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David PerryExcerpt from New Years
BLAZING THROUGH TIME . . . What I wrote off the cuff yesterday seems awful now. Today is Monday, and I am a working person. I make no other claims. I work with the "like-minded." Picking, as if at a scab, then doubting, but at least I've got something to say, relating the matter at hand to something interesting. Several pages extend from here, in which I consider questions of reception and criticism. The dead brown leaves on the modest street leading down to Gowanus and beyond. Knee-biting Brooklyn. Dark rust, white frames, lilac shades, aluminum storms. Third floor squirrel ladder (or imps). I am like the spoon. Look into my bowl. Hold me upside down and stir me around, noting the reflections. I'D TAKEN THE BUS down from the mountains with Pepper, the tramp organic farmer. I mean temp organic farmer, on break from Stanford. We took the one a.m. taxi through miles of Soconosco scrub, to Puerto Arista. The mushrooms had been packed in honey at 7,000 feet back above Jovel. Now, at sea level, the heat turned the contents of the jars into gray goo. I thought some emptiness might make sense near the surf, that something would wash up with the tide. NOT THE SAME-same day, same apartment, same keys-but not. Differences do not go unnoticed, piling up like meringue, but too often they are considered nothing. Home alone, attempting to answer a personal ad, the longest I've ever seen-the complete works, even a shelf, stuck in my head. CAT STOPS HER PACING in response to my glance. I thought I was being smooth. She chirrups at the pocket door, apt metaphor for my I-know-not-what-I-want-and-want-not-what-I-know state of mind. We're tight like that. All possible words are awful. PUT EVERYTHING IN ONE PLACE and leave it there. Some other brain. The earth, the delicate ball of sensations . . . of which to say more would be indecent. Copyright © 2003 David Perry |