All Things Are Possible

All Things Are Possible

            As the reductive force of the ocean works and the waves fill the space that is left, sounding life as they leave and come back again, the sun returning to return again, red and strong as it falls away, pointed and lost behind the growing earth, pouring heavy wind upon the cursed land, away after the sun and the ocean as if drawn by some myth or other abstract power she is busy, determined, her task though futile, full of meaning. 

            I’ve come upon her struggling, each hand charged with an aspect of her subject, everything possible to buttress a frail cheek from the breeze – it pushes and pulls itself about her and upon her, her hair falls limp and comes alive again, full of something like grease perhaps ocean water, though only touch or taste could ever tell.

            She shrinks within the bounds of her overcoat, being torn and haggard and of a faded black set upon gray seems to recede at once and become one with her and who she is. 

            Those things that seem strong, that are to fear (like fire); that bring both death and deliverance and burn at once what they once make bright are as weak as they can sometimes seem, fluttering under the guise of their own existence.  The light whisking and failing again – the sun though proud, dying still.

            You won’t ever get that thing lit – I said to her – it’s best not to try at all.  All concerned. 

            And she, with only a slight noise of assent, but harder ever still, as if talking to herself or to the palms of her own hands, whispering secrets.  Yes.  But all things are possible, I believe.  Good things come to those that try.  I believe in those things.  Her voice of a withered and ancient graveyard, some spirit hallowing sacred rites and sacred truths. 

            And this is a good thing?

            No – she answered – there are no good things in themselves.  There are good actions, good thoughts, and good consequences, and these things are all good everywhere but nothing, of itself, I’ve found, to be good.  But I believe that this is good, so it must be, in its own way. 

            The breeze poured thicker across her and the black blue of the approaching night pulled itself closer and the pace with which she was working heightened, the closing and opening of her hand doubled, the flickering of her match light rose and seemed to burst its own noise (as if its own essence) deep into any place that was or could be hearing it (deep into your soul).  Deep into that void; the horizon endless and orange, pinks here and there, purples rising and falling high and low.  The silence of the coming sunset, the brief majesty of a dying idol, its fumes though toxic, of an ancient regality and good, in part, for the soul.   

            Her brow began to quiver, her body shake a little harder, sweat pouring down her forehead and falling on her hands and then off again.

            You’re causing yourself to sweat and that is combining with the wind to make you cold.  The sun will be set in ten minutes and you may die out here, of hypothermia.  Is that good?

            All things are possible, as I said. 

            I saw how she divided the sand and the pavement like a warning that this is some sort of threshold and she may be a daemon or an angel, both perhaps.  She seemed younger than she seemed, paradoxes and all becoming here, facts slightly ghostly, borderlines withered and lost with the tossing sand, mountains encroaching up the brick barricades, wars of a lesser humanity, footprints marking all of it.  Her feet digging forever in the sand, mounds of it and she sinking behind those mounds, covering it all, all of it, everything is sand and as loose as something of sand my seem.  A deacon of a losing parish, everything slipping, everything setting, loud noises simply echoes, the day is dying until tomorrow our gods and their gods of a different construct.  The blinking diamonds of the sand crystals waning and never blinking anymore, the wind always pouring heavier, though never harder.    

            Why are you so set upon this? out here?

            The shells are cold with the collapsing day.  The small particulars of former creatures.  The sand cold, the air is cold, our skin is cold.

            My home is empty and I have no money.  This is my last cigarette.  I like the way the ocean gasps as the sun sets.  I like being alone, and all the objects in my house remind me of the things I used to do, of the people that I used to know, and have lost.  Those people that are lost, forever. 

            How old are you? 

            Can’t remember.  I may be as old as this poor lighter, humble piece as it is, or even older.  You know, I stole this thing from my mother when I left them, those bastards, they were losers.  But I’m old kid, and its hell.  I’m too old to give up now. 

            And with that the cigarette caught. 

            She took a real hard drag and lay back down, these boots though too big with personality swaying back and forth all lopsided at the front. 

            I walked over to her and stood over her and she was smiling as if she had never smiled before or had no shame or both. 

            What’s your name? 

            I’m too old and free to have a name.  I have nothing except all that you see about me.  I’ve been there and back boy, I’ve seen it all, at least maybe, at least I would like to think so.  I have seen it all.

            Seen what? 

            Well – and with this she rose upon those pale and bony and wasted elbows, tracing the line of her sagging cleavage with a hand of nails so stern as the iron of carpentry nails and rusted as so, her shirt so weathered itself like those cliffs, brazen, jarring, hiding nothing – I saw a man drown out there one time.  A shark got to him before the lifeguard ever had a chance, well, the current got him first, I guess.  That’s something, ain’t it?  The way we can just be taken, or controlled like that.  Swear I’ve never seen a person so week and helpless.  I’ve seen babies with a greater chance of living, babies with cancers and missing fingers and entire limbs just useless.  So weak and helpless.  We couldn’t hear him, only saw him flapping about or, well, his arms flapping about.  What he was saying was lost in the wind.  I just stood there and watched him.  You ever just watched people before?  Quite an interesting thing, humans, people and all.  Especially when they are dying – you’ve ever watched a person die before?  Swear you’ll never see a person do anything else again.    

            I want to know who you are.

