He realized now how thick-headed he had been. Once she suggested they visit Times Square for a night of porno. He did not understand then. Now he understood, woefully too late.
*
His idea was to commune with Nature.
Most Jews immersed themselves indoors. He was obsessed with finding a place much like that pictured in the 1849 painting "Kindred Spirits" by Asher Durand. The poet William Cullen Bryant stood upon a stone shelf above a waterfall in the midst of primeval forest. The vista of pristine America showed the romance of the age.
Artie had seen a rendering of it on a page devoted to the poem "Thanatopsis." Both the art and the poem had resonated within him since the Tenth Grade.
I want to immerse myself in Nature. The Nature of William Cullen Bryant and Ralph Waldo Emerson. I want to sing my Niggun loud!
*
On the way to the place chosen for his mikvah Artie rode beneath the boughs of a splendid sycamore. A crude sign was nailed to the trunk. The rustic calligrapher had woodburned an iconic finger beneath the word ENDOR. Intrigued, Artie resolved to explore the matter upon his return.
*
It was late afternoon when he halted his 1953 80cc Indian safely off the road. The geezer bike had belonged to his late uncle Izzy, who maintained it religiously and stored it in a dark private garage. Whenever Artie took off on it he heard Steppenwolf. He parked it in a blind behind the sycamore. A faint woodland trace led from there into a purple and gold forest said to be haunted by whistling spirits of the old Knickerbockers.
He had walked a hundred yards when he heard a raucous chittering above his head. Two frenzied squirrels were zigzagging up the trunk of a tall elm. Whisking out to the end of a single branch. Like a Stukka bomber, the hawk came diving. It snatched up the screaming male and climbed with mighty strokes into the forest canopy.
Artie's mind, filled with thoughts of Goethe and Emerson and Thoreau and Transcendental Bliss, was horribly awakened. Nature's guise fell away and for a brief moment Artie beheld a portion of the world shed of Glamour. Then, like a spider, Maya, the Hindu goddess of Nature, spun a stitch to repair the worldwide web of illusion.
*
He passed through a coppice of newgrowth chestnut. Rough symmetry belied a planter's hand. From the heart of this matrix a footpath led forth into a smokey hollow. Nestled in the shade of a great oak, the cabin grew like an enormous mushroom. Squat and mottled, with blond timber seemingly blotched with burgundy wine, it commanded the crest of a bald hillock, furrowed for legumes, carrots and Queen Anne's lace. Off to one side stood the white lattice of a concord grape arbor. Smoke curled from a fieldstone chimney.
Artie knew the tale of King Saul and the witch who conjured forth the ghost of Samuel the Prophet.
He pictured a dusky copper-eyed woman garbed in a leopard pelt apron and a mauve tunic open to bare her right breast.
A breeze coiled among the beech boughs.
Suddenly a wicker ewer skittered across the lawn, issuing a riot of scarlet ribbons. A jack-o-lantern carved from a humongous turnip strung from a porch rafter grinned like the Cheshire Cat.
Already the enchantment had begun.
"That's crazy. You'll catch your death with cold."
"Nah."
"Might I ask where?"
"Somewhere up the Hudson."
"Oy, veh."
His heart still felt like roadkill. Solange had hinted many times that she was not satisfied, and now she was gone. He realized now how thick-headed he had been. Once she suggested they visit Times Square for a night of porno. He did not understand then. Now he understood, woefully too late.
*
His idea was to commune with Nature.
Most Jews immersed themselves indoors. He was obsessed with finding a place much like that pictured in the 1849 painting "Kindred Spirits" by Asher Durand. The poet William Cullen Bryant stood upon a stone shelf above a waterfall in the midst of primeval forest. The vista of pristine America showed the romance of the age.
Artie had seen a rendering of it on a page devoted to the poem "Thanatopsis." Both the art and the poem had resonated within him since the Tenth Grade.
I want to immerse myself in Nature. The Nature of William Cullen Bryant and Ralph Waldo Emerson. I want to sing my Niggun loud!
*
On the way to the place chosen for his mikvah Artie rode beneath the boughs of a splendid sycamore. A crude sign was nailed to the trunk. The rustic calligrapher had woodburned an iconic finger beneath the word ENDOR. Intrigued, Artie resolved to explore the matter upon his return.
*
It was late afternoon when he halted his 1953 80cc Indian safely off the road. The geezer bike had belonged to his late uncle Izzy, who maintained it religiously and stored it in a dark private garage. Whenever Artie took off on it he heard Steppenwolf. He parked it in a blind behind the sycamore. A faint woodland trace led from there into a purple and gold forest said to be haunted by whistling spirits of the old Knickerbockers.
He had walked a hundred yards when he heard a raucous chittering above his head. Two frenzied squirrels were zigzagging up the trunk of a tall elm. Whisking out to the end of a single branch. Like a Stukka bomber, the hawk came diving. It snatched up the screaming male and climbed with mighty strokes into the forest canopy.
