You are about to begin again, or so you believe, but you are lost, and you have lost the word, the first word, the password, as they say, and that is the prompt to your beginning, or maybe, the prompt to the telling of your beginning, if in fact it is a beginning. Perhaps it is simply the prompt to carrying on, or the memory of carrying on. Although carrying on infers continuation, and continuations must begin somewhere, at some point, at a beginning of some sort. To presume a beginning is dubious, and to presume of I, suspect. You must begin somewhere, perhaps with a seed, if seeds are the beginning of anything, perhaps better to assume an indiscretion, and to look for the father of such, but he is long dead and hardly able to assist in the definition of you. You must, therefore, seek that which is clear, and whether it is a beginning or a continuation is neither certain, nor the point. You are about to begin again. Maybe.

You are certain that everything rests on foot. You are certain that it is your foot, and it is suspended in mid-air between the third step and the street, or, to be more precise, the third from the top, not counting the landing of course, or the one just above the sidewalk before the street. You are also certain that you begin, or begin again on foot, and that yours is a naked foot, plugged into a wingtip shoe. The leg is bare as well, except above the knee from that point up it is covered by a robe. It is the right foot. Of this you are certain as well, for the left is firmly planted on the step. That is to say, the same step, the third, or fourth depending on the count, or perhaps better defined, as the one immediately above the sidewalk before the street.

Definitions are deadly! The things you know cannot be known without a name, and one’s perceptions are foreshortened by a choice of word. The named is easily overturned and renamed. Words spill from the mouth. The fourth becomes the third, but remains the one above the street. Think deeply, and when your thoughts become unnamed ask yourself if the definitions of the past have liquidated your future, and if the nothing new is new, and all that is truly left is old. And when the old is revisited it becomes the shock and sensation of our age. That is shock!

The left is firmly planted. Your right hand grips the rail. Your foot is moving towards the sidewalk, moving down. You are moving down. You hear a sound. Your head turns, and, as the foot follows the head, your foot turns too, but the rest of you continues its descent. The door slams. You turned for sound, and caught a slam, and with no time to reset the foot for landing you tumble to the street. Tumble? Hardly. It is more like a half-fall, if there can be such a thing as half-fall. Your hand held the rail. The rest of you collapsed and stumbled. It could hardly be described as anything but a half-fall, unless of course you thought that you were in suspension. That’s better. You remained suspended, clinging to the rail, unable to right yourself, and barely able to hold on due to the weakness of your grip. Suspense? Perhaps. You struggle with the dilemma of having to let go, as completion of the fall is the singular means to attain a position from which you can right yourself, and continue, or, perhaps, begin again.

It is not clear if you let go, or because of circumstantial muscle contractions, merely fell out of suspension, but you are on the street recumbent with twisted neck and chin on brick. How you arrived is not important. The struggle between position and disposition is the lesser of your concerns. You are more focused on status, your status, and you are compelled to ask two questions. ‘Have you left, or have you been put out?’ You turn your head, rest your ear on the brick that formerly supported your chin, and direct your eyes to the door hoping for an indication of left or put out. There is no confirmation of either. The post-hole flap softly taps ‘Goodbye,’ against the door. You return no salutation. You are unable to discern your status without a sign. You wonder if in is out, or out is in, who is in your bed, whether your bed is out, and who or what is the source of out. And you don’t know. You roll onto your back, turn your head, rest chin on chest, and study your feet. Two vertical boats both bare and both plugged into wingtip shoes. Neither the feet, nor the fact that they are yours is surprising. Feet are typical and commonplace, but these of course are yours. You have studied them before. You are familiar with their length and breadth, the longitudinal configuration of veins and tiny bones, the curvature of the toes, the tiny hairs on each, the yellow nails, their length, the dirt beneath, and the distinctive odor of each foot. The left is clearly Camembert, the right, is something from the grave. ‘One foot in,’ as they say. They are hidden of course, in the wingtips. You send a signal to each. They respond with a slight twitch. The wingtips click together, a gesture of possession. They are yours. You smile. You knew it and have no need to slide your fingers through the slime between the toes, and bring it up on tips to share a little Camembert and grave with nose. You think to toe the heel of one with the other, reverse, and slip the wingtips to the street, but not today and not now. Today the wingtips dominate, and these are more significant than cheese or death. These were the same that you had worn before, once, and only once before, and that was a beginning. It was the beginning of that which led to this. One is tied the other has no lace. The plugged in feet attached to legs. The legs were bare, the hair, or lack of hair, or that which was left of that which once was, looked plucked, and left the legs although not quite, but something near, chicken-like. But chicken-like is insignificant, or to say, not as significant as the robe from which they, the chicken-like protrude.

