Brilliantine The Mind

Brilliantine the mind though gusty be the roads through loneliness. Walking alone through the city I felt old sentiments astir. A gilded flame blowing around the edges of the heart. Also a memory of youth walking through light & windless rain, my body ephemeral shedding its name. It was like this to be specific: Along the street it was autumn as it also was in that part of the earth that day. A sturdy wind, unruly as a mule, came & went blowing all kinds of things along the pavement & in my head - Alone with yourself as they say. But my thoughts soon passing old unattended glories, dropped gaze & left the way they came.

On the bridge I lit the firecrackers, watching them fall in a sparkling chatter to the river - silver bodied under the empty sky & the white glow of electric lights. Once I imagined a broken filament of love stirring to glow inside the hollow threads of a bygone summer. But guided as I was through the chaos  of the night I was no more than a child drawn to a lit keyhole. A goldfish investigating a sparkling grain of sand momentarily snared by light. What do I think of love now? Nothing. Except once I knew it in a place being young & studied the wounds it left in small, windy rooms & strong moonlight. A molten wing was crafted in those idle hours delightfully potent & unfragile in its idea, though to this day I've found little to no practical use for it. But time was the easiest currency to spend then & you always wanted your own music played being young, & there was no hurry troubling over things like bread or rain but rather what it was right  that moment, in the world, with the days flying face down over the green felt like cards & your heart testing the flame.

Of course I was afraid. Of course also the wind was my friend & the rain was always a good reason for smoking.When I say the wind I do not mean to describe only the sensation of its travel & breath. I mean I am looking at a girl. The wind comes from nowhere & drops down my spine & if the wind is something we both knew we were good for each other for at least a little while. When I say the wind I mean after one winter the dark camellias crowded the staircase in a small wooden house in the south & she was gone & even the dog knew you were going to be no good & there was a piano in the house & you knew that you'd play more not because music was necessarily medicine but because you were alone & it was there, right in front of the fireplace, a shiny thing of wood, at times oddly more animate than yourself or the dog. And did that happen? When I talk about the wind I mean to say it didn't happen, the piano was always there, obediently gathering dust & the hearth crackled with flame as you lay down alone, beguiled by sentiment, sorting through etcetera. And then one night driving back to the city the stars like lit windows along the hills all the way to the city where she was. You wanted to be lit up the same way inside the night & the thought alone sufficed & when the wind blew through it didn't find room to whistle through the cracks for the first November in a couple of years.

Theres no point telling you about the rain. That is another thing altogether. Down Thirlemere Street I let the thought cut itself loose of me & I went around the corner for a coffee & browsed thoughtlessly through a newspaper, sitting in a night without significance. The arrival of morning now seemed both inevitable & preferable as  simple as coins of separate currency being exchanged. After the coffee, I threw the newspaper in the garbage by the door. The wind in my face walking out I knew love was not something I ought to have thought of yet & I walked back along the river looking at the city in what blueness was left of the night .

A Fake Twenty On Your Honeysucker

I wake up in Chinatown, where being irrelevant but accustomed to dissecting meretricious hubbub at snails pace I fix the cigarette with a scrap grain of boiled rice off a stool with a painted phoenix, pasting the torn paper & screwing the smoke back to the filter. The wind brings the smell of medicated balm & five spice & mid-task,  I decide to reserve the item for a purer moment. A hot faced boy in a white singlet & a monk's shaved head wheels from an exploding firecracker as I walk up the shop alleyway. He gives me the evil eye & pokes his tongue out through grubby teeth. I say: Fine Li Po Jr. I'll clean up your old man in the next game of mah jong and am somewhat perturbed when he darts inside the shop like a frightened bird.

Feeling dry in the throat & a little muddled by my shallow sleep I loiter in thinking to re-invigorate with cold coconut juice & knock over a tattooed hick squatting in dark sunglasses by the vegetable freezer. Hey right on the money Hong - how much for this? he says clutching an exquisite hand carved bone dagger I'd have pilfered myself had I seen it on a shelf. But to be handed the evil eye & be called Hong in the space of a minute has blown a shot of hot mercury down my spine. I stare him down through the one way shades but seeing only my own disconcerted reflection I settle on a simpler appraisal of the situation. No matter that my names neither Canelutti or Hong, compassion enlivens karma. For you its free, I say, carrying my head of heavy fog up the aisle. Hey just playing fuck nuts. You're alright Jack, he says, giving me the double thumbs up. Leaning on a rack of multi colored yoyo's & plastic abacus I take out a beaten pocket notebook & write: 1. when absentminded I may exude an air of small shop ownership. 2. the thumb may at times resemble a pick axe. Two of the shop attendants follow him out to the street. He does not know how to bargain & with an expert thumb lock one swiftly kneels him on the ground while the other recites fiery Cantonese poetry. I retrieve the notebook again noting drily: Noticeable chinks in my armor.

