78. Sedan In the Manzanita

In the brush just below the Buttes Road, someone abandoned an old Ford sedan. Yes, a steel car sat in manzanita.

Who? Why? We didn't ask those questions. We rode by. No one ever towed the car. The thing became a fact. Brush has overwhelmed and hidden it. Fabric and tires disappear fast. Soon, we guess, it all gets down to the chassis.

Oxidation works away. Its shifts run round the clock. Red iron seeks red clay.

Was it by accident or design the car came to rest, to disintegrate, there? Design and accident both, maybe, not either/or. Also, after enough seasons of sun and snow, accident becomes design, you know, and design begins to seem improvised if not haphazard. When, who, what, why, and how leach into the where at which a steel frame comes to rest.

You can't see it from the road now, even if you could find the road and the place below. No, you'd have to know already it was there, and you'd look at the brush, and you might think, yes, yes I think that's the place, all right. All right.

77. Pun Debt

I want to take a notion cruise, perhaps visit a dessert aisle?

I should like to explore cites of hysterical importance.

I have wonderlust, it seems, a need to sea the whirl and sale the seize.

Ultimately, I shall compost a travel-log, marmolize my daze for posteriority in hoops my words shall be widely red.

76. Five One-Word Novels

1. Juan . . .

2. Stop.

3. . . . red . . . .

4. Never!

5. Ronvelderhorst?

75. Mountain Goat

Look: out of these words pops a mountain goat. White and horned, it stands on a blue ledge in Montana.

Consider the image an entertainment, if you like, one that's free.

You may enjoy it as you will, flipping it like a coin, arranging it with other images, letting it go like one red blossom fallen from a tree.

The image of the mountain goat belongs to you, you see. You see.

74. Black Rectangle, Red Signal

He kept the television off because he discovered a television off is a large black rectangle in a room and as such holds more interest than what the television is given by the Flow Factory to spray into the rooms of Viewers.

So every evening he watched Black Rectangle. He imagined, thought, and wondered.

Ensuing days found him pretending the black rectangle went with him on his life's wee routes. When his boss was bossing him, he conjured the black rectangle just above the boss's head.

On the Metro, he pretended the black rectangle sat with him in weariness, silence, and a new-found bemusement.

Ah, but the the black rectangle always displayed one tiny red dot, an electronic mole on its sleek epidermis, a signal the television was always ready to be Powered Up.

73. Continuous Soft Hits

A voice from the car-radio promises "continuous soft hits," and I imagine a boxing match featuring cartoonishly large red gloves stuffed with eider down.

Another voice declares traffic to be a mess "no matter what direction you're headed." As usual, the car and I are headed forward, yet traffic is not a mess, and how does the possessor of the voice know where I am headed?

I wish another voice on the radio would explain how radio works. It's something to do with electrons and frequencies, but I fear I'll never understand, and I long for the voice of Marconi.

I change "stations," and loud voices of two men bicker. Neither voice will define terms, banish bad analogies, resist the temptation to interrupt, or sustain nuanced argumentation, and now I begin to wonder whether the radio's inhabited by entry-level demons.

I wonder also why radio is still around, now that more highly evolved creatures of electronic digitechnics have left in a quaint, pitiable state.

Why indeed am I directing my automobile forward, listening to radio, when I could be an avatar, a hologram, an astral body?

A voice on the radio urges "me" to "hurry" because "the offer" is "for a limited time only" and "certain restrictions apply," but alas I seek eternal offers with uncertain restrictions, offers toward which I may amble sluggishly. I want to tell the radio it is, though dear to me, unsatisfactory. The automobile, the radio, and I stop behind a white line beneath a red traffic-light.

72. Glow

You said it would be red, and you were right. You were correct about its redness.

How did you know the glow in question would be crimson? You were so sure, did not demur, yet did not lord your knowledge over us, us the we who were so misinformed about the color of the thing caught in a crossfire of perception.

