He has one shining stone, that one. Well maybe that's not true. I hear his other stuff is quite good. Too bad I don't read much, but maybe someday I'll get to it. His satori isn't the one I have though. I guess it's mine alone to have, with some Cotton Jones.
On the toilet. "Writing a memo," as Mike would say. Writing with no pencil. Writing itself in my fuckin' head while I read it. Satori In Paris. His last chapter. The whole truth behind his two weeks. Of the cognac, of his slurry Parisienne observations, his half-hearted ho-hum reverie, his loss in Brittany, all of it.
Ah, here it is. He's in a cab, and it just takes a beer. Before the flight, the return. Double-parked on the corner. The driver's real, and I think Jack sees it. Impart a little reality oh, Kerouac. Why, thank you. Sometimes all it takes is a cab ride.
It's quaint and subtle like a feeling of that someone brushing by you on the street, and you breathe a real breath because for a second you know for sure you're not dreaming. A bump of reality. A jolt. An unintentioned thought. Something not sought after specifically, just a slap to know for sure that you're thinking at all. You are existing. Satori. Enlightenment on the toilet. But it's not my satori. It was some guy Jack's, and he was in a cab, not on a toilet.
[stop]
No. For me, satori is a day that hails in Paris, with my head hanging out the small high window. It's a little more than able to let my arms through too, which is nice because then I just lean on the sill with the spliff by my face. And it's dark now because I'd slept the day away after vomming late last night. That's what happens when you don't eat dinner. You get drunk and too high, then you can't even help it when the girl's straddling you. Except that it's not the girl you love. It's the other one that wants you.
I woke up on the bathroom floor, face up, with my legs hanging out the open door because this Parisian bathroom's so damned tiny. Stupid servant's quarters. So I move to the threefold mattress on the floor at the foot of Lili's bed, clutching a box of Carrefour cereal like a teddy bear because my stomach's churning and growling at my accidental dinner fast and my fully intentional weed and wine binge.
Weak-bodied. Too tired to carry any armor anymore. In my wife-beater, the cold air feels like a fresh inhale to the pores. The body heals faster than the heart I think, because try as I might, all the food and pasta and endless pints of water, they bring me back sure, but only my body.
The soul's still lying there bare on the bathroom floor. Still, through the crazy hail that's raining down in little white peas, crashing against the black slate roofing above in all manner of thunderous cacophony, still. It curls, an exhausted faun, heaving deep breaths. Wide-eyed and helpless, frozen from the noise. Still now, with the spliff. Invalide is splashed in orange-gold from below and the dome's ornaments throw long shadows upward, all the smallest details in sharp relief, in glowing monocolor.
It peaks over the neighboring roofs. The only other presence on the twilight skyline is that behemoth at Montparnasse, lit like an LA skyscraper. Just a tower of white boxes, some dark, some still churning off in the distance. On the high levels. And I think of her. She comes back like some old dream recalled. It's been a while since I'd thought of her, I suppose. She's probably in some not too dissimilar building giving some presentation in a smart suit, or jet setting across the country, at cruising altitude. And if she is, I wonder what she's listening to. Does she still hear songs and think of me? Probably not. I wonder if she has a Montparnasse. An image she lays eyes on and sees my unfortunate face when her heart's worn and tired. Maybe not in the office, but on the planes sliding between time zones, from cities in the east to cities in the west, and all the in-betweens. Maybe she only gets window seats, like I do, and she sees me in the clouds. Then time hits me. Time passed, like ice water on the shoulders. I sigh. Some part of me says she's an aisle-seat girl now.
[stop]
It's the same part of me that cringes with a shiver at the past night's events. It tells me to expect the most pessimistic. It's a fear of hope, because optimism only comes crashing down, and it hurts a lot more when you fall from high up with your head in the clouds. But this wallowing in the low basin mud ain't no fuckin' fairy-tale either. It's that constant moderate depression, awash in cynicism because I know no one can really hurt me. Down here in the hazy daze, it's just me. The Parisian crowds float by like a grey mist. Waking life becomes all the time I was asleep in high school and college classrooms. This city's my classroom now. The lesson plan's written in each step, in circles around the Seventh, just trying to pick a path. The light to lead me out only fluttered for a second. She was young and beautiful and nonchalant and didn't always stand up straight, but hey, neither do I. A stoner's closet, cut from a different cloth than the rest. Corduroys and soft wool red jackets that wake slowly to the touch. And she almost did. Maybe my eyes opened for a moment, but in reality's light I know what's what, or at least I seem so certain of it anyways.
So I close my eyes once again and stay so still, feigning my dreams on the cold hardwood reality. I just crave her company. Anyone's really, but especially hers. Her red wool coat, her vibrating neck pillow. Her long spliffs with king papers. Her art class field trips, her same sad movies. Her witty bored sarcasm, and her squinty side-laugh with a smile.
[stop]
I've said my piece though. Squeezed dry all emotions in a text too long for just one breath. That shitty French smartphone cuts me off halfway and I have to finish in a second. And after that well, I guess I'll never see her again. Probably never hear from her. And so I'm glad to be squeezed dry. But that wringing out always leaves a vacuum. The smallest most minute thing, but it flexes back with the slightest shudder.
The empty hole's there again, and it's a sucker to get used to no matter how many times it happens. Sigh. Back to sleep again. Back to the daydream. Hide my heart away once more and close my eyes as Adele sings that sad lullaby of my life. At cruising altitude I choke back the tears into a lump in my throat. Above the checkered-like old-timey linoleum of pure white, the great Atlantic below. There's a chop on the water.
C'est fin.
