Prodigal Sun

Change.

http://thedayonfire.blogspot.com

I want the world now
To love and leave me alone
Rain comes full circle



More thoughts on the novel by Sueskind coming soon...

Oh, I'm sure there is. Well, this should be considered the extended remix.


"Mysterious and secretly there prowl at the walker's heels all kinds of beautiful subtle walker's thoughts, such as make him stand in his ardent and regardless tracks and listen, so that he will again and again be confused and startled by curious impressions and beweitchings of spirit power, and he has the feeling that he must sink all of a sudden into the earth, or that before his dazzled, bewildered thinker's and poet's eyes an abyss has opened. His head wants to fall off, and his otherwise so lively arms and legs are as benumbed. Countryside and people, sounds and colors, faces and farms, clouds and sunlight swirl all around him like diagrams, and he must ask himself: "Where am I?" Earth and heaven suddenly stream together and collide, rocking interlocked one upon the other into a flashing, shimmering, obscure nebular energy; chaos begins, and the orders vanish. Convulsed, he laboriously tries to retain his normal state of mind; he succeeds, and he walks on, full of confidence..."

from an even longer description of the necessity of walking
from The Walk by Robert Walser (translated from the German by Christopher Middleton, et al)

Page 134 of a Calvino novel I am reading contains a hidden door.

I touched the paragraph lightly on the enjambment - which looks completely unintentional - and find myself face to face with an old fashioned priest hole of the mind. I was content to find nothing of the sort, to enjoy a couple of hours of solitude immersed in the joy of literature. However, I see now I should have expected to find such a passage within a passage, if for no other reason than had none emerged, I would have created it. Over time I have come to find that given a wide berth in which to roam, I will become unsatisfied with my bounty and seek out extra footage to explore. Where does such a habit originate? On the surface it appears the product of greed, as evidenced in and fostered by my very American past and present, a continuum of conspicuous consumption, of doing because one can, not should. It is Yang all the way - action always trumping inaction. Movement validated over its foil. It is not a question of gratitude. I do appreciate every plot of ground before me. No, I believe my incessant desire stems from an illogical coveting of things unavailable, seeing in the idea of them a mystery entirely attributed and arbitrary. Granted five unlikely hours of personal time, I want six or, more to the point, five of solitude and one of happenstance adventure that I myself must strive to create. In the course of an afternoon I want a child's agenda of a million lifetimes before dinner. Five more minutes, mommy. Just five more.

The passage in question deals - oddly enough - with this very topic, though it hardly appeared out of any real necessity. The entire book to this point has been thoroughly engaging. Its quality a continent wide with a soil rich enough to accommodate ten of the likes of me. However, as is my innate custom, I have discovered a way to even more.

Next: The passage in question and where it comes out

A disconnect of phrases will bother you now for the rest of the night. That sentence itself runs across your vision like a visible voiceover overlaid like bad linoleum on your bathroom floor. Two mirrors facing each other to conjure an endless dub of whispers certain to keep you from sleep. You curse caffeine and alcohol, almost believing they are at fault. It's the bum and you know it, what he said and what he didn't know he meant. His face, a thousand thousand times shrinking inside itself until daybreak picks the lock again. It is another good day in your life, though you will inevitably fail to recognize it.

Iambic Pentameter infuses history for a reason. A short puff followed by a heavy stroke, guaranteed to please older women. For these days if the diction is hearty enough the author is content with a steady plodding ahead, nuance left as a device for the lesser. We are a culture that outgrows its formality. Dress, manners, arts. An express engine from form to chaos.

You open the magazine on the nightstand and look for something erotic. But instead of half-covered curves you get full disclosure in marketed nonsequitor. You want a woman who may know something of your desire, but in her place the practiced dance of the bored stripper. She's not even looking to see who's looking, but following her stanzas to the end, occasionally adding, out of sheer boredom, a coda that's a chorus taken from the pop song that never seems to leave her head. You reach out to take part and may even reach arousal. But if you do, she's only been at the right place at the best time.

A notion of form implies a desire to convey, a purpose - through composition - to build toward something known, overlooked, or even mutually stumbled upon. But too much and you have a formula. A fine line between the sassy slap of the ass and choreographed, staid, gesture. Bravo, that blob of mustard just might help you sleep.

But reality sets in again. A dance while mouthing Eminem is not the same as the poetry you are reading. You've reached too far on either end to make art and life seem compatible. You lost something, the main thing, in the space of five minutes. You should have castled, and now you need to go back in time - even further - if you hope to continue the game.

The bum on the corner is about two miles from where you met him, and yet he hasn't left you for a second. The dancer yawns at a bar down the block. You are somewhere else, too, somewhere between movement and stasis (looks a lot like Franklin Avenue at Nicollet). What aroused you more? Are you getting old? Could it be that the context of these things you hold is the basis for the future of your sexuality? It's two a.m. Do you know what your libido is?

From safely behind a large window I cannot move. The sun beats at the space between my hair, aging the crust of my aging melon. However, it is not the heat that plasters me to this spot, but the split-second look between two elderly women on the bus outside the moment a gangbanger jumps aboard.

April 14, 1912 a rumor is heard simultaneously by two ship passangers seated at dinner. Strangers, their eyes meet, connected by the terrifying news they somehow know is true.

Her legs separate below and above
gods dream of Achilles
tendons balanced on mountain shoulders

Her breasts emerge at once
as the future of love to say
It is not because of beauty
the world is lost

Her face blurred by
a divinity of reason is curiously outdone
by her peasant perfect feet

What lies between them
a melting contour of salvation
hips that will save us all

Though never rendered for the likes of us
make no mistake

Venus was armed

"All words to this point are footprints on the way a land buried deep in a bracken. Instead of foliage, a mass of of grasping hands. Breaking through to the town square, a monument stands in your honor. Without fanfare take up residence again in one of its anonymous suburbs. Hold up like a hermit and power the monument's purpose forever, "Denkmal des Taugenichts", a constant reminder to your people the dangers of folly."

- What one hears while walking by the statue of Goethe on Kaiserstrasse (Frankfurt)

STEPPING TO THE EDGE
of impropriety while talking
with the barista.

He wants to pull her over the counter
and make her sorry
she married young.

Instead, he makes sure to include
words like pour in, I need,
and bed.

Each time both faces are saved
by context.

The narrow stone steps seemed for
locals only. BETWEEN FOLK TALE HOUSES
to concealed and gilded churches

down to streets no one
bothered to name I walked.

The half walls lining the steps and
guarding many of houses were filled
with pretty flowers which
if you got closer
grew straight up as if at attention



They rose between iron spikes that seemed
to me distinctly German. Not to dissuade the
children from walking the walls, the points
were bent uniformly inward to keep the
foliage in its place and beautiful beneath
the stern wishes of Godesbergians one and
all.

Looking at this I felt I saw defined the
last mysterious trait of this culture, one
that couldn't be described in a travel book,
a university course, or even in conversation
with a seasoned expat.

I wrote down what I saw, in broken words and
pictures, on a scrap of paper and buried
it in one of the planters.

Walking to the U-bahn I knew it
would be discovered soon. Read by
a local it would serve as a pathogen
forcing the next evolutionary
step for Germany. It would not start
in Berlin or Frankfurt, but right here in
little old Bad Godesberg. No one would expect.

At the main train station, ordering an overpriced
cup of coffee, I imagined an elderly woman
reading a dirty slip of paper. Her face. Her
eyes. Her arms and legs a signal box switching
the tracks of the future.

It was the least I could do for this
place so connected to family, to art and to God,
and now to me.