Jerry Gordon (9.24.06)

The Bazaar

As a scholar who travels through foreign lands, I am always suspicious. I find it is physically healthier to be so. I don't listen to proclamations about miracle cures or celestial orgasms anymore. It is also just a good idea, in order to keep an appropriate distance on events, in order to observe and see them as they should be witnessed: in the third person. But, I can recall one occasion when I cast off my rule and let myself be drawn in by the local color, when I was intrigued and captured by exotic and secret beauty.

The country was a small one, which I shall keep anonymous as it no longer exists by the name it did and because the faction currently in power may read threat in the most benign of my observations. (I enjoy plane travel far too much to go into hiding.)

I was wandering, pulled by my sense of sound and smell through the market in a town on the northern outskirts of the capital. It was crowded with people, some in simple or religious dress, and others in black leather sport jackets with elaborate gold embroidery down the sleeves and across the backs. At first, from the violent images of birds tearing at tigers, and bulls goring snakes, I thought the jackets were the uniform for the then growing political faction that later took over power and now rules. But, I later learned that they were rooters' jackets for the country's five-team soccer league.

An international constant: the fanaticisms of political power will never match those of professional sports.

The busy market was a labyrinth of corners. On a daily basis, the makeshift shops--which had been erected in temporary fashion for the past two thousand years--transformed the stone-paved square into a tight crosshatch of foot-worn pathways. Some stands sold polyester shirts or belts or items to make the daily chores of living easier. (Whatever the chore, in whatever the country, a shopkeeper has a thing that will make effort vanish. Market capitalism's perpetual motion machine.) But these types of use-items never interest me. As a traveler--a man abroad--I buy only for the moment. Waste is the fuel that drives me. I don't come to the market to purchase anything. I observe and feel. I come to watch the culture in rhythm, to sense the pace and beat. I measure and thumb the weight of the cloth, but never to buy. I am there to note the rituals in a small book.

As I turned from one row onto the next, the market was a blanket of heavy murmurs. People moved and I moved. As a mass, we stroked the tattered strips of rough, grayed fabric that hung as walls for the shops. From the outside, each stand was a duplicate of the colorless next. But when the wind blew a heavy canvas doorway aside, I could see the colors and clear sounds of life glowing within . Each had a different hue and pitch. The laughter of fruits and vegetables was common. It was a familiar tone and had brilliance. A pear here was as a pear there and at home. Carrots were piled in balanced clumps on their stems and seemed to lick like orange flames igniting and churning from the ground.

It was visually exciting and, to its favor, produce is usually secure. You can most often trust vegetables. They make few assertions or promises.

But, as I continued my stroll, I entered the area where I am always most leery. This is where men shout in a song-like chant while waving a sample of something in their hand that you must buy in a taped box. This is the zone of trust and persuasion.

The first stand to catch my interest was no more than a small Formica table. Upon it, a man had twenty four household glass jars lined up from one edge to the other. They ran in rows of eight. And, in each jar, supposedly, the breath of the devil was contained.

The man--the seller--was dressed in dirty polyester slacks and a leather jacket with a large gold dog licking its paws over a pile of 12 bird carcasses. He told his story as a convincing narrative of fear. His voice had a style that seemed particularly fitting considering the nature of his product.

"The devil is not dead, as we are told to believe. I have spoken with it, face to face, and know that it's very much alive and real. Its breath smells of sulfur and garlic. It is an awful smell. This I swear to you."

As he spoke, sitting behind his layers of glass, he gripped the edges of the table and rocked from side to side with his eyes closed. He went on to tell of how he had been ill for a long period of time and that his family would routinely put him in a small room while they ate dinner. He said this was understandable because his illness was, "the kind that ruins people's appetites." He didn't name his illness in any more detail than that, except to say that it was very serious and that his doctor had given up hope of his survival.