Artie's mind, filled with thoughts of Goethe and Emerson and Thoreau and Transcendental Bliss, was horribly awakened. Nature's guise fell away and for a brief moment Artie beheld a portion of the world shed of Glamour. Then, like a spider, Maya, the Hindu goddess of Nature, spun a stitch to repair the worldwide web of illusion.
*
He passed through a coppice of newgrowth chestnut. Rough symmetry belied a planter's hand. From the heart of this matrix a footpath led forth into a smokey hollow. Nestled in the shade of a great oak, the cabin grew like an enormous mushroom. Squat and mottled, with blond timber seemingly blotched with burgundy wine, it commanded the crest of a bald hillock, furrowed for legumes, carrots and Queen Anne's lace. Off to one side stood the white lattice of a concord grape arbor. Smoke curled from a fieldstone chimney.
Artie knew the tale of King Saul and the witch who conjured forth the ghost of Samuel the Prophet.
He pictured a dusky copper-eyed woman garbed in a leopard pelt apron and a mauve tunic open to bare her right breast.
A breeze coiled among the beech boughs.
Suddenly a wicker ewer skittered across the lawn, issuing a riot of scarlet ribbons. A jack-o-lantern carved from a humongous turnip strung from a porch rafter grinned like the Cheshire Cat.
Already the enchantment had begun.
Monday, April 18, 2011
k'lid k'iyass
No white man was certain of its age.
The K'lid K'iass had been revered among the Haida people for generations. It was a Sitka spruce devoid of chlorophyll, hence its boughs of gold. Believed to be the only one of its kind in the forest, the Old Tree was a thing of divine mystery. So the elders taught.
Its spirit resided in all of them. Sacred in thought, word, and deed.
Then one night someone murdered it.
Word of the crime reached Lotus Land school. Artie heard one story.
A crazed jobless logger motored his outboard toward tribal land. His mind seethed with hatred for all things Eco Green. Fuck the Indians, fuck the Hippies, fuck the Communists, and fuck the RCMP in their Smokey Bear hats! He beached upon the island and stole into the woods. Within a few hours the K'lid K'iass had been cut down.
On the way back he polished off a pint of Canadian Mist and tossed the bottle into the ebon waters, all the while shouting obscenties to the dark moon.
*
Kelly found him shirtless and shoeless, weeping upon the Emerald Lea.
"Mister Artie, please. Please be all right."
His soul had been sundered with the force of a well-tempered axe. He sobbed, "Oh, my poor Haida."
(Ironically, the Haida had for ages been a scourge from the primeval Queen Charlotte Islands. Slave traders whose Viking-swift raids ranged from California to Asia, they were by no means pitied by less aggresive tribes in British Columbia.)
Artie's lean rugged body reminded Kelly of aspen logs, white with odd blemishes. She wondered if he bruised easily.
Supine with an arm draped across his face, he grieved, unaware of her presence. She placed a small simian hand upon his left nipple. Smooth and flat as river stones his chest galvanized at her touch.
"Kelly. Dear Kelly."
His eyes were whirlpools of uncertainty and they frightened her.
Tugging mightily, she brought him to his feet. After a deep breath he said, "I'm all right."
Once again he stood as her stalwart defender. Her teacher.
Yet he smiled painfully as his spirit hemorraged. Gazing upon her through lidded eyes he appeared to her like dying Lord Jesus in a Russian Icon. Dew glistened in his monkish beard.
She led him by the hand toward his domicile, with its little square Tibetan prayer flags.
*
Kelly sat crosslegged on his futon. "So this where you crash."
He handed her a mug of hot cider. The alcohol caused her to wrinkle her elfin nose. Suddenly she bolted up and began touring his private room, touching mementos and scrutinizing each and every photograph.
"Who is this woman?"
"Someone from long ago. When I worked at the Whitney. We both loved art, and we were quite close."
"What happened?"
"She went back to France."
"Why?"
Kelly could be persistant as a child. With a sigh he surrendered the truth. "For a while we were lovers. Then she grew bored."
*
"Ooh, this you?" Pointing at a snapshot of Schwartzbart.
"Ho ho. Yeah, that's me. I was a Sikh."
"You were sick?"
Did he really wish to explain it all?
About Kirpal Singh. Naam. The Ruhani Satsang. And the day the Master visited New York.
Passing with entourage, Master Singh glanced into the crowd of selects and captured Artie's
eyes in a divine moment. A darshan. It healed mind and soul. Inexplicable.
"What about some coffee?" Artie hoped to redirect Kelly from his past lives.
"Just had cider."
"Oh, that's right."
She picked up the can of Chock-Full-Of-Nuts. "Look, it still shows the World Trade Center."
*
A lone cicada whirred beneath a sylvan moon.
Artie sat on the verandah in a hickory rocking chair. His thoughts drifted aloft like faceless seraphim.
Kelly Alabama sat beside him like a Kickapoo hausfrau. Crosslegged upon the planking.
What more could he ask for?