An old silver haired Chinese man glides out from somewhere & stepping out the doorway, coolly waves one of the attendants over. I am not curious to witness the conclusion of the scene & take a can of coconut juice & a string of standard firecrackers up to the counter. I immediately see an old woman in a chemise of pale yellow frowning at me & the boy behind her in a cane chair cushioned by old Hong Kong gazettes sobbing dismally. What is wrong with you? Why you make boy cry? He only little kid., the old woman barks, cutting me down further with a malicious glare. Three hits in a row inside two minutes all within a 10 meter radius of occurrence. I am rightly pillaged & no longer know what to think & say. Then the old man in batik glides out from a corner beside the boy & says something calmly monotone to the old lady. I make a note of his character to write down later on: Shards of pomade like ice pasted on either side of temples. A small slouch..cool hard eyes - dead give aways for an old master adequately self tutored in subtleties. A gliding shuffle for a walk - weak bones, likes to sit on his ass & read newspapers to kill time when business is quiet. Has long been ready for a more exotic version of paradise.

The pair discuss things for a little while while I stand rooted to the spot with a can of juice dangling firecrackers. The old woman undoubtedly has fire in her belly but the old man has metamorphosed into a cloud peaked mountain. She accedes when the old man starts interrupting her retorts with one word, the same word, the meaning of which I do not know & carries the now wailing boy through the passage way behind a faded green flower curtain. The old man steps up to the counter. Thank you, he says. Life's tiring, isnt it ? he says. Thank you for what exactly? I ask impatiently sticking to the point. Knowing I was face to face with a reasonable man, I abused the privilege & showed off my temper. You have a cigarette?, he said. I have my last one, I told him. He glided to the tobacco shelf & looked back inquisitively. Chesterfields, I said. Good, he says & shuffles around the corner smiling quietly to himself. I take a twenty out of my wallet & hand it to him. Things have taken a small turn for the better. I could feel that the way rheumatics feel variations in weather with their bones. The old man looks at the twenty I am holding out. That is a fake twenty, he tells me, I can tell from here. But it should make purchase anywhere else. Lets go have a smoke outside.

Outside a small breeze has churned in. The tattooed man is sitting up looking contemplative but cradles his head back in his knees when the old man shows up on the staircase. The old man opens the pack & lets the cellophane strip seal drift away with a gust. Ahh a southeaster, he says making a few other calculations in his mind. The day begins in the dogs mouth. But after auspicious signs are acknowledged... the old man stops, picks a smoke from the box & hands the rest to me. Apologies, he says. Thank you. I say & light one for myself. The old man is still thinking, he breathes out a slow-curling stream & taps his ash away from the staircase. Then he continues: After auspicious signs are acknowledged the traveler remembers the beauty of a shadow.

I acknowledge his character more than his words. I realize I understand him rather easily, but keep looking at the tattooed man cradling his head out on the street. He'll be fine. He's resting. the old man says. Had you not startled him up behind the freezer he would have been able to sneak out with that dagger. I had just looked up from reading a newspaper & saw it in his hand. It was a matter of timing. The dagger belongs to that boy. An excellent heirloom, I said. Yes, the old man says. It would be at least a hundred & fifty years old & made towards the end of that particular craftsman's life. Anyway we found that with the boy on these same steps 7 years ago. That is why I never ash on these steps & get it swept every evening. We do not have children of our own. I see. I said. - would you like another smoke? I ask him though I know he will not be up to it. The old man puts his hand up. Just 3 a day for me. he says, any more is foolish. There is a small unsettled matter in my mind & the old man obliges. The boy probably thought you were mad & had chased him into the shop. But children make those kind of mistakes. I guess so I said. Life is tiring isnt it? he said. Among other things, I said. Among other things, the old man said. Ok , I said. Yes, he said. Have a good afternoon.