            There was rising this dense cloud of smoke and the biting calm smell of the cigarette controlled the air while her sighs and the sounds of the breeze and waves seemed to collapse into each other and the sun had finished setting and with the rising lights around us she rose as if a star herself, crushing the waning cigarette beneath her boot.  She staggers slightly in the place she stands, perhaps emaciated, more likely wasted.  And she finds herself stable and with a wide smile turns to go.  As she recedes into the darkness she turned around and said

            My name is Elsa and I’ve lived my whole life in Southern California, though I’ve been to other places too.  They say things about this place, you know.  They say its paradise.  That the weather is so perfect.  They say that this whole county used to be orange groves, and that the river used to flood all the time and destroy the crops.  They damned the whole river to save the crops, and then they forgot the crops, the oranges and all.  And then they say it’s just a desert.  You and I both know that isn’t true.  This all used to belong to the Mexicans and before that the Spanish and before that the Indians and then the Mexicans have the audacity to say that we stole it from them.  This place may well belong to nobody but the breezes, the cresting shorelines, the seagulls.  Man may have no affinity here.  There is nothing of stability here.  Everything is always changing.  Perhaps the sun sets too bright and we enjoy the day too much.  Everything just seems so easy.    

            She left the sand on her person. 

            Are you going home?

            She stopped. 

            No.  I am dying of some cancer, and I would like to see the sun set from the ocean side of Catalina one more time.  You ever just sit on that cliffside and just watched the sun drop all slow, see those yachts just rock in the water?  But that was my last cigarette and I have no money.  Look at the water.  I can’t see it.  I bet its real red though – that’s a good color.  I’m educated, you know.  I went to college too. 

            You won’t last if you don’t rest. 

            Well, good things come to those that try.  I want to live.  I believe that these are all good things.

            Do you truly believe that?  

            She spread her arms and then they fell down.  She disappeared into the blackness.  She returned to my sight under the gaze of the next lamp down. 

            You have to answer that question yourself, she called to me. 

            What if there is no answer, I questioned back.  There is never any answer. 

            You already know that all things are possible.  You saw with your own eyes.  It’s science. 

            That was not all things.

            Regardless, all things or not, I hope you find whatever it is that you are looking for.  Belief is a terrible thing and a terrifying thing but it may well be the only thing.  A good woman, now that’s what’s hard.  They are all gone too soon.    

            And she was gone, though I think I heard her footsteps.  The ocean still sounding, a few stars shining, though the lights and noises of mankind are stronger still. 

            I turned to leave, her cigarette still alight though battered, her outline still traceable in the sand where she had laid, her life, though waning, stronger than ever. 

            I hope you see the sun set, I said to myself.  But I was not listening.  Because I am young.  Because I am foolish.  And I am not listening. 

            Come with me.  The night comes still with anticipation. 

            I pull my sweatshirt, as black as all the space about me, closer to my person with my crossing arms.  I walk in the opposite direction toward the lights on the northern horizon, small ones.  Flickering lights and lights that would go around in circles and tiny lights would pass her as she went, even smaller ones spinning above the pavement.  She’d walk down the black pavement and little bells would ring pass her as she went.  And her hair and eyes would bleed into the darkness – they’d see her face and her arms and hands and legs and they would wonder what she was doing, alone.  Only knowing that eventually he would join her, there.  The skin.  Sometimes brown, other times pale like milk.  Like a glass of milk.  Freckled and sometimes dirty.  Like a glass of milk.  And you know that she is looking at the moon too.

            I see meaning in everything.  I’ve been having dreams about her.  For endless months now.  Some are hours long, others last barely a few minutes.  She used to have so much shame.  And she’d go down and dance all night.  She’d get lost in the haze and disappear into herself and think about it.  No answers, no questions.  And when she would come to away she’d go into another pair of arms, another pair of lips, to breath into another pair of lungs.  And then she’d wrap up in a blanket on the shore and simply wait for nobody and nothing.  Her eyes peerless, her chin resolute her cheeks plump and red and shaking with a fever.  The moon above her, in front of her dancing on the waves, the sounds of them gushing and the firewood burning and pouring black smoke into the sky, the moon everywhere and nowhere just think of her.  With that blanket firmly tracing the line of her jaw, her hair falling about it.  Her lips profiled against the blanket.  Warmth.  The way she tilts her head forward and figures her mouth.  So warm. 

            I am looking for Rosemary.  That is her name, and I am looking for her. 

            The last time that I saw her she was nothing but a person to me.  Yet overnight she metamorphosed, violated all the inner parts of a heart, transfixed, transported, cared less for a young man on the edge, rather a small boy with a nervous shake, gallons of body fluids gushing and then nothing, cold steel cold skin, lips over with wagging tongue, brain and head hurting palms all in a rush with pulsing blood sweat missing salt and carrying agents of a new temperature, called herself my idol, she my sweet witch of an angel, always at the infinite spaces always slipping away into the darkness, a god of a young man with no gods and triumphant spirits shaking their spears, endless road signs and autumn passed hard and the winter passed cruel, the spring brought rain and no deliverance and the summer started and time extended into the night like a thermometer the blacktops pouring haze into your eyes my eyes seeing nothing oh lord I must see her and talk to her, I must love her, my new lord my new mission oh, however is she so lovely she is lovely, she is my mantra, my motive, a dictum a truth and a falsity a lie and a fact, an always and never lover, she moved high into my thoughts until my stomach had reached my eyes and poured righteous acids and alkaloids into the space before me, her lessons, her dreams, not mine though I follow a new god for a new man, a prophet for a blank passage.  A shape, no outline, a country, no border, some changeling, a legend, a passage without an ending.  It was a dream and the dream was long and I may still be dreaming, you know.

            The Great Fetallah is here and she knows the entire universe, come!  The future lies clear in her lucid mind, all the pathways and the road signs, all the alternative choices, the entire reality of the universe, as determined, at her bequest! 

            What do you say, Soothsayer?