*
Then God explained to Artie exactly what had happened.
There was this college boy on summer furlough. His job was to climb a tree and saw off its top. After the boughs fell crashing to the forest floor, he surveyed things from his perch.
An axe man below shook his head and muttered, "Damn dreamy chucklehead is gonna get one of us killed."
One day it occured to the dreamy college boy that a fresh clearing resembled the epicenter of that meteor strike in Siberia.
A Pauline conversion took place.
With a Pentacostal flame burning within his skull, he walked off the job. His mission: save the woodlands of Britsh Columbia.
And his name now was Elijah Hazzard.
His vision was true.
The Golden Spruce was everybody's pet plant. A mutant tree. Sacred now as the cow in India. Not to be touched. Thus it would be the perfect sacrifice. Slain upon the altar of environmental conservation. Its death would ignite a firestorm of outrage. The logging industry would finally reap the whirlwind!
Ottersplash. Elijah Hazzard slipped into the cold water and left the boat at anchor. He abided the cold shock to his system. Even in a wetsuit his genitals shrank into absentia. He swam toward the island. Bound in a watertight black plastic sheath was a lightweight chainsaw, strapped to his back like a broadsword.
He cut the tree badly, but did not saw through it.
Mortally wounded, the K'lid K'iyass fell three days later.
The K'lid K'iass had been revered among the Haida people for generations. It was a Sitka spruce devoid of chlorophyll, hence its boughs of gold. Believed to be the only one of its kind in the forest, the Old Tree was a thing of divine mystery. So the elders taught.
Its spirit resided in all of them. Sacred in thought, word, and deed.
Then one night someone murdered it.
Word of the crime reached Lotus Land school. Artie heard one story.
A crazed jobless logger motored his outboard toward tribal land. His mind seethed with hatred for all things Eco Green. Fuck the Indians, fuck the Hippies, fuck the Communists, and fuck the RCMP in their Smokey Bear hats! He beached upon the island and stole into the woods. Within a few hours the K'lid K'iass had been cut down.
On the way back he polished off a pint of Canadian Mist and tossed the bottle into the ebon waters, all the while shouting obscenties to the dark moon.
*
Kelly found him shirtless and shoeless, weeping upon the Emerald Lea.
"Mister Artie, please. Please be all right."
His soul had been sundered with the force of a well-tempered axe. He sobbed, "Oh, my poor Haida."
(Ironically, the Haida had for ages been a scourge from the primeval Queen Charlotte Islands. Slave traders whose Viking-swift raids ranged from California to Asia, they were by no means pitied by less aggresive tribes in British Columbia.)
Artie's lean rugged body reminded Kelly of aspen logs, white with odd blemishes. She wondered if he bruised easily.
Supine with an arm draped across his face, he grieved, unaware of her presence. She placed a small simian hand upon his left nipple. Smooth and flat as river stones his chest galvanized at her touch.
"Kelly. Dear Kelly."
His eyes were whirlpools of uncertainty and they frightened her.
Tugging mightily, she brought him to his feet. After a deep breath he said, "I'm all right."
Once again he stood as her stalwart defender. Her teacher.
Yet he smiled painfully as his spirit hemorraged. Gazing upon her through lidded eyes he appeared to her like dying Lord Jesus in a Russian Icon. Dew glistened in his monkish beard.
She led him by the hand toward his domicile, with its little square Tibetan prayer flags.
*
Kelly sat crosslegged on his futon. "So this where you crash."
He handed her a mug of hot cider. The alcohol caused her to wrinkle her elfin nose. Suddenly she bolted up and began touring his private room, touching mementos and scrutinizing each and every photograph.
"Who is this woman?"
"Someone from long ago. When I worked at the Whitney. We both loved art, and we were quite close."
"What happened?"
"She went back to France."
"Why?"
Kelly could be persistant as a child. With a sigh he surrendered the truth. "For a while we were lovers. Then she grew bored."
*
"Ooh, this you?" Pointing at a snapshot of Schwartzbart.
"Ho ho. Yeah, that's me. I was a Sikh."
"You were sick?"
Did he really wish to explain it all?
About Kirpal Singh. Naam. The Ruhani Satsang. And the day the Master visited New York.
Passing with entourage, Master Singh glanced into the crowd of selects and captured Artie's
eyes in a divine moment. A darshan. It healed mind and soul. Inexplicable.
"What about some coffee?" Artie hoped to redirect Kelly from his past lives.
"Just had cider."
"Oh, that's right."
She picked up the can of Chock-Full-Of-Nuts. "Look, it still shows the World Trade Center."
*
A lone cicada whirred beneath a sylvan moon.
Artie sat on the verandah in a hickory rocking chair. His thoughts drifted aloft like faceless seraphim.
Kelly Alabama sat beside him like a Kickapoo hausfrau. Crosslegged upon the planking.
What more could he ask for?
*
Then God explained to Artie exactly what had happened.