He went on. One night while in isolation with his family eating on the opposite side of the door, he said he called at the ceiling to whatever power “either of good or not of good” (his exact phrasing) that could cure him. Soon after his plea, he said he heard a scratching of hooves on the concrete floor of his room and could feel the sulfur and garlic breath of the devil moving across his face in the accelerated pants of a heavy smoker. The man said:

“The devil spoke very softly, very different than the devil in the movies"

But, he said that the devil did not ask for his soul or for the souls of anyone.

"The devil does not want more souls. It wants space. It wants to buy cheap land. That is why I am selling these jars of breath. I must sell breath for the devil because it saved my life. But, you only have to pay for the breath and can then enjoy its benefits. There are no other obligations for you. I promise you this is the truth. No obligations.”

As I was intrigued by the notion of the devil giving up his traditional role as the tormentor of souls for the chance to own property, I stayed and listened to the questions that always follow such a hawker's pitch.

"Did the devil show himself to you?" said a man whose pants were tightened around his waist by a chain of rubberbands. "How can we be sure this is really the devil's breath and not your own?"

"If it were my own, wouldn't I be able to make more than 24 jars?" responded the man.

This seemed to still the crowd in a moment of reason-weighing. I could hear the scales of logic balancing level in about half the onlookers. The others left. The questioner nodded and heeled closer to the table. And, when he bent forward to stare into the breath-filled jars, I noticed the beautiful head of a woman tilt intently around the corner of a ragged stand which sold mirrors cracked by the king in a fit of vanity-anger.

But she was not interested in the devil's breath; she was looking at me.

At first I was spooked. I do not cut through space in the shape of a man who such women lust for. I have long accepted this about myself. But such a look from such eyes from such a face has the power to disfigure even my long held mental self-image of a comfortable grotesque. Her eyes reflected possibilities I am still incapable of imagining on my own. She inspired the irrational. And she was what caused me to set down my scepticism, for a moment, and trust in beauty. To pursue a thought unquestioned. To desire.

I moved to meet her, but she bolted behind the canvas corner. I followed. I did not wish to appear in chase, but I feared the distance her flight could lay. I picked up the pace of my walking. I moved as though I was trying to reach an empty seat on a train. Not exerting myself, but gliding towards an immediate fixation. But she was gone, dissolved within the current of moving fabric which flowed as a dynamic surface of nape and weave. Lost. Into the blur of texture and ache of shadowed folds.

I knew she could not have gotten too far. It was too crowded to cover a large distance in such little time. Besides, I trusted her interest. I hoped.

As I worked my way around the area, spying corners without turning my head, absorbing the scene with peripheral sight rather than focused vision, I overheard a man trying to guilt his wife out of buying a book at a nearby stand.

"You always say you will read them, but they sit in a pile next to your chair with only the first twenty pages rustled. But, if we buy the lucky spell we don't have to do anything. It works on its own."

"But this one is important for both of us. You will want to read it. I know you will appreci. . ."

They sensed that I was eavesdropping and moved to a more private corner, out of my hearing. But, from their movements and hand gestures I could tell that they were striking a deal. They were promising to change bad habits for each other in order to get what they wanted. Perhaps their wishes did come true. Before they paid their coins, perhaps they created their own magic.

They moved away from the frayed grey wall and I followed them with my eyes. The wife led the way to a small stall where the canvas flap door was tied up to accommodate the almost constant flow of customers.

"Moses was a juggler!" the man in the entrance way chanted, "I can teach you to beat him at his own game!"

I wanted to stay and over hear more, but I knew he would not divulge any secret. He would only make claims and cite examples. I strolled on without direction. I tried to pick up the beat of love in the air and unconsciously move in that way.

It worked in under five minutes.

As I widened my hearing, listened larger to the music of the bazaar, I lost track of the thing I was pursuing. I let myself go and then she came. I was rounding the edge of a young child's begging basket when the woman whispered to me from my left. I turned. There was her beautiful face smiling at me from the alleyway between the only two permanent buildings in the square--the national bank and the brothel.

I moved without hesitation. I smiled and kept her eyes locked with mine. She waited, but then bolted down the alleyway. This seemed odd, but I was out of the pale of scepticism. I was breathing on trust. I lunged for the corner as to not lose sight of her. And then, I saw her all. I saw her contorted, monster-like shape fleeing.