You knew red would be revealed, and so you said so. That is the way to go, indeed, when indubitably you know. You know?

71. The Place

Look around the corner. See the store with the red sign? That's the place.

Don't look too long. Get back in the alley. What kind of place? you ask. What's sold or bought there? What kind of work goes on? Yes, I know, the words on the red sign aren't much help. As you noticed, they say The Place.

Do you want to look again? Do you want to leave the alley? How did you end up here listening to me? Look around the corner. Is the sign still there? Is the world? Tell me, tell me what you see, and I'll tell you what I know about The Place

70. Night of the Topics

I didn't want to write about my father's death, so I went door-to-door, saying, "Tell me what to write. Give me an assignment."

The police took me in for questioning. At the station, they said, "Your behavior is strange." "Not so," I said, "no, it's methodical. I said, "Give me a crime--almost any crime will do. I'll write a confession--very detailed."

The police became impatient with me and let me go with a warning--no more solicitation of topics--got it?

On the bus, I asked my fellow travelers what I should write. One man slugged me. "Write that up," he said. I tossed off a poem about getting slugged--and about buses being transitory villages. "It doesn't rhyme," the man said, having examined the poem. I slugged him back, but not hard. "Rhyme that, Buster," I said. I'm not proud of my reaction, nor of the poem.

Expelled from the transitory village and wishing not to see my friends the police, I hoped to bump into my father's ghost, but I did not do so. My father didn't believe in ghosts, and he hated to be contradicted, so even if his ghost appeared, it would have made sure I didn't see it, just to prove a point.

I pretended my father was alive and told me not to write about his death but to write something for one of Reader's Digest's regular departments, such as "Humor In Uniform," or to write something for Full Cry: The Magazine of the American Coon Hound Association.

Later I went on listening to this city, which my father never visited, in which he never lived. I refused to write about his death.

I went home and read a paperback mystery with a red cover. My father read thousands of such pulp-novels, munching them with his stone-mason's hands, taking them as they were, something to do while snow piled up and the wood stove moaned and the hounds slept and my mother read The Sacramento Bee--the one from the day before: because that day "the Bee man" had spun his truck off the slick black highway near a place called Slate Castle.

Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, Max Brand, Ernest Haycox, Louis L'Amour--these were among the authors whose books my father read. These boys knew exactly what to write, and, like my father, they wore hats. Never caps. Hats.

I have completed my assignment for tonight. What was it? The sun is coming up on the next page.

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69. Placed

Placed and placid lay the stone at the center of the town.

Down poured sunlight, heating the stone, which had existed long before concepts like sunlight, down, poured, and stone existed.

Walking by, a woman in red shoes stopped before the stone, touched it; it was warm.

Feeling effects of sunlit stone, she felt placed and placid now. She understood belonging, was of that town and of that stone.

68. Song: Lady of the Dew

Song: Lady of the Dew

She may visit you tonight
Cast in red uncanny light.
Her perfume may make you dream
You float on a silver stream.

She's the Lady of the Dew,
Child of morning, bride of night.
She has power over you.
No, you will not want to fight.

Sharp logic and bright light
May convince you she can't be.
Then comes dusk; then comes night.
You'll believe what you can see.

She may visit you tonight.
She's the Lady of the Dew,
Cast in red uncanny light.
Her perfume may make you dream
She has power over you.
Floating down a silver stream,
No you will not want to fight.
She's the Lady of the Dew,
Child of morning, bride of night.

You'll believe what you can see
After dusk, into the night.
She's the Lady of the Dew
Cast in red uncanny light.

*
Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

67. Red Chair

I went to see my friend at his house. He was sitting in his living room. The bank had taken the rest of the house. Walls, windows, roof, rooms, chimney--all gone except for a section of floor, a carpet, and a chair with my friend in it. A red chair.

"How's it going?" I asked.

"Jill and the kids are living with her mother."

"I always liked this room," I said.

"Did they have to take my television?" he asked.

I shrugged.

