June 2010

We were sitting in the Drenched Beagle in Vancouver when a guy from the bar asked me, “Where are we?” “Here.” I said. Later he asked, “What time is it?” “Now,” I said. When he asked me if I was a writer, I guessed it was because I was sitting at a table in a corner with some writers that he had heard of. So I shrugged and said, “Sometimes I scribble after midnight but I ain’t no writer.”

He nodded and went away happy. I guess he recognized a writer when he saw one.

Jim Christy was sitting next me at the table. He watched him walk away, shook his head, took a shot of apple cider and started to tell me about a trip he would be taking to do an article on apple cider farms in the U.S. It would be hard to get the good apple cider there that you could get here, he thought. So I told him to take some apple seeds with him and think like Johnny Appleseed.

He laughed and said, “Scribbling after midnight, I like that. I’m gonna use it. Right after I plant some apple trees.” We had another drink or two and then went off to his poetry reading.

After the reading I went to another literary beer joint. My friend Gus was sitting alone at the bar, an almost empty glass in front of him. He was holding his hands out, studying them for clues as if he was looking for testimonials to their loyalty. His fingers are his marines, he once said, his first wave at the point of attack.

Clouds of gunmetal gray smoke frame his apparent contemplations. He is lost in the peril of his own strategy. It seems like he sees nothing in the mirror but the empty space surrounding him.

I had a couple of drinks with him. We talked about Dylan and Ginsburg. He loved one, hated the other. He told me he had written a new piece. He said he would email it to me. Just as I was leaving he grabbed me by the arm. “Can I borrow a couple a bucks? Writing sucks,” he said and turned back to the bar.

I read his piece early the next morning before I went out running. It occurred to me later that maybe he had seen everything he could see, at least for now. That maybe he was just passing through the writing, that for him it was safer and easier to hide in the here and now of the smoke and whiskey. As it is for all of us. Far safer indeed than to try to go back inside to the beginning, before conscious thought, to wherever it is that the words come from.

Photo Credits

Scribble courtesy Creative Commons

It’s been raining hard all day.

I’m driving south on Main Street towards Marine Drive. I’ve got some bills I have to pay. Roy Rogers and Norton Buffalo are playing on the radio. It sounds like the lost nights and the window skies from so long ago. They were sweet and endless like youth itself — and now, it seems, over. Rest in peace Norton.

I stop for a red light. I catch sight of the Honolulu Café on the eastern side of the street right there between the New Antique Market with a “new” container from Belgium and the Come-In Enterprises Emporium, featuring stamp collections and “super healthy” food from Hong Kong.

Honolulu, I think. Hotels, beaches, Pearl Harbor, beautiful Hawaiian girls, the Pipeline. The palm tree sign out front has fallen over. The place looks wet from the inside out, shrouded in the rain like Noah’s final port of call, a last chance hole in the wall wait it out ‘til paradise kinda joint.

I get to thinkin’ how maybe Miles or ‘Trane played here some long ago lost night on the road but that’s romantic tripe. My guess is that nobody ever played anything at all at the Honolulu Café.

I feel lucky I don’t know anyone in there and it is lucky they don’t know me. On a rainy day up here, north of the original Skid Row, every passerby is a convict, every customer is a saint. Every driver is an innocent bystander. According to a local ordinance, every act of kindness will be revenged.

Behind the fallen palm tree sign and the worn out yellow light the shadows drift behind the fading yellow window. From where I am you can’t tell whether they are convicts or saints but I’m guessing that one thing is for sure: Every act of revenge will be a kindness tonight at the Honolulu Café.

Outside the Honolulu Café an old man staggers against the blowing rain. I imagine for a moment that he is remembering how the decks were awash in the South Pacific swell and the hold was full of tuna, or maybe it was Toyotas. The Southern Cross was all but gone as the winds picked up again from the southwest. As he ran for the wheelhouse he prayed that it wasn’t another one of those killer waves rolling up from the South China Sea.

From behind the wheel it looks like that storm is right here, right now. Watch caps and John Deere hats don’t keep you dry up here. The streets are wet, his pockets are empty. My guess is that there ain’t nobody home waiting up. He turns to look at the oncoming rain. It slashes his worn face but even from here I can see that he is remembering his last good day. I’m guessing it was somewhere east of Solomon Islands, running for home in front of the storms coming up out of the southwest.

At the Honolulu Café you got to figure that since they don’t say anything, they got to know something.

A memory inside the rain pounding on the roof carries the sounds of chairs scraping on the wet floor and dishes hitting the bus box. A deserted hotel kitchen long after the meal service was done, a voice, pure and clear, a gnarled figure singing, “you’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’…” over and over again. He was back lit in clouds of steam and endless stacks of dirty dishes. He wasn’t young like me or old; it seemed from where I stood he was just worn out with the distance between here and there.

I went to look for him the next night, to talk a little, to ask him where he’d been, to ask him what he knew. He wasn’t there. I guess what he knew best was being gone.

I’m waiting for the light to change. I can hear the wipers on the windshield, the rain on the roof, the road wet tires and the sound of passing by. I’m heading south, paying some bills. I’m waiting for the fog to lift, waiting for sunrise over the islands. I’m waiting for the phone to ring. I’m waiting for the waiting to be over.

Photo Credit

“Neon Palm” Fred Davis @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved

Archives for June 2010