Tucked deep in the winding golden city, under piles upon piles of concrete and steel piled into giant, golden megaliths towering over us; under masses upon masses of human bodies philandering among the golden megaliths, girls laughing and swinging around their bodies for the handsome men; under ropes upon tangled ropes of revelry and reeling, shining neon lights and bursting bubbles of laughter; tucked under all of this is a quaint little jazz cabaret which I inhabit.
It’s a nice, cozy little cabaret which wraps me like a warm blanket around a fireplace. Here I am at home among clinking glasses and silverware, among snazzy jazz notes that make my body play, among rich red velvet and dimly lit candles, among rich men and their rich laughter as they clink their glasses together to a celebratory “Cheers!”—here I am at the bar in my newly bought suit-and-tie and nicely groomed, luxurious black hair that make me feel apart of this luxurious endeavor of whiling away evenings to jazz and friends and fine wine. I sip and savor my fine cabernet wine and breathe in the devilish, intoxicating perfumed air. Ah, what a perfect night to while away to Ella Fitzgerald’s Dream a Little Dream of Me!
“Some house-blend nuts please,” I command the bartender.
I am pleased, for they nod and return with a dainty small plate full of rich nuts, mixed with the bar’s very own special spice mix. I savor the nuts, one at a time plopping each capsule of flavored richness into my mouth as I watch all the interesting things happening around me like the secret overseer of the cabaret.
I watch over the musicians’ bodies as they twist and mutilate to the swing of the jazz. They sing and play my favorite ode to the Human Condition, filling their music with an intoxicating essence as if they melted their souls into one thick perfume which they secreted out of every pore of their bodies. Each pluck of the string, each vowel of the vocalist, pulls the strings of my soul, evoking images of dreams and longings—yearnings and forgotennings.
I shift my gaze to a triangle of three old, devilish hags who frequent this cabaret often. They talk about bizarre, licentious things and laugh hysterically at each other.
“That reminds me—you have to hear what just happened the other day,” one hag says.
“Yeah?” another replies.
“So I was waiting at the bus stop with a cigarette in my mouth, you know, smokin’ and waitin’ when this red car passes by. A moment later—what do you know?—that car makes a full U-turn, stopping all the traffic in his path—just to stop right beside me! And you know what the driver said?”
“What!?” the other two scream in anticipation.
“Oh… you’ll be surprised… He said… ‘Come in my little chick!’”
Laughter explodes from their little triangle, convulsing their entire bodies in one giant orgy of uncontrollable humor.
“NOooo! That could not have happened! Who wants an ugly old hag like you!?”
Laughter again explodes from their triangle.
“Oh yes! It did! The driver came right up to me and said to me, ‘Come in my little chick! I’ll drive you wherever you need, babe!’ He thought he was smooth!”
Laughter again explodes from their triangle.
I look away in embarrassment for I feel for a moment their laughter to be directed at me—what pretensions I have looking over the cabaret as if it were mine! So I move my gaze to this one couple sitting right behind me.
They talk softly to each other, their minds tenderly feeling each others’ souls while their hands tenderly feel each others’ bodies. Their eyes snap together like two puzzle pieces, one fitting perfectly in the other; and, before long, their heads gravitate together, placing one hot lip on the other, kissing long and hard. I start to feel that eternal longing which humanity at large feels for something else, for the same transcendent store of love that the bee and the flower pull from, when a lady taps me the shoulder, and I look to the left only to see nothing.
“Oh! There you are!” I say, laughing at how stupid I was, for she was actually to my right. She giggles a bit as well. It was Lilac, whom I had agreed to meet with later tonight.
“So, how was your day?” she asks.
I sigh, “It was alright… Very tiring, though. There were just so so many meetings and presentations to give and people to please. I really wish I hadn’t taken this job as a consultant…”
So we continue talking about trifling things: how our days were, how tired we are, how it’s so nice to sit and relax at this bar, especially when there’s some nice handsome guy like me or some nice beautiful lady like her to sit with at the bar. We talk flirtatious nonsense, complimenting each other in trifling ways as if merely to avoid directly saying, “I love you.”
“You know,” I say, “Lilac really is a beautiful name—a really fitting name for your blooming beauty. You’re like the heavenly blooming lilacs of spring exploding with purple shine, a flower descended down from heaven, placed here on Earth to remind us sinful humans of our prior innocence in the Garden of Eden.”
“Where did that come from?” she giggles, “a book?”
“Well, I did write poetry once,” I reply, slightly embarrassed. I start to caress her cheek. Our eyes lock together, fitting perfectly like puzzle pieces. Oh, maybe I’ll experience some love too? Just like that couple, our heads gravitate toward each other, propelled by the yearning strains of the jazz vocalist, which charges us with a profound sexual energy. We kiss long and hard—and a bit strangely because, suddenly, I’m reminded of a time in the past when I thought myself beyond such love.
It was ten years ago that I ran through my neighborhood, weathering the freezing cold with my ragged green coat. It was a green coat I had worn all my youth—a cherished and prized possession for much of my life. But, one day, when real life came knocking on the door, I decided that it was about time to become an a responsible, well-adjusted adult, so I threw all of my childhood away and restarted life anew. And with that childhood went my ugly green coat, which I presently see my past self wearing and running in—an image that deeply unsettles me for the green coat is everything I do not want to be.
It was Christmas time, when a warm blanket of snow covered and tucked in all the cozy little cottages dotted over the rolling landscape. I ran around, looking at the way the warm, orange light shone out of each cottage into the dusky cold blue evening. I admired the way the multi-color Christmas lights jollified the bleak landscape like the stars in the sky light what would be a terrible pitch black sky. Over this backlight of warmth stood the black silhouettes of families exchanging gifts, sipping on eggnog and enjoying hearty mashed potatoes, singing Christmas carols, keeping out the dreary winter blues with their rosy facial hues.