I kick off the ash I dropped on the steps & walk over to the tattooed man sitting on the street. I ask him if he too wants a smoke. Hell, why not?, he says. I done away with the dirty things years ago. But I'll have one. His face is somewhere traveling through Missouri via Macau. I am not talking about his physical state as the old mans handlers have left him unscratched. He seems nevertheless a better man for the small beating, the dodge & edginess gone. I haunch down on one knee & light up for him & get up. That was a beautiful dagger man, he says emptily. That it was, I say. Do you know what that creature was?, he says. The creature carved on the handle? That was a kylin man. A kylin ordains the coming of a sage. I really wouldn't have a clue. I said. The tattooed man coughs. I get your drift man. I fill him in about the boy. Lucky I didnt get away with it then. Poor bastard, he says. I laugh. No, no man. I didnt mean it that way, he sighs tiredly looking back towards the shop. I don't blame you. I tell him.

I walk off turning west at the corner. In a small while I am on a wide street, lined with small plane trees their leaves falling down green. A small while later I am looking at an errant streak off the sunset gilding the number 6 on a window when I hear Erik Saties gymnopedie being played how I've always heard it in my head. Foot off the pedal, no introspection, straight out blunt with innocence. I take out the fixed cigarette & light it following my own smoke towards the lamps being switched on over the tenement.

I'm thinking I'll set these firecrackers off this evening somewhere along the bridge. Although in truth I had bought them for the boy.

Experiment With Plastic Goldfish

Its a done deal no doubt. Dirty snow in a coconut husk. Still we sit it through, stick a smile on the barb, not so razor-like now after centuries of free falling buttocks, & breathing in the heavy smoke of a torched hedgehog. Hey Canelutti, he calls from the side of the barn he has been painting. His movement through the longer part of half mowed grass is uncomplicated, - the careless, self compensating stagger of a practiced drunk the morning after. Though the sun is behind his head he winces from the unguided pressure of dreams inside his skull, pulsing like magnetic water in the pinhole courses their schemings have poked through his mind. Yes? , I say throwing a broken cigarette at the stump of a half buried swivel chair to warn him of the hazard. He trips nevertheless zigzagging akwardly as the tobacco splits from the butt. He sits up coolly on the only flower we have seen for miles. It was only a dandelion, the wind says, leaning against my brow. Fuck you, I whisper back, it was the last coffee orchid. The panzers are upon us, my friend says from his seat. Naturally, I reply. In the smudge of black-red dirt in my palm is a kingdom. There a small thing lives drinking sunlight from a porcelain thimble. No armor can resist its light yet say the word love & even a mouse can gnaw its ice. That is why I'll be washing it off. I have need for simpler things. Like fresh warm bread to take to the sorcerer who splits mountains with the most basic gruel. Hello, buenos dias says the sorcerer arriving on cue, any bread for me? I slingshot him off the chimney with some telepathic garter & a replica of the philosophers stone. An ace of spades flies up turns into a swarm of toothpick sized swans & then a scrambled bunch of no good flowers. You ready?, the wind says. Fuck this!, I exclaim, simultaneously wondering what the hell has gotten over me as a cloud explodes. Lord almighty. Arrivederci!! - the sorcerer waves, hastily transporting a loaf that looks to be in the shape of an ass. My drunken friend has still not moved but those two words are like churchbells for him. Fuck this? No my friend - Fuck that. , he says glibly. I lay me down, my hand atop the roots of a giant mango tree that sends wasps to my hammock. I'll fix the broken cigarette when I wake up. It'll be a different place then & I'll most probably feel like a smoke. I know where it is & I can see it wont be raining.

Recovered Note no. 1: Fly On The Death Train

I was sitting on a train about 9 years ago. It had been a while since I'd last used public transport as it was highly pleasurable driving around in an old white Chrysler Valiant AP6 circa 1965 with big windows and steel ashtrays everywhere, a classic beast of an automobile made for smokers. The train was traveling from the port town of F. where I'd just spent half the afternoon walking around looking at things as I did on a regular basis back then, en route to the city where I was thinking of doing exactly the same thing. This was the class of writer I aspired to be, a writer that walked around, looked around, sat down & wrote about the countlessly remarkable ways nothing at all happened. Writers these days write about too much.

Anyway if I remember well enough I had noticed some kind of pertuberance in the air even back in the uncrowded cafe strip where strangers still nodded when one walked by. I had sensed some kind of aggravation in the mood of the afternoon in general although I wouldnt waste anybodys time explaining this.There is nothing strange about it. Afternooons get anywhich way from time to time.

To get to the point a man with a look of extreme frustration & bloodlust boarded the train shortly after I did. A pair of lovebirds who had been behind me, immediately moved through the automatic doors into the next carriage. So there he was, - a strongly built man with brutal demeanor, fresh scars on his head and arms over scrappy black ink tattoos, leaning a little too far forward - & me in a white shirt-jack & dark gray cap with calligraphic stitching seated too squarely opposite him thinking: He would make a good portrait with his tattoos & face with the river through the glass when this damn train goes over the bridge.

