Ask For Ginger

During my early days on the street, I learned a song about ginger. How it grew, how it flourished, how it assuaged osteoarthritis and eased digestive issues. There was a breadth of meaning in it that I could take for a walk. I could talk to the local spirits. I could think about condiments in a time of creosote. I could hesitate at crosswalks and impose my will on the rule of traffic lights. Deep within the Greenland ice sheet, sits an old man lost in thought. I feel in some way responsible for his being there, but reluctant to disturb the mise-en-scène with a superfluous objective. I’ve been told that there is more than one way to achieve sarcasm. One way involves a razor wit and a hellcat tongue, and the other just craves a little inducement, a convenient pretext. Look for a big blue door. Ask for Ginger. If you’re like most romantics, you’ll probably want a fascinating pain to go with your extremism. Find a cause. Veil your tactics with gauze. Be sweet and cajoling to Civil War reenactors. Turn an eye toward Luxembourg. I have 103 reasons to like concision. This is one of them. I found it on the bus. The entire circus of existence. Doing something to a car antenna. And bent down to tie my shoe to get a better look. It’s what romantics do when they’re old and ornery. Too edgy for yacht rock, too arthritic for nirvana. 

The candle teaches a finger the timbre of fire. My sense of abandonment prefers that we speak with sunlight in the dark. I’m not trying to be difficult I’m just trying to be exempt from summary. There will now be a play during oysters. We sparkle, I sparkle, they sparkle as one by one we eventually realize there's no point to it. And this makes it all timpani. We never know what they want do we but we know what we want that gets it done. Not everyone gets to have fun, even though I'm outside praying for the death of hope, which has been the most amusing thing I’ve done all day. Hope turns real solutions into bargain basement gimcrackery. I go about my business with a certain je ne sais quoi. There’s no need for density. We sometimes faint and when I grope around I feel the strangest things trying to establish intimacy with my skin. I like making myself available in ways that some might find strange. Posting things on social media is probably the strangest. They tell the story of what our clouds are like as they drift over the rugged terrain of our existence. I can never find the right metaphor. All the old bromides and platitudes are junkyard curiosities. I go down to the parlor. The realm of the imaginary versus the totalitarian beast. Emily Dickinson sitting in the dark while the winter pounds on her door.

In this kind of situation, where lyric poetry is often more about freestanding furniture, like envy, or telepathy, we save our grocery receipts, and learn to ride the clouds. The plump glow of truth walks a lonely path. An example is when a character in a play reveals their thoughts and innermost feelings, often when alone on stage, and begins to speak frankly and without censorship. You may have already seen a mime pretend to be trapped in an invisible box, using gestures to give the impression that she is pushing against the walls and a ceiling. This is called simulation, and is a way to achieve imperfection. In its free form, it spins like a mood for which the skating rink is a memory, as if water were a form of thought masquerading as blood, passing from one form or the other until it arrives in someone's antenna, humming like Billie Holiday.

Passions are awakened in the carefree joy of dance, and those who have seen such beautiful performances know exactly how much passion depends on the shape of an ankle, or the impressions of bare feet in the sand. Those enthralled by the steely grip of winter feel themselves huddled together, burying their faces behind a spread of fingers. Behind the tarpaulin, if a creaky old romance occurs, I will comb my furniture with a vacation. I am a beginning student of thorny things. This is my device. You are my blackberry. Together, we will make this fulfillment fulfill itself. Among nature and natural phenomena, the natural substance of things is evident, despite a manifest aura suggesting a clear foreshadowing of a fever dream about to unfold, something primal and desperate, something definite and vast, a mountain range or interstellar trajectory, a marble frog denying its inertia, and leaping into Norway. You can feel that tension in almost every sentence. It's a feature of language, a feature of the imaginary. The power to propose, to build a palace out of air, and hold it there just long enough to dazzle the logic of space.