Sub Specie Praeteritorum

By Eliot Gabriel Graham

Tomorrow’s boxes will be modernized, dwarfed with Beetlejuice pixie dust, obsolete layers molted out, sent to the dump as dead, carbon-fried history. MacArthur Park side of 6th Street, neighborhood of Training Day café, the apartments of Axel Foley and Hank Chinaski, the region’s golden age Champs Elysée--rotted and resurgent--a Goodwill sells the most affordable rolling luggage needed for the quorum quarks to squeeze into. Just the right size with a shiny purple carapace, a pet tortoise, skunky and empiric, on roller skates, donde están las malletas, porfa? Allá? Ah, okay, hay que pedirle a la señora atrás, muy bien, ya está, gracia. Just so you know, this is one of the best organized Goodwills there is, the good management is visible. Appreciate that, with genuine misty mien, chopped and screwed reality real time playback. Twenty bucks for a hard limit of keepings, let’s get on with it, donde se puede tenir el cambio?, it’s laundry day but two blocks away.

Tight fit these quarters, elbows constricted by good manners, bunk posts, and door jams. The fitness closet has clean drinking water, the only store of fresh oxygen in an otherwise windowless cell. Keep fit at all costs, at all locations, in all moods, on all schedules, for good reasons, for good teeth, bones, skin, strong spangled span. Bandini’s terminal at 6th and Main is no longer available, instead shuffle with pet down Flower, more jogging than not. What would default into the Graffiti Towers is a jittery tilt up, slip in through the jaws of Nippon Sharyo Blue Line at Pico de gallo. Eat your heart out, Kusttram, the whole soggy coastline won’t even get out of this county, nay, state; country?--sheeyit. Opgeven kan morgen ook nog. Conciliatory second stings metallically, undoubtedly, especially from such land hog, urban starved civic-civil emaciates.

Vantage advantage over the region’s southside; perspective from a high-flying train doesn’t allow for ignorant stops, look both ways before crossing, ostrich neck panoramic before getting off, it’s on you here, responsible security, ladies and gentlemen. A long ride to Anaheim Street, Zaferia, Eastside, Iguana Kelly’s. Read some Aristotelian Poetics and eavesdrop on the couple and their alpha wheel across the aisle. Todo es bien aquí, no? Trabajo en toda las partes. Para me, dispensa, para nosotros, no hay problemas encontrarlo. - Conozcan a los otros estados?, ciudades? Neuva Yorke, Chicago, Miami? Prefiero ser, disculpa, prefieremos ser donde no hay muchos gavachos. All eyes and spines sync on deck to confirm the offense didn’t fit any key-shot earholes, a self-incriminating gesture on par with smelt-it-dealt-it logic. Carry on with reading, not letting up the jig, the more ignorance presumed the more tasty data consumed. They carry on. Papas, Papas, atodos hablan papas, as the doors opened onto the median platform. One could hear their bubble heads pop cherry. But just then the Anaheim Street bus is spotted -- run for it or wait longer than usual, as it’s a holiday. Run, always run Oana was told as the tram was pulling up to the Grandes Cottignies stop in Marc en Baroeul. Even after a day’s hard teaching, the dash was successful. It usually is. The bus was boarded, leaving alpha centauri in the rearview.

Sea mist holds life’s squishy little secret. The paradox of dry moist, or the reverse. The balance creates the containment charge, dividing the world up between this thing and that. Democritus was on about it, the jolly coastal goose. Apartments around these parts are without any kind of ambient conditioning, usually. So the air inside and out remains equal. Energy eats energy. Mini cockroaches, ants, roly-polies, and other such little guys thrive on mold, lazy people and each other. Sticky desiccant funk fumes the living rooms and kitchens of California beach flats. Listen carefully to West Coast Hip Hop and you’ll hear this as carpet burning vinyl buzz.

Still on the same top floor of the compound adobe duplex, red-tiled steps always seem lightly salted with beach sand, even at a two-mile breeze, forcing one to accept how appropriately named, in fact, this city is. The burlap welcome mat bristles the glassy floor as that old-school screen door is knob-thumbed open, swinging out way too far, and thus requiring a slapstick recovery. Front door should have been left unlocked, and it is. His name is hollered out, as the door slams shut. That sogginess holds the weight of time on the furnishings, outlining all 3-dimensional objects with vaporous peat.

So the courtyard has aged a bit, though still looks pretty good. Some weeds and slightly rusted lawn furniture, but in California, just about everything is lit better, so it photographs well, and probably always will. A nice common space for the four units, a street-side double stack, with a smaller version on the alleys-side, the ground floor reserved for garages and storage and an artist’s studio. Mr. Obbligato conveyed the balance of boxes here in a strategic coup, forcing a confrontation with Mme. Chronomo, who has stepped out, apparently. Simple the forward task of locating, sorting, cleaning, disposing, reducing: let the air out of the bubble grains, and toss out the shells, or hold onto them as future marbles. All to be done within a day, eight hours or so, firm.