Wingtips, Camembert, grave, and chicken-like, your survey of the distant and dear goes well until you feel pain. It must have been there all along, but you are only now beginning to feel it, and your awareness forces you to consider two of the other elements attached to your recumbent form. You roll left and free both, the arm from under back, scraped and bleeding, and the penis from under leg, scraped but not bleeding. You right one and placed it across your chest. The other rests on your thigh. An exclamation point seldom used in life rests on your thigh, swollen, bent, unused and deficient in blood from a lack of use. An external appendage fastened to your trunk for reasons forgotten long ago in the beginning when the wingtips were new, and polished, and first worn. Rearranging your assets diverts you from your fall. The ringing in your ears becomes a drone that you find soothing. But, don’t rest. The pain will soon return the pain from the protruding or, better, that from which they, the chicken-like protrude, the robe, not really the robe, but the comprehension thereof, and in that, the realization of what the robe is not. It is not a greatcoat. You have no greatcoat, no greatcoat code, no I, and this is not a portrait of a modernist clown. Samuel is dead. You have you, not I, in your robe, your default robe, and no greatcoat, and no hat, and no string to tie the hat if you had a hat. And if you had a hat would you string it to the robe? No. All the Greatcoats have been discarded and replaced by postmodern one-size fits all default robes. It is no longer possible to wrap oneself in a greatcoat and go on. Although you feel you must go on. You can’t. You must begin again, maybe.

It is somewhere in between light and dark and neither warm nor cold. The wingtips reveal their details. They are stiff and dusty. Beyond the shoes the scene is a pencil sketch, an outline of dark gray lines on gray. You are not uncomfortable on your back, feet slightly raised, head bent forward. Perhaps you should be. One shoe is tied the other has no lace. At another time you sat with Lewis he pointed to the shoe, not this, another. “Tie the shoe,” he said. You did, and then, he placed his hand on your knee and said, “Have another, my lovely.” You did, and laughed, and poked his rib and spilled your drink and said, “What now?” “Call it indiscretion,” he replied and then said, “I must go on,” and grabbed his greatcoat and hat, and left.

Lewis fades, as all digressions do. You regain your feet and stand. He left. You look right and left and right again. The right scene is even less defined then what is left. The door is to your back. You cross the street and walk into the space between two buildings, a sort of doorway that leads nowhere, except where it is; the space between two buildings. The space is darker than the street. You turn and face the door, the slam, now on the other side, the side left. The door is closed. The windows by the door are dark. The windows of the upper floor are dark but you can see the eyes. Eight, four pairs from four, staring at you, and you at them. Not enough. Too much! Two steps forward and left. You. Left.

Your feet hurt from the stiff and dusty, lack of lace, wingtips, but that is the lesser of your concerns. Foremost is direction, and for this you turn to logic, and logic is numbers and forty-eight being the year of indiscretion seemed the proper choice. Forty-eight over four eyes left twelve. The calculation is smooth. You settle on twelve-left. You advance along the sidewalk, counting. Robe secured, right hand pocketed to support the arm, counting. You glided past one. Two is not as easy what with the scene, like memory, a mere sketch. You must estimate the distance to the curb, adjust your stride, equalize your steps, and prepare to land with right on curb and left positioned for entry into the street. After a series of carefully executed, serpentine maneuvers, you arrived in perfect step. You step in, cross over and step out. Ten more, twelve, and you turn left. In the second twelve between nine and eleven, which makes it ten, you saw a boy, or so it seemed, although you don’t remember if he was short or tall, big or small, or blond or black or red. He held a ball. You think. You studied him and when he stared back, you opened the robe. He dropped the ball and fled. Another twelve, and left, and twelve again, and left, and you return to that place from which you first began, again. Other than that chance meeting with the boy, if it was a boy, it was an uneventful trip of forty-eight. There were no farts and tarts, nor pricks or kicks in the contours of the sketch through which you traveled, and you’ve returned to the space between the two across the street from the door through which you sprung. It is neither light nor dark. No one was on the street. The door was closed. The house was dark. They had either just come in, were not going out, or had left.