There was this college boy on summer furlough. His job was to climb a tree and saw off its top. After the boughs fell crashing to the forest floor, he surveyed things from his perch.
An axe man below shook his head and muttered, "Damn dreamy chucklehead is gonna get one of us killed."
One day it occured to the dreamy college boy that a fresh clearing resembled the epicenter of that meteor strike in Siberia.
A Pauline conversion took place.
With a Pentacostal flame burning within his skull, he walked off the job. His mission: save the woodlands of Britsh Columbia.
And his name now was Elijah Hazzard.
His vision was true.
The Golden Spruce was everybody's pet plant. A mutant tree. Sacred now as the cow in India. Not to be touched. Thus it would be the perfect sacrifice. Slain upon the altar of environmental conservation. Its death would ignite a firestorm of outrage. The logging industry would finally reap the whirlwind!
Ottersplash. Elijah Hazzard slipped into the cold water and left the boat at anchor. He abided the cold shock to his system. Even in a wetsuit his genitals shrank into absentia. He swam toward the island. Bound in a watertight black plastic sheath was a lightweight chainsaw, strapped to his back like a broadsword.
He cut the tree badly, but did not saw through it.
Mortally wounded, the K'lid K'iyass fell three days later.
conifer hearts 5
An atonishing mantle of scarlet, purple and indigo, all layered like Neapolitan ice cream, fell gently to earth. The Dog Star guided Artie and Kelly homeward. A grassy quadrangle lay illuminated by a sodium lamp. Bungalows for resident students stood in stark bas-relief.
Arriving at the pebbled promenade, Artie asked, "What happened to you, Kelly?"
"Beginning when?" Anger bubbled up like gas from a tar pit. Her Kickapoo eyes were black as a nun's rosary beads. Evidently he had pushed the wrong button.
"At the beginning."
"You want to know why I'm so small. So deformed."
Artie Hoffman. Peace Corps teacher who introduced PVC to fledgling engineers up in Lahore. Tour guide at the Whitney Museum. Humble leader of a Ruhani Satsang. Motorcycle gypsy, once married to a Morman prophetess. Now teacher at Lotus Land special school. Was fixed speechless.
"Of course you do, Mister Artie!" Her fury lanced into his unprotected soul. "My momma kept me from growing up tall and straight."
He offered his hands, palms up, in supplication. She hissed, all knotwood and knifefight. "Hear me, damn you! We lived in this li'l ol' Airstream trailer with iddy-biddy windows. Daddy drove us from one place to another so's he could pick tobacco. I 'member pineywood trailerparks where I came by all kinds of bogus aunts and uncles. Get what I mean? Momma and Daddy drank t'gether and would get stupid as turnips a'watchin' TV. When I was a baby going to hollerin' Momma shut me up with paregoric."
"Tincture of opium. I used to get just a drop with Milk of Magnesia."
"Well, Momma didn't fool around with no magnesia! She wanted to knock me out."
"Stunted your growth."
"Stunted my everything, Mister Artie."
"What about the scars on your back?"
"Foster daddy. Sumbitch Ed Fletcher whipped me with a 'lectrical cord 'cause I told his wife Lucy he diddled me. Got me knocked up, s'what he did. Please, Mister Artie, I don't want to talk anymore."
She gave him a soft hug. Her fury spent.
He watched her go. Feral, silent, becoming one with the night.
Kelly finished the Third Grade, able to read and write.
The school hired her as groundskeeper. Her wages paid for tuition, room and board. Staff people called her "Porcupine" (spikey hair) and "Half Pint" (short stature). But to Artie Hoffman she would forever be Kelly Alabama.
Fondness for her grew in their hearts. Some saw her as a mascot. Others saw her as a unique person. Always the wild child, she continued to mature along tangents that surprised everyone. The night sky with its constellations and the occasional aurora borealis fascinated her, speaking to her and giving her uncommon spirituality.
Artie presented her with a primer on astronomy and it became her new Bible. She learned the name and motion of each star that she could see, and within a year she was reading celestial omens.
One evening as they sat on his verandah she asked, "Mister Artie, how do you explain change in the world?"
Arriving at the pebbled promenade, Artie asked, "What happened to you, Kelly?"
"Beginning when?" Anger bubbled up like gas from a tar pit. Her Kickapoo eyes were black as a nun's rosary beads. Evidently he had pushed the wrong button.
"At the beginning."
"You want to know why I'm so small. So deformed."
Artie Hoffman. Peace Corps teacher who introduced PVC to fledgling engineers up in Lahore. Tour guide at the Whitney Museum. Humble leader of a Ruhani Satsang. Motorcycle gypsy, once married to a Morman prophetess. Now teacher at Lotus Land special school. Was fixed speechless.
"Of course you do, Mister Artie!" Her fury lanced into his unprotected soul. "My momma kept me from growing up tall and straight."
