I was on the road trip that could only take place in between time and space, and this was the one where I was visiting old friends. First I would see my tongue, and then I would see my heart, and it would make sense if both of them were living with her, but they were not. In fact, the her with whom I assumed they would be living was not one but a number, that is, a number higher than one, and so it was becoming very necessary to try to keep track of the pieces of things. She was pieces, and she was many, and there were more hers than I had known about, but it was suddenly important to follow the tracks to all of them. If I could follow her fractions, then someone might be tracing mine, and this is the way we could keep track of each other and help each other put each other back together each other. Not that I was falling apart. Not ever.
The only reason I knew that I was still thinking about her was the fact that the sun on the road in front of me looked more like her face, like I was driving into her mouth (rather than the usual face of the sun, which for me, like most of us, is a Tzotzil Mayan elder, possibly male or possibly not, but probably yes male yes because of the phallus that is hanging by his ear ((left)) ). This was the funniest thing about it, the most ironic thing, because I understood so very well that I would never actually reach her mouth, that it was always just out of reach, and I was starting to understand what sailors go through when the moon is making them insane, and why they turned manatees into mermaids.
I was on my way, then, on the road trip, then, and I decided to stop just then and have a snack and look at souvenirs, and I pulled off by a shop, Ambo's Mundos. The sign outside said that they had pancakes made from dates offered 24 hours a day, and a free butter bar. Although the idea of the dates never sounded very good to me, the butter sounded so very French that I had to stop, because I was so worldly (am so worldly), and this was between so many mundos that it just made sense. I turned off the motorcycle and let myself just sit there (stand really because if I sit then the whole thing falls over and it can break your leg because it is so dangerous to be on a motorcycle, even when it is not moving), and I let myself just consider this moon this sun this face of hers that I was chasing and it was always just out of reach. And that made sense because I don't know why because really but it made sense, and seemed to be perfect, a perfect way to enter into Ambo's Mundos. In my mind I was thinking about a story where the boy misses the girl, and isn't even aware that he's playing with that idea of the feminine and the lunar, but finds himself buying things in series of 28s, and it doesn't even dawn on him how much he misses her. Thinking about this story, even more than thinking about the moon, I felt very much whole and well put together, so much better off than the character in the story I was creating. He was an awful mess. Just a mess. Slept with a girl a few times (maybe 56) and still so hung up about it (maybe it was 3) and he can't get over her and thinks he's romantic (3, there was something about 3 that was just insanely crazy and good, so so so very very good) but he's really just insane and not at all well because as long as she's there in his head, no one else will enter, until the next one, except the next one always comes along and enters, and stays, and it's not very easy for him, the character in the story in his head, not like it's easy for him, the character in this story that I''m writing right now, and so he feels so much better than he could have imagined earlier upon waking this morning, with the sun on one side and the moon on the other.
But the real story, what''s happening right now, is so much more infinitely important, because it is in a cafe and it's really happening at this very moment. We are crossing the line between art and life, and it's fantastic, and even exihiliariating, because it is so real and visceral. His hands are cold and his mind is racing, racing, faster than the motorcycle, and all of his life is an attempt to catch those lost moments and still live in the present and still be aware that the road up ahead has a cow in it, and he needs to be careful, because cows are so very important here. His mind is racing so fast, in fact, that he forgot that this part is told in first person, and once again the "I" became a "he" (resisting readers: resist the text!), but that's something I can fix right now.
I am in a cafe. My hands are cold. I am thinking about cows.
Since it is that kind of cafe, she is sitting across from me, and she is wondering if we should eat the pancake and explore the butter bar, and the answer to these wonderings is always a yes, and the universe is on our side. And as she's wondering, I'm looking at her, and thinking about the next important thing to say.
She interrupts, however, and she asks me point-blank, "Are you really trying to live through the first conversation again?"
"I'm not," I say. But I am. But not again so much, because it's not one that I relive very often. I am thinking about talking about first dates and making a joke about porn, because it would definitely break the ice, because it would be inappropriate. She would say something about how she never actually saw porn, anywhere, which is very unlikely, because of the way things are in the world right now. It would get entirely too complicated after that, so I try to steer away from porn altogether, and try to imagine us making an amateur porn film, except without the porn, with the same natural light and hand-held cameras, and instead of doing those kinds of things to each other, I am imagining how it would look if we set the camera on a high chair and it would film us eating date pancakes with all that butter, and thinking about how filming people eating is the new porn, because porn is what shows what we really do but don't talk about.
In that film about butter, they begin at a table at the cafe, and she is looking at the pancake and she is looking at him, and they start off slow, a dab of butter to begin, and soon enough they are melting the butter and pouring it over each other, and somewhere in this Marlon Brando with white hair comes in and starts to take charge. The men with the wide jaws are always taking charge in all the best films, and when Brando is in charge of the butter, we are in very experienced hands indeed, and it's electric and visceral and gritty and it's just like goddam life, beautiful and ugly all at the same time.