Though such things mean little as they are mainly exterior the unsettled mood of his gaze did give me concern; staring me out as if to say: you give me the smallest fucking reason buddy & I WILL BE THERE IN A FLASH!! Needless to say the air between us was as warm and thick as jelly blood in an electric frying pan.

Now anything unstable - a table, a building, a man like this, could bring about a lot of regretful silliness & harm & despite my secret lifelong desire to never lose my cool on public transport I was starting to think carefully, asessing little details like the way I was seated, how he was likely to come at me when the moment broke & the disadvantage of this was he could sense it and reciprocated it by adding more of that invisible mean pressure on the space between us. Then a fly blew in, buzzing loudly around the cabin before checking on my companion's plight, repeatedly alighting for a quick scurry on his forehead. This of course set him to cursing & swinging blindly, part of him already intent on mangling the first thing to bring him grievance, which before the fly, had more than likely been me. This went on for a small eternity and though I felt blessed by the distraction I was also imagining it was just the thing to snuff all regard of reason from him & set him on a rampage that would put me on the evening news.

The fly was too small & agile though & after a while, probably disenchanted with such brute mindlessness it flew over to my side of the carriage & crawled into my ear humming something unbearably trivial. Of course a part of me didnt want to move too suddenly and add to the man's agitation. There is some manner of explanation provided for this in treatises concerning the art of bullfighting. Or so I think. I kept looking out the window of the train, watching my fellow passenger in my peripheral and trying to track the fly's buzzing, slowly brushing my hand through the air to wave it away when I felt it hit and drop inside my hand. I automatically crushed it with the empty headed grace of a renegade Buddhist saint and dropped its shattered wings between my shoes. I beamed politely at the man across the aisle who looked at me as if I'd just skated on two paper boats over a blood-colored whirlpool & quietly turned his gaze away. Needless to say the rest of the afternoon was uneventful, just the way I like it. Thats all. I could probably add that when I got to the city I dropped into a bar known to be the hang out of gangsters and murderers and bought a quick shot of single malt in honor of the fly before going about the rest of my business but of course, I'd simply be making it up. And you know, what reason have I got in the world to do such a crazy thing?

Part 3: The Whole Of The Moon

The night winds up with the aftertaste of Tabasco at The Moon,an old haunt that has sustained itself through alternative grit & reinvention all the way back to my friends cherry picking days in the south. I am talking over fifteen years ago.The old sign outside is still the same excepting a white lit crack across the middle, no more than a nice scar fitted to its character. We are indulging a second wind, having spent a good part of the evening at Mr. Birds waiting for the saxophonist. The saxophonist played to standard: much resolved curvature in flight, more fruit ripening above the painted rain & attentively whittled thorns. But he is by no means still dawdling in our ears. We are quite gone with the whippoorwill now,done with the day. And though the saxophonist himself had traveled too far & wide to remember us it was good enough to see him in town again. We stayed for 4 songs & left at the end of a familiar tune. This is Fall isnt it?, my friend said. I listened a little more & nodded. Yes it is. He's doing a pretty good job. I said. Yes , he said. Well shall we? The song is in our ears as we walk into the outside light. Where next? my friend says. The Moon you think?, I say.

The air in The Moon is easier to breathe, the light dimmed agreeably in the red cushioned booth we have to ourselves right along the middle of the aisle. The place is in reasonable bustle & though everyone seems animated with their piece of pie we do not hear so much as a murmur over the recorded music playing into the warm air, not even from the occupied booths either side of us and gives the occassional sensation of viewing an experimental film in an old cinema. My friend is in the movie, the back of his head against the mirror. He is looking around, saying nothing just yet, his mood blithe, sardonic. He is chuckling over a photograph he has just taken of me, romantic enough in the glow of a wall lamp scattering off lined mirrors but at the same time I appear confounded & bloated like an old fish hooked through the gill. Then I do not know what it is I say or if he remembers something but we are back picking over the details of the days of the glittering wind as though it were a complex mechanical toy in disrepair we have not troubleshooted to mutual satisfaction. As always we are sure it ran without batteries. So as always we are trying to figure out what made it stop. We have, prior to this evening inspected the gears, both large-scale & miniscule & felt for left over traces of grease. We've tightened bolts & screws, coppered the threads, replaced springs, put reflective paint over the rust. The only thing left to do is attempt to identify the dedicated function of every wire we've found since we first took it out of its case. All this of course is in a manner of speaking. We are dealing with one of the most exotic things to refer to in casual note form: romantic illumination. But a simpler sense of things prevails. I order a pizza. My friend holds up a finger for a beer. I add a cup of flat white coffee & a lump of Italian chocolate. The waiter seems to like us & engages us in a small conversation about the funky tang of blue cheese on the pizza. When he goes we do not pick up where we left off. I get up & grab a bottle of Tabasco.

