Thursday, July 26, 2012

the favored instructor & goodbye to gentleman jack

There is a force that resides in the east, my origin. And at times, delicate times, it feels as if there lays vast oceans between now and there (between here and what has been done - the complete and unfinished, living and dead, the real and potentialities). And yesterday as I retraced steps with a departing friend (Espuma is gone but it is doubtful I will ever forget the anticipation of walking towards it, as long as Alamo Street remains) it occurred that if Time has been so chipping away at what I treasure here, what has happened back east that I can not see? Would I recognize so little of what remains that I would feel as a stranger must? Making it now less real and leaving me center-less? Is this as it should be, must be?

But of course anyone everyone knows that Place must change, it has always been so. Places get taken down and new places put in their space and the people close will choose to scatter, take jobs and lovers and opportunities in other distant places and perhaps occasionally think wistful thoughts about those they left behind. That is likely the absolute most one can hope for. And so I do not then find it strange amongst the swirl, the desolation, the absolute emptying, to take great comfort in finding someone exactly where they were left, doing what (correctly, I say) they were doing, believing/espousing (I love you for writing to the readership of one! even as I disagree) what they were saying before and before and before and before, sweet then. And maybe that constancy was understood/felt then, before it demonstrated itself it was implied, and maybe that was part of the gravity. And gravity will not be denied (pulling us to your porch, to knock on your door, to break from decorum because a few words, a look, from you will remind us so absolutely we will not speak, should not speak, for miles).

And so the beat goes. I fear gentleman jack forever gone, his carcass shipped west towards his country. And good for him I say. Sail the ship sail the ship a pirate ship must be sailed. And gentleman jack was for another time, place. He doesn't belong anymore so bury him already.

At this moment when I look west I see the sidewalk I walked with the poet, always a hurry to our steps (the poet with so much to explain in those days), and the balcony attached to the room belonging to Earth Mother and I can almost make out her outline (statuesque, regal, but bent, slightly). And I clearly see the spot where a dear friend and I smoked several cigarettes and she gave me counsel (she must have known it was her opinion mattered most?) that I have mostly ignored but not forgotten.

And when they smash that building? When I can no longer visit that place, what then?

(you will forgive me for not returning your calls today?)

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