He said, "I went down to the bank yesterday. I wanted to yell around. But another bank had taken over that bank, so all that was left was one office on the fourth floor. The rest of the building was gone."

"Yeah," I said, "they usually leave one person behind in an office just for appearances. And then that person disappears."

"There wasn't anyone in the office. A crow sat on the desk, pecking papers."

"Oh."

"What I don't get," he said, "is how that office can stay suspended without the rest of the building to hold it up."

"What I don't get," I said, "is that and all the rest. Anyway, come and live with us."

"Okay. But you'll grow sick of me, and we'll stop being friends."

"Yes," I said, "but not right away. This is the hospitable phase. We mustn't think too many moves ahead. Let's bring that chair with us, shall we?"

66. Tomatoes

When home-grown tomatoes turn red, the gardener says, "Welcome. You've come a long way. How do you feel?"

The red tomatoes don't answer the gardener because they haven't heard anything and can't speak anyway. The gardener knows this.

Much of gardening concerns gesture, however. Much of gardening concerns waiting. Lots of gardening concerns work.

Sometimes a gardener needs to say something to something that's ripened, such as a tomato. Or a strawberry. Or a raspberry, right before the gardener plucks the raspberry, pops it into his or her mouth, tastes, and comes close to swooning. Gardeners tend not actually to swoon because stones and sharp edges always seem to be nearby. --Better to remain standing. Or seated.

Sometime a gardener just needs to stand there and talk to a red tomato, or to sit there and murmur like evening air, as birds make noise and bugs swarm.

65. Mimetic Complications

Yesterday--or was it last year?--she held a mirror up to nature. A lithe branch whipped out of nature and cracked the mirror, which was, however, already useless because of fog and mist.

Then she started to make a list of things and creatures she saw, but a couple of them sent her mind down tangled trails of association until she got stuck in thought.

Subsequently the form of the list intrigued her, so much so that she played with that, ignoring nature.

Then her musings become comparative. She wondered how painters, musicians, real-estate "developers," hunters, actors, bird-watchers, escaped prisoners, and religious zealots would react to the scene before her.

Soon she had a smile on her face, a sack of mirror-shards, an unreadable list, and hunger, so she got back in the red conveyance and headed down the hill of nature.

64. Barbarian At The Gate

I'm a barbarian, and over there's the gate. It is red. Actually, I'm from a small town outside Barbar.

There's an old man having coffee at a table near the gate. He offers. I sit.

"So--what's the gate to?" I ask.

"It's to civilization, of course," he says. "What are you--some kind of barbarian?"

I order coffee and pastry. He talks. "They're in there falling apart--greed, lying, a state-mania for control, horrific weaponry, economic injustice, bovine media, and an odd blend of incompetence and arrogance."

"I'll be darned," I say. "How's it going to turn out, in your opinion?"

"You should know the answer to that already. Don't they teach history anymore in Barbar?"

"You're a Barbarian, too?!" I ask.

"Born and raised," he says. Then we heard shouting from inside the gate.

"They're in there blaming us for their problems. They're using a sophisticated lingo of hate, fear, and xenophobia."

"How trite," I observe. "However, technically, we are Barbarians at the gate."

"You couldn't pay me enough to go in there," he says. I name a figure. "I might reconsider," he says.

"Merely a thought experiment," I say. I pay for us both and leave a robust gratuity. The server comes over, and I ask, "Is there a bookstore around here?" The server looks at us and sneers and says something most barbarous to us. Nonetheless, I let the gratuity lie as it is. The server leaves.

The old man says, "Civility is often a blade that power unsheathes and waves in the air."

"Is that so?" I say. He's not an easy person with whom to converse. We part company, but we both go in directions away from the gate.

63. For a Landing

The airplane glided over a bay, around which millions of people lived, and light from the low sun turned some water red. On the plane, I thought of the people down there all doing and saying all at once what they say and do, verbal and bodily, base and mysterious, reasoned, instinctual, weird, private, public: all of it, all of them, all at once in a moment, and of course I could only imagine someone imagining it because even one interval of its totality can't be represented. There is no realism big enough to handle reality. The airplane landed.

