The car sped down
the highway with an intensity of some impending unknown cataclysm
until it
wasn’t clear if there was still a road underneath the wheels or just falling
into the vast
roaring
ocean. The foam was blue and iridescent carrying the colors from the dusk into
my windshield
or the rain
from falling clouds and it was a marimba or a glockenspiel or an organ or
something, I
don’t know.
On the dock there were pale lights glowing from across the water from houses or
people or
lanterns. I heard a voice and called, “Who is there?” but the small yelp on the
wind
grew louder
until I realized that it was the voice of the water, being carried by waves
into a mass
of static
fuzz. There was clapping in the clouds turning into the sound of a stream
running that
turned into a
passing car or an oxygen ventilator. Rain fell into the slapping waves so that
water was
everywhere, in the
air, the earth, the vessel for the ocean, in me, in the car, in the light
trying to shoot
its way through the
drops of sound. It washed over noise of children laughing and playing with a
piano and a lovely
girl humming. There was a constant beating that made my shoulders tense,
yet at the same time
sounds so lulling that they blew the billowy sky over the distance
between me and the
island and the mountain. I was there, or I was in the car, or I was off
somewhere making
love or dying. There was barely even any rhythm to it. In dreams the ground
drifted off beneath
our feet and all the water that was contained underneath seeped up through the
grass. It spoke of
ancient questions, sometimes in German. We were sure that the water kept on
going and that swaming
it, the distance between the waves and the molecules of the night sun
split before the
pixelating mountain. OBFUSCATION.
The fog was rolling in from that rocky pile
out west to get
tossed in the waves. In the middle of it all, far out enough that the land shrinks
into a tiny dot, it
becomes an alien planet orbiting some distant sun that has a name that no human
tongue can
pronounce, because it was so heavy and churned like some great wooden mechanism
were
below it. A giant
wheel turning and keeping everything moving. So vast and empty that it becomes
a
desert. The place
that is the absence of water is the same as the place that is the absence of
land.
Sinking; light doesn’t
sink it water. It tries to reach into the deep, but turns into a mess of
rippling expanse. The
storm had stopped. My shirt was wet and my pants were dry. I walked
the road back to the
town with beads of water sweating off of strands of my hair. The town was
empty. Everyone didn’t
even have time to pack up their things before abandoning the place. The world
had stopped moving.
I wasn’t even there. Someone was snapping. A final breath of the storm wafted
around in
the street before being swallowed by a storm drain. I saw Phil walk out of the
studio,
the keys in
his hands. He dropped them. He’s standing there dropping them over and over
again, a skipping
image of burning film. Over that wild westward expanse there was so much
nothing, but
in nothing there was some kind of peace. An easier type of piece. I was trying
to reach
for something
to hold, but it was something that I couldn’t hold; something dissolving my
hands in the
wind. I lay
down in bed, with a night cap on that drifted past my waist and had a poofy
ball on the
end. I pulled
the covers up to my chin and I could still hear the ocean. In this place where
he
lived, there
was a constant roaring, constant noise all the time. From my bed, I heard it
swell and
lengthen. A
wailing solo, saying something, but nothing. Roar like an animal. Hungry
and adoring.
***
***
