Phantom Limb Syndrome

12FEB2012 – Dutch Boy, Franklin Avenue, Brooklyn. Waiting for coffee and eggs Benedict amidst the sonic swath of: the singing click of washing plates, running water and loud reggae flowing forth from the kitchen; the layers of conversation bolted to the cafe walls by sibilant hooks ejected into fricative fucking existence by the deadlier of the species dominating the room; the silence of couples exchanging a kiss on the sidewalk outside.

On top of the world one minute, lying prostrate in the valley with a face full of frozen pig shit the next. It’s not as complicated as you make it. (In fact, it’s much, much worse…) The clock ticks louder, each second resounding like a rifle shot until the explosions are loud enough to wring water from blood. Each blastwave shakes the table, rattling flatware and clinking the glasses. I am beyond screaming at this point. This goes unnoticed by everyone else.

Everything we do takes place in this world, during this timeline and in this dimension. We are captive court jesters; reciting our lines at the top of our lungs and juggling just as fast as we can, giving our all to a sleepy king who yawns once an hour, resting his fat head on a meaty palm. No escape pod, and no way to hug the beyond from here.

While escorting a friend to Grand Central Station on Saturday, I theorized that our emotions were somehow anchored to the ocean. When we enter this world, we are issued an anonymous measure of the sea which goes about behaving as the sea is meant to behave, all the while manipulating our moods, governing our capacity to give and our eventual tendency to need something in return for ourselves. The throbbing desire to give is proportional to the clawing need to receive. Some of the blocks are subsurface, cold and salty. Some of them crash frequently upon sunny shores and white sand beaches, aerated like blue champagne. When we pass on from this world, our block of ocean is returned. Renew, reduce, recycle. Our emotions are by no means new. Sign and date here, please.

Maybe I’m getting it right but I’m not loud enough. Maybe I’m doing it wrong and thankfully no one has noticed. Or maybe I’m doing it wrong but no one has bothered to tell me, like the elderly deaf uncle who shows up to a funeral with his fly open. I have no choice but to carry on — the desire to write burns as brightly as ever.

On good days, it feels like having lengths of exposed copper hair shoved deep beneath my skin; there is a stink of ozone and tiny sparks are born to die as the wires are scraped across the leads of a battery with a pop, propelling my left hand to spasm and flail for the nearest pen and begin stabbing words into existence across the surface of anything that will carry ink. Those of us afflicted by this terrible disease meet twice weekly in anonymous church basements, sharing our shame over stale donuts and buckets of burnt coffee. It is foolish, embarrassing and wrong but I know I’ll never be able to stop, even if I fail.

Putting way too much thought into the expression “I don’t mind”,

Stevie Wonder, Me, and The Death of The Fightin’ 88th

So, there I am at my favorite diner in the valley.

It’s a bright Saturday morning; I’m tucking into a stack of Silver Dollar pancakes smothered in blueberry syrup and a damn good cup of coffee, and enjoying the company of the man seated across the booth from me – one Stevland Hardaway Judkins, born May 13, 1950. You know him better as the genius who wrote ’Higher Ground’, released on his 1973 album ‘Innervisions’.

We were talking about this, that and the other thing and before long the conversation turned to dreams, so I told him about the time I dreamt I was being chased across the Gobi Desert by a vengeful Mariachi band…

I ran until I could run no more and when they finally ran me down, they marched around me in an ever-tightening circle, blowing their mighty trumpets as if to crumble the walls of Jericho.  I lay where I fell, battered by the force of the angry sound, balled into the fetal position and doing all I could to protect my head while they stomped ever closer.  Spikes of hot sunlight glinted off their polished golden instruments and the sequins of their exquisite costumes; their brown leather sandals kicked up mile-high plumes of hot dust and desert sand like explosions in an old war movie…

It was a dream within a dream.

I can see it now; the four of us, the only ones left from the Fightin’ 88th - Little Joe, Arizona Frank, Mikey-from-the-Bronx and me, the MoPic – running like Hell while the Devil took potshots at our unprotected backsides.  We dove as one for the relative safety of a foxhole, blown over the top of the uncoiled concertina wire by the force of a nearby explosion.

