Freezing Ted Williams

Goddamnit!! I will never live to see the eagle pass!

According to some crazy Buddhist optimist story: I will soon be released from the cycle of rebirths. I will only be caught up in my own follies for as long as it takes an eagle to wear down a granite mountain by flying over it once every 100 years dragging a silk scarf across it.

If it was worth freezing, it must be deserving of being thawed out one instant at a time like newspaper microwave flash fried photos: reborn, or something like time-traveled, like a lucky lottery winner, I return & no longer understand human language. A buncha naked smiling apes, deeply and artificially tanned & with chemically enhanced glowing white teeth ask me what my goals are.

I lose track of time. It is my only infidelity. I simply lose track. Rare moments of coming alive, becoming briefly my real self dissipate. I am a deflated space suit, hung up swaying in a narrow distant archway the setting sun just left. It takes me hours to shake off sleep. Alcohol helps. Helps me come alive. Even alone. Keeps me interested.

Every office I work in has an extra chair next to the desk. I hate that. People come by. They sit in the chair and stay & chat. They bring on the news of the day. Chat's boring. People are bored. There's nothing to do. Nothing to make anymore. No reason to own anything.

And my real self only cares about passing along secrets with other people who have secrets to share. Secrets you know would alarm everyone else.

They stay too long. No one looks me in the eye. They glance around, casual like. I can understand that.

I wear a mask. It covers my entire face and because of it, I am expressionless. People like reactions.

Oh, I could take off the mask anytime, I suppose. But wouldn't that be just another beautiful mystery destroyed? How would that make you feel?

A right hand scratches a letter with a sharp pen on a page that tears at the touch of the pen. The other hand grasps its wrist. This handwriting will be neat! A tortured sequence of paper-tearing pen strokes.

We can only see the hands of the woman who is reading the letter. The pen tears at her clothing.

What devastation is wrought from principle and what from bandits in the hills?

A pious god-loving old woman sits alone muttering prayers at the back of a church.

In the end I can reassure you all that none of us will ever know from what it was we died.

An old indian saw the eagle pass sometime in the 40s. Ted Williams was a star. The injun didn't know Ted Williams. I was 10 years yet to be.