Twelve The atlanta airport is warm... Thirteen There's a cure in sight-soul unease-suspension wires-wink and smile-windblown newspapers-advert scrapes-sardines in a kipper snack tin-abandoned train station-wind rips dirt off the road-sagebrush where it belongs-the songs of Solomon-tumbling along the melody lines-voice echoing-everyone walks with unshakable self-confidence-pretend to be unafraid-This isn't you-This isn't me-what do you talk about when you talk about love- I regret leaving the minute I get out of the Holland tunnel. But I knew I would. I regret coming. But I knew I would. I regret that I regret. But I know that I will. I stop for gas on the Jersey turnpike and almost turn around. I can't decide what would make me a bigger fool, trying to correct the mistake or trying to live with it-or drinking heavily and ignoring the question altogether? I drive the interstate straight through to Athens. I get to the cottage in the early hours of morning. I go to bed and don't get out of it for a week. I try to maintain things with Maya; I call her all the time. I smoke cigarettes and stare at the ceiling for days on end. I cry. I punch the concrete wall. I agonize over the poetry of it all. I am the apologist. I write a long letter to April explaining how bad I feel about stealing her money, but half way through I notice that its more about how much I enjoy having her money. I throw the letter in the trash. I am positive impotent. After a few weeks, Maya stops returning my calls. Maya is gone. The Mayan priest and his demonic escorts hold court daily in my bedroom. He has taught me how to master pain. He tells me that mastering pain puts you next to the gods. The snarling creature is always outside the door. I am scared to leave the house. I go out for food and nothing else. Waves of nausea overwhelm me whenever I think of Maya. The priest says this will pass. He tells me that everything will pass. But I knew that it would. It's the middle of the afternoon and I haven't gotten out of bed. Torturous visions of Maya making love to other people are crackling through my head like static on an AM radio. Jimmy knocks at the door and I reluctantly let him in. I haven't seen anyone since I got back. I have been hiding out. I tell him the whole story and make him swear to never repeat it. He's losing his job, and overall seems to be about as depressed as I am. He insists that we go out and get a drink. I reluctantly accompany him to Five and Ten. After a couple shots of whisky and a few beers, the priest is nothing but an incoherent mumble and the repulsive visions of Maya taper off. I drink more. I don't stop. Eventually Jimmy heads home and I walk downtown. I end up passing out in the alley behind the Flicker Bar. Morning finds me covered in garbage and smelling like a dead fish. I catch the bus home to take a shower. The boy is selling chiclets in the living room; the priest is siting on the couch. Giant eels circle around his feet. The priest has constructed a giant labyrinth around the couch, extending out past the coffee table. Ten foot long serpentine beasts circle through the labyrinth, gnashing their teeth and hissing at my feet. I quit the house for Five and Ten. Several nights in a row I wake up in the midst of plastic garbage bags. I regret the intense happiness I feel. Alternately I feel like a sponge wrung dry, discarded like yesterdays newspapers. I love the pain. Weeks turn to a month. Just like they always do. I feel nothing. But. Yes. One day the eels get loose and in an effort to destroy them I burn everything I own in the fire ring. The billowing black smoke draws Jimmy over. He stops short in the driveway and stands back, watching me mutter and curse as I drag everything out of the house and into the fire. I burn my books, my furniture, my heirlooms, my artwork, and most of my clothes. Jimmy helps me get the mattress in the fire and then he heads off to buy me some alcohol. We sit around the rest of the afternoon drinking and smashing the bottles against the living room wall. Then we start in on the plates, then the glasses, then light bulbs, then clay pots. We wrap towels around our hands and punch out the windows. There is pile of glass several inches deep and several feet wide, extending out from the wall. Dean would have loved it. At the end of the night, just before he leaves, Jimmy mentions that he is concerned about my mental health. I assure him that I share his concern. He offers me the use of a cabin that his family owns. He says it's situated on a hill overlooking the surrounding area, he says