St. Paul’s Cathedral looks like a petrified cloud plummeted into the center of London. A bossed aeonian cumulus architecturally fluffed renaissance-styled Acropolis unfurling into a basilica of worship. A monochromatic meringue dolloped with parabolic lintels adorned with statues of saints like corbel tears. Vivian states quite right it looks like we have arrived. From a distance Baker announces his inevitable analogy how the dome looks somewhat like a boob, so Daisy should go right on ahead and self-examine herself for lumps if she had anything to begin with in the first place.
In front of the entrance to the cathedral statue of a Queen Anne sits in front surrounded by what looks like sea nymphs, one brandishing Poseidonesque trident. This is to be our last major touristy stop outside of Harrods later on this afternoon. As we get out of the bus we are looking up. Even those Big Tenners wearing ubiquitous baseball caps heralding the name of colleges they will never attend have their fingers saluted over foreheads. The bottom of the Cathedral is configured like a Greek temple with ionic beams sprouting up into a cornice of glory giving birth to more columns, a double-decker pantheon, a plinth of pietist pagentry. From the West entrance the cathedral has two monochromatic spires. Akin to its cross-town conjugate Westminster one spire has the clock the other has a vacant socket with a dome (garnering the inevitable in-bus comparisons to the DC capitol, compliments of Spencer who happens to be on an intermittent makeshift town crier Oyay-Oyay kick) ballooning like a rocket-halo into the perched celeste welkin.
It is the most beautiful spring morning I have ever seen.
One of the kids notes that from this periphery one can't even make out the Dome.
I look around Fleet Street still hoping to see any sign of a Boots to no avail.
I turn to my roommate.
In front of the entrance to the cathedral statue of a Queen Anne sits in front surrounded by what looks like sea nymphs, one brandishing Poseidonesque trident. This is to be our last major touristy stop outside of Harrods later on this afternoon. As we get out of the bus we are looking up. Even those Big Tenners wearing ubiquitous baseball caps heralding the name of colleges they will never attend have their fingers saluted over foreheads. The bottom of the Cathedral is configured like a Greek temple with ionic beams sprouting up into a cornice of glory giving birth to more columns, a double-decker pantheon, a plinth of pietist pagentry. From the West entrance the cathedral has two monochromatic spires. Akin to its cross-town conjugate Westminster one spire has the clock the other has a vacant socket with a dome (garnering the inevitable in-bus comparisons to the DC capitol, compliments of Spencer who happens to be on an intermittent makeshift town crier Oyay-Oyay kick) ballooning like a rocket-halo into the perched celeste welkin.
It is the most beautiful spring morning I have ever seen.
One of the kids notes that from this periphery one can't even make out the Dome.
I look around Fleet Street still hoping to see any sign of a Boots to no avail.
I turn to my roommate.
“My English teacher back home told me that you have to
go to the top. He says that the top is one of the best panoramic views of
London.”
From behind me I can hear Jim Baker say this is what I
think about your English teacher back home even though I don’t look.
Vivian goes into detail explicating the architectural genders. Vivian states that the site we are standing on has been used for services
since at least 600 AD but that Wren's masterpiece dates back to just after the fire of London.
The church is more commodious than Westminster Abbey. The interior of the cathedral is the most grandiose
place we have visited since Blenheim Palace. Vivian talks about the architect Christopher Wren
and about septets and how the cathedral is laid out like a cross. The Corinthian textiled walls resemble an enjoined series of diminutive Arc De Triumphs buttressed out from baroque masonry rising into saucers stainglassed with fractals of light, the distillate pastel of whatever eternity that is somehow yet to come. Spencer crosses his arms and places his head down and Smurfs up his Young Columbus hood intoning chants as if he is a Medieval monk. Baker publicly grouses stating that he doesn't understand why all we ever see on this trip is like old gothic shit.
"It is quite a public space with church services three times a day."
"It is quite a public space with church services three times a day."
Vivian reverts back to her Diamond Jubilee jingoism as
she talks about the cathedral surviving the Nazi blitz stating with quotation
marks that through the billowing wreath of smoke the gilded dome of St. Pauls Cathedral stood as a bulwark and testament to British recalcitrance during London's darkest hour.
Jim says that even though he is bored this is better than West Minster, because West Minister Abbey was just a mausoleum that is one big graveyard and in a way he is more than right.
Jim says that even though he is bored this is better than West Minster, because West Minister Abbey was just a mausoleum that is one big graveyard and in a way he is more than right.
I am lost in the orifices of spring lights splintered from the top of the dome.
I tell Jim to look up.
I tell Jim to look up.
I look up lost in the overhead rotunda of light.
The interior of St. Paul's is a majestic series of arches, all lauded up in the direction of the sun, in the dome, in whatever God there is or ineffable energy we may become. It looks like the interior of a finely-detailed rococo teacup stranded in abeyance above our foreheads. It is like I am gazing up into a biblical UFO. The April sun continues to echo and squint through the center of the house of worship leaving the already gilt monument hazed in a borealis of blinding white. Vivian notes that the dome is the second largest in the world next to St. Peter’s in Rome.
"Look up man. I tell Jim and Justin and anyone else who is around me."
Jim responds with a shrug.
I think about my mom and how Christian faith is everything to her. I think about how today is my mother's birthday.
For a second I am overwhelmed.
It feels like I am looking up into the ocular consciousness of a purloined heaven
'Heaven Schmeaven." Notes Jim.
Heaven Schmeaven.
***
Jim responds with a shrug.
I think about my mom and how Christian faith is everything to her. I think about how today is my mother's birthday.
For a second I am overwhelmed.
It feels like I am looking up into the ocular consciousness of a purloined heaven
'Heaven Schmeaven." Notes Jim.
Heaven Schmeaven.
***
I am in St. Paul’s cathedral and for perhaps the first time in the last five days Harmony is nowhere on my mind. I am in St. Paul's Cathedral and there is no sight of Mark or his emerald flavored Doc Martens. I am in St. Paul's Cathedral and I swear I can see Princess Diana worshiped in a Deity of voltage snaps, a diadem of hi-wattage constellations every time she steps outside. She is a goddess. She is hounded. Her every subtle actions are chronicled. It is heavily rumored that she hooked up with Bryan Adams and that the song Everything I do I do it for You alludes to their torrid assignation That her second son was really the son of caddish scarlet haired British infantryman. I am walking down the apse and somehow I can feel the peach of Princess Diana’s breath. I am lost in St. Paul’s cathedral and every time she blinks it feels like an epoch passes.
The coy blink of her eyes.
I am in St. Paul's Cathedral and somehow she is walking in my direction.
It is St. Paul’s Cathedral and I am no longer all alone.