My friend has a nice place up in the hills. Lately he has taught his daughter, barely 2, to resist the poison berries in their wide rambling garden on instruction. This is no mean feat, making forbearance like this clear to a child, considering the lure of bright red berries in among the dark leaves & stark white flowers of the cotoneaster. They are numerous, easy to find, & sit pleasantly in the fingers, smear easily when dragged against concrete & roll willingly off the stairs. The place sits on just under an acre, the main abode backing against meadow & a small grove of eucalypts & paperbark. A small path winds through garden & lamps to a fortress-like old mechanics garage my friend is converting into a personal music hall & studio. Other than the fact that it faces the highway & lets too much sound through, it is perfectly sized & partitioned for his intentions. He has previously walked me around pointing matter of factly to where things will be. This is where the recording booth will be, I'll put a window right here,...the piano sits next to the Hammond across that wall. It is all easy to see. It is a project that will require much of everything. The bricks are now stacked up inside & out, sandwiching the glass paneled frame that used to be the garage door. My friend has wandered across the entire length of some eccentric's salvage yard two kilometers up the road & will bargain with him about the price of some wooden dragons he intends to ornament the hallways with. Though knowing he would appreciate a hand with the menial finicks about the place, I take my time preferring instead to call him out for the evening on a whimsy. My friend from Nagano has advised as much: Do not spend too many hours laboring with a friend, it discourages more pleasurable mysteries. And that is the way it goes.

.................................................................

It is the morning after. I am having coffee on the porch steps beside the grass. The clouds over the rooftops are ridged in frail bending lines like the rippled surface of windblown sand. Like the becalmed shore too perhaps, of other, unspeakable thoughts. For a small while my thoughts revisit the days of the glittering wind, not just here but all the way to the Pacific. Not just out of reminiscence but because before sleeping I came across Lafcadio Hearn's description of the Tennoji temple in old Osaka which excellently mirrored the sensation of its memory:

" To know what Tennoji is, one must see the weirdness of its decay - the beautiful nuetral tones of its timbers, the fading spectral greys & yellows of wall-surfaces,the eccentricities of disjointing, the extraordinary carvings under eaves, - carvings of waves & clouds & dragons & demons, once splendid with lacquer & gold, now time whitened to the tint of smoke & looking as if about to curl away like smoke & vanish. "

It is not something I could have expressed better, even coincidentally. It is no longer something I deliberately think of & as such, though I have referred to it enough I have also left many things out. Whatever those days meant we have left in a matchbox in some transit station in our minds. But we still have each a matchstick left. Even last night sitting quietly beside the mirrors I saw it between our teeth. Even three months or so ago walking the streets of my childhood I scratched my ear with it.

Early in the afternoon my friend from Nagano sends me a text: Its sunset now. Nothing more. I do not even know if he is still in Nagano. Later in the car on the way to pick up some bread & apples,over the barrier railings of the freeway, I see the sunset arrive on the river. My 2 & a half year old daughter says it from her seat behind mine : The clouds are on fire.

Part 2: That Old Glittering Wind

In the blur of a quirky finger the old hawkdeer evaluates our meal on half a palm sized calculator. I have not seen anyone so quick since my days as a child in the Pacific, dragging my heels along some clamorous section of Chinatown behind my father who was always ready to negotiate his way to hell & back for the sake of an amazing bargain. I have a sense of seeing another small mathematical device savant on the sidewalks of Molo plaza streaking through the digits but then it my memory as a child & everything in childhood seems mostly an exaggeration. Though I myself am not tall, standing on the other side of the wooden till, all I see is her hair below me like an auspicious black clod. I do not mean cloud. A cloud being lofty & a clod being a lump of earth. She is more of the earth & I mean this with admiration, - the earth out of all things, being closest to my sentiments. I think to myself: this will be her battle posture confronting the beautiful machines, here by the golden light of the lamps, right under the calendar to make the occassion unforgettable to the surviving remainder of the machine vanguard. Or perhaps she will wait, quietly meditating herself into a metal cutting wind in that blue shadowed corner just beside the entrance. Then suddenly I imagine I am hearing the weird rippling echo of breaking koto string. She is looking up at me, informing me of the total. I pay, nod a small goodbye, her smile keeping, even as I turn my back. My friend has his feet stretched out under the table. He looks like he needs a toothpick. I need smokes , he says, as if reading my mind.