She limped and moved in a rhythmic bowing motion away from me. I ran to catch her. She was deformed, but could still outrun me. She could lure me. Willingly.

She stopped in a small sun-hidden alcove formed by where the bank and brothel come together. There she halted, panting her false exhaustion. That was where her trail ran out, where I caught her. Or, where she caught me. I came to the spot soon after her, out of breath and damping my shirt with exercise. And, then I was able to see her clearly.

Her beautiful head was perched atop her wind pumping throat at an awkward angle, fixed like someone looking for something they’ve dropped to their left. Her features were delicate and clear, a shining edge smoothly defining each bend and transition. A cleanly worked softness and surface, hopeful evidence of some aesthetic tooler forming corners of the world as a way to make we who read deeply in Darwin leave room in our thesis for the irrational. A head of grace.

But, her body was bent and twisted as though at some age a force peeled her skin down off her skeleton, tied her spine in a knot, and then redressed her bones in a haphazard impatience.

She stared at me. She worked to calm her breathing. I, with my skin chilled by the shade and my soaked waist-band, hoped she would keep up her pumping; I selfishly wanted to hear her speak in a pant. It would have been stimulating.

And then, suddenly, I felt my heart heave in a strange skipping rhythm. I wondered if it was a sort of love-effect or a by-pass surgery anecdote. I leaned against the dusty sandstone wall. I began to kneel and to move my hand to my chest when she started towards me. I stood up, for unexplainable reasons. She motioned for me to come to her. I did. She motioned me towards her mouth. I moved, looking and imagining futures which I as quickly forgot. Her lips were thin and unchapped. "A dreamer's paradise," I kept thinking, but I don't know why.

Then, with her lips filling my vision, she peeled them back, like a set of odd stage curtains, to show me a mouth of perfect teeth. White and straight and cap-less.

I thought for a moment, in a brief clutching back at the sensible blankets of reason, "Is this what this is all about? She's proud of her teeth?"

But then The Event occurred. The event which was only possible to witness in a state of semi-imagination. She opened her mouth, spread her teeth apart like a pair of gates set to hide the sublime. And there, in her throat, were spoons.

Five chrome spoons were lodged in her throat, placed in a row of descending size from left to right. I stared, lost for a reason. Lost for thought. Lost in the repetition of my own convex reflection in the dim light of her mouth. I couldn't move. I froze with the heels of my hands wedged against my knees and stared. Amazed and marveled.

But, then I noticed that her mouth and lips were drying out and I returned to my senses. I straightened back up and said, "Hmmm."

I felt odd and awkward, not knowing what to do next. Should I ask her questions about the spoons? Should I pity her or act like they don't change her beauty in any way? Should I run away or pay her something?

But then she started. The spoons were not just some kind of cultural punishment or tribal beauty accessory. They were an instrument. She began to exhale in a smoothly controlled and practiced manner. A thin line of air exited her mouth and with it came a tune.

She played on, and as I listened I caught the melody. It had power and passion. Much more than I can still even imagine could be possible from stainless-steel cutlery in a woman's throat. It was a warming rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. The acoustics of the alcove seemed perfect. It would have brought me to my feet if I weren't already standing. I listened, and when she finished I applauded, alone, the percussive cracks of my hands echoing in the alleyway.

I tried to pay her, as I would a musician with an open case on the street, but she would have none of it. She wanted action rather than my cash. She hadn’t simply picked me out of some bazaar crowd; she had chosen and stalked me and she wanted my help because of the access I had and that she was denied of--her being a native in a country where only foreigners can use the hotels.

In a very rehearsed speech she laid her case bare to me. She wanted me to smuggle a spoon out of the hotel restaurant for her. A tiny demitasse spoon. Chrome finished and industrial was best. She explained the entire thievery in relation to it being able to expand her range and repertoire. She said she would then be able to play more show tunes and classical pieces. Perhaps even compose. I felt rather like a patron, and I agreed.