She hovers in my direction like a Grecian wraith. She is levitating. A cloud of sagebrush. A train of her wedding gown a pristine parchment. A veil muffled over the shy countenance.
Vivian’s visage is shocked in a fleece of white. She is smiling. Her smile looks like it ricochets through the variegated stain glass in prism.
The same color as Vivian's smile.
The same color as Vivian's smile.
***
With our red coats and cameras we amble down the center of the nave. We are small. Every three feet it seems like there is a chapel off to the side. There are several statues. A bronze effigy the size of a docked sailboat honoring a former British military General. Everything seems baptized in a sheet of gold. There is a baptismal fount five times the size of the Baptismal fount in the front of my home church.
The overhead spring sunlight is so white as it appears to be almost bleached. I don't want to partake of the perfunctory tour. I badger Trevor supplicating to climb to the top and snap pictures of London.
Trevor responds by stating all in good time, Hair.
All in good time.
The inside of the Dome is illustrated renaissance concavity of biblical fresco. We are flanked by dual organs, bronze stalks looking as if they are ready to joust. There is a sort of refulgent placidity.
There is a serenity.
Back home it is four o'clock in the morning. Back home my father will wake up in a half-hour. He will kiss the balcony of his wives forehead wishing her a happy birthday thanking the golden tinge of inscrutable longing he has field dressed as a Christian Deity for granting his earthly partner another year of life. He will brew coffee in the Gevalia coffee pot that I received from Grandma, the same plastic contraption I made a grainy pottage out of the kitchen counter because I didn't realize I needed to use a filter the first time I used it last autumn. My father will drink coffee and he will hoist the bundles of papers from across the street, counting each individual bulletin, making sure that we have enough before waiting for Tim Flanagan down the street to arrive where the two of them, with the neon orange baldric of their Journal star bags will march down the avenues of Sherman and Moss in West Peoria as if brandishing a bass drum in marching band. Dad will smile when he sees Tim, he will smile as somehow, the light I have experienced six hours away will gradually surf in the overhead unused teabag clouds of morning. He will smile when he tells Tim that he heard from his son last night. That his only son called around what would be Midnight London time to wish his mother a happy 44th birthday.
The light I have been basking in on the most apical spring day is London has permeated overseas.
All in time.
***
"Have you ever thought about being married?"
I am holding Harmony over the phone. It is March 1995. I am writing for the school paper. I have gotten in trouble by the Track coach for going across the street in the alleyway next to Schpke's and smoking a cigarette during lunch. I despise everything about Manual. I loathe everything about my high school experience. I feel like I am drowning. I feel like I don't belong. I have been cutting my flesh. I am a Junior in high school. I am pissing out ink-splattered stanzas of poems prostituting the anemic weak lining of a Wexford spiral notebook a month.
It is twenty-two months since the Trip of a Lifetime.
We talk every week long distance. Since I still have my paper route I call her. I know she has been involved in a beauty pageant to garner scholarships. I know she has been casually dating a self-proclaimed comedian where, together they tired to get into the Club and had to use the old we forgot our ID's at home because of our age bit.
The final night of her beauty pageant I send her flowers. Earlier in the conversation I asked if she received them. She tells me that she did. She tells me that the gift was special along with another gift she received from a certain someone she classifies also as being special.
She has not graduated high school and she is talking about marriage. She has not had her first legal beer or voted in a presidential election and she is talking about marriage.
She says the word marriage again.
***
The overhead spring sunlight is so white as it appears to be almost bleached. I don't want to partake of the perfunctory tour. I badger Trevor supplicating to climb to the top and snap pictures of London.
Trevor responds by stating all in good time, Hair.
All in good time.The inside of the Dome is illustrated renaissance concavity of biblical fresco. We are flanked by dual organs, bronze stalks looking as if they are ready to joust. There is a sort of refulgent placidity.
There is a serenity.
Back home it is four o'clock in the morning. Back home my father will wake up in a half-hour. He will kiss the balcony of his wives forehead wishing her a happy birthday thanking the golden tinge of inscrutable longing he has field dressed as a Christian Deity for granting his earthly partner another year of life. He will brew coffee in the Gevalia coffee pot that I received from Grandma, the same plastic contraption I made a grainy pottage out of the kitchen counter because I didn't realize I needed to use a filter the first time I used it last autumn. My father will drink coffee and he will hoist the bundles of papers from across the street, counting each individual bulletin, making sure that we have enough before waiting for Tim Flanagan down the street to arrive where the two of them, with the neon orange baldric of their Journal star bags will march down the avenues of Sherman and Moss in West Peoria as if brandishing a bass drum in marching band. Dad will smile when he sees Tim, he will smile as somehow, the light I have experienced six hours away will gradually surf in the overhead unused teabag clouds of morning. He will smile when he tells Tim that he heard from his son last night. That his only son called around what would be Midnight London time to wish his mother a happy 44th birthday.
The light I have been basking in on the most apical spring day is London has permeated overseas.
All in time.
***
"Have you ever thought about being married?"
I am holding Harmony over the phone. It is March 1995. I am writing for the school paper. I have gotten in trouble by the Track coach for going across the street in the alleyway next to Schpke's and smoking a cigarette during lunch. I despise everything about Manual. I loathe everything about my high school experience. I feel like I am drowning. I feel like I don't belong. I have been cutting my flesh. I am a Junior in high school. I am pissing out ink-splattered stanzas of poems prostituting the anemic weak lining of a Wexford spiral notebook a month.
It is twenty-two months since the Trip of a Lifetime.
We talk every week long distance. Since I still have my paper route I call her. I know she has been involved in a beauty pageant to garner scholarships. I know she has been casually dating a self-proclaimed comedian where, together they tired to get into the Club and had to use the old we forgot our ID's at home because of our age bit.
The final night of her beauty pageant I send her flowers. Earlier in the conversation I asked if she received them. She tells me that she did. She tells me that the gift was special along with another gift she received from a certain someone she classifies also as being special.
She has not graduated high school and she is talking about marriage. She has not had her first legal beer or voted in a presidential election and she is talking about marriage.
She says the word marriage again.
***
We are at the front of the church. It is the altar of
God. Several members of both the Big Ten
and Daisy’s group cross themselves. I want to ask Future Rabbi Dan if he feels
awkward being inside a Christian institution. I want to ask Spencer what
Mormons believe and if this is considered blasphemy in his dogma to tale pictures inside a cathedral.
The walls are dotted with New Testament mosaics. The
above chancel seems to have tongue of gold.
Akin to West Minister Abbey the choir lofts come
replete with three row of lampshades resembling more of standing library than a chorus of God.
We have been reminded several times by Vivian about the royal wedding and how all of London and over a fourth of the planet tuned in to witness the occasion and that a few feet from where we are standing now.