In real time, however, she is very upset, because she gets that way whenever she is beckoned from her sleep to participate in this same scene all over again, and I woke her up before there was enough butter to warrant waking her up, and it's not as confusing as it could be. Because I know why she's mad.
"I'm mad because you keep wanting to relive this," is what she says.
"That's not true, it's not true at all," I say, and I am a liar.
"Then why am I here again?" she says.
"Because I don't know who you are," I say. "Because I miss you," I say. "I don't like date pancakes, and I never will, and the idea of a butter bar isn't exciting to me. I've always liked real butter, all on its own, and at the end of the day, that's all you were and all you'll ever be to me. Real butter. You don't need anything else. But I don't know who you are, and I have no idea where you went, and I am still looking for you, and quizas quizas quizas..." I trail off, because it drives her crazy when I don't finish my thoughts.
Only it doesn't drive her crazy, she is already not paying any more attention to me. She is texting someone here at the table, in front of the pancake and everybody, and it's cruel and absurd, and I get terribly angry about all of this.
I am afraid suddenly that her texting at the table will remind me of the time that woman was texting that cruel little man from the hotel room, in front of him and he pretended he didn't know but he did and that makes her a little dim but I am not bitter, and suddenly I am afraid that every time someone texts anyone from now on, I will feel threatened, and get so unreasonably angry, that I might say angry things, things like, "Please don't text while my tongue is on your heart." And that will cause no end of trouble.
She is texting and I am trying not to relive this part of things, but it's too late, I am already stuck here, stuck with the version of her that got so very tiring, the one who couldn't focus, or decide, so entirely unlike me who has a razor-sharp consciousness and never second-guesses. Except to wonder what it would be like to pick up the threads of her and the threads of the thing that was me, and try to weave them together again, and see if the patterns had numbers that might be worth pursuing. It would be easier if the idea of her were more stable, but the reality of her were not, because in the mind she becomes mixed into a very large and complicated one, where in the world she keeps breaking up into pieces of the whole, and the whole is the only thing that is worth pursuing and entirely impossible to hold, so much so that at the end of the day, there is only that thing that wants to want, a drumbeat that plays a very particular song, and that song was the one he heard, not for the first time, but it was a very clear time, when he heard it while there was a date pancake and a face of someone that he knew he would love for a very long time.
Fabric breaks open whenever there is a word like love trying to work its way to the front of the tongue, and fabric breaks in spectacular ways, always making room for other ways of covering and other fabrics, it is not jealous, nor greedy, nor gluttonous, broken fabric is the cream of the butter on the pancake of the world. And in this moment I have never been so far from all the things I care about in the world, and never so close, because it's always blinking back, on the other side of a very thin cloth.
(more cafe scene coming just you wait)
The only reason I knew that I was still thinking about her was the fact that the sun on the road in front of me looked more like her face, like I was driving into her mouth (rather than the usual face of the sun, which for me, like most of us, is a Tzotzil Mayan elder, possibly male or possibly not, but probably yes male yes because of the phallus that is hanging by his ear ((left)) ). This was the funniest thing about it, the most ironic thing, because I understood so very well that I would never actually reach her mouth, that it was always just out of reach, and I was starting to understand what sailors go through when the moon is making them insane, and why they turned manatees into mermaids.
I was on my way, then, on the road trip, then, and I decided to stop just then and have a snack and look at souvenirs, and I pulled off by a shop, Ambo's Mundos. The sign outside said that they had pancakes made from dates offered 24 hours a day, and a free butter bar. Although the idea of the dates never sounded very good to me, the butter sounded so very French that I had to stop, because I was so worldly (am so worldly), and this was between so many mundos that it just made sense. I turned off the motorcycle and let myself just sit there (stand really because if I sit then the whole thing falls over and it can break your leg because it is so dangerous to be on a motorcycle, even when it is not moving), and I let myself just consider this moon this sun this face of hers that I was chasing and it was always just out of reach. And that made sense because I don't know why because really but it made sense, and seemed to be perfect, a perfect way to enter into Ambo's Mundos. In my mind I was thinking about a story where the boy misses the girl, and isn't even aware that he's playing with that idea of the feminine and the lunar, but finds himself buying things in series of 28s, and it doesn't even dawn on him how much he misses her. Thinking about this story, even more than thinking about the moon, I felt very much whole and well put together, so much better off than the character in the story I was creating. He was an awful mess. Just a mess. Slept with a girl a few times (maybe 56) and still so hung up about it (maybe it was 3) and he can't get over her and thinks he's romantic (3, there was something about 3 that was just insanely crazy and good, so so so very very good) but he's really just insane and not at all well because as long as she's there in his head, no one else will enter, until the next one, except the next one always comes along and enters, and stays, and it's not very easy for him, the character in the story in his head, not like it's easy for him, the character in this story that I''m writing right now, and so he feels so much better than he could have imagined earlier upon waking this morning, with the sun on one side and the moon on the other.