At the gas station I wait while my friend picks up some tobacco. I feel an easy indifference towards the rest of the evening & believe my friend likewise indisposed. It seems to be enough that we have supped together, it seems to suffice that we have chewed the cud over unprofound matters such as our common memory of an extraordinary lady who ran a 24 hour hamburger joint, a long time ago at the edge of the city. She had employed us separately in our youth before we were friends, beautifully assuring us with free coffee & pancakes of our inevitable success as artists in our fields: my friend in experimental music & me, as I'd like to say just to confound - as a self employed electric fan connoisseur. It seemed to suffice, the general pleasantness of sitting down in that place discussing the return of the saxophonist unclouded by more absurd & mysterious business concerning the event & noticing the neat, plain elegance of the small calendar under the clock while putting away our meal with delinquent speed. The only uneventfulness was slight. My friend had mentioned a pair of missing chopsticks. But the waitress having considered the old hawkdeer's tutelage, glanced back mid step & pointed to the paper wrapped sticks we had knocked to the floor & fetched a new pair to maintain grace. And I recall the old hawkdeers smile at the till & her eyes scanning the place like an invisible searchlight.

We drive to the venue like old men, no music in the car unlike the days of the glittering wind when music was relentless . We had it for breakfast & drove it through the taut gut of noon into the nectarine pit of twilight, right through to the frosted glass edges of December night. How many conversations in windblown rooms or staring at eternal things astir in the sparks of the hearth? How many times absurdly obscure, how many times embattled or sincere? how many times very sadly mistaken? Through an open window to the weather we watched sleeplessly as the earth returned the moon knowing our songs & believed those hours engraved on the chalice of an eternal spring. And what few parts were true in that fated rite of passage trickled down the back of our minds to make us see the world in newness: opening our minds with compelling quickness, then like sputtering flames sustained only by ambrosia, which later we shunned as monks of an inevitable night. It made us better creatures, despite the price, our time with that old glittering wind obvious to those who had sensed even its coolest light. Do not be mistaken. I am not trying to bowl you over with the vigour of wordings. I am sharing the hash of a favorite time. Do not be mistaken. I am not talking only about music. Though it is in the blood of the fruit - I am talking about a time.

It was a different time. We were chasing down the difference then.,my friend says as we overshoot the turn & drive further down for the U-turn at the intersection past the white painted horse shoe bridge. Yes, I think, like an old man, but in always wanting the difference it was at times like a slow motion pressure cooker & the day came when I wanted to escape with the steam. My friend blows smoke thoughtfully. Darn., he says. Then something else occurs to him & he grins. Then for some reason or another, all by himself, he laughs.

Being good acquaintances of the owner Mr. Bird, we take the privilege of parking in the back alley behind the bar. We get out & walk through the back gate onto a ramp edged by two dwarfish maples  & a rusted ornamental gate mounted on a brick wall. We are early. The live music crawls & bounces down a narrow passage way glowing with the dim light behind, a quartet & now someone is on the saxophone splitting the reed but we know, listening, it is not yet the man we've come to see. I annoy my friend with requests for my portrait to be taken in front of the ornamental gate which looks agreeably decadent & symbolic. I am not a cynic. A beautiful gate that opens up to a brick wall does not sum up the eccentric temperament of our yesterdays. It takes me back in an immediate & graspable way. I know the magic words start with a perceptible distant glaze in the eye. My friend knows it too & we are behind the brick in a manner of speaking, moving further & further still, quite fluently.

Neither the night nor the event takes on a preponderance that sifts cool moonlight through the nerves. We are there of our own accord, expecting little,happily anchored on the minor details. We drift in & out of the bar, taking our free coffee from Mr. Bird & passing conversation from jovial & eccentric strangers. We have seen the evolution of the place from an idea across a bottle stained kitchen table to the place we are sitting tonight waiting to witness one of our old favorite front men returning with his horn with all the fine  he surely would have learned in his exile . Gone is the rush of the glittering wind. We are no longer the dandy heralds of an alternate ideal but the hardened vagrants of an indifferent truth. My friend is talking to Mr. Bird. They are appraising some aspect of the place or evening. Perhaps my friend is sharing notes about the saxophonist, who is not some pissant charging dignitary in his book but a noteworthy memory & an equal. From the bar I can see the street. Passersby stop & look in, a handful sauntering through to hover undecidedly at the bar. Some stay, most go. There are approximately 30 people maximum, at any one time in the bar but it does not necessarily create an intimate air.