Jim Baker notes that all marriages are horseshit. Just look at his parents’. Just look at Charles and Diana.
"It just didn't work out."
I make it a salient point to tell them that Princess Di and Prince Charles are separated. They can always rectify things.
Jim bends over and says rectify this asswipe..
"It just didn't work out."
I make it a salient point to tell them that Princess Di and Prince Charles are separated. They can always rectify things.
Jim bends over and says rectify this asswipe..
“You know she was out there banging everyone behind ol' Charles’ back. You know all she wanted to do was just fuck everything.”
I try to tell Jim to watch his mouth in church.
I try to tell Jim to watch his mouth in church.
Jim replies by telling me not to worry. He tells me that the only thing my fat girlfriend would ever cheat on me with is a Chinese buffet.
"The Royal family are all cousin fuckers. I mean. Groom
of the stool, bro. They can’t even wipe their own collective asses. It’s a
conspiracy bloodline yo."
Jim Baker says that they don’t care about the people. All they care about power.
I have no clue what Baker is talking about. I hold one
finger over my lips and blow over it like a recently fired handgun in an effort
to get him to cool it with the language, bro.
“How do you know all this stuff about the Royal family. I thought you only read porno magazines?”
“My step mom is like obsessed with the Royal family dude. She’s like obsessed with conspiracies and shit. She thinks that the Queen
Vivian is again talking about Princess Diana and the
Royal Wedding we are all somehow too young to remember. She is saying that, of
course, the weddings was watched by over a billion people.
“How do you know all this stuff about the Royal family. I thought you only read porno magazines?”
“My step mom is like obsessed with the Royal family dude. She’s like obsessed with conspiracies and shit. She thinks that the Queen
Future Rabbi Dan is stating that British political
system is paradoxical. You can’t have a monarch albeit decorative and still
have democracy over whatever it is the house of commons is supposed to be.
“Your step mom well be really excited to learn that
you saw the Queen in the flesh."
Vivian is saying, yes, quite right, the rumor mill.
Probably best we have this discussion at a different time.
For the first time this trip Baker is actually showing
that he has some sort of a brain.
“There’s even rumors that Princess Di was fathered by
this pimp-mafia dude and that the only reason the royal family needed her was
because she was instrument in their bloodlines. She gave birth to William whose
labor was induced so that the future king of England would be born
Again Baker states that the only reason he knows all
this shit is because his stepmom won’t shut the fuck up about it all the time divorcing
that cock-sucker Charles and when he is at home.
We walk around the ambulatory. We scatter around what is known as the Quire spelled with a cue. Vivian points out a well known picture of
Christ being the light of the world.
“Trust me dude. The royal family never gave a fuck
about Princess Diana. Look at her other son. The red head. He doesn’t even look
like his father at all. Trust me dude. She’ll end up a pawn on the royal chess board that is England.
I tell Jim that it sounds like he is prattling on about imperialism. Jim says whatever.
I tell Jim that it sounds like he is prattling on about imperialism. Jim says whatever.
“Everyone know that the whole Royal family is full of shit dude.” Baker says looking around as if he lost the remote.
We saw the Queen yesterday man.”
Baker lets go of a big fucking whup.
“She didn’t do anything to be Queen. Her gay-ass son with the dumbo ears didn’t do anything to be the eventual king. They were just born in a bloodline. It’s incestuous, dude.
From behind me an anonymous member of the Big Ten says dude, lets check out that crypt.
***
During Diana's wedding at St. Paul's cathedral she botched her spouses name during the marriage ceremonial vows stating that she takes Phillip Charles over Charles Philip. Charles also smudged up the wedding mantra stating that he would offer his spouse thy Goods and not The Worldly Goods.
Diana's Prince never promised her the world.
Diana's Prince never promised her the world.
The word 'obey' was conspicuously absent from the wedding vow at the couple's request.
Diana never made an overt vow to obey her Prince.
***
For a day I think about joining her. For a day I think about using my ticket to see her. I think about getting dressed up. I think about her invitation of walking her down the aisle, of standing up next to her in the altar of whatever God there me be, a spare bowling pin unable to emotionally topple.
I think about being a dick and raising my hand and objecting at the inquiry of the Priest.
For a day I think about how this is nothing but a fluke. For a day I think about how any minute she will say that she acted prematurely. That there is a lot going on in her life. That she met a guy and he proposed and in the moment she said yes.
I call Harmony again and tell her that I love her. I call her up and tell her to wait. I call her up and tell her that I feel like we have a connection. That I've been waiting a Junior-year eternity to fly out and see her again.
For a day I think about how she will be realize she is to young. That by my birthday she will have called the engagement off. That she will say she was being silly.
That she will say that she misses me. She will say that whatever rapport we harbored was leading to something deeper than itself.
She will say that she wants me next to her right now.
***
It is four and a half years later and it is a Sunday morning. I have just commenced my freshman year at a Community College I despise. It is four years later and life is new. It is four years later and everybody started smoking over night. It is the year that I made a vow that I would be in the summer Olympics as a distance runner even though I threw in the proverbial towel my senior year of high school. It is four years later and I have just had the greatest summer since 1992.
Since Music Man,
***
***
Diana never made an overt vow to obey her Prince.
***
For a day I think about joining her. For a day I think about using my ticket to see her. I think about getting dressed up. I think about her invitation of walking her down the aisle, of standing up next to her in the altar of whatever God there me be, a spare bowling pin unable to emotionally topple.
I think about being a dick and raising my hand and objecting at the inquiry of the Priest.
For a day I think about how this is nothing but a fluke. For a day I think about how any minute she will say that she acted prematurely. That there is a lot going on in her life. That she met a guy and he proposed and in the moment she said yes.
I call Harmony again and tell her that I love her. I call her up and tell her to wait. I call her up and tell her that I feel like we have a connection. That I've been waiting a Junior-year eternity to fly out and see her again.
For a day I think about how she will be realize she is to young. That by my birthday she will have called the engagement off. That she will say she was being silly.
That she will say that she misses me. She will say that whatever rapport we harbored was leading to something deeper than itself.
She will say that she wants me next to her right now.
***
It is four and a half years later and it is a Sunday morning. I have just commenced my freshman year at a Community College I despise. It is four years later and life is new. It is four years later and everybody started smoking over night. It is the year that I made a vow that I would be in the summer Olympics as a distance runner even though I threw in the proverbial towel my senior year of high school. It is four years later and I have just had the greatest summer since 1992.
Since Music Man,
It is four years later and I have dedicated myself to writing poems.
It is four years later and I have been twenty years old for all of two months. It is four years later and the books I will discover that autumn are the books I will carry with me the discourse and pulse of my adult life.