But the real story, what''s happening right now, is so much more infinitely important, because it is in a cafe and it's really happening at this very moment. We are crossing the line between art and life, and it's fantastic, and even exihiliariating, because it is so real and visceral. His hands are cold and his mind is racing, racing, faster than the motorcycle, and all of his life is an attempt to catch those lost moments and still live in the present and still be aware that the road up ahead has a cow in it, and he needs to be careful, because cows are so very important here. His mind is racing so fast, in fact, that he forgot that this part is told in first person, and once again the "I" became a "he" (resisting readers: resist the text!), but that's something I can fix right now.
I am in a cafe. My hands are cold. I am thinking about cows.
Since it is that kind of cafe, she is sitting across from me, and she is wondering if we should eat the pancake and explore the butter bar, and the answer to these wonderings is always a yes, and the universe is on our side. And as she's wondering, I'm looking at her, and thinking about the next important thing to say.
She interrupts, however, and she asks me point-blank, "Are you really trying to live through the first conversation again?"
"I'm not," I say. But I am. But not again so much, because it's not one that I relive very often. I am thinking about talking about first dates and making a joke about porn, because it would definitely break the ice, because it would be inappropriate. She would say something about how she never actually saw porn, anywhere, which is very unlikely, because of the way things are in the world right now. It would get entirely too complicated after that, so I try to steer away from porn altogether, and try to imagine us making an amateur porn film, except without the porn, with the same natural light and hand-held cameras, and instead of doing those kinds of things to each other, I am imagining how it would look if we set the camera on a high chair and it would film us eating date pancakes with all that butter, and thinking about how filming people eating is the new porn, because porn is what shows what we really do but don't talk about.
In that film about butter, they begin at a table at the cafe, and she is looking at the pancake and she is looking at him, and they start off slow, a dab of butter to begin, and soon enough they are melting the butter and pouring it over each other, and somewhere in this Marlon Brando with white hair comes in and starts to take charge. The men with the wide jaws are always taking charge in all the best films, and when Brando is in charge of the butter, we are in very experienced hands indeed, and it's electric and visceral and gritty and it's just like goddam life, beautiful and ugly all at the same time.
In real time, however, she is very upset, because she gets that way whenever she is beckoned from her sleep to participate in this same scene all over again, and I woke her up before there was enough butter to warrant waking her up, and it's not as confusing as it could be. Because I know why she's mad.
"I'm mad because you keep wanting to relive this," is what she says.
"That's not true, it's not true at all," I say, and I am a liar.
"Then why am I here again?" she says.
"Because I don't know who you are," I say. "Because I miss you," I say. "I don't like date pancakes, and I never will, and the idea of a butter bar isn't exciting to me. I've always liked real butter, all on its own, and at the end of the day, that's all you were and all you'll ever be to me. Real butter. You don't need anything else. But I don't know who you are, and I have no idea where you went, and I am still looking for you, and quizas quizas quizas..." I trail off, because it drives her crazy when I don't finish my thoughts.
Only it doesn't drive her crazy, she is already not paying any more attention to me. She is texting someone here at the table, in front of the pancake and everybody, and it's cruel and absurd, and I get terribly angry about all of this.
I am afraid suddenly that her texting at the table will remind me of the time that woman was texting that cruel little man from the hotel room, in front of him and he pretended he didn't know but he did and that makes her a little dim but I am not bitter, and suddenly I am afraid that every time someone texts anyone from now on, I will feel threatened, and get so unreasonably angry, that I might say angry things, things like, "Please don't text while my tongue is on your heart." And that will cause no end of trouble.
She is texting and I am trying not to relive this part of things, but it's too late, I am already stuck here, stuck with the version of her that got so very tiring, the one who couldn't focus, or decide, so entirely unlike me who has a razor-sharp consciousness and never second-guesses. Except to wonder what it would be like to pick up the threads of her and the threads of the thing that was me, and try to weave them together again, and see if the patterns had numbers that might be worth pursuing. It would be easier if the idea of her were more stable, but the reality of her were not, because in the mind she becomes mixed into a very large and complicated one, where in the world she keeps breaking up into pieces of the whole, and the whole is the only thing that is worth pursuing and entirely impossible to hold, so much so that at the end of the day, there is only that thing that wants to want, a drumbeat that plays a very particular song, and that song was the one he heard, not for the first time, but it was a very clear time, when he heard it while there was a date pancake and a face of someone that he knew he would love for a very long time.
Fabric breaks open whenever there is a word like love trying to work its way to the front of the tongue, and fabric breaks in spectacular ways, always making room for other ways of covering and other fabrics, it is not jealous, nor greedy, nor gluttonous, broken fabric is the cream of the butter on the pancake of the world. And in this moment I have never been so far from all the things I care about in the world, and never so close, because it's always blinking back, on the other side of a very thin cloth.
(more cafe scene coming just you wait)
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