It is green, plastic, ill formed, with hole in the bottom, and the upper right side is chewed. It sits on the street, under the window, to the right of the door, and is recognizably yours. Did I say the house is dark? The house is dark. The bag is open. The path is clear. You step in, cross over, step out, two-step to the bag, identify the recognizable, and sit down. The bag is full. It always was. No more, no less, simply full, as it always was. Inside are a note, some bills, and an accounting of charges for services. The note is in a hand that you have read before. You do not read what is written, you simply release it to the street. Your feet hurt. You sit, remove the wingtips, wipe the blood from your feet, and place three socks from the bag on each, replaced the wingtips, and pour the remaining contents of the recognizable into the street. Capitulated to memory, form without content, and codified by a name you cannot remember, you stand ankle deep in image, counting the bills and recalculating the accounting of charges for services rendered, and recognize that you are short of bills, but not of change.

In a window above and across the street a light switches on, a radio follows. A fat man in a sleeveless, dirty white, t-shirt sits, profile to the window, in a brown chair. He is unshaven. The hairs on his arms and chest obscure the contours of the shirt. With the right he smokes and with the left he fingers his nose. From your position on the street, looking up, you deduce that beyond self-indulgence there is little purpose to his actions. He continues. You watch his fingers probe, and twist, and stretch his hairy nose-holes. The fingers flick theirs finds through the open window, and followed by an ash, they filter through the gray air to the street below. The radio lists the agonies of the day, “Fundamental, Bombing, Democratization, Delusion, Campaign, Casualties, and Deaths,” and declares, “This is the end of the world news.” You realize that the logic of the past leads you nowhere but back to where you started, and where you started is the
end. You must begin again.

*

You begin walking. You have not chosen a direction, but the road on which you walk leads to the station. It is slightly darker than it is light. The lamps lining the perimeter of the road are unlit. There is no wind. A gray wet mist forms and fills the space between the street and a height of one meter, obscuring the visibility of everything below your waste. You hear your wingtips clicking against the pavement, but you cannot see them. You are a boat moving quietly through the water with its anchor dragging along the sea floor. There are no other vessels in sight. This is unsettling, but the rhythm of your wingtips provides enough comfort for you to move forward. You have not chosen a destination, but you continue. It is neither warm nor cold. You are moving. The part of you above the mist is hot. The part below is cold. You move faster. You sweat. Your hot breath surrounds your upper part and forms a cloud that sinks and mingles with the mist below. The cloud obscures your vision. You swing your arms up and push out, and move the cloud away from your eyes. You can see, but the exertion makes you sweat more, and with each breath comes another cloud. The rhythm of your wingtips clicking against the pavement increases. Your arms swing up and push out again, and again. And you move faster, and faster through space, a swimmer escaping from a self-generated cloud that obscures your vision. You do not know where you are, where you are going, nor do you know why you are where you are, wherever that may be. It is only clear that you have left somewhere. You stop, and turn to look back at where you’ve been, but the only thing you see is the turbulence you left behind in the mist. You wonder if it is possible to move forward without being aware of the past. Is it possible to have a future without a past, or is everything simply dependent on the actions of the moment, and past and future are definitions that divert you from the present?