It is four years later and I have returned to Europe two times. In a way I have won the Young Columbus each year I got dressed up and spritzed my hair and memorized a speech.
It is four years later and I have gotten my heart broken by Harmony. Gotten my heart transitioned into porcelain shards by a creature I gave everything up for only to lose myself only to find again.
It is four years later and Morrissey and Tori Amos are still my best friends.
It is four years later and I have flown three times in the last year spending a week in New York city feeling like an artist. Feeling like I have potential. Feeling like I am less alone in the world
It is four years later and I am a writer.
It is four years later and I haven’t run all summer.
It is four years later and I work in the thoroughly air-conditioned vat of Northwoods mall, the same Mall where in another Junior high lifetime ago I met Dawn Michelle and Renae Holiday and we held hands as we made circle-eight infinity emblems down the lower level. The building where I am now a supervisor with the boss who looks like a well-read baby giraffe.,a tie noosed around my neck. I am selling books.
It is four years later and I am older than Mark and Greta were on the formative trip which seems like skipped decades ago. I have become the intellectual titans of Bus four that I so venerated.
It is four years later and I drive a Chevette. It is four years later and, after twin semesters of inestimable heartache suddenly there are females. Girls with long hair. Girls I meet while working all hours of the day at the bookstore. Girls who smell the way the buses smelled in England that spring.
Girls who smell brand new.
Girls who close the lids of their eyes like flower petals. Girls who allow me to tug at the warmth of their blithe waistline in a series of unbuckling clasps, reeling jeans down to the prominent caps of their ankles. Girls I write poems for. Girls I press the center of my torso into, dry-humping octaves.
Girls who drive me crazy indeed.
Girls who I have wanted to be with since my ears registered the syllables of their name in junior high.
Girls who attend colleges like Northwestern and Purdue. Girls who live in Roanoke, Illinois, in the country as somehow it feels like I am making out with the earth every time I kiss her forehead, every time my torso becomes stiff, every time the center of our
It has been the summer of females. The summer of staying out to five o’clock in the morning and smoking cigarettes at Perkins and Lums.
The summer that transitions into the endless lavender well of autumnal sunsets.
It is at this time when I hear her voice.
It is the night that she died.
***
Before descending to the crypt Vivian points out a well-known picture Christ bringing the light to the world. She is stating that the rudiments of this painting is what the cathedral is all about.
Vivian states that those who pay keen attention will note that in Europe as a whole that many of the non-Anglican churches are shaped like a womb, where one goes up to the altar to receive the blessing, hence many churches on what she refers to as the continent our referred to as Notre Dame or Our Mother. She references the light of the world picture again denoting that per the painting,if one looks astutely, one can see Christ carrying the lamp.
That if one looks closely one can see that it is Christ knocking, ferrying the light into a world of mauve darkness.
An exorbitant number of members in my group turn out to be Catholic, Jim Baker says that he went to Sunday school once and they kicked him out and if he knew this Europe tour would be all about spending all day in churches and museum and shit then he would have asked the god people from NIE who randomly selected his name out of a hat for the money so that he could purchase a four wheeler and a Super Nintendo.
Baker says that everything about this trip with the exception of getting his hands on titty magazine blows.
"Some of us had to work for this trip. I mean write essays. Give interviews. participate in quiz-show like contests.
Baker asks what my queer ass had to do. I tell him that I had to give a speech.
"Sucks to be you Harry. Give a speech. What did they give you the contest for giving the speech on, how to be an asshole?"
Vivian states that those who pay keen attention will note that in Europe as a whole that many of the non-Anglican churches are shaped like a womb, where one goes up to the altar to receive the blessing, hence many churches on what she refers to as the continent our referred to as Notre Dame or Our Mother. She references the light of the world picture again denoting that per the painting,if one looks astutely, one can see Christ carrying the lamp.
That if one looks closely one can see that it is Christ knocking, ferrying the light into a world of mauve darkness.
An exorbitant number of members in my group turn out to be Catholic, Jim Baker says that he went to Sunday school once and they kicked him out and if he knew this Europe tour would be all about spending all day in churches and museum and shit then he would have asked the god people from NIE who randomly selected his name out of a hat for the money so that he could purchase a four wheeler and a Super Nintendo.
Baker says that everything about this trip with the exception of getting his hands on titty magazine blows.
"Some of us had to work for this trip. I mean write essays. Give interviews. participate in quiz-show like contests.
Baker asks what my queer ass had to do. I tell him that I had to give a speech.
"Sucks to be you Harry. Give a speech. What did they give you the contest for giving the speech on, how to be an asshole?"
***
I am asleep and there is crud in my eyes. Before I flew down to Dallas to visit Mark, to see Mark for the first time since we said goodbye at Newark all those years ago I dyed my hair a brass-blonde, the color of the organ pipes at St. Paul's Cathedral.
It is a dream. My sister Jenn goes to a boarding
school in Michigan and my other sister Beth is entering her freshman year at
Illinois Weslyan. Although it is late August wind seems to zip through the side
window. It is five in the morning. I am thinking about the girl last night that
I listened to Depeche Mode with and then got into the awkward tiff. The girl
from the right side of town. The girl who goes to Northwestern even though I
have read more books than she. I am
wondering if she will somehow come back to me.
I am blinking my eyes. I am to be at work in a few
hours. My room is nothing but books and pictures of mostly impressionistic and
cubist paintings. I burn through a notebook a month.
Although it sounds anthologized the door creaks open.
It is like life is blinking at me. I hear my mothers voice. I still have three
hours before I am to wake up. Before I will fill a pot and half of coffee down
my twenty year old anatomy and drive my Chevette to the mall.
I hear my mothers voice.
“Dave, Princess Di. She died last night.”
Princess Diana is dead.
****
"Daaaaaath. Daaaaaath. Daaaaaath. Daaaaaaath!!!"
****
"Daaaaaath. Daaaaaath. Daaaaaath. Daaaaaaath!!!"
***
We descend before we rise. We topple into the lip of the earth, fumbling en masse into the soil of the underworld, the hormonally-jilted Orpheus of our loins in search of the eurdice of spring Vivian has her umbrella lifted as if it were a torch and we are following her into the crypt. Several of the Big Tenners make references to HBO's Tales of the Crypt. It feels like how it felt when we descended into the dungeon at Warwick palace. We are drilling into the earth. Spencer hides behind a statue of what could be St Peter and jumps behind scaring several members of Daisy's group who are not Daisy.
Vivian informs us that this is the largest crypt in all of europe and that the epitaphs are of renown and heartfelt.
I am thinking about all the crazy conspiracies Baker said about Princess Diana. Her marriage in St. Paul's was twelve years ago. When the majority of the inhabitants on Bus #1 were between ages six-months and three years old.