He offered his hands, palms up, in supplication. She hissed, all knotwood and knifefight. "Hear me, damn you! We lived in this li'l ol' Airstream trailer with iddy-biddy windows. Daddy drove us from one place to another so's he could pick tobacco. I 'member pineywood trailerparks where I came by all kinds of bogus aunts and uncles. Get what I mean? Momma and Daddy drank t'gether and would get stupid as turnips a'watchin' TV. When I was a baby going to hollerin' Momma shut me up with paregoric."
"Tincture of opium. I used to get just a drop with Milk of Magnesia."
"Well, Momma didn't fool around with no magnesia! She wanted to knock me out."
"Stunted your growth."
"Stunted my everything, Mister Artie."
"What about the scars on your back?"
"Foster daddy. Sumbitch Ed Fletcher whipped me with a 'lectrical cord 'cause I told his wife Lucy he diddled me. Got me knocked up, s'what he did. Please, Mister Artie, I don't want to talk anymore."
She gave him a soft hug. Her fury spent.
He watched her go. Feral, silent, becoming one with the night.
Kelly finished the Third Grade, able to read and write.
The school hired her as groundskeeper. Her wages paid for tuition, room and board. Staff people called her "Porcupine" (spikey hair) and "Half Pint" (short stature). But to Artie Hoffman she would forever be Kelly Alabama.
Fondness for her grew in their hearts. Some saw her as a mascot. Others saw her as a unique person. Always the wild child, she continued to mature along tangents that surprised everyone. The night sky with its constellations and the occasional aurora borealis fascinated her, speaking to her and giving her uncommon spirituality.
Artie presented her with a primer on astronomy and it became her new Bible. She learned the name and motion of each star that she could see, and within a year she was reading celestial omens.
One evening as they sat on his verandah she asked, "Mister Artie, how do you explain change in the world?"
conifer hearts 4
What could he find in the footlocker? Artie wanted to share something with his newest Third-grader. But what?
There were books. Two his father had given him. Artie was about to depart for India and his father thought they would be somehow instructive as well as entertaining. Talbot Mundy's "King of the Khyber Rifles" and Louis Bromfield's "The Rains Came." Zev Hoffman had enjoyed them long ago. Maybe his son would also.
Artie pictured his father reading by lamplight after closing the tailor shop. Escaping into fabled lands far, far away. Transported from the sooty brownstone life in the Lower East Side.
"Thanks, Pop."
He never read them.
The footlocker contained a trove of wisdom books. Rumi and Kabir. The Vedas and Bhagavad Gita. D.T. Zuzuki on Zen and an odd little work by Paul Reps, "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones." There was Momma Hoffman's Tanakh.
Eureka!
There was his boyhood Duncan championship yo-yo, its edges chafed down to bare wood from "walking the dog." He stuffed it into his jeans, feeling a parable taking bloom in his head.
*
He found her practicing his Tai Chi on the downy turf of the Emerald Lea. Sleeves of her oversized Hawaiian shirt flapped like the wings of a ruptured box-kite. Breasts jiggled within the loose tube top. The elasticity of her gym shorts had been laundered to death. They would not stay up.
That was how he saw the scars.
Cords of raised white flesh stretched across her lower back. Artie was certain she had been flogged.
As in Cat O' Nine Tails.
God damn Alabama!
"Namaste, Kelly."
"Mister Artie!" She paused in her dance of winds. "How'm I doing?"
"How do you think you are doing?"
"Not so good."
"It may be that you have not found your true center."
"Where is it?"
He placed the palm of his hand upon her belly. The node of her navel found his life line. He replied, "Somewhere within you."
Coquettishly: "I favor a man with a slow dry hand."
Immediately he thought, I'll reserve the yo-yo for someone else.
*
In the late afternoon of the same day he sat with her beneath a Douglas fir. He had spread a bluebonnet tablecloth, and there were books and a bottle of Boone's Farm. Two silhouettes wrapped in the sun's ochre glow, they listened in silence to the gurgling of a rill that nosed down from the forest.
And he asked her if she believed in the enchantment of things.
After a long time she replied, "Sometimes things touch me in the spirit."
"Such as?"
"Oh, beautiful things. Like all this." She gestured with an all-encompassing wave of the hand.
"I feel the same way, Kelly."
In a raspy low voice she said, "Sometimes things afflict me in the spirit as well. Demons in the dark. When I'm not sure of things."
"Do you have medicine?"
"I have Lord Jesus."
There were books. Two his father had given him. Artie was about to depart for India and his father thought they would be somehow instructive as well as entertaining. Talbot Mundy's "King of the Khyber Rifles" and Louis Bromfield's "The Rains Came." Zev Hoffman had enjoyed them long ago. Maybe his son would also.
Artie pictured his father reading by lamplight after closing the tailor shop. Escaping into fabled lands far, far away. Transported from the sooty brownstone life in the Lower East Side.
"Thanks, Pop."
He never read them.
The footlocker contained a trove of wisdom books. Rumi and Kabir. The Vedas and Bhagavad Gita. D.T. Zuzuki on Zen and an odd little work by Paul Reps, "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones." There was Momma Hoffman's Tanakh.