“Well,” gasped Little Joe a few moments later, ”Whadda’ we got left?”  We dumped out our bags. It didn’t look good. We had 40, maybe 45 rounds of pistol ammo between us, 23 rounds for a Thompson with a jammed feed, three hand grenades, two canteens of water and no rations to speak of.

Arizona patiently counted the ammo a second time.  “We’ll be fine,” he says looking at the rest of us with a bemused grin, ”so long as there’s only 39 of them left and none of us miss.”

As for me, I’ve got three frames left on this roll and a bagful of stuff that will probably never see the inside of a dark room.  I snap three quick portraits of the other men – something for grieving widows to frame and place on the mantle right next to the wedding photo.  Hurriedly, I jot my name and rank, the date, I.D. for each of the men, my serial number, press affiliation, and some final ironic observations about the brutality of war into my field notebook before stuffing it and the camera back into my old canvas bag, covering it with my pock-marked helmet and covering the whole thing with a pile of stones and a white handkerchief.  Hopefully one of our guys finds it. Looks I’ll have to accept that Pulitzer posthumously.

The eyes of the haunted stare back at me, their faces drawn.  It is silent for a moment, save for the boom of distant shelling.  The minds of the doomed men reach out to the friends and families they know they will never see again.

Little Joe suddenly grabs the radio, twisting the crank on the front like a man possessed.  Arizona slowly reaches over and points out, yet again, the gaping bullet hole in the face plate that prevents it from working.  Disgusted, Joe casts it aside.  “This is it,” he fumes.

“I reckon yo’ right about that.”  Arizona speaks slower than a sunset.

“No way!  We’ll get out of this! Right? I’m supposed to get married!” That’s Mikey-from-the-Bronx, dumb kid, still green.  Brand new to the unit, barely 17, lied about his age to impress his old man, killed his first Kraut about an hour ago.

The explosions creep closer, slamming into the ground like a giant’s footsteps… closer, closer still… I jump with each blast, as dirt and debris rain down around our heads.  They’re zeroing in on us… better this way, I guess.  Faster.  A mighty pressure builds in my chest, and try as I might I cannot breathe… we’re not gonna make it out of here, not this time.  We’d pushed our luck taking out that machine gun nest.

Suddenly the air is filled with the Doppler scream of an incoming round.  This is it.  Without thinking, I light up a smoke and jam my fingers into my ears – I don’t know where I’m going next, but there’s no sense in showing up deaf… I close my eyes, shouting to be heard above the banshee wail of the mortar shell.., louder, louder!  “It’s been a hell of run, gentlemen!”

I awoke with a start to discover my own hands clutching my pillow tight against my face and my alarm clock beeping like a dump truck in reverse.

Stevie clapped his hands and laughed with delight, swaying back and forth the way you imagine he might.

We called for more coffee, and continued to talk as the morning sun shone brightly.

 

 

Take Me To Your Leader – An Alien in New York

03JUN2010 – On the train to NYC, slowed to a near-predatory crawl beneath a railroad overpass somewhere south of Pennsylvania. If this train had a long furry tail and a thing for yarn, we could expect to come bursting from this tunnel within seconds in hot pursuit of fuck only knows.

Speaking of improbability, if you’d told me six months ago that I’d be moving to New York City and furthermore, that I’d be excited about it, I’d have recommended you for a straight jacket and a cameo in a Quiet Riot video. And yet, here I am; packed, racked and rolling north on a true blue summer morning. Our ETA is approximately 1040, and I plan to be in my new apartment by noon.

The movers came yesterday; it felt rather strange being on the other side of the paperwork. I saw myself as a fresh out of high-school kid in a bland grey t-shirt with a truck on the front, the sweat wrung from my body by the gallons and the doomed feeling of being completely spent before discovering the pool table in the basement, which won’t fit on the truck. I think being a mover was what drove me to a life of minimalism. I mean, who needs all this shit?! Just ‘cos they sell it doesn’t mean you gotta buy it.

Time passes, and I sit watching the scenery rush past. My thoughts are an indistinguishable roar. I feel like a blind man at a cocktail party, unable to draw one voice from the multitude. Sometimes words fail me. I could live for a thousand years and still never reach the mastery of language that life and experience deserve. “Sometimes,” it has been written, “a hundred thousand volumes of knowledge aren’t enough, and sometimes one word is too much.” Yeah, I get that. Holding the cosmic unfathomable in one hand, and the Oxford English dictionary in the other doesn’t quite weigh out. It’s a like hunting for fireflies with a bear trap. I stare out the window some more, watching the graffiti evolve as we near the cradle of Krylon.