The crypt of Horatio Nelson is the size of the grand piano we sold on Christmas eve morning.
There is still no sign of Mark. His bus must have taken a longer route than necessary. Eagle Scout Josh is still irked that we didn't use his skit last night. I want to talk with him but I'm afarid he will make a flippant comment about how he thought I was a serious athlete.
Years later there are crushed beer cams dotting the kitchen table where I write. I have not worked anything other than third shift for the past fifteen years.I am thinking about how she died as part of a ritual. She died as part of a sacrifice. She died as something that was pre-ordained. She died as part of a scapegoat enacting sacrifice. The the 13th pillar in the Ponte De L'alma tunnel has Illuminati significance. That it took the ambulance over an hour to get to a hospital that was less than ten minutes away. That her body was purportedly dead body was rushed to be embalmed. That she is still really alive somewhere living in Hitler's old digs in South America.
That her marriage in the building I am standing in right now was a lamb being brought to the slaughter.
That when she was floating down the aisle above where I am standing she is being brought home to die.
****
News of her demise has monopolized the altar of the television screen. A corral reef of flowers have sprouted in front of Buckingham palace. The world adds Paparazzi to their collected vocabulary.
I arrive to work. Whatever books there are on Princess Diana I place on the counter. She is wearing a black dress. A lady comes in crying and when I ask what is wrong she states that Princess Di died.
I write a bad poem about Paris abducting the lower making a sapient allusion to Paris abducting Helen, instigating the Trojan War.
Mother Theresa dies the same week and yet, outside of India, her death is gravely overshadowed.
It doesn't seem like any of this is happening.
That none of this is happening at all.
I write a bad poem about Paris abducting the lower making a sapient allusion to Paris abducting Helen, instigating the Trojan War.
Mother Theresa dies the same week and yet, outside of India, her death is gravely overshadowed.
It doesn't seem like any of this is happening.
That none of this is happening at all.
****
We are rising up the rafters of British Heaven. Even though there is no reason Vivian is holding the stem of her umbrella up a la Ellis Island Lady Liberty style.There are 378 steps to the Whispering gallery.
Vivian states something about Brass rubbings. Simone’s girls are still giggling every
time they look in my direction.
Vivian tells us that this is as far as most of us will go because it is a bit of a hike up to the top.
Vivian tells us that this is as far as most of us will go because it is a bit of a hike up to the top.
Vivian says quite right. Vivian seems to be looking into the direction of James Baker when she adds that one must indeed watch their tongue in the incumbent balcony we are to enter because it can be heard all around various echoes of the cathedral and we should keep in mind that this is indeed chiefly a house of Worship.
Vivian says that this is to be our last official stop
but for the brave of heart there is the deck above and the view is rather
panoramic.
I look at Trevor and he nods.
I look at Trevor and he nods.
It is the Whispering Gallery and we’re below the shadows of Saints. It is the Whispering Gallery and for the time being Jim Baker has already reverted back from his conspiracy toting self stating that the ring on the Gallery looks like a giant diaphragm. It is the whispering gallery and we still have more stairs to go. It is the whispering gallery and below we can peruse into the navel of the floor, where a winking star appears to be giving birth in front of our every blink.
It is the whispering gallery because, purportedly, one can walk have way to the antipodal side of the oval and, due to the construction o
We rise up the stairs.
Even though it is a house of reverence the Big Ten is treating part of the Cathedral as if it were a locker room.
We have entered two castles a palace and an abbey but this is the highest we have been the entire trip since our British
Below I can see Vivian and her umbrella. As I look towards the West Entrance there still is no sight of Mark's group.
It is a balcony adorned by statues of saints. Baker is laughing. He is walking with Spencer's roommate who doesn't talk and Chris. He is tip-toeing as if he is some sort of a repo man traipsing around the parabolic swerve of the Whispering Gallery.
Jim has one hand cupped over his lips. He whispers something to the Bulk of the BIG TEN. There is laughter. Baker then smiles in my direction and points before whispering again.
"Harry is a fag. Harry is a fag."
***
"Harry? What the fuck. man. You jerking off in the floor of the godamn bathroom. Harry what the fuck man. What the fuck?"
"Harry!!!"
"Harry man what the fuck?"
"......"
"He's like squirming like shit, bro. He's like out of control."
"It looks like he's having a seizure or some shit."
"Look at that. There's like saliva like yo-yoing out the side of his mouth and shit."
"Shit."
"Harry!!!"
"Look at his eyes, yo."
"Daaaaaath. Daaaaaath. Daaaaaath. Daaaaaaath!!!"
"Get his tongue. Jim he looks like he might swallow his tongue!!!"
"I'm not touching another dudes tongue yo. That shit is gay. "
"Well go get Trevor or something. Man, he's like shaking. He's like foaming at the mouth."
"Harry!!!!"
Daaaaath.Day!! Da-da-da!!!"
"Man, look at him. He looks freaking possessed. You should call the exorcist or something. Harry man. What the fuck man. Harry what the fuck?"
"Harry Just calm down Harry. Everything gonna be alright bro. Just calm down brother. Be cool. Everything is gonna be fine."
***
Vivian again states that the remainder of the steps are only for the stalwart of hearts. They are referred to as the
"It’s a bit of a spire There’s over a thousand steps if you count both ways.” Vivian accedes.
"It’s a bit of a spire There’s over a thousand steps if you count both ways.” Vivian accedes.
From below looking up the stairs appear to be a nautical swirl leading up into the stratosphere of pauper heaven.
I tell her it is all good. Several of the Big Tenners are staying at ground level. Sir Charles waves a hand like he will gladly chaperon. Trevor is next to us as well I cajole Justin into walking next to me. Banky, Specner’s reticent roommate is also with us as is Bryan Fanning.
At the outset Justin says that they stairs sure are steep.
“My English teacher told me that you just can’t beat the view from the top of St. Paul's Cathedral. It’s epic. It is panoramic. He says that you can see all of London.”
Justin again insinuates that his track Coach said that the two things he needed to do was go to Madame Tussuads and have Fish and Chips and Flanagan's. He says that we’ve already been to Madame Tussuads and Flanagan's is where we are having lunch.
At about stair number three hundred Trevor turns to me and says Harry this is crazy. None of the other groups are venturing up the stairs. I am next to Bryan Fanning of Alaska. I have loathed him from day one since is in the same grade as me and he can purportedly run a mile under 4:50.
“So when hey timed you with your miles was it an indoor meet?” I inquire.
Bryan asks me what I am talking about. I ask him again about when he broke the elusive five minute mile.
I mean, in an indoor meet you have to run around the track eight times in and out door meet you only run around the track four.”
