achromatic

It was an isolation weekend, but I don't mind. I actually accomplished some writing and I feel that much more productive for it. This latest work-in-progress differs from my previous two novels as I am taking on an entirely new milieu and writing in the third person. It's what I like to describe as noir-cyberpunk. Yes, my film school education and appreciation for film noir unites with Cyberpunk, which is perhaps my favorite Sci-Fi genre. It can still be construed as literary fiction (like Gibson, Orson Scott Card, Clive Barker, et.al.) like my previous manuscripts, only this tackles a divergent theme. So, think Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past meets Neuromancer by William Gibson. I know, that sounds as simplistic as a two-minute pitch meeting at some Hollywood studio exec's office, but it does provide an immediate image of where I am heading with this latest endeavor. And it doesn't get much better than Mitchum in a noir flick or Gibson's hugely innovative and influential award-winning debut novel. Yes, I spent the weekend indoors here at the Queens Compound. Truth be told, I felt a little washed out. Sure, I wandered outside to air myself out and traipse to the corner store. The mild January weather lends itself to being outdoors. But my social calendar was anemic bordering on cadaverous. It occasionally feels like Sarah and Rob's wedding on the 6th was such a prodigious social blowout that spending the rest of the month in isolation is not such a big deal. But I did go out on the 20th, and ended the night at Bar On A (uh, that's a bar on Avenue A). Ah yes, that was a long night full of Jim Beam and cola and friends, and though it was enjoyable, it also served to exacerbate my cold. No, the next day I was not feeling well and had to pass up Contempt (a monthly club event at Remote Lounge).

So where does this stream-of-consciousness lead me? It leads to right now as the clock closes in on 10:00. I blanche at the thought of the new work-week. It beckons like the Sirens on Sirenum scopuli. Oh yes, I want to resist the fluorescents and and phones and stale odor and starched collars, but the call of rent and groceries and bills and a new printer are too overwhelming.

wistful

Sunday night - the calm before the clank and clamor of the Monday morning commute and the waking commotion of a city. Quiet here, contemplative in this room, music playing at low volume through these speakers. Keyboard at my fingertips. What I write on the monitor. A chill in the air.

Standing briefly, parting the blinds with my fingers, I can look out to see the sparkle of Manhattan's Upper East Side across the water. Private rooms and private lives beyond the fixed gleam of those copper pinpoints of light. Turning my gaze to the left I see the office buildings of Midtown, aglow against the night, cold sentinels cutting the air.

I see the time and know that dawn awaits me. Soon I shall be here in darkness and silence to find a fragment of contentment through my unremitting restlessness.

"Got no reason for coming to me and the rain running down.
There's no reason.
And the same voice coming to me like it's all slowin' down.
And believe me -

I was the one who let you know
I was your sorry-ever-after. '74-'75.

It's not easy, nothing to say 'cause it's already said.
It's never easy.
When I look on in your eyes then I find that I'll do fine.
When I look on in your eyes then I'll do better.

I was the one who let you know
I was your sorry-ever-after."

below

Isn't it strange how sometimes events in our lives can become such a part of the past -- seemingly so distant -- that we become detached and it feels like another life? It's almost as if we have to wonder whether or not we actually lived through that period or not.

Now, here on a Friday night at the Queens Compound, I remember the Tenderloin. It's like someone else's disturbing waking dream. But it's mine and it does not faze me. No, I will not use the term "nightmare" because the Tenderloin of San Francisco never seemed that horrific to me (though it often was). I knew the names of some homeless, some pimps, some prostitutes (at least, I knew their street handles). Once upon a time I tread its streets with caution, not fear.

There I lived and worked in a residential hotel near on Jones near the corner of O'Farrell. My room was on the top floor and overlooked the south of the city. It was an amazing view as the state receded across a hilly horizon line. The beauty of that view was also a dichotomy with the squalor below. One of the windows in my room looked straight down on the intersection of Jones and O'Farrell.

Long ago now, it seems. Distant. Could it have been someone else and not me? Do we lead lives where a foreign soul slowly overtakes what we call ours and tangible memories become illusory?

Oh, yes, even I find my speculation doubtful.

I remember.

Once, she was at the open window. I was nearby. In that room, I could not help but be nearby. I write this based upon memory, and memory cannot revive the exact words of the conversation. Thus, I improvise:

She: "Hey, come here. Take a look at this."

I wander over to stand next to her and look.

Me: "Whoa. What the hell...?"

In the building across O'Farrell a man is half out a window. From the waist down he is inside an apartment, and the rest of his body limp and dangling against the facade of the building, arms stretched downward. Unmoving.

She: "Do you think we should call the cops?"

Me: "I don't know. He's probably not dead..."

She: "But what if he is?"

Me: "Well, if he is, then there's probably not much we, or anyone else, can do about it now."

She: 'He's not moving at all."

Me: "He's probably drunk. Or drugged-up. Or both. Look at the neighborhood."

There was further exchange, but in the end we let it go. And, lo and behold, hours later, the man draped out the window in the building across the street was gone.

Maybe it was all an illusion.