Goneness

I've long forgotten where I meant to start this wayward tale, my mind swirling in a rage of feverish dreams and thoughts, Bob Dylan's the 'times are a changing' echoing through my head like the cymbals gonging in some otherworldly marching band, but every story needs some kind of setting, a place and feel, a feel of what the times are like, the season of the collective mind. Cause when the reader can get a view of the state of things they can dig things a little better. I don't pretend to know everything, not near everything, maybe just a little piece of everything, that's slowly fading into the obscurity of everything, but I did my best, in the madness of it all to gauge this long gone piece of everything that will give you a feel of the times.

I was sitting on a rusty beaten down park bench that looked the color of an ol' firetruck under the glare of harsh father sun, eating a sammitch the size of a small child, with each bite the toppings would shift and scream to escape my savage chomp, my hands were a mess of the sweetest Italian dressing and the creamiest mayonnaise you've ever tasted, and I was thinking about the goneness of it all, the utter and complete goneness, the depressing faithless goneness, the permeating oozing goneness that emanated up from the asphalt coalescing with the hurried forms that rushed pass in aimless ignorance. The ol' sun was beating down in the most relentless way, creating a sort of invisible fire in my heart, he shared not a drop of mercy for your fine narrator, but that's just right cause this fire burned like a sort of purifying thing, opening me up to all kinds of recollections and truths that seem so evasive and fleeting at most times. So I sat with sweat streaming down my face like big ol' alligator tears for the goneness, the frustrating seamless goneness, and the tears streamed down and down and onto my hands mixing with the sweet Italian and creamy mayonnaise and giving that sammitch a nice salty tinge, and the sweat still poured until it dripped from my forgotten form to a slow death on the heated blackness only to rise again to life in the sky above.

As I was sittin there pondering, overwhelmed by the everything, wrestling helplessly with the never-ending flow of it all, I was digging an old man down by the roadside. The man was churning away at the driest piece of ground you ever seen. It was so dry you could see the wrinkles creating the infinite lines that were running all around and over the dirt, I could almost hear this thirsty little plot calling out for a drink, praying up to heavens for a little relief, asking that the sun just take a quick afternoon nap, and the man toiled away. I couldn't make out the man's face but for some reason could still see it perfectly, the unflinching square jaw, the unwavering sharpness of the blueness in his eyes, the jagged hook of his sweet ol' Roman nose, and the pale colorless lips, drained of moisture, craggy and dry. He wore a mask of wrinkles drawn so deep they mirrored the cracks of his precious ground, it was like someone threw a can of the deepest brownest paint all over him, the sun had scorched him so, and all the same he moved with a mad sort of determined spirit. He was gyrating about in the oddest ways, digging and dancing on his little plot, pulling at the invading horde of weeds that had fought through the cracks.

So I sat there twiddling my thumbs and chomping down savage mouthfuls of the sammitch, while watching this oddly spiritual dance of the old man and his land, after a time he came to a bird-like crouch there in the dirt, he had noticed my staring and now reciprocated my interest, gazing over with the same merciless quality of the sun, jerking quickly out of the squat and flying into a stand-still he waved his arm aggressively, calling me forward from my sinful reverie. I ambled over to the edge of his domain and stood in silence for a wee bit, wondering what he had in mind to say to me, but he didn't make to talk, and I felt it sort of selfish to have this big ol' sammitch in my hand and not offer to share any of it so I blurted out 'you can have a bite of my sammitch if you want.' There was a slight craziness in that old geezer, standing there all lost on his land, and he responded in a gruff but welcoming voice 'well don't mind if I do, I seen you sitting over yonder watching me an figured I'd invite you over to my land.' I stepped onto the patch and handed him the sammitch, his mouth opened so wide, it was like he was an animal of some sort, he wiped out nearly the entire remainder of the ol' sub. I didn't mind though, figured he deserved it more than me, dancing around there in the sun. 'Sorry about that my boy, got a little carried away with old smacker there, haven't had me a sub like that since I was going steady with Mary Ann, I've just been working here on my land.' I sighed, and worried a bit about him worrying about how I might feel about him snacking on most of the rest of my sub, but he gave a little nod with a crazy look in his eyes and I nodded back in understanding. He gathered himself up there standing on his land like and ol' southern preacher before laying down the word, there was an austere, spartan holiness about him, like I had found a modern John the baptist on his small plot of wilderness. I was to be part of his solitary revival as he preached and danced to the righteousness of the soul, and hopelessness of the everything of it all.

'My boy, vanity of vanities the good King Solomon said back in his time, and there's nothing more to it. This hard sun beats down on us all, the rich'uns and the poor'uns bow there heads down to it, and it's just vanity. I toil away at this here plot cause this is my portion in life.' He was approaching a righteous rage as he uttered the first lines of his sermon, face getting redder with each word, and his movements growing twitchy and pronounced, like he was bursting to get every word out at once just so he didn't forget a thing. 'What's ya purpose boy, what's ya downright God given purpose on this whole wide green earth. I knows my purpose is to whip, grind and churn this godforsaken plot of dirt to something each year, so that the death dry soil rises up to give birth to this new life, which in turn gives some of this life to me, so we can all go right on livin.' He was in the throes of this right spiritual harangue and his breathes were achingly deep, as if issued from deep down somewhere further than his lungs, like his whole body was shuddering to release each word of his sermon. In the moment I felt nothing but love for this forgotten prophet, on his forgotten land, a longing, painful love that resonates up through the limbs, and my body began shake uncontrollably as his words washed over me. This wise soul shuttered off by himself with his well of wisdom. The shame of it all was just to much. 'That's all you gotta do boy, find that purpose, it's an elusive, wayward beast, but in all those downright vanities it's hidden somewhere and it's the only way you gonna beat the goneness of it all.' I had never heard it thus termed 'the goneness', he had named the plague for me. That endless emptiness that occupies the souls of them all, like a hanging, sinking feeling, that something's just not right, that something's just not how it's supposed to be, and the fire eventually grows dull and bland, and the eyes placid and devoid of life, until the sinking feeling has retreated and it's to far gone, and resuscitation is useless, for the life has been bled dry, like the prophets little patch of land. He fell to silence and stood there perched on his toes looking down on me, and everything he said seemed remarkably, almost overwhelmingly true, like there was some supernatural, imperceptible, persuasiveness in the slight craziness of his eyes. I didn't say anything just stood dumbfounded by this holy calling of purpose to find my purpose, in all the vanities under the sun to find my portion, to fight off the raging, insatiable violence of 'the goneness' that had hollowed out the times and left the collective imagination to dim and darken till only a flicker remained. I decided then and there to find my purpose, and to fight off the darkness of the goneness with that purpose, like a torch against the darkness of the night. I would depart on a journey of which I had no idea the destination, to find my plot of land and to find pockets of life in the quickly darkening landscape, pockets where people living with the fire still burning, with their life still raging against the coming of the night.

I don't pretend to understand the smallest part of this nonsense, but in this portentous vision of my cracked up mind the apparition of the old man became my muse on this journey, spouting off his holy philosophies buried deep in my head. Even now thinking back to that encounter his stature may be exaggerated in the the grasp of my ragged memory, but his importance is never to be questioned for as I stood there wedged between the dark grey titans of the city sky and their much smaller natural fathers in the park, the red sun shone on the horizon and illuminated my soul like a burst of some divine fire, and so my journey began from rusty ol' bench to the ends of the earth, searching for that elusive wayward beast called purpose.