Bryan is still looking at me confused. From ahead Justin says that he can’t understand why you guys would run such long distances when you can just run high hurdles and be done in fifteen seconds.
“I mean, you told me you ran the mile under five minutes. What sort of meet were you at when you ran that fast?”
I want to tell Bryan that running that fast is my dream I want to tell him that I run everyday. I want to tell him that I am trying to get to the next level of my harrier carrier after a semester of unfounded injury.
I can note Bryan’s prominent Eskimo features as he looks at me funny again. He says that he wasn’t on a track.
“Where were you then Was it like an open mile road race?
Again Bryan shuffles his head back and forth
“It was in a gym. It was one of those president fitness challenges things. I ran 4:51. Just ask my coach. He measured out how many times you have to run around the basketball court in the gym to make a metric mile.”
“So you never ran on a track?”
Bryan Fanning says no. Bryan Fanning says why.
I shake me head back and forth. I tell him no reason.
Anyone can run a sub-five minute mile in a gym.
Trevor points. Ahead we are seeing light.
Justin is ahead of us, when he gets to the top of the stairs he acts like he is ready to fall down.
“Man, this is amazing up here. You guys got to check it out.”
***
You don't love me. You love the woman I was twenty-five years ago when I was a Senior in high school. You don't even know me anymore at all."
***
Years later we will be on top of each other. Years later I will be able to see her smile and read her letters instantly on a computer screen as thin as a church bulletin on Sunday morning. Years later she will surprise me in autumn, the day the color of Diana's funeral, Years later we will make out in the breath of Bradley park and it will feel like we are one. Years later I will lash out because she will not leave her husband, the Prince, whose father in a way looks like Mohammed Fayed, who drives a green Porsche the color of a hundred dollar bill. Years later I will have two of her ivory fingers inside my lips and my right hand sliced down the front of her tight jeans as if I am searching for something, hat will release us both.
Something that will set me free.
Years ater she will leave later that night and we still cannot stop kissing.
She will leave and return back to her Prince Charles.
She will tell you that her marriage is not hers to give.
***
You don't love me. You love the woman I was twenty-five years ago when I was a Senior in high school. You don't even know me anymore at all."
***
Years later we will be on top of each other. Years later I will be able to see her smile and read her letters instantly on a computer screen as thin as a church bulletin on Sunday morning. Years later she will surprise me in autumn, the day the color of Diana's funeral, Years later we will make out in the breath of Bradley park and it will feel like we are one. Years later I will lash out because she will not leave her husband, the Prince, whose father in a way looks like Mohammed Fayed, who drives a green Porsche the color of a hundred dollar bill. Years later I will have two of her ivory fingers inside my lips and my right hand sliced down the front of her tight jeans as if I am searching for something, hat will release us both.
Something that will set me free.
Years ater she will leave later that night and we still cannot stop kissing.
She will leave and return back to her Prince Charles.
She will tell you that her marriage is not hers to give.
***
It is spring at the top of Saint Paul. Harmony is spending the day secluded with Lynn Minton and twenty-five of what can only be perceive as the trips finest somehow everything is perfect.
Late spring. The air somehow seems windexed. Even in London the scalp of the planet smells brand new. It smells like fresh spring linen. I think about Mr. Reents mounting the brim of his desk like a throne in the classroom in jester like fashion after perusing my itinerary telling me how much I am going to enjoy the view from the palatial pinnacle of St. Paul’s, thinking about how Mr. Reents claimed that he was going to be overseas as well but over in Austria and Germany, briefly cogitating via optical correlation how much that man in his underwear looked just like Mr. Reents with my glasses off when we checked into the Gloucester in London.
Trevor is on my converse side and points out towards the river.
I take out my camera and begin to chronicle the voyage in snaps. The older man still has his hands buckled behind his back, he walks as if he is a Headmaster strolling across desk tops during an exam.
“The view really is exceptional up here. It’s beautiful. You can make out all of London.”
He turns around and nods in a stolid fashion. He could be Lloyd Alexander. He could be JRR Tolkien. He seems to step up next to me. He looks like he could pass for a moribund yet wise usher at the church I attend in the South Side of Peoria back home.
“Quite right. It really is so lovely.”
He walks up next to me again it is as if we have some avuncular affinity at bay. I try to sound m ore intelligent than I already am. I try to sound just like Mark-Andrew.
“The view up here really is immaculate.”
He responds again in the colloquial quite right. He asks me if I am American. Inwardly I feel honored to be mistaken that I might be from somewhere else.
“I’m from the Midwest. Illinois.”
“Illinois yes, that’s my favorite state. I studied for a year at Bradley University.”
I pause. I am overwhelmed.
“Bradley. That’s like four blocks from my house! My grandma worked there for over thirty years!! I literally grew up on campus. I used to ride my bike all around campus in the summer and just ogle the girls sunbathing on the roof top of their respective sororities.”
Trevor nods and says that it certainly sounds like a college town.
The man next to me is smiling. He is looking at me in a formidable fleeting way other’s have on this trip—as if he already knows something about me.
“When were you at Bradley?” I inquire, as if attending a scientific lecture not realizing that tomorrow I will be back in my home state, back in my old neighborhood, back basking amongst the spring penumbras of Bradley university. Not realizing that tomorrow this world that has visually slated before me will all somehow resemble a dream .
The old man blushes, presses his glasses up into his forehead.
“Oh long before your time I’m sure.” He smiles again. “I used to live in Pekin Illinois, actually.”
A resonance of home shrills in my chest.
“Pekin, that’s like fifteen minutes from where my grandma lives!!! I used to go to church youth group in Pekin with all those white kids out there!"
Trevor is still next to me.
“Yes when I was living in Pekin their mascot was called the Chinks. It was the Pekin Chinks which I always thought a bit disparaging, don’t you?"
Trevor says that its probably not called the Pekin chinks anymore. I am fifteen. I have no clue what a chink is. I want to tell the cool old guy mounting the palatial zenith of St. Paul’s cathedral that yes, I’m sorry, it is the Pekin Dragons. I want to tell them that Pekin is known as being a seminal racist town. That there school always refers to half our cross country cadre as niggers as they pass us around the circumference of local golf courses. That there graduation rate is nearly three times of our school. That there is a fairly high percentage of White trash attending their school. That only three African Americans attend Pekin and that they are all varsity athletes.
“Yes,” He says again, I lived in Pekin. It was known then as the Pekin Chinks and it wasn’t half-bad--the living in Pekin part that is.”
I want to tell him that my parents' have been looking at churches in Pekin. That every time we rove our station wagon into the parking lot at the church in Pekin Dad always asks his head back and forth before verbally commenting that people who attend this church drive nice vehicles.
