The Stream

Fragment, Charlotte, NC, 1997

Along the warped plywood storefronts laced with grime, bits of broken glass cling to a rusted window frame, shining in the sun, stripping the dark and empty room within of its confinement and waste and revealing it to be as light as the spirit, full of the whisperings of heaven. People come here to do what is proscribed, in the darkness and silence and cold, maybe knowing that light is in here no less than anywhere, enriching the glow that is conjured from within.

You can scan the span of tigereye wastrels in all their rutted glamour, slick and sticky with the sickness of their inchoate yearnings, the indulgent, reciprocating maws of grease and mewling, sitting in stupefied splendor on benches, chilled in the oppressive haste of the mainline.

One muttering "all I have left is to be great, to reduce what little I have to immortality." And so he brings me his unhappiness on a silver plate, first complaining, then persuading, finally placing this world that he rejects outside of me, too, and my sight is diminished, everything turns scaly, as grey as a parking lot, as malevolent as a lamprey eel, as fungal spores in a dusty hay loft.

And his world of filth seems silk and mahogany to me as well, while my own tired bungalow seems dung-covered and yellowed. While he wallows in squalor, oblivious to everything but his white-hot vision, those on the other side, scared to death not of his ideas but his...condition, these people want the best but somehow settle for the worst, all their energies trapped in the servitude to desire - desire for what they are told must be worthy of wanting, as if their desire could wash them clean.

At the place where they look, where all things are possible, there is no desire, cognac is swilled like an obligation, saunas of eucalyptus have no more appeal than scrungy tubs, gold is something for gangsters and Persians - it is all about control now, every moment must be tamed, every impulse kept under surveillance, the glory of everyone reduces to pressure points of fear, and the one who has everything waits, expending his worth - his fire, his time - in the fear of hell, so he lives the hell of every moment.

"But," said the Swami, "each man is the same." Then how to account for those who look identical? How to account for the anonymity of art? Is it all inside - a particular color of feeling - is that the distinction drawn like twigs into the bonfire?