LT: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds “Abattoir Blues”. Sudden hunger and a craving for caffeine propel me from my seat and I hum a little tune as I amble toward the cafeteria car. “I went to bed last night and my moral code got jammed/ I woke up this morning with a frappuccino in my hand.” The lurching and bumping of the train reminds me of being at sea; taking three weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a three-masted barque. You’ve not properly lived until you’ve spent hours vomiting over the side of a confiscated war prize in heaving seas; strapped into a safety harness and clutching the rail for dear life, shivering uncontrollably in the freezing wind with the salty taste of ocean water on your lips. Eventually I got my sea legs (and some rather strong medication), but like the man said: “The future’s uncertain, and the end is always near.” He also said, “Never vomit into the wind.” That’s good advice, too.

Moving forward along the train now, counting up the number of doors as they spring open like the jaws of a hungry thing until I arrive at the dining car. One Alexander Hamilton later, I’m the proud owner of a breakfast sandwich, a can of Red Bull and, ha ha, a frappuccino; this in addition to the large cup of black coffee purchased at Union Station about an hour ago. A writer’s mind must remain limber. It’s not my fault that Amtrak doesn’t offer quality speed at a fair market price. I work to maintain balance with a flimsy cardboard tray in my hands, contemplating the rushing ground and churning steel going clickety-clack just beneath my feet as I move between cars. Headed aft and aware of the math, I make way back to my seat with my precious breakfast treasure, counting back down the doors and checking off the human landmarks as I pass them by: Sleeping Girl in Bright Blue… check. Grown Man Watching “Garfield” On His Laptop… check.

Fresh off the train, I was following the herd across the platform, thinking that very soon this city would become second nature and muscle memory, when my leg experienced a mild earthquake. I fished my vibrating phone from the thigh pocket of my cargo shorts and read the message; a rather random text from my old friend Katie Orlando welcoming me – sort of – to NYC: You’ve got to go to Au Bon Pain! she insists.

Me: Why? (I text back) Are you there?
Katie: No. They have the best food. Seriously.
Me: (stunned.) You so crazy. I just rolled into town, and you want me to try out a chain restaurant??
Katie: See if that contortionist guy is down at South Street Seaport. He performs daily in a neon tiger print outfit, ha, ha.

Forty-five minutes later, I’ve picked up my keys and turned them in the lock for the first time. I put my bags down in the middle of the room and wander through the apartment, turning on the lights, turning on the water, opening cabinets. Time to work: I set up shop on the granite countertop. Open my laptop (free signal from somewhere!), take out a pad of paper and find a pen. I call the electric company, the gas company, the internet company, and set up new accounts with each. I play “Simon Says” with FedEx and my bank; they blame each other during my attempt to locate a certified check for $1,000 I’d sent to my broker several days earlier.

Simon Says I sent the check from the bank’s website. Simon Says FedEx neglected to give the bank a tracking number. Simon Says someone at FedEx couldn’t find the very visible Madison Avenue address it was intended to be delivered to. It’s being sent back to me and then back to my broker. Oops! You didn’t say, “Simon Says!”

Next, I empty my backpack and head out the door. Objective: Find a local coffee house (check), a deli (check), a proper grocery store (check). A shopkeeper with one leg, glittering eyes and a grip like cast iron gives me a free pint of Manhattan espresso coffee cola because I had no cash — only plastic — and his ATM is down. I’m about to put the bottle back in the reefer when he smiles, bags the bottle, and hands it over. “I’m Timmy,” he says with a thick Brooklyn accent while pumping my hand vigorously. “You look like a decent guy. Just come back some other time.” True story! At this point, I’d been in New York exactly three hours. I think I’m gonna dig this place.

