The first days of June, mourning the last days of May. I look at my mask, as if a foreign object, its purpose momentarily lost. I wear it as I circumvent people on the street. It’s somewhat suffocating, but must be worn, if only out of respect to others. I imagine the last centuries epidemic, when women wrapped lengths of Egyptian cotton and silk around their faces with only eyes exposed. And why not cover my face, an out of work urban shaman with only vestiges of vanity. There are stretches of absolute compliance, alternating with moments of confined agitation. I find myself speaking aloud, ordering myself about, rousing myself on to do the smallest tasks. Brush your teeth. Lace your boots. Feed the cat and brush her coat. Now fold your clothes. Now call your mother. No, mother is dead.
I suffer a bright pain over my left eye, a migraine bellwether, but I don’t succumb. I’ll claw my way up the absurd mountain I’ve chosen, just a hill really, a ragman hill. I decide to take a long walk. The roads are empty so I head west to the river to watch the full Strawberry moon rise. I stop at an abandoned hangar, now a temporary storage facility surrounded by weed trees and cosmic debris. I sit on some cement blocks and wait. In a little patch I spy a glint of something. Bending over I exhale and fog up my glasses, but clawing around I locate and unearth it. A prismatic sliver of rarified carbon around two inches long. I hold it tight in the palm of my hand then release the pressure. Everything within me relaxes and the pain radiating from my left eye vanishes. I slip my find in the small inner pocket of my jacket just as the moon shows its face, unmasked and grinning, slightly pink and faint, a ghost of itself.
For a moment I feel the promise of great distances, unexplored cities and great possibilities. I dread going back home to confined repetition. And then there is another bothersome aspect- a reoccurring female voice, not my own, whispering in my ear as I pace around.
Are you ready? You Are Ready.
Ready for what, I cry. Stagnant July? The dog days of August. This afternoon the refrigerator began to sputter and water dripped all over everything. While wiping the floor I noticed my hands were covered with lines, not just lines of age but from excessive washing with a type of disinfectant I never use. I’m not a soap kind of person, just an olive oil bar from Marseilles is normally all I need. I tripped over some travel books and banged up my knee. The laundry folded last week begged to be done all over again, the floors to be swept again. Nothing is so bad, nothing really perceptible, and being alone, who would notice. I don’t know. Perhaps the silent drying of a less tangible vein, an identity that depends on movement.
I retreat down the hill and walk against the almost non-existent traffic. I feel the fading remnants of a brief happiness, as a child being wrenched from a dream in order to dress for school. I have no word for it, but as I mount the stairs I suddenly remember my morning dream. I had somehow forgotten it. In the dream William Burroughs gave me a tattered, lightweight brown velvet cloak. He took both my hands as he often did when I was troubled, looking at me calmly. Go as you are summoned, do what you must do. The world will turn as it should. The ghost moon still rises, and the ghost self will take on all tasks, will feed the cat, wipe a daughters tear.
William my dear guide. In my pocket is a sliver of something new, an unversed glow and hardness. I approach the door to the room. I no longer possess it, as it has developed an atmosphere of its own. But as I place my hand on the knob I sense a vague pulsing radiating from its sonic heart.
End of Part One
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