The sun sets over the highway and forms abstract
patterns as the shadows get all protracted by the mountains, cacti caught in
something stark, a fox darts across three lanes of traffic and vanishes into
some low brush. To one side of the road the ocean roars and it cries in
desolation and it is alone. Out on it somewhere a boat is tossed by waves and
over the side a young sailor vomits, first time on the sea, lost for love so
lost at sea so lost always lost. And back on the highway the man coasts along
at 65, his headlights come on automatically and the radio drums out some top
40s hit. He taps on the wheel out of time with the music, expectantly for
something, and he thinks about a funny thing he heard at work today, but he
can’t remember what it was, only that it was funny. The sun is pink and purple
and it reminds him of the guts of a dog that got hit by a car in front of his
house when he was a kid. He saw it get hit, and he watched its owner come out
and cradle it gently as it bled out, not caring for the blood that got all over
him, just cradling his dying dog, whispering something, tears in his eyes. The
man moves into the left lane to pass a truck.
The trucker smokes a cigarette that he holds out
his window, his arm tanned from driving this way for too long. He yawns
slightly, then sets his left hand on the wheel to hold it steady as he turns up
the volume on the radio. It doesn’t matter what’s playing, he turns up the
volume anyway. Has to go a hundred more miles tonight and the sun is setting.
It’s orange and the sea is orange, blood orange, all blood orange, and it
reflects off the roof of the Beamer that just passed him, gets in his eyes, and
he squints even though he is wearing sunglasses. He sees a sign for a gas
station at the next exit and decides to get off, though he still has half a tank,
wants to stretch his legs. The sun wavers and flickers in the sky simulacra
record spinning tick tick tick of the clock plastic pink flamingo on a fake
green plastic lawn in front of a trailer home, woman smokes a cigarillo and
wears sunglasses too big for her face, her dress has flowers on it and her face
is deeply lined and she swears about the heat, and behind her a different ocean
beats its breakers desperately against sand and rock, clawing away, cutting and
slicing and sucking gastric bypass and the doctor says something to the nurse
about drinks tonight. His hand slips.
The motorcyclist watches the truck swerve
slightly, then right itself, and decides not to pass. Then he watches the truck
get off at the exit so he speeds up again. Sundry store neon indian plastic
diaphragm American supper time sadness summertime sadness pop music peach ice
cream pretty girl bare legs summertime sadness summertime sadness remember how
she used to laugh how she used to make him laugh doesn’t remember why they
broke up doesn’t matter sipping a beer with his best friend before he shipped
out desert sun dust came back didn’t come back but still here now here then
back again summertime. Rev up gear pop snap crackle pop hoping for a dream,
trying to remember, wishes he was young again, remake every mistake he’s ever
made, wishes he’d kissed her that night, wishes he hadn’t kissed her that day,
night then day, light flows over the horizon and it’s sometimes green,
reflecting the sea, emerald, a far off land, a more distant shore abandoned for
promise of this shore become brighter, who knows anymore, doesn’t know
anything, girl’s hand in his walking down the hill and he remembers he didn’t
kiss her either and he remembers the punchline to a joke he heard once, but he
doesn’t remember the joke. Wonder wander wish a better tomorrow for a better
today for a never tomorrow for an always today for a dream of a dream of a
dream of death. Does he not bleed for his better nature? Then he gets off the
highway too, and he pulls into the parking lot of a little old diner and he
takes off his helmet and carries it as he walks inside, and the waitress smiles
as she seats him. He orders a chocolate shake and a cheeseburger and a slice of
blueberry pie and he eats his burger then she brings him his pie, and when he
tastes it he remembers a day when he was small.
When the sun sets, do you look to the west, and
when you look to the west do you see your dreams dying? Because in the west the
sun never sets because your dreams lie always further west. So you look to the
west and you look to the west and you look to the west and you forget to look
down and over the edge of the cliff you plunge, canyon walls struck distant
passage of water through time down you go, down you go, and the river that
surges below cuts ever deeper the canyon so how can you ever stop falling? And yet
stop you must and you must stop so you stop and yet the river keeps flowing.
And still you look to the west.
The waitress takes off her apron and says goodbye
to the cook on her way out the door, then she gets in the driver’s seat of her
beat up old Honda and drives home. She watches TV while she eats dinner and
through a window she sees a neighbor washing dishes. The neighbor looks like
her father. He used to drink bourbon. The neighbor used to drink wine. The
waitress used to drink vodka. They all used to drink and now they all don’t
drink together. The waitress stares at her TV and it’s a commercial featuring
an actor who is dead now selling a product that doesn’t matter now and she
wishes she just had a little more money. If she had money she could get out of
here (here?) and go there (there?) and she could get away from the sea.
As a girl the sea was salt and wind and glistening blue reflecting
luminescent the clouds horizon line the sea become as one as all, as a girl the
sea was a boy just when boys became more than the sea would become, but then
the boy went away and there were more boys and then as more boys went away the
sea became a burden. So now if only she had money she could get away (and go
where? Cities scare her and the desert isolates her, forests startle and hide
and the plains clutch and grasp but then they aren’t the sea, and perhaps...)
owls crow out their night cry as on TV the commercial ends and now that same
actor again looks out at her and now he’s someone else. As a girl she fell in
love with the actor - but then he was alive, and now the waitress thinks she
still might be in love with him, because he’s dead and because the girl inside
her (buried, dormant) once loved him.
Falling
In love
Is easy.
Being
In love
Is hard.
Cages and voices are cages are voices are prisons are prisms are
mirrors are genuflection are deflections are protestations are remembrances are
fragmentations are dreams are the sea are a smell are a voice are a gentle
laugh are the taste of salt (lips and sea) are the end of the beginning but it
all must end.
The director calls a cut and the actor steps back
from the camera’s gaze, the stage light’s glow, the live audience’s stare, and
grabs a drink of water, and he watches her slender legs disappear behind the
set and he calls out to her as she disappears but she doesn’t hear him, and yet
still the audience and the lights and the camera, and yet still they try to see
through him but he can’t hardly see them (for the footlights in his eyes) and
she is gone, and he is left with only the memory of that slender leg.
In three years he will be committed and they will
tell him she was but a whisper of smoke on his chemical imbalance but he will
tell them she had to be real because if she wasn’t real then none of it ever
will be real, but they then assured him she definitely was not real.
In five years he will put a shotgun between his
lips and pull the trigger, and his brains will paint a picture on the wall
behind where his head once was, and it will be a picture of the girl who was
naught but smoke.
You once misheard the lyrics to a song, and
despite listening to the song a hundred times, you could only ever hear the
misheard lyrics, they came to you in a dream.
A singer once sings a song and one set of words
pierce her lips.
And yet another pierce her mind.
And on her mind too is the leg of a pretty girl
she knows she’ll never have.
And the man who records her voice day in and day
out
Will fall asleep remembering, loving, her face
only.
Even as his hearing goes and he knows soon the day
will come when he has no reason to ever again even look on her face.
And even then her voice as recorded with his
failing ears will call out to people the world over, and they will all fall in
love at once and sometimes they’ll fall in love with the voice and sometimes
they’ll fall in love with the face across from them as they hear the voice, and
sometimes they’ll fall in love with falling in love but what is assured is that
some day they will all fall in love because falling in love is what we do and
yet some day too we will fall out of love.
The singer drives along a highway on a cliff by
the sea. She watches a BMW pass a truck. Then she sees the truck swerve. Then
she watches the truck exit the highway, and at the next exit she watches a man
on a motorcycle exit too. Then the sun reflects through her windshield just so
and she loses briefly control of the wheel.
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