The old man has his hands welded into a fingery corsage behind his back.
He nods again as if to say yes, I know. As if to say that he knows everything about me. As if to say that I am you in a disparate dimensional vagary, that I know everything about the discourse of your travels, that I know the trajectory of your fetishes, your loves and your inevitable foibles. That I know everything about you.
***
***
Twin decades later simply by typing her name into an oracle in the center of my computer screen I will be able to see her face once again. Twin decades later she is everywhere around me. She is in the wireless bleep of of the cyber ether. Twin decades later and I can see her visage in Linked. I can see pictures of her marriage on Facebook. I can follow her career. If I type her name into the bullseye center of the Cyclopic slate I can discern everything about her.
Twin decades later I see the picture of her in the wedding dress. Her husband has dripping long hair and looks like a Young Benjamin Franklin sans spectacles or knickers. It is autumn and crushed beer cans are corralled around my outdoor writing desk like bouquets of flowers planted around Buckingham palace in millions and in droves the week Princess Diana died.
It is twin decades later and if I am tacking out sentences onto a slate about what I was 22 years ago. By the click of a mousepad I am surrounded in a sea of unclad nymphs. For years I can't stop clicking. For years I can't stop getting off with every blink.
It is 22 years later and I can see anything that I've ever wanted to see in font of me any time I want.
It is 22 years later and the creature I left everything behind for all those years ago is still no more.
He nods again as if to say yes, I know. As if to say that he knows everything about me. As if to say that I am you in a disparate dimensional vagary, that I know everything about the discourse of your travels, that I know the trajectory of your fetishes, your loves and your inevitable foibles. That I know everything about you.
***
I am at the front of St. Pauls and I can see her clad
in white. Somehow the wedding is taking place and somehow I am not a part of
it. Somehow I am watching her constitute vows while I am dying at the same
time. She is smiling in a way I have
never made her smile before. There is a ravishing blink in her eyes.
I am standing at the back of St. Paul’s cathedral
and I am madly in love.
I am standing in the back of St. Paul’s cathedral and
I am losing her all over again.
***
Twin decades later simply by typing her name into an oracle in the center of my computer screen I will be able to see her face once again. Twin decades later she is everywhere around me. She is in the wireless bleep of of the cyber ether. Twin decades later and I can see her visage in Linked. I can see pictures of her marriage on Facebook. I can follow her career. If I type her name into the bullseye center of the Cyclopic slate I can discern everything about her.
Twin decades later I see the picture of her in the wedding dress. Her husband has dripping long hair and looks like a Young Benjamin Franklin sans spectacles or knickers. It is autumn and crushed beer cans are corralled around my outdoor writing desk like bouquets of flowers planted around Buckingham palace in millions and in droves the week Princess Diana died.
It is twin decades later and if I am tacking out sentences onto a slate about what I was 22 years ago. By the click of a mousepad I am surrounded in a sea of unclad nymphs. For years I can't stop clicking. For years I can't stop getting off with every blink.
It is 22 years later and I can see anything that I've ever wanted to see in font of me any time I want.
It is 22 years later and the creature I left everything behind for all those years ago is still no more.
***
She mandates that I enter her slowly at first, into the vestibule of femininity cupped between her thighs. I am wading into her body slowly. I am still the crucifier, I am ferrying the cross to the front of the church on Easter morning. I am receiving the blessing from the altar of Christ.I am lost in the cerulean ponds of her eyes. I am buoyed and locked in the unclad ivory of her midriff. Breath is bartered between us in a staccato tempo not yet known to mankind, I assail the Grecian white of her lower neck with an armada of kisses. I yanking. I am biting. There is something in which her kisses taste like the spring in Hyde park.
It is almost impossible not to think about her mounting the future King of England acting like he was saddling a limp gelding at some sort of a polo match.
Christ, bringing light into the world in a subtle patter of invocation and knocks.
I am kissing her forehead. I am brushing her blonde cropped hair to the side of her countenance. I am kissing every part of her body. I am roving my lips along the bottom of her neck. I am releasing an orchestration of buttons in a series of terse plops. I am watching as she vacillates and rises. We are biting each other. We are plowing into each other. We are centrifugally thrusting in opposing tandem. I am holding the virile stem of my anatomy like a diploma. I am lost in the semi-sheepish swirl of her eyes. I am holding her and I am kissing her forehead. In the porno-viewing shower curtain room inside my head I am fucking her as hard as I can. I am slamming the chalky untanned
I am fucking her as if I can save her. As if I can heal her. As if I can somehow assure her that she doesn’t need to go through all of this.
She is coming. Her eyes batting in a series of blinks.
I am entering Diana the way her vehicle entered the tunnel the night she died. With fury exhaust and erratic adulation. I am exhilarating the brisk of my tempo. I am lost in the fields of her forehead.
My fingers continue to massage the back of her scalp. Her eyelids close and then open. I can stop kissing her. I can’t stop making out with the welkin of her forehead. I am biting her ear. I am holding her. I am planting incantations of my lips behind her right ear. I am assuring. I have welded my longing inside the feminine copse of anatomy. I am telling her that she doesn't have to be sacrificed.
I am telling her that we are one.
I can see London when I am inside her body. I can feel the breath of the Thames exit her lips on the lower level of my neck. I am inside the body of Westminster Abby. I am inside the vestibule of St. Paul's. I am lost in the road of her wedding dress, a strip of ivory. I am drilling blithe spring kisses into the splash of her forehead.
I am falling in love with the time-signature of her eyes.
She is taking me back to London. She is taking me back to the city the sloppy prophylactic that is my laytex heart pulled out of all those years ago. She is taking me back to that night on the Tames in Spring when life was new teeming with the dew of promise that is Youth.
The way her body traverses through the city I love.
She is drilling me deeper inside her body. Her fingers forming octaves below her naval. For a moment we are one and our consolidated sweat forms the teardrops of an empire.
I am fucking her brains out.
I am fucking her brains out.
For a moment I think can save her.
***
The night of Princess Di’s funeral I stay up all night so I can watch it live. I brew myself a pot of coffee. London has turned into a botanical garden overnight.
It has been just over three years since I last saw Westminster Abbey on my second jaunt through Europe. Her corpse is adorned in a horse drawn carriage in the bleeding fauna of early September light. She is being followed by her progeny. By her philandering salient-eared husband. By her brother. By her late-70ish ex-father-in-law. There is silence amidst a sea of clops. Her progeny, her brother her ex-prince walk the way ushers walk in my church. She is being ferried by a horse,down the mall.
In front of Buckingham palace the Queen steps out with palatial pause.