You are a swimmer without direction. Your hesitation confuses you, and your left foot becomes entangled in an object on the street. Your attempt to free the foot causes you to twist your ankle and fall. Under the mist on the street you wrestle with the object and open a wound below the knee on your right leg. During your struggle to free your foot you realize that the object in which you are entangled is a bicycle. You extricate yourself from the bicycle and regain your feet. The left is sore and twisted. The right leg is bleeding, and you have lost one shoe. You remove the cloth belt from your robe and bandage your wounded leg. You bend into the mist in search of your lost shoe. Your search is unsuccessful. It is impossible to move forward on a twisted ankle and one shoe. You bend into the mist again, locate the handlebars of the bicycle and pull it to its wheels. You push it forward and back, a small test, the front wheel is slightly bent, but the bicycle appears to work. You mount the bike and discover that the left pedal is missing, but that’s the one for the twisted and shoeless foot, and you won’t be using it anyway. Your left hand holds the handlebar, and you push off. Your right foot pushes the pedal down for locomotion, repositions itself under the same, and pulls it up for continuation. Your right hand gathers the robe together, holds it fast at your waste, and you pump your way forward.

The rhythm of wingtips is replaced by the scraping of the bent wheel against the bicycle’s mudguard. Your speed increases, and with exception to a slight wobble caused by the wheel, you glide through the mist. The cloud of breath that obscured your vision dissipates. You ride high, slicing through the damp gray, leaving a scar that lasts until the mist rolls over and covers your trail. The road comes to an end and you have a choice of left or right. You choose left, negotiate your way through the curve and emerge with the harbor on your right and the station in the distance ahead. The mist over the harbor is thicker than that which surrounds you. You cannot see the water, but you hear the lick of its tongue against the seawall. The mist covers the boats and distorts the details of the station. You follow to the rhythms of scraping wheel and tongue against seawall. There is no distinct image to confront. The soft gray lines on gray, somewhere between dark and light, and the neither cold nor warm leave you devoid of image. The moment demands no definitions or decisions. You simply move forward following the rhythms in a soft an ill-defined gray. Your mind drifts and comes to rest on a series of images that you define as past. Color fills the frames that flood your memory. The location is the same. The scene is filled with people in motion, and you identify a remarkable array of characters. A few men in greatcoats, a butcher, woman in a green dress, man with a monkey on his back, an alcoholic, a woman with a shoe on her head for a hat, an old lady strikes the side of a bus with her cane, two ballerinas, a man falls- his papers fly in the air, two others step over him, a policeman drives his stick into the ribs of the indigent, a waiter carries a tray of drinks, three dogs, a clown and a dentist. It is hot, and it is light. You feel a sense of déjà vu. You have been here before, and you are here now, but the scene is different. So where’s the déjà vu? Is it gone, or is it you that has redefined the known and colored it an empty gray. Both the memory and the moment reside in you, and it is you, the painter of the scene, who has colored it damp gray. Or is it? Maybe, you identify the image for what it is, damp gray, and maybe, you are trapped in image and have lost your identity. Does the responsibility for identity rest with you, or have you delivered that responsibility to the mass and settled for a comfortable damp gray? Memory blurs the moment and the mind. Your efforts to pump forward are stalled by an image not unlike yours which you fail to identify as standing in your path, and in a moment he is on the street, your bicycle on him, and you on top of both. You have fallen for another image. You right yourself, free your bicycle, stare into the eyes shining through the mist on the street, kick their owner, and move forward. Memory blurs the moment and the mind, you think, and pump forward, free of thought, blank, but clear, and more in tune with the scene through which you move.

The effects of the mist diminish, and in spite of your lack of destination the station stands clearly in your path and becomes one. The mist clears. The damp gray lightens and changes to dry gray. The mist retreats slightly, contours sharpen, and although the scene remains as a pencil sketch of gray line on gray, it has become animated. There are other travelers on the roads moving towards the station. Gray men in gray dress, each with the same case, move along the tendrils of the network to and from the central core. You have no case. You watch the vertical animations of gray men coagulate like a great human blood clot and force their way through the portals of the station. They are pumped through, ticketed, stamped and redistributed, sucked into worms on rails, and spit out again somewhere down the line. They are only going to wherever it is that they always go. You are not going. You are not part of the clot. You have no ticket. If you were going, you probably wouldn’t know where, and with no destination you cannot go. Ask yourself if it is possible to have a future without a past? And is everything defined in the present, and are the past and future definitions that divert you from the moment? And, if so, you must begin again.

Joseph Scorselo