SATURDAY – Boneshakers for breakfast; coffee, and a vegan sandwich named after a bicycle. (Stopped off at the deli and gave Timmy the three bucks I owed him, promising to return for my butcher needs.) The day is getting sticky and the streets are full of trucks. Some of them are bringing new things, and some are hauling the spent remains of other things away. A cool breeze flutters down from the ceiling fan and sits on my shoulder like a small bird as I sip my coffee. My apartment is bone empty at present; a wooden wasteland populated only by what I carried in on my back. I’ve been sleeping on the hardwood floor, eating on the floor, pacing and washing the floor, dusting the counter tops, polishing the chrome…

Went into the office yesterday to see what all the fuss was about. It’s strange to see my name outside the door. (Just means they’ll know who to throw against the wall first when the revolution comes to town!) My desk looks out over a quiet park of oak trees, a colorful playground and beyond that, the towering fingers of the financial district. I can hear the mournful bellow of the Staten Island ferry as it departs the pier, and there’s a place less than a block away that serves ethnic food and strong coffee. Slowly, the pieces come together…

Seated now at a weathered wooden table, looking at the bicycling paraphernalia that lines the walls, and an outdated exhibit flier affixed to the window with loops of yellowed tape. Good sandwich! I chew slowly, gazing out the window at the ink-saturated street urchins passing by. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I’m not on vacation, and this isn’t another travel gig. I live here now. For the moment, this is everything. On the plus side, Boneshakers has tons of electrical outlets and strong, cheap coffee. I’m told it’s important to establish ones haunts early on.

Observations and eavesdropping: I read somewhere recently that 90 percent of conversation is gossip, the passing of memes and the transmission of vital information which affects ones social status and therefore their ability to survive and provide.

I wander the streets of Planet Will-burg for several hours, taking lefts and rights as they seem relevant and scouring the walls, doorways and other vertical surface areas for stencils and graffiti. It’s powerful fucking hot. I’m glad I chose a neighborhood with shade trees! By accident, I happen to meet one of Boneshakers’ owners. She was sitting alone on the wide steps of a church a few blocks away from the café with an empty drink cup at her feet, taking a break from a challenging morning. Turns out the refrigerator had come unplugged in the night, and all the milk had spoiled. Apparently this Yelp-approved café was originally designed as a bike repair shop that served coffee, but customers wanted a place to sit down and surf the internet. Same as they do anywhere else, I guess.  We shake hands, and she goes back to work.

Will-burg appears to be putting on a city-wide production of some sort, which calls for the cast of thousands to be adorned in old school tattoo flash, facial piercings, thrift store clothes and ironic t-shirts as they crisscross Brooklyn astride their duct-taped ten-speed bicycles. The only other explanation would mean such items were a prerequisite for citizenship, and that’s too just silly to be true.

Later, I sit on a random bench with a bag full of coconut juice and fresh oranges, jotting observations in my notebook and getting a feel for my neighborhood. Makes me wish I could draw. “Well, why don’t you start?” No thanks. That’s why photography was invented. Took a ton of pictures today, although all of them have been with my cell phone as I’m leery of waving my G-10 around. Maybe later. I look forward to cracking open my camera like an oyster on the rocks and prizing the treats from within.

Birds sing. Trees sway. I sit, I look, and I write. I think about the places I’ve been and the sights I’ve seen. I think about the here and now. When I get tired of sitting, looking, writing, and thinking, I find my way to Barcade. Fifteen dollars and several stouts later, I feel nicely disjointed from the present tense. It’s a nice place. Well lit, cheap drinks, and two long walls of my childhood friends, although none of the ones I was really good at.

Apparently the world record holder on Donkey Kong hangs out here on the regular. Dr. Hank Chien, 35, is a Queens-based plastic surgeon who, on February 27, after a 2 ½ hour marathon session, racked up a score of 1,061, 700 on the classic arcade game, besting the previous record by 10,000 points. I plan to make it a point to meet the legend.

At this moment, I can’t see very far. I’m butted hard against the plate glass of the Now, with no idea of what the future will bring. This is it. This is as far ahead as I’d planned ahead for. I feel a piece of machinery vibrating somewhere below my feet, and I take another sip of my stout. I should go soon, since I don’t have the funds to make this an all-nighter, but I don’t want to go back to my empty apartment. (No internet after the first few hours. The Wi-fi well’s run dry, boys…) The situation is hopeless, but not serious. At least I have the job needed to generate the dollars to fill my pockets to allow me to sit on this torn-to-shit barstool in a refurbished warehouse space in Brooklyn getting ripped to the tits on powerful stout. And yet, the voice of financial responsibility nags at me from the back of my mind. I really wish it would shut the fuck up. I’ve paid all the bills, I’ve drafted to-do lists, I got a haircut, I set up the utilities, and I’m TCOB as the King used to say. I’m taking care of me and mine. “Would it spoil some vast eternal plan/ if I were a drunken man?”