The place is long & narrow. Walking through the door the rectangle vacuums optically to the immediate far end, falling in a heap before the gargantuan, brown velvet curtains of the stage. The patchily lacquered wooden seats look disjointed, inexact in their arrangement, the closest seat about 10 meters from the stage. There is an encouraging length of bare floor between & I point this out. That is where the girls dance ,states Mr. Bird. His manner is sound, eerily priestly. But there are no girls dancing on the floor. Its as if my friend reads my mind: What days are those Mr. Bird? he says, just like that. On Wednesdays, they fill up the place. Mr. Bird says. But its not Wednesday, the place is too stiff, unable to fold out & make more laps if need be. From the back of the room I see the rest of the back of the room including the second back section past the stage where the ornamental gate is bolted to the wall. My friend & I comment similarly this while smoking out the back,by this I mean the second back section. The place is back heavy. The front is a bad illusion. It does not exist. The light & space from outside is of no recompense, - the passersby are walking through the clouded glass at opposing angles, neither approaching the rectangular vacuum or leaving it. Only at the middle of the cross; at the door, do they take on a tangible relevance & only momentarily or as people with other places to go. It would be much better to leave one pane as a partial window, a reverse peephole to goad some mystique into the bargain & seal off the rest with some good paint or an interesting panel in the tradition of Milo or Ogata Korin. Something alluring yet quiet enough for the eye to move through at its own behooving.

It is not bad for a place to attempt simplicity but for it to fall halfway & feign being settled tempts even sadder conclusions. Neither is there anything wrong with the small bar but the seats in front of it inconvenience the quick exchange of money for liquor, especially on Wednesdays, as Mr. Bird declared, when the girls fill up the place. The dimmed lights are another thing. There is a dimness which pleases in aesthetic zones or streams of radiance. But the way the lights work against the walls make the white look murky. It effects a denseness as if the light were made of yolk, as if the air were weighted with some lazy, ancient sediment. Like candlelight moving through a bottle of cloudy vinegar...but perhaps I'm being hasty. Its my only visit after wandering about the place with half a kebab some months ago when it looked very much like a sealed off alleyway with a perfectly scratched beautiful blue door. For to what it is now is still a feat in itself , squeezed right off the sweat of Mr. Birds back,. As the light now wraps shadows like coal stains around the bags of his eyes I withhold further judgement. But as my friend, who had the other half of the kebab says: But why the heck stop now? My friend from Nagano wrote to me last November: I am painting a bluebird & since I have no blue paint I will be paying close attention to the detail of its wings. From this point it is no longer my business. I can see the shadowed back of the saxophonist looking over the stage. I only wish for willful sense within any enchantment but time will tell what I meant to say.

Part 1: Fuji

We step out into the evening he & I. We do not get very far before the need to get in the car assails our common sense. We duly check the evening sky for comets & falling brunettes & such before jumping aboard. In honor of rare privileges I spark up a cigarette closing the silver automobile door behind me.This ok?I inquire with the minimum required concern having suitably preempted his reply. Our minds are locked in. As is my habit, I also preempt the T junction mere seconds or so away. My friend is liable to make the turn before asking the way to the restaurant which even at the mouth of the Void remains a 50/50 proposition. Left here & then right at the first corner, I offer rolling down the window to add some smoke to the billowing exhaust. Of course he says. For a moment I wonder whether he said that to give me permission to smoke or to say Listen man its only a restaurant down the goddam street how lost do you think we can get? But he pulls his own tobacco from a silver blue box in his black Steve Mcqueen type jacket & knifes a hand into the standard right pocket for a lighter. When seated every pocket tightens up like a cat before a tub of water. We are discussing pants here. Every smoker knows this but its still the easiest place to stash a spark. I bring a flame up for him, mine being still in hand & we roll the windows down exhaling in tandem & join the headlights on the parade.

