Excerpt from “Slider,” a Tale of Multi-existence
For there was no ill wind here. There was the beautiful tranquility of calm, fresh air. Following the entrails of string of the broken kite that had crashed into me, I made more progress away from the fog itself until it was gone. What I had crossed was, in fact, a levee.
With my back to the water, the roar of the chemical surf slowly morphed into the blowing of a fearsome horn, but this sound fragmented until it had been replaced by the horns of tugboats. These in turn faded into one fancy horn—actually, a steamboat calliope, which began playing proudly with all of its bellowing and whistling. It was a very full sound, a dynamic range of a tune. And it stopped me cold, for I could pick out a certain skeletal measure.
My song!
I continued to experience my cold sweat but was finally reassured by the rest of the melody. The boombox dirge I had heard recently, which wrought the death knell, was now fanned out, its ominous cadence diluted throughout by interpolated complements that gave it a joyful fullness.
I didn’t turn around, but instead continued to look forward. I looked to life over the levee. The sky was blue. And there was the city below, the beautiful city of New Orleans. It seemed bustling. There were multi-colored kites in the air, happily floating over Jackson Square, merely for the loveliness of simple existence, none at all concerned for the loss of one of their brethren. The unkempt levee I had crossed was the one that guarded the French Quarter from the Mississippi river, from whose waters my song was gushing forth. There was landscaping ahead, the care and detail becoming more meticulous toward St. Louis Cathedral, along my line of sight.
There was the sound and vision of a city I had known so very long ago. If I had landed in the most terrible place of all, then there was a fine line that divided that place from this vision which I called normal. It was as if I had not slain myself back there but had slain only my demons, liberating me, I hoped, to roll back down to a stable reality bowl. I was at a threshold: I was crossing over with the knowledge of good and evil; and I was redeemed from my original sins, because I had died a type of death for them.
I sat on a grassy and clovered knoll, honey bees sharing the spot, going about their busy little bee day. I was not yet on the carefully landscaped scenery that was part of the park that symbolically separated the city from the river. That is, I was still on the utility part of the barrier between culture and nature. But there was green, and grass was a welcome site and a soft feeling. My journeys had involved so many urban adventures and desolate beaches that it was good to feel something living under me again.
I watched the scene below me. There were airplanes passing over periodically. There were those stylish outside elevators moving up and down the avant-garde buildings that so handsomely appointed the clean downtown skyline. It all looked so healthy, so purposeful, so innocent. How many of the terrible places I had been through recently could have looked like this from a distance? I asked myself. I wondered if I was being set up for a shock when this did in fact turn out to be the worst of all nightmares. I wondered if I was going to visit here only to see horrors that can only be seen close up. But then I elected to be gullible, since I didn’t have enough psychic energy to distrust my destiny.
I wore clothing that was tattered. I wore the vomit of my travels here. I wore that baby grease stuff of my dead child, and I know I still had on me some of the blood of the double-crossed suicide victim that had awaited my own as part of her twisted unilateral bargain.
My face wore the shroud of the fat fiend’s — my doppelgänger's — facial exsanguination. I must have been something terrible to behold, yet my appearance did not frighten the child that scampered my way only in frolic, not escape. As he did, he spooled back up the string of his broken kite that he was following.
“Hey, Mister,” he called to me. I stopped short, stunned. He must have been about five or so, about Les’s age, and he was the antithesis to Les in every way. He was nimble and bright-eyed and chipper. He was a beautiful fair child with sandy-blonde hair. He had no cares in this world, because as he approached he became preoccupied in the silly act of hopping on one foot. Just for fun.
He was everything Les could never be. Les was impaired, handicapped — special. This child was perfect.
How I wish I could have a child like that, I thought, to raise, to guide—to finally give something back to the world. But this thought made me feel the slightest bit guilty, for wasn’t there anyone who would wish for the children like Les, anyone who would want to try to fly the broken kite? I supposed so. Could I? Some people are better suited to deal with that sort of disappointment and pain. But this child! So beautiful—the kind anyone would dream of having.
“Yes?” I answered him.
“Have you seen my kite?” he asked.
Breaking my reverie, I was amazed to come across such beauty at this time. Crumpling my face at him in regret, I pulled the string toward us which dragged his mangled toy into view. I feared the disappointment I would see on his face, perhaps even the anger for such a senseless wasting of a good toy. To my surprise, he threw his head back in laughter and skipped off singing. I followed him, enchanted by his puerile beauty and the glory of his innocence which symbolized everything I had longed for. Even when he had run happily out of sight, I still followed the path he had taken, as if he were an angelic guide to my predestination. The calliope continued.
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