A Spy on the Street Where You Live, pt. 3

But what can I say . . . to make it clear? How can I say that to her, when the groveling started sixteen years ago—or thirty two, if my stars really do point at her—was ineffective then, and has, it would seem, continued, to resurface now? How can I say that, which every brokenhearted singer has ever sung, that every adult has recognized for the screen-kiss kitsch it is, as a vehicle for commercial culture and greater need, to this stranger whose company I crave with a thirst I’d say anything to slake? Never trust a junkie or a crooner: My mama done told me, they’ll both do anything for another hit.

And, how, after all, if she won’t return my calls, who gave up writing weeks ago, who won’t be getting in touch, nor speak to me at all? If the sun refused to shine, perhaps she would return my calls; or if the moon plunged into the sea, perhaps she would call me. Of course, if that happened, phone service would likely be adversely impacted, not to mention low-lying coastal areas, and we, refugees, going nowhere.

If it were but a matter of faith,
if it were measured in petitions and prayer . . .
but it is not, nor do I care.

Barring the fools’ unforgivable sin of rushing in and talking out loud; even choosing not to tell her about it, how can I even think I crave such things, and continue to think of myself as a person? No: Must struggle, must ramble on; must . . . resist . . . compulsive . . . romantic . . . hyperbole.

A Spy on the Street Where You Live, pt. 2

And there’s Lerner and Lowe’s Fair Lady, herself also a figment from Ovid as Pygmalion’s Galatea, but, back then, she didn’t have a street, just the pedestal.

The audience of the modern musical, for dramatic development, had to be shown that Eliza Doolittle was not only sophisticated in ladylike civilized artifice, but also filled with the feminine graces known to prompt poets’ odes and lovers’ praises, through the introduction of a rival suitor to the Professor’s as yet unspoken devotion.

Rival suitor sues to see her, and succeeding, has found a reason to sing of enchantment pouring out of every door, has cause for singin’ in the rain, and dancing in the street.

People stop and stare; they don’t bother me,
For there’s no where else on Earth that I would rather be.
Let the time go by, I won’t care if I can be here on the street where you live!

This is before the rain, of course. Properly validated, Liza falls for the Prof.

Excised from the arc of plot, this recorded and rerecorded song is simply everyman’s love song. Again, the lyric is not about the beloved, whose presence merely imbues the setting, but a report on the state of mind and heart of, or simply part and parcel of the art of, the singer. As always, at first, I’ve just seen a face and can’t forget the time or place of that first sight. Then, with or without overtures or encouragement, merely because I want to hold your hand and can’t stop my brain, or maybe because I’ve been watching . . . every breath you take, the residence of the beloved is discovered. Then the wooing, the suiting starts, or the stalking—the difference lies in her consent—with the overpowering feeling that any second you may suddenly appear.

A Spy on the Street Where You Live, pt.1

A Spy in the House of Love, or Stalker on the Street Where You Live

It is only a woman that can make a man become the parody of himself.
--French Proverb, the Rev. T.F. Thistleton-Dyer

Under . . .

I cannot step out of my home without asking myself whether I’m only going out in the hope of seeing her, here on the street, and knowing that if I do or do not see her, I’ll be looking for her anyway, and judging and chiding myself for it. Let me tell you a little about what I know of me and this fervent furtive infatuation.

Conditioned by love songs to be the perfect American romantic id, in addition to being the paranoid monomaniac ego of me, I am attuned to poignant phrases pertaining to the street where she lives, or some synonymous heterologue, distinct as a singular wandering star in the collective romantic meme-pool of popular music, an ersatz zodiac of coupling if not graveyard of the language and dreams of modernity.

This has been powerful imagery for me since before she moved onto my street.

There ought to be a lot of love songs dealing with this theme, but I can only think of two, and another scenario, to which I add this, my words and tone, my own inept tune.

But soft! What light in yonder window breaks? It is the East!

Not even a love song, but some higher-art embodiment, in perhaps its most perfected form, this is certainly the archetype, the articulation of romantic love that has most imbued the cultural discourse; has so imbued this discourse, that Romeus and Juliet are commonly invoked as exemplary lovers, despite their tragic non-consummation. As if they’d got hitched, bought land, and made it fruitful across the long gloss of their bliss.