Eureka!
There was his boyhood Duncan championship yo-yo, its edges chafed down to bare wood from "walking the dog." He stuffed it into his jeans, feeling a parable taking bloom in his head.
*
He found her practicing his Tai Chi on the downy turf of the Emerald Lea. Sleeves of her oversized Hawaiian shirt flapped like the wings of a ruptured box-kite. Breasts jiggled within the loose tube top. The elasticity of her gym shorts had been laundered to death. They would not stay up.
That was how he saw the scars.
Cords of raised white flesh stretched across her lower back. Artie was certain she had been flogged.
As in Cat O' Nine Tails.
God damn Alabama!
"Namaste, Kelly."
"Mister Artie!" She paused in her dance of winds. "How'm I doing?"
"How do you think you are doing?"
"Not so good."
"It may be that you have not found your true center."
"Where is it?"
He placed the palm of his hand upon her belly. The node of her navel found his life line. He replied, "Somewhere within you."
Coquettishly: "I favor a man with a slow dry hand."
Immediately he thought, I'll reserve the yo-yo for someone else.
*
In the late afternoon of the same day he sat with her beneath a Douglas fir. He had spread a bluebonnet tablecloth, and there were books and a bottle of Boone's Farm. Two silhouettes wrapped in the sun's ochre glow, they listened in silence to the gurgling of a rill that nosed down from the forest.
And he asked her if she believed in the enchantment of things.
After a long time she replied, "Sometimes things touch me in the spirit."
"Such as?"
"Oh, beautiful things. Like all this." She gestured with an all-encompassing wave of the hand.
"I feel the same way, Kelly."
In a raspy low voice she said, "Sometimes things afflict me in the spirit as well. Demons in the dark. When I'm not sure of things."
"Do you have medicine?"
"I have Lord Jesus."
Sunday, April 17, 2011
conifer hearts 3
Chock-Full-Of-Nuts could be either the First Circle of Hell or the Seventh Heaven depending upon your personal atomic clock. For Artie Hoffman it was home turf. He could relax and expand there. A gum-chewing chickadee cleared away his mess and poured him a fresh cup of that most excellent coffee. A Spartan breakfast of one egg over easy atop whole wheat toast would fuel him for most of the day.
Eyeing his sheaf of job applications, the waitress chummied up a bit. "Good luck wid doze, Soljah."
Hair shorn in the fashion of a Zen monk and his beard shaven so close his chin shone like porcelain, he could very well be mistaken for a GI. "Thanks. I'm looking to get on with the Whitney."
"Should be a snap fah you, Handsome."
He watched her go. Her behind had rhumba to it.
A Goya showing was scheduled for the Whitney. So with his resume he had included an early college paper on "Saturn Devours Children." In it he called to mind seeing a homeless man gobbling a bean burrito scrounged from a dumpster late one night. Under the glare of a streetlamp the man's flesh shared hue and color of a freshly slopped pig sty.
*
It was one of those pricy lithographs often purchased by a scholar living on a small pension in the East Village. Something to be gazed at in quiet awe, it possessed a cruel frisson. Colliding flesh tones. Almost homoerotic, Artie thought. It showed an elderly man, robust and solidly built, stripped to his loins, being nailed to a cross.
A mute frame of acacia wood enhanced the lithograph and its brute force. Just imagine seeing the original, Artie thought. Buying this article was out of the question. His funds for discretionary spending were depleted. Viewing it was one of the several things that uplifted him during his lunch hour.
"Enjoy it while you can, young man," the shopkeeper advised. "A buyer came in yesterday and put down a retainer."
"Some musty old curmudgeon on fixed income from NYU, I bet."
"Wrong. An investment banker," the shopkeeper clucked.
"Oh."
Artie knew he would miss seeing it tremendously. "The Crucifixion of Saint Peter" by Michelangelo Buonarrori.
*
Ten minutes remained of his lunch hour.
"I've got to run."
"Wait. Here she comes." The shopkeeper was wearing a green cellophane visor.
"Who?"
"This French dame. Gorgeous. Kind of sullen, no, pouty."
"Huh?"
"Yeah, walked in and asked me how much for the Feininger print I just wrapped."
"Halle Cathedral."
"Paid me in Traveler's Cheques."
Artie gasped. She could have walked off a movie set.
Tall with slender legs in clingy denim jeans, faded to salty azure. White longsleeved business shirt with a high crisp collar. Black jodhpur boots. Auburn hair woven into a thick braid. Long narrow nose, the kind Artie associated with Verscingetorix, chisled between wide-set gray eyes. High cheeks, and flawless skin in radient blush, possibly from recent sex.
She passed by him, giving him the briefest of nods.
"Good day," she said to Green Shade. "Regrettably I must ask a large favor of you."
"Hold it. I've seen this a million times. You don't want the item but you want your money back. Now whadda you take me for, Lady?"
"Oh, you are mistaken. Allow me to explain."
