McKenzie, still in the modernage

Jesse S. Mitchell

more here session Santiago

On the edges of the photograph on the postcard, you can clearly see shadows and other wide-eyed buildings, super-gray and concrete, trying hard to peek into the frame, blend in and get noticed, New York City with a spoiled child syndrome, midtown, great big neo-gothic castle-cathedral standing straight up and down like a Yew tree, maybe an Ash. Yggdrasil, something dragonous gnawing at the roots, bitter herb-roots.  The very center of the universe. Been lots of centers of the universe, Persia, the river Nile, Ur, Paris, London, Zeigler IL., Harappa.
My eyes try to focus on the picture but, I’m just too tired, too blind, all I ever see anymore are the blurs, the blurs and trailing off smears that the blurs leave as they fade away, blurry.
I had a dream once where I saw the end of the universe.  All chaos and fire and uproar and commotion.  There was no center of anything.  

 the old postcard, swinging on the wall, barely noticing its horrific pin.  The stickpoint prison.  A moment in time, both the picture and the card, unable to communicate more than the strength of that particular moment, and the strength it has to live on in memory or else to die away.  To leave a hole, noticeable or otherwise, is still an expression of strength, of vitality. 

And beneath that, under all that memorial detention and sophisms  

A flat table.  A table I got purposely after a long week of long nights reading ’the problem of philosophy’.  Russell used a table just like this one to illustrate a hundred thousand points.  It lifted off the top of my head, like poetry.  Dickenson would be proud.   

On top of the flat table is a mess.  A woven mess and mass of chaos and narrow string all strung together.  Falling off the sides, bundled up in places, mounds, several strands thick here and there. 

And over the cluster of string and strands, is a clock.  A very plain clock, stock black and high contrast white, bright red second hand.  And I watch it.   My eyes naturally focus on it.  The hands swinging and spinning around the wide face, orbiting, ticking off time.  We tell time in orbits, sun dials and clock towers, because that is how we decay, one spin after the next around the big blazing yellow sun.  

The numbers printed on the face are meaningless.  They can’t tell you anything.  It is the movement that is crucial. What we get from clocks is sensational and not material, time absolutely abstract.  

The moon in the corner of my window is all I need to know that it is night.  Shining gibbous, great modern witch face, an ocean wave, ghostlight, raising from off the deepest floor, the sea arm, diffusedlight, tsunami coming up, washing away the color

But only for a little bit

Just to replace the copperlight with purplenight and trade one source of all light for a sky of two million, three hundred billion.  Churning stars.  Everything palemoonlight.

The hash dealer that reminds me of Oliver Reed is outside, down the block, sitting inside a car.  Waiting on me.  Me, trying to get up the strength to get up and out the door, if even for a few minutes.  Nothing ever goes quickly enough.