you can see downtown glowing at night. I vacate the cottage the next morning. Jimmy gives me a map and a key. I am going deeper into retreat. I stop at the liquor store and stock up. I buy fifteen bottles of scotch, a case of canned beans, five dozen eggs, six pounds of bacon, and ten cartoons of cigarettes. I ask for polar bear fat, but the pimple-faced clerk says they don't have any. The cabin is quiet and peaceful; there is no stereo, no phone, no mail, no running water. It's a single room with a sliding glass door in the back. There is a kerosene stove, an icebox, and a pump handled sink against one wall. To the side there is a dilapidated old couch and a tiny forty-watt lamp. Jimmy brings out a table and few chairs. Everything is coated with in a layer of dust and smells of mildew. In the cupboard above the sink I find a jar of moldy, fermented fruit and a key to the outhouse down the road. I sit around drinking, smoking and wallowing in self-effacing pity. I have a nervous tick in my leg that makes it bounce incessantly, but the priest and his host of fiendish consorts can no longer find me. I am not a pretty sight, but at least no one is watching. The cabin is on an outcropping overlooking the hills. The leaves still cling to the trees, the hills are a riot of color. Everything is hanging on to some slender thread of life, shuddering at thought of deep winter chill. Everything except for one charred, lightening struck, tree about two hundred yards down the hill. Its craggy blackened remains disrupt the otherwise pastoral scene. The tree is my best friend. Everyday I sit on the back porch, drinking scotch and staring out vacantly at the tree. Trying to make it mean something. A burnt charred tree. Lightening, careless matches, smokey the bear ads... But. It looks like lightening. As hot as the core of the sun. I can do this forever. Jimmy and Ulric come out to visit me and bring provisions. I give them wrinkled twenties stained with manicured fingerprints and Lubriderm. Today Ulric tells me that his girlfriend has left him. He is broken up over it, but he says he is too busy to deal with it. I'm happy for him. "Ya I can't really say I miss her. I have more time, I don't have to call anyone when I show turns into a late night party or something you know." "Oh I know." I pass him the bottle and we drink in silence. We drink like prospectors, like miners, like forty-niners. We drink like breaded men. We drink the way whisky was meant to be drunk. We are so ridiculously male. "Next time you come will you bring me some dip? Or chewing tobacco? Or something really manly-Drum? Is that all you want for Christmas?" "Shit Christmas?" "day after tomorrow" "Jimmy, damnit. Why haven't you mentioned this?" Jimmy shrugs. "You're not religious." "You're right. Well then yes bring me some dip, some snuff, some chaw, some Drum and another case of whiskey and I'll give you double what its worth and we'll consider that a holiday exchange." "Sounds good." Ulric laughs. "We thought maybe we'd come out for new years..." Jimmy looks at me as if waiting for me to okay this idea. "Its your house man. I'm just stealing it." They make plans. I hear Chloe's name mentioned. But I keep thinking about a book I read years ago, Things Fall Apart, by somebody or other. In it thing fall apart. But I had expected that when I bought it. A new year is dawning. We barbecue chicken and talk about old times. I enjoy the nostalgic sense of everything ending; it's a step up over sardonic heartache and confusion. Over dinner, Ulric tells us he is moving to Florida to do some recording. His band is under contract to produce their second album by the end of next summer. Jimmy is moving to Boston to go to law school, and out of nowhere, Chloe announces she's going to Europe in March. I tell them all about Dean and Paris. I tell Chloe to look him up. It is the end of the gang. I am to be the sole straggler. It is quite a feast they bring out, chicken, greens, and corn on the cob, a real southern meal. In the center of the table is an enormous pile of well-gnawed bones with little chunks of cartilage and caked nuggets of barbecue sauce clinging to ends. Jimmy and Chloe are polishing off the last two pieces of chicken. Ulric is gnawing feverishly at a nearly naked corncob. I'm sucking on the ice from my empty glass. You wouldn't have even known it was New Year's, except for the box of illegal fireworks that Ulric brought back from a trip to South Carolina. Jimmy leans back in his chair and works his gums over with a toothpick. Chloe takes some plates and walks