Green Shade gestured. "Go ahead. I won't interrupt."
Artie pretended to examine several things in the store while closely listening to her dulcet voice. He learned that her name was Solange and that her friend in New York was Kit Pico.
She had purchased "Halle Cathedral" as a surprise gift.
Kit Pico already possessed such a lithograph. Had had it since college.
"Well, Lady," Green Shade grinned. "You're in luck. I can swap you with a Feininger's 'Gaborndorf 2.' How's that?"
"Oh, merci, Monsieur!" she gushed. The jiggle within her two-button decolletage did not go unnoticed.
Artie's lunch hour expired.
Eyeing his sheaf of job applications, the waitress chummied up a bit. "Good luck wid doze, Soljah."
Hair shorn in the fashion of a Zen monk and his beard shaven so close his chin shone like porcelain, he could very well be mistaken for a GI. "Thanks. I'm looking to get on with the Whitney."
"Should be a snap fah you, Handsome."
He watched her go. Her behind had rhumba to it.
A Goya showing was scheduled for the Whitney. So with his resume he had included an early college paper on "Saturn Devours Children." In it he called to mind seeing a homeless man gobbling a bean burrito scrounged from a dumpster late one night. Under the glare of a streetlamp the man's flesh shared hue and color of a freshly slopped pig sty.
*
It was one of those pricy lithographs often purchased by a scholar living on a small pension in the East Village. Something to be gazed at in quiet awe, it possessed a cruel frisson. Colliding flesh tones. Almost homoerotic, Artie thought. It showed an elderly man, robust and solidly built, stripped to his loins, being nailed to a cross.
A mute frame of acacia wood enhanced the lithograph and its brute force. Just imagine seeing the original, Artie thought. Buying this article was out of the question. His funds for discretionary spending were depleted. Viewing it was one of the several things that uplifted him during his lunch hour.
"Enjoy it while you can, young man," the shopkeeper advised. "A buyer came in yesterday and put down a retainer."
"Some musty old curmudgeon on fixed income from NYU, I bet."
"Wrong. An investment banker," the shopkeeper clucked.
"Oh."
Artie knew he would miss seeing it tremendously. "The Crucifixion of Saint Peter" by Michelangelo Buonarrori.
*
Ten minutes remained of his lunch hour.
"I've got to run."
"Wait. Here she comes." The shopkeeper was wearing a green cellophane visor.
"Who?"
"This French dame. Gorgeous. Kind of sullen, no, pouty."
"Huh?"
"Yeah, walked in and asked me how much for the Feininger print I just wrapped."
"Halle Cathedral."
"Paid me in Traveler's Cheques."
Artie gasped. She could have walked off a movie set.
Tall with slender legs in clingy denim jeans, faded to salty azure. White longsleeved business shirt with a high crisp collar. Black jodhpur boots. Auburn hair woven into a thick braid. Long narrow nose, the kind Artie associated with Verscingetorix, chisled between wide-set gray eyes. High cheeks, and flawless skin in radient blush, possibly from recent sex.
She passed by him, giving him the briefest of nods.
"Good day," she said to Green Shade. "Regrettably I must ask a large favor of you."
"Hold it. I've seen this a million times. You don't want the item but you want your money back. Now whadda you take me for, Lady?"
"Oh, you are mistaken. Allow me to explain."
Green Shade gestured. "Go ahead. I won't interrupt."
Artie pretended to examine several things in the store while closely listening to her dulcet voice. He learned that her name was Solange and that her friend in New York was Kit Pico.
She had purchased "Halle Cathedral" as a surprise gift.
Kit Pico already possessed such a lithograph. Had had it since college.
"Well, Lady," Green Shade grinned. "You're in luck. I can swap you with a Feininger's 'Gaborndorf 2.' How's that?"
"Oh, merci, Monsieur!" she gushed. The jiggle within her two-button decolletage did not go unnoticed.
Artie's lunch hour expired.
conifer hearts 2
The artifacts of his life were collected in a footlocker. Catalogues from the Omega Institute and Esalen. Issues of Ramparts magazine. A maintenance manual for the Indian motorcycle. Political buttons for Eugene and Bobby. A scrolled poster from the New York Arthur Murray studio where he had taught ballroom dancing.
Even some ticket stubs from Hindi movies. Snapshots filled a shoebox, most of them taken by Sunil "Sonny" Patel with his trusty Instamatic. One showed the chubby hotelier laughing at Artie's Nehru jacket. Sonny's crabby wife steadfastly believed all Peace Corps people were CIA spies. Artie and his friends called their chintzy abode the Hostel of Mango Pickle.
Three months In-Country and he was wearing a dohti.
*
What a sight years later he had been, jouncing on his Huffy ten-speed along the Willamette Bikeway in a white gauze dohti. His magnificent Sikh beard bifurtaing in the slipstream. Folks pulled over to watch him whiz past. He was mad with joy.
"Who was that? Rasputin?"
"Maybe Gurdjieff."
