Indigo Bleeds Green By A Mid-morning Sun

Imagine a world filled with streams of people in endless tuxedos,
women stepping
from the doors of black limozenes, running
into a spectrum of another night's endless
beginnings. A sidewalk full of sounds. To
see a car running into the highway of America
reborn, underneath the purple light of flashing
into blue neon, rhythmatic poetry in motion.
Where is the progression of stairways ? the
next cigarette ? Pictures turn into sounds in
one long line of forgotten memories. I dreamed I saw your face in the
mirror of my
life and watched reflections bend inwards past
eyes caught in the memorium of a Tennysonian poem. I saw your face
passing
into the dream of light blinded by the passion
of love. White woman, black woman, Hisapanic woman. I have loved you
all.
Give me the flesh of night, the wine of
desire; a golden cup of deliverance
painted by the illusion of the mind comprehending the reality of
being,
alienation.

Time stands in the background represented by the wooden clock
near
the top of the stairs; and we unknowingly walk upwards towards those
lofty recipices of the mind. I once
stood for three hours, watching the hands turn inside the glassened
boxed
in case; realizing that we see symbols
to the mysteries of life hidden beneath
those hands. Two chairs sit inside the
room, and my friend and I from the early Beat days of the eighties sit
by the
one hundred year old fireside discussing
books of past ages; our cold and tormented past. Larry had been a
good
streetwise kid, who lost his innocense
when he became lost in the streets of
San Francisco one summer afternoon.
He was nineteen years old. Now, he
spends his days waiting on the hands
of time, remembering old things: lost
lovers, relatives, visions. Where do
we store the remenants of the past ? What do we do with memories too
painful to consider in the wake of the
morrow ?

"There is no God, you know....", he
says to Larry, as he gazes out of the half-empty window, watching the
sunlight hit the open streets of the city
pavement. The white sidewalk and the
streets of life merged in an ever-present nightmare.

His friend, Lloyd, some older man
with white hair and a beard sit beside of
him staring out of the same window. We
are all three of us sitting in that small
room in San Francisco in heavy plaid
shirts and blue jeans, breathing in the
cool mid-morning air from the bay harbor. There are times in San
Francisco, when a person can sit or stand for hours tasting the salt
from the
pacific ocean, as it hangs on the top
of cool early morning breezes, as if
supported by angel's wings, before falling listlessly into the slowly
dawning
mid-afternoon streetscape, some lost
avenue of dreams, post responses,
covered over by the steps of hurried
businessmen, stockbrokers, beautiful
women in professional attire, lost ladies
of the evening heading for the safety of
apartments, hotel rooms until the nightmare of night begins again.
They
are seeking the next taxi-cab, the next
ride, another step away from the movemnt of merging traffic; where they
will pass away like some illusion melting
into some mirage created by the heat of
the day. The older man in the cynical
philosophical sort; and gives Larry
conversation and song. The wine has
been flowing from the bottle of mirth
all through the night. Classical music
blares in the background, resembling
some mad rhapsody rolling over
continuously inside songs left over from
some earlier era lost in the ages unmemorable. Insane
conversations
have been going on throughout the evening all night long. Lloyd has
been
enjoying the turmoil, some intellectual
swordplay of the mind. Larry cannot
take much more, and I reach for the
bottle of whiskey hidden underneath the
book cabinet. Soon the city will be returning to life with all of her
madness,
and Larry will not be able to cope with
such circumstances of the moment.

"Of course there is a God," replies
Lloyd half laughing as he holds Larry's
hand, whispering to him cliche's, random phrases that seem to
torture
Larry in a hardened unyielding grasp.

"God is all around us son."

"There is no God Lloyd." Larry screams in the aura of his soul,
the
soft dying of his soul; his shrieking
voice descending over the brickened
structures of dawn. I pass the bottle;
prefering silence.

The vaitican is a city unto itself.

Indiana interstate 80 going down into
Iowa, in a sun that had been unforgiving
that summer. A red new sports car
drove up upon the highway like some
mythic charriot from the ages of the
hidden civilizations of the Western fronteir; a shining red carriage of
deliverance for the damned. Like some
winged serpent from Apollo, the car
seemed to arrive bringing the cool relief
of the air-conditioned interior from the
blistering 120 degree heat springing
across the Iowa landscape. The wheels
made a rough muffled sound, as the
car stopped upon the side of the highway; sending a cloud of dust
circling
in the noon-time air.

