So George, ambling in the road with the sun on his shoulder, thought to himself. He thought of why and where this hour had come from to leave him so lonesome, so tired of his favored city. Not the city of his birth but the city of his choosing, where music sprang out of the stones like water and madness was the norm. A beautiful madness that did not judge, though sometimes fought, or screamed, or whimpered, but often as not sang and danced and loved to love. This was where he had meant to live, in this madness and music; this is where he had meant to die, to be carried through the live oaked streets on the upraised hands of a second line. But something had changed, either inside or out. Everything had tilted sideways. He could no longer see the curtain, let alone the glimpses of what stood behind it that had been his church for so long. His faith was shook and with it the ground on which he stood shook, shaking him to his bones. Good Christ he needed a drink.
Somewhere hidden from the sun. The sun who had been following him now for days, hinting at love and devotion. George had never loved the sun. He wasn't abhorred of it, but the moon- his Bela Luna- had always held his heart firmly in it's shine. His own self would wax and wane in that light, and he cherished both the death and rebirth that each new month would bring. The day was fine, the light through the trees and warm wind on the backs of his hands still made him smile. But the low light and mad colors of dusk were the start of all beauty for him. Cloudy nights when Bela hid always had him edgy, in a mood that could not be defined but smelled vaguely of dissatisfaction, just like the first skinny crescent could light his mind on fire, the flames glowing in his eyes as he sang to the sky.
So to a crescent city he had come. A perfect placed laid along the veins of the river like an opened moon. But something had happened, was happening, and nothing but discontent followed through his head as he wished himself towards the bar. Ten months sober would soon be at an end if the scraps of his wages could be trusted.
It was the girl, the woman, who had brought him here. Not to the city, but to this shadow of it. She had become the moon for him. The moon and the bottle and even a new kind of sunshine that did not burn his skin or stun his eyes. He had found her, like these things always are, when he had not been looking. Indeed he had been looking very purposefully away from the idea of loving. He had settled himself firmly to a regime of slow and steady self destruction (or deception, both things being equal to the stumbling mind) and a diet of out of tune singing chased with whiskey was all he hoped for from day to day. No, it began as a chance for employment. He was her mechanic, cajoling her ancient brown and rust van into the labor from which it clearly had intended to retire. He wasn't great, no shop in any city would hire him, but he had a skill in his hands that could not be overlooked. The same skill that could pull music out of an old clarinet or chords from a thrift store guitar could also pull a few more miles out of old and battered engines. So she had come to him with the proposition. Food and cigarettes and a free trip back to the old northern town in return for doctoring the old Chevy up and an even older Ford back down. What the hell, he had thought, what could possibly go wrong.
But, of course it had gone wrong. Somewhere on the highway in the middle of the night, delirious on too little sleep and rock and roll radio it became clear that they were either falling in love or already had. They got back into New Orleans and went straight into the bar to try to rethink this new idea that had snuck into the back of her truck while neither one of them was looking. But Elvis sang “It's now or never...” and they played game after game of pool (two more things they shared a love for, besides each other) and the whole damned mess conspired in spite of all obvious screaming signs against it to put them two together, and that was that. And it all seemed so promising at the time.
But he being who he was, and she being she, and the world being just the same world it had been before they met, it all went south before long. They tried to hold it together, each sacrificing on the altar something they held dear. She gave up her stubborn independence, her need for private space. He gave up the bottle. Hardly an even trade, but he couldn't see it. Thrice she left and thrice he coaxed her back with tears and madness and unintended promises. But three is a charm and on the fourth it was done.
A terrible month that November. All death and birthdays and the new found bottles began to pile between them. A wall through which he could only vaguely see, and when his vision cleared enough he could see that she was really gone and gone for good at that.
George's heart is palimpsest, grooved through with chicken scratch runes of too many days, of not enough time. So many layers are typed again over each other that any original meaning or plan has long since been lost. Yet he reads through the text every day trying to decipher enough of it to glean some sense of purpose to his life, to this seemingly endless string of false starts and failures. The best light by which to ponder this text, he found, was the neon and TV glow of a bar. It could not be just any bar. The combination of light and sound, of smell and lonesomeness had to exact, or as exact as one could hope for from a place designed to make people less inclined to worrying about all of the minor problems of the world (and some of the major ones, as well).
But this was New Orleans and the permutations were nearly endless. Any kind of place you could imagine for sitting in and drowning could be found here, from the Quarter to the Canal. If it was deluge you wanted, deluge you would have.
A short happy life is certainly better than a long, unhappy one. But what about a life that hasn't been going on very long (though it feels that way sometimes) and possibly could keep going on for at least as long again, that is constantly being thrown between ecstatic highs and mind tearing lows with no sign of ever leveling out? Where the hell does that sit in the equation?
This is what's rumbling through the back ends of George's skull as he pokes at the double shot of whiskey on the bar in front of him. He's not really trying to figure out the answer, it's just a fun little exercise, something to keep him amused while he waits for enough of the whiskey t get into his system where he doesn't have to think about anything at all, at least not consciously.
George has learned to keep these sort of musings to him-fucking-self because nobody wants to hear that kind of shit- nobody even wants to think about a bunch of depressing crap like that. He learned this by having it told to him over and over again by everyone from random assholes in the bar to women who he could have sworn were in love with him, and probably would have continued to feel for him if he hadn't turned out to be so needy and bat shit crazy to boot.
Very little of what went on outside of George's head ever made sense to him. Most of the stuff that was going on all the time on the inside didn't really make sense either, but he felt he at least had a fighting chance with that stuff. A mile in someone else's shoes was something George was always attempting and failing. He wanted to understand other people (especially the women) and to some extent he did, if only by blind instinct. But he could never get other people to see what he was looking at when he looked out at the world. This always led to a massive breakdown in communication with George realizing that what he thought the other person was thinking was not even close to what they were actually thinking. His desire to know had led him to imagining whole universes where it all made sense.
“Whiskey, please.”, said George, easing into his place at the bar. The place was almost empty. A jukebox whimpered in the corner, trying to find a song that somebody, anybody, would want to listen to. At a table in the back the three sisters watched him and whispered through their smiles. He raised his glass to them and turned back to the bar.
“Good Morning, George. How's the moon today?”
“She's just fine, Morgen.”, then to the others in turn, “Maeve, ?????. What terrors have you three invented since the last time we spoke?”
“We don't invent the terror, George. You know that. In fact, believe it or not, there's still some people in this town who think what we do is quite beautiful.”
“I'm sure there are, dears. I meant no harm. You know I love you, don't you?”
“Which one of, George? Which one do love?”, smiled Maeve.
“Please don't ask me to choose. And besides, my Luna is the only one for me. I thought we had established this.”
“Of course, lover, of course. But a girl can dream can't she? When are you gonna take me dancing again?”
“Oh, I would ???, I would. But as you can plainly see, I don't have any legs. If I were to climb off this barstool I'd fall right over and just roll around the floor collecting cigarette ashes and peanut shells until someone felt bad for me and tossed me out into the street to be run over by a bus. I'm not the dancer I once was in any case.”
and some music
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