I wrestle with new ways to describe the silvery ping of quarters striking the polished steel diaphragm of the change machine. They make a scraping rasp as they’re scooped out and forced between the narrow red lips of the nearest game just a few feet away by a barrel-bodied man of an indeterminate age dressed in – wait for it – an ironic t-shirt. (Don’t get me wrong, I really like this bar.)

I can’t wait to get back to some serious writing! I’m way overdue for a maniacal burst of pure genius, a go-to-hell story cranked out in the darkest hours of the night; my eyes redder than the Communist threat and my brain fueled by hot water and xanthine alkaloids (see also: C8H10N402.)

MONDAY – Woke up. Turned on laptop to write while I waited for the movers to show. Found that I had just enough signal strength to post this! It’s not quite done, but it’s better than nothing.  Gonna rush up the block and grab an Americano.  Can’t wait for my stuff.  At last, something to sit down on!

Down to my last $500,

TWM

NW616, 7A

26DEC08 – Ate a hearty breakfast at a little diner just a ways from where I’m sitting; the faces of large men in filthy ball caps and strained suspenders turned to size me up as I walked in the door. I took a seat at the counter, drank several white cups of black coffee, and wolfed down a fantastic, bulging omelet served up by doe-eyed small town teen angels looking so tired and weary in their matching polo shirts.

Now sitting in a tiny snow covered airport in the North. Everyone is through the security check, and people are chatting quietly amongst themselves. I hear the words ‘shovel’ and driveway’ repeated often. The drinking fountain here smells of root beer, and the overly cheerful voices on the radio bounce and skitter across the stone foyer. My eyes burn from a lack of sleep. I’m dressed for comfort; heavy cargo trousers, multiple t-shirts, a new hat pushed back on my head, and the same Keens I’ve been wearing since the day I kissed A.D. The air crew tromps in tracking snow across the worn brick floor, and passengers drag their carry-on luggage wearily toward the flight line.

Later, at 30,000 feet, a dignified looking blonde woman cautions out the drinks. My tray table won’t go all the way down; it’s got a three-wheel motion to it. The sky outside my window is a ghostly pale blue soaked with hints of coral and gold, and I’m getting a high-pitched massage from the engine. The vibrations tickle my skeleton, and it feels like a tattoo gun humming and thrumming against my bones. I feel it in the arches of my feet, so I splay my toes and turn my ankles, cracking them one at a time.

I’m listening to ‘Sinnerman’ by 16 Horsepower and thinking, as I often do when I fly, about The End. What would it be like wake up the morning after feeling choked and utterly doomed, knowing you’d never draw breath again that wasn’t tainted by sulfur and bloody ash, and understanding suddenly that the skills you spent a lifetime learning will have very little to do with the ones required if you expect to survive from that moment on?

The cabin is old and worn; the seat in front of me is cracked and tattered. I take a few snapshots out the window and remember how much happier I am when I’m traveling. Crunching ice with a molar, I study the lens flare on the apex of the engine cowling and gnaw on my lip, savor the gentle sting as the skin shreds a little. Life while flying is all about patience, breathing, and not punching anyone in the back of the head. Crammed into a tiny seat with nowhere else to put my limbs, and the person in front of me decides to kick their seat all the way back. The droning of the engine will no doubt obscure the sound of my knees rupturing.

While eating a can of tuna at what I’m informed is our cruising altitude, I wonder if the fish this used to be could have ever dreamed that it would be chopped up, crammed into tiny tin coffin, only to be exhumed and devoured by a man rocketing high above.

The battery in my iPod is running low, we’re on our final approach.

TWM

“Thus, the pattern of my relationship was already prefigured; today as then I am solitary, because I know things, and must hint at things which other people do not know, and usually do not even want to know.” – Jung