Unknown territories making such realms seem unfamiliar and
strange.
Time and space seem to lose their relevance in such nights of
memory,
growing cold and barren as night passses
into morning. Such conversations become illusions lost into melting
landscapes, and soon dreams take over
a world inhabited by our senses. I once
remember being quoted Faust, while
traveling through the green lands of
Indiana.

"Youth fast and fleeting
Art long eternal
Opportunity----
Happiness is a full purse."

Some rides seem more memorable than
others, and come back to haunt the mind
years later, mainly because of their
surrealistic beauty, providing comfort
in the barren dryness of the most souless
of winters.

A hot summer in Iowa; grass turning
brown in the barren dryness of the most
souless of winters. The long hot summer
of Iowa. The grass will turn so brown that it gives off a dull burning
odor in the
air at night. Sometimes, the heat will
turn hot, melting the pavement, making
the air appear stagnent. It lay hanging
like some piece of rotting dead meat,
hot and heavy, smoldering in noon-time
temperatures, until the skin burns to the
touch in the thick mid-morning air. The
early dew that normally comes to relinquich, the earth never arrives in
the
summer. and the soul rests in dry solemness, waiting for the gentle
breathing of rain turning clouds into water. Noise and sound turn into
a low
steady hum. Cars pass by in lines of
continuous motion. the door opens, and
a voice beakons to the lonely, and the
haunted.

"Get in the car and close the
door baby.....you are going to catch
a heat stroke out there.......the road
is long and unforgiving."

We went into the old Trieste Cafe.
Larry and I would often go into the old
place in the morning to avoid the
tourists. The old l950's jukebox stood
in the corner; playing old songs from
earlier eras. Chuck Berry burned into
the cool air of a San Francisco morning.
Gale sat in the corner, drinking her latte.
She had just finished a shift at the bookstore. There is a clearness
that seems to come upon the mind in the
earliest hours of morning; a type of
enlightenment that normally follows some
sort of meditation; a feeling where
everything stops and for a moment all
is seen in its' beauty guiding inside the
infinity of the one.

When I was in San Francisco my
circle of friends would meet in those
early mornings, and discover solace
in the coolness that arrives with the early
morning breeze blowing across the ocean's fair winter winds left over
for the
demise of the mid-summer rains. Grey
hughes and the colors of dawn filled
the skies; but the colors ran as water
colors fully from the brush of an artist's
easel. An early morning sunrise is
something rarely to be missed, and we
would relish such quietness before the
woods and noise of the afternoon day
descended on such thoughtful contemplation.

We sat at the small squared table in
the back corner of the store. Gale's
latte steamed in the cool air. One refreshing aspect of San Francisco
is
that the air is often cool and dry; with
relatively little humidity hanging in the
crisp breezes that would blow in from
the ocean. She was beautiful as always;
carrying an air of confidence that managed to convey a sense of
pertinance
in the face of another noon-day's mourning. For in San Francisco we
had
been mourning a great deal lately; as
the sadness of fall seemed to pass into
the coldness of winter, and we each
looked back on the memory of summer
of longing; surrendering to the endless
visages of youth that seemed to arise
and fade in an endless array of images
cascading overland through a waterfall
of life lived but held together by the
fragility of moment.

Her crisp clean smile broke the eternal seriousness of the occassion,
and
Larry and I became transfixed by the passion of her emotions. She
carried with her the beauty of all women. I have
to say that of all the women that I have
known, Gale carried with her an air of
elegance that I have yet to have seen
in the most beautiful persons of the
highest calibre of classes. For, as anyone that has ever visited San
Francisco knows, classes in the city have
become rigid. They realize few boundaries. The upper classes in
San
Francisco carry a sense of stability that I
have never seen before in the east. They live well, but tolerate the
poor as
New York never could. It is possible to
walk into a bar in San Francisco, have
little money, no traditional family heritage, and order a beer and
with-in
moments such a person as you or I may
become accepted in the highest of circles.
Such is San Francisco; so different from
the blatent apitaths of New York City.