A beer is offered, and kindly rejected with a finger circling an invisible wristwatch. Roll up the sleeves, make arms raptor-short for maximum maneuverability, pull the rubbish bin from the alley, through the Public Beach Indecency notice, and ramp up as best as possible, get on with it. Life carried on productively for the last score without need or desire for any of these tokens, dusty tokens. Slingshot, region 2 DVD player, Jaguar’s jaguar, bottle of Lou’s puke, gangboy photo album, and endless copies of all writings, blocks of unnecessary archived storage, blocking space, solid state and otherwise. The viewfinder points forward, and thus the backtrack is always sepia, unless the bubble still shines through. Space is limited, the preferred constraint. Purple shell roller will hold what it can hold, and then the balance usher gets to work. If done correctly what remains will be a heavy wagon of marble mound lightshine.

A clinical dustup, one box after the next, the sun falling closer and closer to the earth, pressurizing all the living topography, until it’s so close it can no longer be seen. Keep everything in its container--the old new, the new old, the discarded--and the eyes and nerves free of dust, just ask it. The index of mapped neural locations formatted with the most efficient of calculus algorithms. A sphere of asymptotic little cubes, Ricci’s memory palace, mental museum of past material. Each lobe kernel popping at the speed of light, deregistering its material with that classic Super Mario Bros. chime. Aesthetic pleasure in analysis, the richest and most satisfying kind.

Remain in Light has always been the funk tune of this place, maybe some early INXS, Duran Duran; music gave the ontology here an everlasting frequency, a gift of grafting. Do appreciate that extra, inner ear dimension, smoke signal to a long-deserted island. Omnipresent color puff for memories to seat into, gravity’s atmosphere. Efficient as a monk, the halfway mark comes and goes. Mme. Chronomo returns mission ready, struggling to hold back the impressed expression at progress. Some yard work finds its way on to the agenda, as the time-honored fable of scratch commons invariable leads to either tyranny or disrepair. He just wanted to make the area as nice as it could be, and they wouldn’t let him. Only for them to quickly thereafter forget about it all. Such as the pioneer attention span carries. The passive social analyst, though, won’t be insinuating into any these drama pods, just a window view, thank you very much. Oh, the ground will tremble here, the more she fiddles with it; veritable parallels thickening to a stodgy cliché soup. Hellas, the ground will move.

Minimal collaboration, if it pleases, please. A few more unwanted treasures tucked into the waxy mosaic, lithographic evidence exists, letting all of the excited helium out of the growing balloon puppy, Koonsy glossy gone, gone baby. Bitter fate ploughing hard yards headwind to this coal cart. Suffer here with the suffering, leather flavored jack booting guilt gong otherwise. Past perfect preterit nevermore, blush, blush. Peace is heavier than warfare, silent, talkie, still, or movie, supra western apperceptions of time. A soft grounding hum steadies beneath earth’s tickling feet, at the dog-whistle dimension, tensioning cadence simmers up in single-degree increments wringing the chords, drums, bands, webs, crown, atria, strings and twitch wires, bong taut, brain knot. Obviously it means a lot to finish on schedule, despite the falling darkness. Millstones dumped, peach-gems held for polishing pretty refurbishment. Relief gets its moment, for that’s the last of it--to the tip all that vintage material, sub specie, subterranean: a proper day’s clerk work.

Rough up into an unbalanced, top heavy, groaning leaf springs hastily parked beach bucket. Sitting shotgun unarmed with Madame Chronomo at that wheel. Walking distance is a relative term. Cops once surrounded the laundromat, a confused boy of six or so heard they heard a woman had called them on the account of an armed man, his trunk, a firearm, Mme. Chronomo electric with anxiety. The swirl of seriousness out of reach of the developing brain. Left turn into the t-bone of a city bus. Oh, not again. Zoom into choosing a table. The table farthest from the junk jaws of American class, but she doesn’t notice. Time wasted stewing in the swill water, until notice sets in. It’s vegan and cooks put nutritional yeast in the black beans, the waitress confirms. Feet feel tremorous, but others’ don’t. Half double decaffeinated half-calf with a twist of lime. Ripples gyrate with accelerating drive, Vera knew it all along, it seems. Get to the boulevard! Get to the platform! Needle through the decaying beach bum zombies shouldering cases of beer like jukeboxes, spitting rotten teeth like darts, the salts of this salty earth. Immunity or ignorance, the core will nevermore abide. The pod jets out of this chalky light, Viking tracks fall behind into the epic silence of a quaking earth.

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