"onwards through
the river of empty parking spaces"
|
may 21, 22, 23
It's a confusing time - these days - but not tortuous. Like I can hear
elves scampering AND I'm more secure in the belief that they WILL open
my tomb, FLAT EFFECT or NO. Let's pretend the "flat effect" means that
one has been laying down too long.
I saw an ad for Post Waffle Crisps, so there's something to be
excited about, when I get out.
Someone that was trying to act as "Pod father" went to work release
this morning / good riddance. Huge hail storm Sat. nite.
In the on again / off again mode I'm in lately, I have failed to mention
that JOHN FLACH's brother or cousin floated through here on his way to
prison, I saw his name on the cleanup crew list one night, but failed to
"investigate" further. So he was gone before one knew it.
"Chaplain Joe" came out and sat in the yard the other night. I'd never
seen him there before. Immediately he was set upon by wild eyed cuckoo
Francisco Robles-Garza (who tormented FLACH up till last minute.) "Cisco"
was in a sweat to know if it was true that the phrase and notion
"all for one / one for all" comes from the bible. Cisco forced the
chaplain to get indignant in the OH-SO-TRUTHFUL fact that it decidedly
does NOT. Later, he and attempted rapist extrodinaire Matt Falcon loudly
continued the thread.
And speaking of threads --- let's move onwards on the path that eventually
led to the Ramsey's doorstep.
I've written the following details well ahead of time to such random
Vancouver places as Buschlen Mowatt Gallery on George St. and the Vancouver
Film School.
So I roamed about at night looking for a place that would BURN. Sure
it was SICK. Why do YOU presuppose that I REVEL in such things? I can FEEL
you doing that you know! I'm not going to REVISIT how there weren't ANY
choices. That IS how it seemed and THAT is what was important as I wondered
through the city.
As the time came inevitably CLOSER, I wrote more and more graffiti throughout
downtown. "TEMPORARY COBAIN." Yes, I would POINT to these signposts when
it was all over. I guess I'm doing that NOW. There was much-ado about the
opening of a VIRGIN Records + Books store. Monsieur Branson came
and entered in some such dangling from the roof stunt. I most ASSUREDLY
considered that store both before and AND after it opened as a TARGET.
I felt it's surfaces and walked it's alley.
But in the end, I focused on a poor little used book and comics store
called "ABC" I think. It was only a few blocks from my hotel. I'd been
there several times. I overheard a clerk there gossiping about someone
from the X-FILES and their shopping habits and compulsive nuttiness. (I
sent the item to a New York Post gossip column.) (Don't know if it was
used - scroll yourselves to Dec. 96.) There was no LOGIC behind the selection
of this store except for PURE unfeeling logic. Les FLAT effect. It was
VERY old and wooden. Case closed.
Now we get right up to the fateful days. I found some porno magazines
in les trash area of the hotel. "Gazongas" or something. I took these in
my room and wrote of les temporary suicide notion upon les breasts-A-bouncing.
I did the same with the books I'd checked out from the S.F. library NEVER
to return. (Nevermore?) Perhaps even a framed object from the hotel wall.
I wrapped them all in les room for I'd probably been flyering about what
I was about what was to come.
Here then I had a bundle of sick gifts. I roamed les Boulevards balancing
a present on the limb of a bush here, os sitting unsecured in a doorway
there. "FOR YOU" written on each one.
Somebody in Vancouver may be yanking away with these porno mags to this
day, still pondering the meaning of "temporary Cobain." Best to have a
sense of humor is it not?
And I did these things as les holidays were SCREAMING. I'd been in Canada
for 6 weeks. My family in Colorado dialing till my phone went DEAD in San
Francisco.
And right as Christmas Eve arrives, so does abject lack du finances.
Such a sweat. "NOW" - it has to be now. Only have the room a few more days.
Subsisting on a few cookies a day that they've been displaying at les front
desk. NOW NOW NOW. It is SO uncomfortable.
But in the end, I DON'T do it.
I rummage through my things looking for my old return bus ticket to
Seattle. The date of departure has long since come and gone. But I took
it on the long walk to the bus station. So God awful bleak. The fastest
way takes one through ENORMOUS parking lots for their civic ARENA. These
lots - these were what I thought were a river the night I arrived.
And of course the ticket is still valid. The fever is broken. I will
return to Seattle the next day.
Everything is STILL a disaster - but for this one day, I can return
to my hotel room and NOT feel les intensity. Now instead of a person who
MUST burn something down TONIGHT, what I am is a person who will be standing
in Seattle with nowhere to go TOMORROW. Awful. But there IS relief in it.
And with the decks cleared I took a long walk by the waterfront.
And later I wrote a NOTE. And in that note I casually but anonymously
laid out all I have recently told you. Cloistering in S.F. / unable to
function with people. etc. I told them I'd come to Canada to FORCE a solution
because nothing good was forthcoming. I told them I'd selected their store
AND I told them how I'd had a Christmas scrooge like CHANGE. I be telling
them, yes indeed, I was a ghost here and ammo gwine back to the United
States.
Who could have known that whilst I was doing this, someone ELSE, in
Boulder, was scraping away, laboring on a NOTE over that long sleepless
nite?
MY NOTE, nutty as it was, contained a Ray of chagrined explanatory etchy
sketchy civility. Casually it told a truth not likely to THRILL it's recipients.
I showed them there were unhinged people like me floating about, did I
not?
Litlle did I know, of course, that within a few months, I would be in
les gendarme office du Boulder, giving samples for comparison with this
OTHER note.
And so, on a very SUNNY but cold day. I left the Royal Hotel and walked
a few blocks down Granville to the bookstore - closed for les Holidays.
There was a giant wooden barrel of really awful books just inside the door.
(When open, they would roll it out on the sidewalk as an advertisement.)
Imagine les flaming possibilities if you MUST. And I did look about to
see that no one was watching, and I did bend down and shove my note through
the mail slot on the door. With that ceremony completed, I had REJECTED
this awful idea.
What became of that note? I know not. For I trudged onwards through
the river of empty parking spaces and onto the bus for
Seattle. FATE apparently decided it would be cute, righteous and and good to bowl me over, to overshadow
this swallowed misery with corpses AND police IDIOCY; And so, I mock it
all......
JT Colfax
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