back inside the house. I watch her dress swirl about her knees until she disappears through the sliding glass door. They all want to cheer me up and they all have their own little patented methods for it. Ulric favors humor, Jimmy the big picture, and Chloe just tries to listen. "Well, I know it does no good to say it," Jimmy shrugs, "but I have to anyway... there's plenty more of them out there." Jimmy has said very little else since I returned. He seems to believe that I need a little mantra to occupy my mind. Ulric leans over and lightly smacks him in the back of the head. "Oh brilliant man, that really helps...." Ulric takes a big gulp of his drink and set his glass down hard with a clattering noise. "Oh Jesus I'm sorry, I forgot about the glass table," he smiles sheepishly. "I think the alcohol is a little ahead of the food right now." It's a beautiful Georgia evening, unseasonably warm, probably in the fifties. We all have on light jackets, but no one's cold. We're on the back deck, overlooking the descending hills which, after three or four miles, surrender to the urban sprawl of Athens. With the binoculars Jimmy brought out you can see the two tall buildings of Athens poking out of the treetops. Jimmy is clearing the scattered remnants of chicken off the table; Ulric and I smoke. Ulric stands up and goes over to the box of fireworks. He rummages around, talking to me in the process. "You can come down to Florida with me when I move, stay a while if you like. I got some friends I could introduce you to... maybe set something up for you. I could get you work that's for sure. Keep you busy." He smiles at me and pulls out an enormous three-foot long skyrocket. I shrug and say maybe. Chloe comes back outside and sits down next to me. She puts her hand on my knee. It feels heavy and foreign, but I stop bouncing my leg. Ulric tosses the rocket back in the box, picks up some sparklers and sits back down at the table. He lights one of sparklers and twirls it around making phosphorescent figure 8's in the air. His expression is serene. Chloe goes inside to help Jimmy. Shortly after, Jimmy comes outside again and sits down. There is a smear of lipstick on his cheek and Ulric throws a napkin at his face. Jimmy blushes and wipes it off. The sparkler fizzles out and Ulric sets the burnt stick on the table. He coughs and mutters something to himself. He fumbles in his pocket for another smoke. Chloe brings out a fresh round of drinks. "I baked a pie," she says, "it'll be warm in a few minutes." She pulls her chair over and sits down between Jimmy and I. "What I'd really like to know...." Ulric leans back in his chair and takes a long drag off his cigarette before continuing. "What I'd really like to know," he begins again, "is what happens to all this, well, call it 'love,' that I still have trapped in my heart? I can't express it, can't get it out, but eventually it goes away... where does it go?" "Wilhelm Reich said it builds up tension and eventually leads to cancer." I chuckle and reach over the table and lift a cigarette out of Ulric's pack. "That's great Sil, that's exactly what I wanted to hear." Ulric coughs as he exhales "Well if it makes you feel any better Ulric, none of his colleagues believed him." I say. "He died disgraced and in seclusion." I light my cigarette and then a sparkler. "Of cancer?" Ulric smiles at me. "I don't know." "But you know what I mean, I mean, after a little while its not the person you cry for feel bad about, it's the fact that you don't really care about the person that bothers you- right? I mean getting over someone is easy, getting over the fact that you got over them is the hard part" No one says anything. Chloe straightens her dress over her crossed legs. I hand her the sparkler. She waves it about like a paintbrush, filling the air with glittering designs. Jimmy narrows his brows and eyes us all like a scolding mother. He sets the binoculars on the table and I snag them. I watch Ulric's mouth through the binoculars as he smokes, his lips are chapped and they crack revealing enormous fissures when he smiles. "What the hell are you looking at Sil?" "Nothing. You need some chapstick." I was thinking about something Maya had said on the phone one night. I'll always love you, you always be in my life. I want to be the one you call when your old and you pull the winning hand in bridge.... "You okay Sil?" Chloe has an anxious look on her face. I nod, take a deep breath and try to laugh. I put the binoculars back up to my face to hide the excess of fluid that suddenly appears in my eyes. Downtown