Swell

When the wave arrives, it’s a rising dark wall. No one expected this. We were sure the wave would be all helter-skelter, a druid of saltwater raising cane with the locals. We didn’t have time to wait for another. These waves are rare. They appear randomly, like the nightlife in Bucharest, or Prague. At night, everything looks like puppets and prime ministers. If I had a hammer and a blowtorch I could probably describe it better. All I did in art school was twiddle my thumbs. I learned about diverging income and inequality trajectories much later, in the streets of San Francisco, where I left my heart on a public bench for people to walk by and stare at. Love did this, yes, and coffee and ivory exports. I get how people like to shout their emotions. It happens naturally, like a geyser, but without the elk and grizzly bears. Have you had a chance to look at the menu? The special today is a pale flower whose roots descend into warm Alabama dirt, served with a delicious subpoena, two salty oligarchs, and a quatrain with seven ventral gill openings and a hollow trigonometry. It’s busy tonight. Please excuse me. These conversations with the dead are always exhausting. Study the menu. Steal glances at the other customers, or the darkness in your heart, or the tiny little light shining in your eyes. So pretty. And yet so sad. Hang on. Hang in there. I’ll be with you as soon as I get back from who I was yesterday.

Now about that wave. It was a dark wall. But it only lasted a moment before it began to topple and curl. That’s when the surfer appeared. She was lean, and taut, and reminded me of the invention of the ballpoint pen. It made me want to go write something. I yearned for a little privacy. A little plankton. I live in an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery. It skews my perception. I see everything a little askew, arms akimbo like a cop, or the phantom limb of a lost cognition. You know. Like Machu Picchu. Last night we attended a wedding on Saturn. Delirium got married to wisdom. The festivities were watermarks of Being, raw life in the jelly of an open knee. The mind is a vapor that floats out of the head. I’ve never tasted such piquant emotions. You can pry them open with a brain. Get up in the morning and kiss the sky. It’s tough and sweet and bitter and red to get lost in thought. The décor is largely germane, given the perimeters of our search, the size of the cave and the resonance of the bells coming from the cathedral. I’m guessing you’re here for the wine. Me, I’m here for the nomenclature. I hear it’s a good place to have fun, exchange a few words, and exceed the bounds of decency, the kind of sanctuary we’re all looking for, however secretly, or longingly, finding it in bedsheets occasionally, but really just exacerbating the problem, giving it room and voice, a way to get even with the world, fight those odds in Vegas, and take stock of the situation. And that’s when it happens. The wave crashes, even as another forms in the distance.

This wave was different. It had wings. It had scissors and scintillation, profusion and onyx. The foam of lost fortunes. The bracing cold of mist and metal. The sadness of docks. The momentum of life. And when it rushed ashore it erased my name and left me here, dripping, nude, and agape. What is this place? I see a dome of blue air. I see as far as the horizon. I see through space, and I see through time. I see where I could’ve been and what I might’ve been. Had it not been for this wave. And the wave before it. And the wave before that. One word after another. Until they reach the shore. And enter the eyes. And enter the ears. And that ocean of the brain.