“If you want to win the teddy bear, you have to break the rules.’
Advice from a panhandler, a regular, outside one of two coffee shops. People come and go, tedious ebb and flow of those getting by; life in this city.
Daily she is here or there, barely warm coat, hands clasped in prayer, paper cup and her frowzy blanket.
Where she sleeps is often a wonder; women’s shelter a block over, or congregated rooming house. Downtown. There are many not far away.
‘Any spare change, anything helps.’
Passersby, some smile, others won’t. Many don’t look down. Not everybody stops, not everybody walks on by. A quarter or two, a coffee or crumpet. Here and there.
More or less.
‘God bless.’
Slight smile from an everyday face that has braved cold winter winds, scorn and rejection. Her life harder than the dirty concrete where she sits. Every day.
Empty stomach. Little promise. Few possibilities.
Some other day. Some other time, the world was different.
So was I. So was she.
Society does what it does.
We rarely know who breaks the rules and do not question those who make them.
Rhythm and pattern easily obscured, it’s what you feel, not what is heard. Polyphonic syncopation, bass line holds the inspiration well before anticipation, a rush of melody pushes to the fore you hear it again, but never have before. Rim shot crack cymbals crash, the beat is burning, and falls like ash. It marches and it swings, like laughter, it is tears. Emotionally charged, by no means irreverent, it suddenly switches gears. History more than the future, a time though, never passed. As definite as prayer, cool as a sweaty glass. Full moon rising heroin highs the music lives on the player only dies. Straight up from the psyche, deep down in the core, no matter the decade, more than less though less is more. Solo piano full of vigor the notes interpret all you have known. Time signature changes, on a dime, or rolled up bill, the rhythm method, it comes from the gut no matter how it is played or how it is cut. Free form. It is life, it is living, it is solid, it is forgiving. As simple or as complex as a saxophone riff, no four-chord progressions. Never boring. Never stiff. Wholly original, as much as it is copied, and studied, sweated over, with notes cast asunder, improvisation, muddied by emotion perpetual motion, realization, over and under. Though practiced it is free, it is glossy, and messed up, so dirty it is clean. Quietly you dream, completely obsessed. A blue note cries out to lovers and all the others, calmer, smoother sounds, longer linear melodic lines, you don’t listen as much as you go for a ride. Off the charts, it’s art and it’s plastered with culture, a contradiction not comprehensible, it is not responsible should you dream a life totally possessed. More about attitude than instrument of choice, the minor keys and major chords create it’s own noise. Structured silence played oh-so-slow in parts of deep reflection, blood rushing through the vein, it steps back then it rises up, triumphantly, again. Again and again, and again. Only a genre is to say night is just darkness, or a day is but a year, it goes down easy with dinner, or a six pack of beer, seedy downtown club or a scratchy vinyl disc it comes with a purpose, arrives full of risk. It nourishes the soul from a rhythm, whatever it has, whatever it be we should all live like jazz.
It was never for the night, but only for the summer. My seventeenth summer. Never would I say it shouldn’t have happened, because it did. You with a past I would certainly become a part of, and I collecting stories. An identity. At seventeen. You took a part of that; of all, or whatever, went forward. What I have become. Bones are formed through experience, shaping us emotionally, physically, and psychologically. Down to the soul. You were there. There I was, not knowing what to expect, and you expecting nothing but honesty. I didn’t question your motives, nor did I question mine. Age was not important, you said, nor was intent. There was a difference. Seventeen years. but only one summer. July heat, the scent of patchouli, sandalwood and #5. Intoxicating. I tasted the moon on your breath, and witnessed the clouds in your eyes. A sullen anger, a hurt from before, and your impatient need to get over the emotions. You talked about it. I could only listen, or try, to understand. At seventeen I could not know. Yet. I would learn. Eventually. In times of give and of take, we took consciously. Each of us. Never a moment of mixing the beginning up with the end. We knew. I wouldn’t ask; at seventeen you don’t. Of course, I remember fireflies, the music, touch, and the sense and secrets we rarely acknowledged. Not enough time. Only one summer. It was close, something I had never had before, but it was not friendship. A friend you would see again. Not only for a summer.
After rain, or tears, have extinguished flames of many candles, diminished now to stiff wax puddles from last night or the one before that.
Flowers wilted on the street, solemn vigil is over, but anger remains. Community grief is necessary. People hurt together, even heal together. When allowed.
Until next night, or the one after that. Another mass shooting, traffic stop or another situation where race meets hate. Another protest over another death. Never changes.
Again and again, lives once lived, stories told, never-ending headlines. Grief forever knows no boundaries. Another night, another life gone. Hate makes waste.
Why don’t you meet me in Paris? Half a globe away, another lifetime. They write songs about the city, in April. I have never been. In any season. Spring has yet to find its way here, so Paris awaits. Rendezvous. City of lights, city for lovers. Should we not taste all Paris could be? Could we not see nights from a tiny apartment, streets below filled with people like us. Experience I do not yet know, but I desire to feel the city against your skin.
I have been told one night in Paris is like a year in any other place. Language I do not understand, but the art speaks to me. Culture not found anywhere but Paris. History unto itself. Art knows no boundaries, no geographic space, yet Paris, as I have been led to believe, is the capital city. Hemingway wrote of Paris, Fitzgerald as well. Picasso found poetry in Paris, the painter found himself, adopted the city, or it him.
Artists, from anywhere, are meant to spend time in Paris, to discover, to recover, from wherever they have lived. You don’t get that feeling anywhere else. Or so I am told. I need Paris. I would write in Paris, I would paint, perhaps on the street, because I can only imagine what others have lived. I can only imagine. In Paris. In poetry. In April. We would meet in Paris, we may never leave.
