The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

A story, then. A New Years Eve several years ago, with an old friend from high school. I guess I hadn’t hung out with him in awhile — and it was New Year’s, we were in Atlantic City, we had pain an exorbitant amount of money for a limousine to pick us up and drive us back to his – my friend’s, not the limo driver’s –  house in the Philadelphia suburbs.

So maybe I was encouraging him. I was  drinking — I don’t know — four drinks, maybe five. The free champagne they gave out at midnight. Somewhere halfway through this evening — after midnight, but before the concert was over — my friend begins to lose the plot. Not exactly sure what is going on. He’s not exactly sure. Me, I assume he’s blacked out — which seems strange — four or five drinks?

By the time we left, he was no help whatsoever. I had to give directions to the limo driver to drive us through these dark black suburban roads back to his house. He could barely walk. Had to walk him in. I left him in his downstairs bathroom. Let him sleep it off.

Next morning, we learn that after I left him, my friend had decided to take a walk around his back yard. He did make it back in — but left the back door unlocked and tracked mud all over the kitchen.

How old were we? Twenty four? Twenty five? The next day his mother asked me if I had any idea what happened. I had an idea — but no knowledge.

So that was that. Alcoholism? Maybe. Maybe for sure. What’s my responsibility in all this? I don’t know.

That was years ago.

Sad and lonely on Sunday after. Three fours blink from clocks. Sad song on my Youtube player. Glowing screen. Incandescent lightbulbs. Guitar out the window. New formalism. Rhyme and Meter. Work to do. The expectations of a future break-up. Fear of getting hurt again. Love, and beauty — lies and expectations — truth, vulnerability — a case of mistaken identity. Danger. Life. Days pass. Past 10,000. Bleed into one. Dead Shakespeare, possessing actors, mouthing lines, saying “All the World’s A Stage,” saying “this one,” and “this one,” and “this one,” and saying “no more marriage.” Honest words. What to say. Girls who like me. Girls I like. Circle games. La Ronde. Psychoanalysis. Try to be happy. Heart’s Ease. The feeling I get when I’m in Philadelphia. The Map of the Territory. Crazy endless hipsters. Cheap clothing, maybe. And bright and colorful. The Kids Triumphant. Die at Elsewhere. A bathtub somewhere. Old loves, old crushes, ten years gone. A watercolor of my face, overlooking wine-dark seas. The British Museum. New York City. Bright lights. Williamsburg. Bushwick. Trapeze Artists. Fly through the Air with the Greatest of Ease. Tone Poem. Barnett Neumann. What not to paint. Stations of the Cross. Jasper John’s American Flag. Jackson Pollock. Museum of Modern Art. Damien Hirst. The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of One Living. Dead Shark. George Clooney. Pandora’s Box. Silicon cell phone towers. Radio waves, bouncing back and forth. Digital communication. Packets. Translated. The Weird Sisters. The Spinners. Clotho, Lochesis, and Atropos. Ultramodern Superpunk. Thomas the Tank Engine. Bob the Builder. Yes We Can. Walking with Dinosaurs. Birdstrikes. Global warming. A sense of where you are. The Great Exploding Chaos. The Big Bang is still happening. The Inevitable Unavoidable Heat Death of the Universe. Where do we go from here. The Champ punches back. Down for the count. The Greatest in the World. Blue eyes and blond hair. Brown hair and green eyes. Black hair and brown eyes. One woman, many faces. One man, many faces. Adonai Achad. God, in Old English, means False God, Strange God, Other God. The word for God in English was Os, and Jehovah Nobodaddy, as a pagan foreign deity, was ineligible. One God. Unity of purpose. Parasitic life on the surface of the planet. Sunning themselves. Rock gardens. The inner contemplation. The comprehensive sound. The uncarved block. The philosophy of the east, of the mind. The letting go. The gravity-like force of dying. The snuffing out. The spent candle. The flame that was and now is not. We do not say that the flame persists in some other dimension. It was and now it wasn’t. Why not so with us? An afterlife for candles. All dogs go to heaven. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Man with a skull for a face. Death. Drugs. Disintegration. Falling to pieces. Quicksilver in reverse. Splatterpaint. Head exploding. Here, gone. Faster than that.

Not yet. Sunday afternoon. Typing. Reading. Watching. Chocolate in my mouth, if I want it. Freezing cold winter. Heat in my apartment. The world will end, but not yet. Strength and will can rise to the challenge. The future must be defended. Fight.