The Japanese restaurant is small, out of the way. A light blue outline of the volcano & the word Fuji is boxed into neon just above the door. The white outside wall & glass frontispiece showing the gold hued dangling of plain paper lanterns falls like a wayward cut onto the beginning of a series of darkened caryards. If this night were celluloid fable this is the border of light where the elven kind make their last stand against the beautiful machines. But we are not elven kind. We do stand a while upon entering, every table being taken or reserved as usual, but it does not last. The lady proprietor glances up from her calculator, mutters efficiently into the air & a waitress fetches us from the doorway & bustles us through scattered groups of shoes to a table, taking the reserved marker away. The lady who by now is familiar with my guess who the wind blew in habits, smiles back from behind her watchtower which is the till. It is a calm, acknowledging smile but she is the fabled hawkdeer, the one who will decimate a good portion of the beautiful machine army in a glittering wind when the elven retreat, before herself dropping to the shiny wooden floor in an ashen cocoon. But let us not unravel.

We take tuna steak,some gingery type bacon called buta something, tempura vegetables & two miso & step outside for a conversation with god whilst it is being prepared. This is what my friend from Nagano calls smoking: a conversation with god, god in lower case too written down as he prescribed. His attention to detail is disturbing. When the beautiful machine army arrive at his door they will find nothing except a note stating: gone to find my true love, at which the machines will experience their very first sensation, one most probably akin to regret. A thousand years hence its consequent purged form as peculiar audio static in the machine mind will be the fateful spur in the overhaul of their final design, - a reconsideration of what perfections were previously omitted due to mechanical type prejudice which will see them rebuilt into the new elven kind. Then will my friend from Nagano return with his true love & say: the details are in the bottom drawer in what appears to be an empty chopsticks box.

Meanwhile my older, more present friend has taken two cigarettes out of his silver blue box. We light up under the neon, our mood in turns Brucknerian & Lullyesque, Lully being the first to introduce the sideblown flute into the orchestra in the mid 18th century. This is of course unimportant but an example had to be made. And the mere mention of a flute maintains the elven undercurrent. We are off to a place named after a bird, where a saxophonist from the days of the glittering wind, who had sought out his fortune in the better known cities of the world for the last 10 years was making an appearance for an 80 dollar fee. The 80 dollars being the cost of having him onstage & no charge at the door. Neither of us understood this sum in the slightest & were curious if we would perhaps hear some explanation in the playing. Perhaps he accidentally sheared off his lower lip in a duel with the Nordic avant-garde & was limited to Ornette Coleman impersonations. Perhaps it was a truly experimental night where with no practice he would attempt to play Sorcerer without a reed. What is 80 dollars? It is a baffling abstraction with what things are involved here. It is not that far from a hundred so why not throw in the other twenty & give the man another little peck at some dignity. It was what I would have liked to ask Mr Bird the club owner, a wise enough character by all accounts. 80 dollars when you are the saxophonist I speak about is a little worse than playing for free.

There is another detail here. The man is an important fragment of our personal history having played in the days of our glittering wind & for all his quiet asideness, we remembered him well. He once compared my friends brief sojourn into saxophone to that of Johnny Griffin's. I cast a lightly sardonic smile over at my friend, a very able thinker & musician, which he returns. Everything flows in code. The machines do not feel beautiful enough yet. Yes we will be dining in agreeable mirth & melancholy. In the days of the glittering wind there were only two in the modern jazz scene who seemed to understand what valid mysticisms we had stumbled upon in the world, in the dirt & light filled whirl of the earth, around that time & reiterated it in their music & the returning saxophonist was one of them. It is a small city I talk about & still we may have missed much but in the days of the glittering wind we may once have imagined ourselves ( in the delightful loneliness of our gleanings) to be without peer.

You may understand this to be a matter of vanity & pride. It is more plainly so a matter of youth & an unsettled sense of things. We imagined our bets were on very long odds and that we had inside information, dependable to a fault & how that source would never be short sold or abandoned in our lifetime. Some of it holds true to the day, although we have come to see more of our peers dodder out of trains, the rain, lamplit rooms with coins & bills on the floor pushed off by musical artifacts, old books & cups on the kitchen table, - all bearing that self same look of jaded embattlement. I do know we had a respectable amount of reliable enchantment for a while then & a dozen or so jesters thrown in for luck. Some days now that old glittering wind seems to have blown right over our heads & the only retainable thing is the vividness of its recollection.

Lets go in, my friend says, handing me the camera. He has already taken two pictures of me smoking in front of a no smoking sign stuck on the door. I take no pride in it & would edit it out later. There is a tear in the metal of the roof where light gleams through. The beautiful machines are aware of us & have decided to hold still. We go in to chow. The old hawkdeer smiles at our return. Our timing has often been good.