A Dose of Semi-Fiction

Ghost Talk

There’s this stupid game I play. It’s not as kinky as it sounds. I slide through the streets like a faceless wader, stooping with all the other pigeons before their last ride home. I carry a bag, backpack I guess—just kinda hunker down, lean if I can. No phone, music there, maybe a book, but it has to be dog-eared and waterlogged; outta someone’s damp basement. I did this in Los Angeles—Los Angeles was go for this sort of thing—you get kinda lost out there and never see a soul you know for months. I’d just wait there with my bag, as if I didn’t live five blocks away and use wireless on a day. I sit their, lean, and look: a bit desperate. Not too much, you don’t wanna scare the collar drones. Just wary and busted a bit.

You say something. Like: where’s the county, I heard that place is rough? When you published outside.

Yeah, I heard that place is rough. You say, for emphasis; holding your coffee.

Someone, not everyone, every time, but someone, would catch and respond.

Yeah, I heard that place is rough.

That’s what they say, they’d say.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s what they say.

Like fishing. Then you start on something seemingly connected but really unrelated. Some guys have a knack for that. But those are the ones that had a life, or an essence of it. It’s a skill.

Yeah, that’s what I heard.

Met this guy, said he’s shippin to Washington for a while. During the winter. How you like that? Seems a weird time to bargain on winter wonderland, especially with a wide swathe of moisture guaranteed. Was in Reno for a while. What exactly, professor? Outside scrambling buffets and slots, what else you got your hands on?

Well, I guess that’s his impetus for ejection, so to speak. Not that it’s all dessert or lost dreams, people actually live there.

I would talk for miles and miles. Lovely. Being alone’s, not so bad. Not bad at all, kid. You get plenty to do, I’m tellin you. Plenty to do.

Yeah, it’s gonna get some snow up there. They don’t want it but they’re gonna get it.

What the hell are they doin? I’d move to San Diego.

Sand Iego gets cold. They get fog, the mist-rain. After a while it gets to bother you. You get sweat-drenched, your toes smell like pepper-jack. Kinda like Seattle.

Most guys can’t pull this off. They look too Republic Banana, I on the other hand, must not be far off from this fraternity.

Well, what business you got for bravin the Cascades, man?

I get tired of Radiohead and Bright Eyes. They’re—too good. Well, I’m not sure about Bright Eyes. They think they’re that good, but I don’t know. I mean there was Lifted, but after that.

When I’m alone, that’s about the best, really. I can’t dig it with other people. Cept in shows. Then it’s unreal. It’s unbelievable; you really get a sense of something outside of you, if that doen’t sound too transcendental. I know.

Well, I don’t. When I’m alone, all I’m sayin, it’s unbelievable, man. Lovely. Truly, for reals. I’m tellin you.

My brother’s up north.

That’s nice country.

A lot nicer than this shit hole. Used to be really clean down here. But now, with Grey Hound.

Didn’t quite subscribe to his reasoning. Most who say that sorta thing don’t really venture beyond the five-block lapse of humanity.

Still.

It’s a real clean.

My friend is Spanish. When she visited people asked her, referred to her as Latin, Hispanic. But if you’re from Spain you’re not Hispanic, you’re Spanish. And there is no place called Hispania. Who are the Hispanic?

Latinos come from Mexico, South America is known as Latin America, sometimes the Caribbean, and Central America. If all these people are connected by a vague sense of nationalism, that’s actually, transnational, what’s the common denominator?

They speak a Romance language, many were Spanish colonies, but the Spanish were not colonies of themselves. Brazil speaks Portuguese. It’s definitely different than Spanish—some people don’t enjoy the sound of it, but I find it distinct—attitude. Spanish resembles Japanese for some weird reason. There isn’t anything that sounds like Portuguese, cept maybe Hindi. Maybe.

Not really.

If you call these regions, which really compose an entire half a hemisphere, Latin America, because of the Latin-influenced syntax, and really, their cultural matrixes, what do you extend the label to, disavow? What about the Philippines? I mean, really, they don’t count? They seem less a Pacific Rim culture than a forgotten member of the Ibero Summit.

Sometimes get a groove goin in my head, and oh man, I gets goin, brotha. It starts to swell like a sucker punch and I hear faintly…it on the edges of sober mind. Awake I hear it outside the walls, sleeping it’s like a stadium beneath my head. It circles around the block and makes me get up in the middle of the night and chase it. I think it thinks it’s funny, or somethin. You probably think I’m fuckin nuts; I know. You’re probably correct, mademoiselle, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There was this one melody I can’t decide was a Kid A hook or some eerie beast just beating on my closet. I really dig that. Some stranger unknown or unfound that just wants to be unleashed and heard. A ghost of chords. I used to hear it at night around the bush, but I couldn’t grab it. It was out there singin but I couldn’t grab it. She left me alone that night. Didn’t sing in my ear while night terrors rang like Liberty. Why does she always do this to me? Alone again.

Madeline, sweet Madeline…like tangerine.

I know there’s deeper stains than we ever conceive but isn’t there something cool about having some surreal common trait, as latent it may be. Like the idea of knowing I could share something about the universe and it reciprocated based on some ancient and bizarre knowledge. Is the wisdom dormant in blood? Was it conceived in horror, incubate in semen and bile, then hatched amongst stoic? Where does the hate go to? Ride down to the paunch to form an oil hardball of angst and stubbornness. The stoic. That horrible wrench deep inside your guts.

The world is such an ugly place sometimes, and we’re no Lucille Ball. I hope there is some integrity all this tunnel vision leads into, channels of scorn to some tributary of karma. But I’m not sure.

It’ll be okay, though. I think. If not, really, I mean where ya gonna go? It’s not like there’s good real estate on Mars. We haven’t even stepped back on the big cheese. Where’s my hologram TV like that one stupid old movie with the robot police? These years sound all like the future and shit, man.

My thoughts of night dwell on mist soaked streets outside the Universal, when I got lost on the MTA and wound up in front of a black monolith. The hills were unknown and the world seemed to stretch and ripple—you be wise to keep scruples about, but that just don’t excite. There was divine somewhere in the confusion, like that’s where all promise starts.