Yonder window, wherever it is, irresistibly attracts the romantic speaker’s attention, displacing the governor of the dome of the sky, the prime indicator of direction and time throughout human history. That window becomes the East, and Juliet is the sun. Wither she goest, so the speaker’s heliotropic heart and attention, perpetually dawning.

lawbar stress anecdotes, elicited

I really enjoyed law school.

Really no aspect of the environment was as terribly stressful as widely assumed (and often insisted upon by grads who like to seem tougher than they are). Not to say there weren't stressful times and manic people competing and stressing all over the place. There were many such and they might have been more or less the norm; I can't tell. Not a joiner to begin with, I was somewhat older than the average student (more or less straight outta undergrad) and somewhat younger than the typical adult learner. Also, I tried to adopt and exude a vibe-opposed-to-competitiveness.

When I describe that characteristic of my personality which is opposition to competition with the sentence "I'm not competitive," more often than not people try to reassure me that, in fact, I have assets sufficient to compete, and that's not what I mean at all. By opposed to competitiveness, I mean that I tried to share: while taking my daily laptop transcript of the lecture and discussion I was able to learn the names of most of the people in my classes, and note when they were absent; many were flabbergasted when I offered them the transcript.

I proofread and marked up (red pen and all) one professor's draft-book-chapters, when they were assigned library-reserve reading for his class, and was hired on the spot as a research assistant, which meagerly-paying position I held for the years of law school.

all the answers

norm, today at clarence’s across
the street eddie sat on the patio
across from me smoking a cigarette
and sipping coffee in a short-sleeve
casual knit shirt with a breast pocket
like an izod but in this case bearing
not the stitched on alligator but
embroidered the words “yes, I do
have all the answers” on the
pocket above which, as though stuffed
into the pocket, were cartoon demo-
litions materiel rockets and bundled
fasces of dynamite sticking up and
trailing to a detonator, beside the pocket
where, over eddie’s breastbone, the
image of Wile E. Coyote leaned
angrily smug on the plunger handle.

apparently an elderly man on a budget
wearing a high explosive shirt
primed and guarded by a maniac
is all the answers. i think so. when,
beyond eddie in his shirt and
framing his head i noticed the
do not enter sign and the one way
sign with an arrow pointing to the right,
and then with the the sirens, norm,
suspiciously i did think of you. again.

the HSA blimp

Dear Norm,

You didn’t believe me when I reported the black helicopters, even when their spotlights bathed your own cars on the commute, hovering in the sun while the trees writhed. You suspected I was intoxicated or embellishing when I reported the very bright very quick, crackling, rushing away early one morning as I took the parkway past the C.I.A. I probably did not even tell you how

strange things levitate over the Interstate ‘tween Shreeveport and South Shriver,
where the blazing skies have dazzled the eyes of many a Sunday driver,

so absurdly, so stupidly, unremarkably familiar were those two enormous cake molds, separated by a shadowy grille, dwarfing the strip mall’s garden of glittering industrial lampposts, and the lamps of the interstate, dwarfing those incredibly tall signs gas stations sometimes use so you can see them before the exit lane over the tree line as you rocket down the high. You wouldn’t have believed me; I tried not to believe me and tried not to look at cakes being baked, and learned self-cynical oblivion.

in memoriam

020209192004

They killed the apartment dog piss tree.
Which apartment dog piss tree?, you ask,
and it is a good question, to which the best
answer is the stunted and dead one, that they
sawed off and hauled away today, unseen,
from Harvard Street, leaving only the pale circle
of concentric rings exposed to the whipping
winds of Alabama, the grudging spatter of fat
gulf coast drops, to the summer storm bringing
its autumnal breeze, nestled in that fresh
rectangle of mulch, soaked by days of rain.

All the trees are apartment dog piss trees in the city.
This tree, this twenty year old pin oak, hardly past
sapling, lived, its brief adolescent life, in the baking sun
and raking wind, on a barren side of the apartment
block, where the basement door and convenience
store are located, so the tenants can take the dogs
out morning and evening without passing through
the guarded lobby’s potential censure. Right there!