I can see the leafy tops of the birches and elms. I imagine the clamoring of already drunk crowds moving from bar to bar shouting happy new year, but there is nothing, just trees listing in the gentle wind. "This is stupid," Ulric says. "Let's talk about something else," Chloe sits up and crosses her legs the other way in her chair. The sparkler burns down in her idle hand. Her attention has shifted to the other hand, which is lightly stroking Jimmy's head. Ulric slouches back in his chair and crosses his arms over his stomach. "I mean how do you do that? Just shut yourself down, stop on an emotional dime? Christ I still love girls I dated for two weeks in high school... but I don't care about them" He looks at me. "I still love women I saw on the street and never even spoke to." I am thinking of one I had seen at the bar last month or has it been longer? "Oh god, that's the purest kind of love there is," Ulric sits up excited. "That look... you're walking down the street in a crowd of people, not paying any attention to them. Then suddenly you meet eyes with some girl just by chance, pure accident, but you both know there is some connection in the eyes." He stares off at the hillside as he speaks. "A look, that's all it takes, and you recognize something in each other in that instant." "You mean love at first sight?" Chloe asks. "Well, I don't know about love," Ulric says. "I think what Ulric means is intimacy at first sight." They all look at me. "You don't act on it because of fear, because intimacy and strangers don't mix." My voice sounds tired to me. "You think you recognize something in them, and they in you, but you don't want to risk finding out. You don't know if they can be trusted or not. You feel vulnerable. You give up before you even start. Or at least I do, but it's not even that conscious, you just keep walking." "Okay, now even I'm getting depressed," Chloe says. "How about the weather? It's a beautiful day...? The government...?" We all stare at her. No one says a word. She get up to get the pie. The sun is an orange garnish on the edge of the horizon. Down the hill the lightening struck stump catches the last reddening glow. Jimmy and Ulric are both looking out at the hillside. Neither of them speaks; I can hear the clattering of the glass pie pan against the stove inside, the noise drifts out the door and crackles sharply in the stillness of the evening. Up the hill, a Poorwill tests it's song for the approaching night. Ulric rattles the ice at the bottom of his glass and throws his head back with it. He chews it loudly with his mouth open. "You know why I left?" I say to no in particular. "The crowning achievement of the human experience is getting to share those little moments with each other, the minute by minute miracle. That's the only thing that makes us human; otherwise we're no different than any other creature. We have time and time allows us memory and perspective, which allow us love, but I left because it's more powerful in hindsight. I get nostalgic for the present. Once I realize that I have to step back and enjoy it." I light a fresh cigarette and take a long swig of scotch. I pitch the empty bottle into the trees. I see Maya standing by the window in that abominable apartment. She is smoking a cigarette, smiling at me. I keep her there in my memory, but right now I'm nostalgic for the memory of her, not her. Chloe brings out more drinks. They are trying to keep me away from the bottles damn them. She goes back in and brings out four slices of warm apple pie with ice cream slowly melting on top of them. I take a couple bites, but my stomach turns at the sweetness. They devour theirs in silence. I rearrange mine, pushing it around like a child does with peas. After waiting a few minutes, so as not be rude, I stand up. "I'm going for a walk. I'll be back in little while," I say. "Are you okay?" Ulric asks. "I'm fine. I just need a walk." I say. I hear them discussing me in whispers as I walk down the lawn and out the gate-nostalgic fools. There is a faint trail from the gate leading down the hill. It's rough going outside the yard; the hillside is choked with dogwood trees and other spindly, naked shrubs. It takes me ten minutes to get to the charred tree. I run my hands over the burnt wood, smearing the dusty charcoal around on my palms. I sit down leaning my back against the tree. The sun is gone now, a blue-gray twilight is settling in over the hills. The moon is to my back, but in front down, near the horizon stars are becoming visible. The spaces between the stars aren't