Sweet air and wildflowers, the river below, glowing like copper in the slanting rays of the sun. He craved it all. His ecstacy was boundless. He became known as Schwartzbart. In time his dohti wore thin, then fell away into pure essence.
While his neighbors cultivated marijuana in lean-to greenhouses, he tended a garden of snow peas, coriander, cumin, fenugreek, peppers and chilies, all to benefit his India cuisine. In town he bought imported garam masala and mango pickle.
Once he hosted a feast, to the delight of his stoner friends. They sated their munchies with chickpea chipatis and other fingerfood. All was going splendidly well until he decided to douse everybody with Easter Egg dye. It happened to be Holi.
Earth Mamas shrieked and freaked.
A fellow who looked like Mangus Colorado with John Lennon wire-rims, said, "You're one crazy dude, Artie. How 'bout you coming with us over to Mount Shasta."
"Be delighted, man. I've heard it's beautiful."
"Morn' that. You can hear God speak."
"I don't understand."
"Yeah, man. His voice comes up from under the ground."
"Sounds to me like some ergot got into your granola."
*
One of the Mamas had dusted the van with spraypaint pastels and then fashioned a mural in primary colors. Not terribly original. It was a Zeitgeist sort of thing. The Who had their Magic Bus. Ken Kesey had his Pranksters bus. Everybody was Wavy Gravy. However, this Mama was so ate up with R. Crumb that she felt compelled to channel the guru of underground comics.
Her Old Man fired up a Mister Zig-Zag and watched her work. He was especially keen on watching her buttocks grow taut within the confines of her white overalls as she stretched high above her head.
"Y'know, Cherry Blossom. I'd like to see you do a whole wall full o'stuff."
"Oh, like Diego Rivera?"
His face was blank. So she decided it need a dab of color.
*
They were loading for the trip to Mount Shasta when Artie jangled up on his bike.
"Whassup, Dude?"
"I'm afraid I can't go. Just got a telegram. My Pop died yesterday. Gotta go to New York and be with Momma."
"Bummer. No, really. I'm sorry to hear that."
"Put a word in for me to the Ascended Masters."
"Wilco."
Even some ticket stubs from Hindi movies. Snapshots filled a shoebox, most of them taken by Sunil "Sonny" Patel with his trusty Instamatic. One showed the chubby hotelier laughing at Artie's Nehru jacket. Sonny's crabby wife steadfastly believed all Peace Corps people were CIA spies. Artie and his friends called their chintzy abode the Hostel of Mango Pickle.
Three months In-Country and he was wearing a dohti.
*
What a sight years later he had been, jouncing on his Huffy ten-speed along the Willamette Bikeway in a white gauze dohti. His magnificent Sikh beard bifurtaing in the slipstream. Folks pulled over to watch him whiz past. He was mad with joy.
"Who was that? Rasputin?"
"Maybe Gurdjieff."
Sweet air and wildflowers, the river below, glowing like copper in the slanting rays of the sun. He craved it all. His ecstacy was boundless. He became known as Schwartzbart. In time his dohti wore thin, then fell away into pure essence.
While his neighbors cultivated marijuana in lean-to greenhouses, he tended a garden of snow peas, coriander, cumin, fenugreek, peppers and chilies, all to benefit his India cuisine. In town he bought imported garam masala and mango pickle.
Once he hosted a feast, to the delight of his stoner friends. They sated their munchies with chickpea chipatis and other fingerfood. All was going splendidly well until he decided to douse everybody with Easter Egg dye. It happened to be Holi.
Earth Mamas shrieked and freaked.
A fellow who looked like Mangus Colorado with John Lennon wire-rims, said, "You're one crazy dude, Artie. How 'bout you coming with us over to Mount Shasta."
"Be delighted, man. I've heard it's beautiful."
"Morn' that. You can hear God speak."
"I don't understand."
"Yeah, man. His voice comes up from under the ground."
"Sounds to me like some ergot got into your granola."
*
One of the Mamas had dusted the van with spraypaint pastels and then fashioned a mural in primary colors. Not terribly original. It was a Zeitgeist sort of thing. The Who had their Magic Bus. Ken Kesey had his Pranksters bus. Everybody was Wavy Gravy. However, this Mama was so ate up with R. Crumb that she felt compelled to channel the guru of underground comics.
Her Old Man fired up a Mister Zig-Zag and watched her work. He was especially keen on watching her buttocks grow taut within the confines of her white overalls as she stretched high above her head.
"Y'know, Cherry Blossom. I'd like to see you do a whole wall full o'stuff."
"Oh, like Diego Rivera?"
His face was blank. So she decided it need a dab of color.
*
They were loading for the trip to Mount Shasta when Artie jangled up on his bike.
"Whassup, Dude?"
"I'm afraid I can't go. Just got a telegram. My Pop died yesterday. Gotta go to New York and be with Momma."
"Bummer. No, really. I'm sorry to hear that."
"Put a word in for me to the Ascended Masters."
"Wilco."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)