62. They're Almost Here

Tomorrow the space-ship is landing. Everyone's pretty excited.

The aliens--they prefer to be called the Others, in English at least--purchased Earth, and apparently the deal just went through escrow.

Well, they didn't purchase all of Earth, just what we call real estate, most of which they'll lease back to us on very reasonable terms, I am told.

They're paying for everything with what we call precious metals. Rumor has it they did the equivalent of laughing when they "heard" that phrase.

The Others own such things as gold planets. They vaporize metal and reconstitute it on Earth somehow. If I knew the physics of it, I wouldn't be working here.

They've promised to help humans survive. To that end, they started by deactivating sustantive military weapons, putting spells on politicians (et alia), and giving the atmosphere a good scrub. We'll see if it works. Personally, I have my doubts.

What are we going to do with all that gold?. . . . Their ship, by the way, is alleged to be bright red. We'll see tomorrow. And the Others themselves are as multi-colored as a big box of crayons, according to reports. That, my friends, is pretty cool. Tomorrow, then.

61. Newspapers in the Red

The newspapers are disappearing. Some are getting thin and blank like fashion models. They report on sports and the city council, then surrender to pages of adverts and coupons. Other papers get sold overnight to petroleum companies, traveling circuses, or no one. They disappear like people the governments kidnap.

Some newspapers are going "online," which in this case seems to be a euphemism. Anyway, going online doesn't quite work. They post the stupid stories, the reporters write blogs instead of news-stories, and you can't spill coffee on the stories, pick them up, and see a brown ring on top of words. Blogging isn't reporting: this just in from the news-desk.

Next, I suppose, will come micro-newspapers--3 inches by 6 inches. The reporters will write in haiku:

Stock market plummets.
White heron flies in local mist.
Janvier is champ.


-- Or: soon will there be nanonewspapers, which you stick in your ear?

I always liked newspapers, even when they missed the big stories and kissed the asses of power. Newspaper feels good in the hands, photos on paper are fun, headlines are less thrilling online, and oh, my, those great newsprint cartoons--like Out Our Way. But this is no time for nostalgia and elegies.

Still, there they go, the newspapers, slipping into accounting's red ink. I think of the reporters, who will have no medium through which to report, predictions of the Online Oracles notwithstanding. I think of people lifting the two rectangles of an open newspaper and putting their faces in the space between rectangles to read, to lose their vision in news.

I recall a riddle from childhood: "What is black and white and red [read] all over?"

"A newspaper."

60. Wounded

In that first instant when
you look at a gash in your own
flesh, you see the cut's impersonal
beauty: dark red meat, blood,
and luxurious flaps of skin. Then
comes alarm and pain and panic
(and a tiny gnat-like voice that
whispers, How could you be so
clumsy?). Mind and adrenalin
launch responses. Whatever
was beautiful about that wound
has vanished. The grabbed,
makeshift wrapping's soaking
through, wet red. You're hurt.
"I'm hurt," you think. "I gotta
get some help." You want to hear
the red and pulsing sound of sirens
coming with people and proficiency.
You're hurt. It hurts. You're wounded.

59. Generic Apology

I have lied, boasted, envied, hated, wounded, failed, cheated, stolen, binged, lusted, languished, pretended, bullied, wept, railed, shouted, wimpered, slurred, cringed, cowered, feared, flagged, frightened, fucked up, misspelled, misread, mistyped, mistook, insulted, offended, fell short, gone too far, ignored, followed, led, instigated, shirked, fainted, sinned, fobbed off, suffered, attacked, retreated, recoiled, forgotten, remembered, preened, primped, coveted, stank, stooped, grabbed, and garbled; also, I have worn a bright red tie. I am sorry, and I am sorry, and I apologize.