dark. It's a void, but it's pure white light, that's where life started, in the nothingness. We live in the spaces in between. I hear them laughing up the hill. I hear some distant pops and then one enormous bang, which jars me enough to look up and see the last twinkling sapphire remnants of the big skyrocket fading out above me. Little fragments of ash begin showering down toward me. I think of the tree, and the flashing cataclysm that tore it apart and set it on fire. I wonder what it looked like, the pure white light? Afterwards there is only empty silence and the gentle snowing of ashes. The world gives birth behind our eyes, not before them. Years ago Maya was staring up at the night sky. She propped herself up and kissed me. We made love on the roof... poetically nostalgic at the time. The fireworks show downtown commences just as the last flakes of ash settle down around me. Showers of light burst up, temporarily outshining the stars and then gradually fading to darkness, only for another brilliant explosion to take its place. As I stand up to go back, I notice a small shoot of growth springing up from between the burnt roots. I run my fingers along the ground, circling the space around it, in between the roots. The light from the fireworks fades to blackness again. I turn up the slope, walking back toward the house. Fireworks fill the sky behind me, illuminating the path with flickering bursts of light. I skirt around the house and go in the front door. I take a few long draws off a bottle of Wild Turkey. They are all still sitting at the table smoking and talking. They look beautiful, perfect, just the way I want to be, living in the spaces in between the temporal world. They are in the infinitude of my imagination, next to which my existence feels flat and tasteless as a junkyard tire, cracked and torn in the sun. It smacks you in the face when you perceive something in a moment that you know is not tangibly present and yet, it's there. A moment that you know will one day be a great memory, the fluid transmission of emotion across time. The hurricane of the unconscious whirls up to the surface for moment, imagination leaks into the real world, some interaction of the personal with the infinite, a stabbing at perfection transcends the ordinary moment. The world gives birth before our eyes and takes us spinning down reveries and private waterslides of imagination through the twisting spiral corkscrew of delirium. You know it in the present, nostalgia for now. Eventually they notice me and insist that I come with them downtown. I don't really want to, but I consent because they are still here and already I miss them. At the bar it's scotch on the rocks followed by neat bourbon. Then I have a shot or two of whiskey and start in on the beers. The clink of pool balls, conversations of foreigner and gradually we are assimilated. Later I ditch the gang and wander down toward the old house that Dean and his sister and I used to live in when we first arrived two years ago. Along the way, walking down Polaski, I cross over the railroad tracks. Out of nowhere I feel the urge to climb up on the cars. The steel ladder is cold as ice, and my fingers cramp before I get to the top. I balance on the metal grating, teetering drunkenly on the roof of the boxcar. The world is spinning and I decide it's best to sit down. The roof of the car is cold, so I slide back a little hatch and look inside. The darkness is impenetrable. I extend down a hand. I can't feel anything. I decide to climb in, slowing lowering myself down until my feet touch something about waist deep. I bend down and grab a handful of the unknown substance and pull it out in the moonlight-soybeans. I sit down in the darkness of the boxcar with the intention of having a rest before I walk on. I settle back, shifting about, making a seat for myself in the soybeans. I light a cigarette and look around the car; raw soybeans are everywhere around me. Maya suddenly feels farther away. She is living in her universe and I am here in mine. My illusions of her waiting for me are crushed beneath me as I sink into the soybeans. I stare up out of the hatch at the stars, lying flat on my back. The stars never judge one way or the other. They see no right or wrong, only what is happening. Everything else is an illusion of the human mind. The stars get to see now and forever. Everything is just as it should be. The soybeans absorb me and take me into their presence as the father greets the son. You got to get behind the mule every morning and plow. The night sky fades into dream.