It has been just over three years since I last saw Westminster Abbey on my second jaunt through Europe. Her corpse is adorned in a horse drawn carriage in the bleeding fauna of early September light. She is being followed by her progeny. By her philandering salient-eared husband. By her brother. By her late-70ish ex-father-in-law. There is silence amidst a sea of clops. Her progeny, her brother her ex-prince walk the way ushers walk in my church. She is being ferried by a horse,down the mall.
In front of Buckingham palace the Queen steps out with palatial pause.
She is flying.
The benevolent groomed old man has his hands behind his back. He is a gentleman. I feel the same way when I was at the Peoria airport exactly a week ago and the well-groomed lad with the pony tail and the lap top seemed to be a future fractalyzed variation of myself. The same when I was in O’Hare and the lad at short haired lad at the Book store kiosk sold me the DETAILS magazine featuring Depeche Mode and how it felt like he know all about my sojourn as well.
I don’t know what a chink is. I won’t learn what a chink is until I go home and tell my dad that this crazy old dotard atop St. Paul's cathedral went to school at Bradley and did his student teaching at Bradley and thought that the Pekin Dragons were really the Pekin chinks before my father would smile, identifying that word, telling me that yes. Telling me that he sounds like an intelligent old man.
I wonder if that man is somehow myself sixty years in the future.
He presses his glasses into his forehead the same way I pres me glasses into the crease of my forehead when I am wearing them.
Everything is quite right. Everything is Illinois.
He is commissioned by the church. He is wearing a jacket and tie. He has his hands christened behind his back.
I feel like he knows everything about me.
I can’t stop taking pictures. There is arrow-row of townhouses. I can see the Thames. I can see the gartering curl of the river where two nights ago I held the woman whose blink has served as the time signature of this trip.
I am talking to the Chink. I am not sure exactly what I am saying.
“I know you are British but do you ever miss Illinois? I mean, do you ever think about that time or reminisce about the place where I came from?"
He is smiling. His chin is British chin prominent. Both if his hands are glued behind his back like a Christmas bulb.
He nods his chin several more times.
“I did quite enjoy Illinois, yes, quite right. I really enjoy the season of autumn with all the corn beginning to wilt. And driving in the country. ‘ Yes. I dare say the sunsets if I do recall were quite nice. The sunsets in autumn over the endless fields of corn. Quite peaceful."
He asks me if Peoria is still kind of a dangerous sort of community.
I tell him yeah. I tell him that parts of it aren’t really that bad.
He still has his hands welded behind his back. He is reminiscing over Illinois. I can see part of the river Thames reflected in the frames of his glasses.
“When I first moved to Peoria from the you-kay the only caveat they gave me was to stay away from the Hill. Apparently there was this castle-restaurant with this hill and one must at all cost to avoid going down that hill. They old me that I would be shot.”
I am almost laughing. My paper route is on the same street as Jumer's Castle Lounge. I am laughing.
“I actually go to high school down the hill.”
The British man steps back. His face aghast.
“It’s actually not that bad. I went to grade school also below the hill. When I was in seventh and eighth grade my parents used to let me walk. I never felt like I was in danger.”
The man adjusts his glasses once again. He is smiling at me.
“Well young Illinois are you enjoying your stay here in London.”
I am smiling. I can’t stop looking around at the top of St. Pauls.
I have traveled across the Atlantic ocean only to find someone who can tell me it feels like to be back home.
I have traveled across the Atlantic ocean only to find someone who can tell me it feels like to be back home.
***
She is being driven trough London adorned with bouquets. She is being ferried through London and the bells are resonating in orchestral pings. She is being driven through London to a shock of cheers.
She is driven through a private Athenian temple on an island in the British countryside where she will enter the earth the way I entered her body in a failed campaign to save her all those years ago.
Entering the earth in kisses.
Entering the earth all alone.
***
Bryan Fanning who only ran a sub five minute mile in his gym is headed downstairs. As is Justin. Trevor looks at me. He looks at the old man atop the cathedral and personally thank him for his anecdotes.
Trevor then calls me Harry. He tells me that it is time to go.
I turn to the old man who is standing not saying anything. I extend my hand.
“Hey, thanks a lot for you stories. It’s really crazy how you can travel half-way across the world and somehow find yourself at the place where you have already left.”
The old man smiles. He does the thing again with his glasses.
“Sometimes in life, perhaps the older you get, you discern that the there is only place and that it is here and now and everyone you have ever known or will meet is somehow a part of your song.”
“Sometimes in life, perhaps the older you get, you discern that the there is only place and that it is here and now and everyone you have ever known or will meet is somehow a part of your song.”
He is poetic. I shake his hand again.
It is time for me to walk down all the stairs.
From ahead of me I can hear Trevor stating that we need to hurry up so we are not late for lunch.
Behind me I hear a voice. It is muffled.
It sounds like he is giving me advice.Behind me I hear a voice. It is muffled.
I look back before the first spiral turn.
As I look back the old man appears to have dissipated.
He appears to have never been there at all.
We walk down the spiral staircase. I stop for a second at the Whispering gallery. I am looking back sub-atomically through the molecular stage curtain perusing past the diaphanous valence that is time, I am lost in the river of white that is the back of goddesses wedding attire. I see Princess Diana, the peninsula of ivory that is the back of her wedding dress,
Somehow I see Harmony less than two and a half years later. Somehow she is smiling.
She is headed towards the front. She is smiling like she is madly in love. She is smiling in a way Diana's shy countenance failed to smile. Harmony is smiling like she has met somehow who snaps into the spirit of her anatomy like a lego.
She is smiling like she is madly in love.
In the whispering Gallery Jim Baker still has one hand counched around his lips.
He is still saying that Harry is a fag.
We walk down the spiral staircase. I stop for a second at the Whispering gallery. I am looking back sub-atomically through the molecular stage curtain perusing past the diaphanous valence that is time, I am lost in the river of white that is the back of goddesses wedding attire. I see Princess Diana, the peninsula of ivory that is the back of her wedding dress,
Somehow I see Harmony less than two and a half years later. Somehow she is smiling.
She is headed towards the front. She is smiling like she is madly in love. She is smiling in a way Diana's shy countenance failed to smile. Harmony is smiling like she has met somehow who snaps into the spirit of her anatomy like a lego.
She is smiling like she is madly in love.
In the whispering Gallery Jim Baker still has one hand counched around his lips.
He is still saying that Harry is a fag.
Before I board the bus in front of the statue of Queen Anne I see Bryan Fanning from Alaska, Bryan who never ran with us one morning. Bryan who boasted that he could run a sub five minute mile on day one.
Bryan is listening to his Discman. He is listening to Bob Marley. He is bopping up and down.
Like Hell, I say in his direction.
Like Hell.
No comments:
Post a Comment