When I gave the young woman the demitasse spoon, she examined it closely as we stood beside a brown metal dumpster behind the hotel. At this same time, I gave her my address at the university and told her to please send a recording if her career ever came to that. She shook her head without looking up and said that music must be lived, not held on to. I nodded, although I did not really agree, and have not heard from her since.


Charade of Destiny

I live between my work and worry,
and learn of worlds released from windows
at each turn I take within these rooms of bruising dreams,
these abandoned factories where my muses loom
up near the sooty ceilings, squealing
in their paper cages like lightless lanterns
swinging high as bitter chariots of cries
guiding me on into darkness and one more lost home.
The ringing ringing ringing of the phone
going on beyond the wall I call my own and the lung-rung
echo that chokes me in my nervous sleep, smokes
out the humming hive of my heart--vacant of all bees--
the bleepity-bleep beat that pulses of another pleasing hoax.
Swing low, swing low, swing low sweet charade of destiny.
Remind me of that look you loosed into my eyes,
that crooked face of history you used to hide
the mystery you took with you,
back into the far side of the mirror.


Waking Ourselves from Death

The sky is torn from mountain tops
and we sit here and hold each other's eyes.
The lies we keep to keep ourselves
asleep and tempered with this tenderness.
"God bless. God bless." I've seen you
when at rest and I believe the knowledge
of your lips. Believe the multi-layered glimpse
we live. Believe this brutal brevity. Believe
the width of every dream,
and the doubt it textures. Conjecture. Conjecture.
I paint the city walls with all the whispered names
for no one, let the bluish-black acrylic
flash across the night, peel the screen of heaven down
to blanket all our beds, the quiet of the house of lead.
The dread. The dread. The river of what's said.
The storm clouds on the morning of the light
that bathed your head. The bird song in the warning
of the city where we met. I said you said it's said,
our hands are always open, open to what's left,
open to receiving every drop of word that's read.
Believing each deception, because we're fictional at best,
but leaning out to kiss you, kiss you on the head, kiss you
on the neck, kiss you in this moment
when we wake ourselves from death
as a way to not forget.


What’s this?

"There is more on heaven and earth, Horatio,
than is dreamt of in your philosophy."
--Hamlet

I name people pedestrians for walking,
and lazy for sitting, and you
beautiful for your rigor in organizing yourself
in black and white.
And the boy, he’s rude
for stinking up the train
with McDonalds’ smell and noisy wrappers.

But this is only helping me
to see what is merely human.
This is not bringing birdsong to my ear
with all its secrets on silence.

From the air
I pick a part and say, “Skylark.”
“Crow” or “Jay.”

Limiting things to what I think they are,
I comb my hair
like the picture in the mirror.


Mirror

Each time I face this dusty pane
it feels like I must
take up the tools of memory
and carve my portrait
from this rectangular ocean of chrome.

The duty to make a me
along some semblance of self
and in that cut and file the world
to make sense as what I see.

I imagine the ease of one day
freeing the dust of form,
of simply meeting the beast
without name, arriving unrecognizable
amidst the evaporating droplets
of chromium rain.


Edges

At the edge of here is there and at the edge of far is near and at the edge of lost is found and at the edge of free is bound and at the edge of day is night and at the edge of wrong begins the predictable edge of right and the edge of left which is at the edge of get and get is clearly on the edge of coming, which is on the edge of impotent which is at the edge of strong but also on the minor edge of simply going on and on and on and at the edge of that is this and at the edge of strife is bliss and at the edge of land is sea and at the edge of all is me, or at least that's what it seems to be when I rub up against this everything that I can see and sniff and fondle with these numby nubs I get for life to use to sense the edges that all seem to stretch out from each seam into the far off edge of my periphery. And attheedgeofwordsis space and at the edge of Osaka is another kind of place and at the edge of hope is doubt and at the edge of smile is pout and at the edge of love is pride and at the edge of hell resides acceptance of all things, a little garden from which springs no manner of distinctions so the edges vanish too and you are you but also the whole zoo of odd rectangles in the mangled angles of the all in one not under and not over any edge of any sun. I'm done, but just begun.