I laugh a bit when I pass by a house full of Christmas carolers singing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. I laugh because I knew that these carolers didn’t understand the true nature of Christmas. No, Christmas lay not in these jolly little tunes we sing to while enjoying hot eggnog—no, the essence of Christmas is beyond all these material things and lay in the grand ether beyond all that can be seen, touched, felt—in short, sensed in any way except in the soul. These carolers ignorantly ommitted the Holy Spirit of Christmas—a spirit which I felt deep in my soul. It was a spirit that lit up the nights though all was physically dark—that warmed my body though it was cold to the touch—that, like a loving father or mother, embraced and protected me from all the dangers of the world.
It was only a few moments ago that I began to feel this spirit. High-knees and butt-kicks—doing my regular warm-up routine—and then I suddenly felt this warmth enveloping my soul. It was an exhilarating warmth—the culmination of all my prior yearning for something greater in this world, some sign of divinity in this cold, bleak, materialistic world the Modernists had constructed. Finally, I felt a great melting down in my soul of all the worries and anxieties and fears—it was all melted down into a small pebble which dropped out of my body like how a tiny trinket accidentally drops out of one’s pocket, never to be seen again.
And in place of all this was a vacuum of pure love. It was a love that loved all unconditionally—that loved not only the good but the evil too: the thieves, murderers, adulterers of this world; the inconsiderate driver who cut you off at an intersection; the corporate leaders who seemed to care only for their greed. All was loved. All was good.
And all this frigid, blizzardy world that surrounded me was no longer this hostile environment that had to be escaped from; rather, it was this large, loving family that protected me and embraced me. No longer did I need to escape into these capsules of warmth called homes; no, the cold was now my home. It was miraculous: despite the numbness of my freezing body, I felt I could simply take my coat off and frolic around in the snow—take a handful of snow and freeze my hand in it—without any repercussion.
And I did. I frolicked around and round, rubbed snow all over myself, crashed into a large pile of snow and made snow-angels simply because I could—it was a feeling of total freedom. I was free from the heavy burden called the Fear of Death which we all carry on our backs like miserable Atlases condemned to hold up the sky forever. I could roll around to my heart’s content, and roll I did. I rolled and laughed and felt the snow go round and round me—down a hill I went and then I bumped into a wall and heard the sounds of jazz around me.
It was the walls of a jazz cabaret I bumped into—not the same one I’m presently in but a different one, one whose location I forgot. It was a cabaret far from everything that was fussing and bustling, located in a quiet forest that seemed to be all but desolate and abandoned except for this one establishment, oddly plopped down here like water in a desert. I listened closely to the jazz emanating from the walls—put my ear right up to it so as to gather as much of it as I could. It was soft, Christmas jazz—softly played to the point that I would’ve fallen asleep to it right there in the cold had it not been for my burning curiosity which brought me to the front door. I looked through the door’s window, and I peered into a strange world of red velvet, dimly-lit candles, and well-groomed, well-dressed men and women. It was a universe entirely apart from my own—one that existed far, far away, farther than even the farthest star. It was another universe connected to my own only through this tiny portal called a window.
Sheer amazement crept into my face. Strange it was yet it was so exhilarating to peer into a world so different from my own. It was like witnessing exotic animals: a pack of three old hags laughing hysterically at each other; musicians bending and twisting their bodies to the swing of the jazz; couples tenderly looking and caressing each other. One exhibition particularly caught my eye: it was a couple sitting at the back at the bar. They seemed to be surrounded by a golden light created by the myriad bottles of wine and champagne and whiskey lined up in ranks reflecting the bar’s light. The halo of golden light blinded my eyes, darkening the couple into dark silhouettes that gravitate toward each other and kiss.
I laughed at them. “Ah, a confused and earthly love—have they no recognition for the truly divine?” I thought to myself, “A fake divinity they find in their love, and I have no need for such fake idols. Oh, you misguided peoples, when will you realize your blindness toward what is real and divine? When will you realize the futility of these empty material possessions? Caught in fake rapids you all are—uncontrollable rapids that make you fear, anxious, jealous, angry, depressed—that make you, in short, suffer. Yet all you have to do is realize that the rapids are fake—that the walls you bump into on the daily are actually permeable—are merely a gust of wind pretending to be solid stone—and that you are actually the ones stopping yourselves from passing through.”
I laughed once more—or, no, I hear a laugh, and back I am in the jazz cabaret, ten years later, still kissing this strange girl whom I seem to no longer know. I pull away from her face with a tinge of melancholy lightly prickling my heart.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing…” I reply, caressing her soft cheek, “It’s just… nothing…”
I look around again at this strange cabaret. What is this place? How did I get here? I look at the musicians and the triangle of three old hags and the couple sitting behind me and wonder how it is that I wound up among them—as one of them, taken in like a lost animal to be raised by them, instilled with their humor and longings and romances. How did the path of my life lead here, almost across the Earth from where I started—here where what once was upright is now upside-down and what once was light is now dark? How did I wind up as yet another sheep of the herd, an exotic specimen displaying the vices of jazz and romance for all those out the window to see?
I look out the window and see my reflection on the glass and see the child I once was standing outside in his green coat. Our eyes lock into each other and I start to feel myself—no, my soul—pulling away from my (or his?) body, phasing into an in-between where I is not I but him and he is I and yet I is still I. Who is this child I wonder? Who is that man at the bar I also wonder? They look at each other as if from distant mountain peaks that suddenly came together from a shifting of the earth, an uncrossable void gaping between them.
“Who are you?” the man asks.
“I am you,” the child replies.
“Where have you come from?” the man asks.
“I came from the same place as you,” the child replies.
“And yet I don’t look like you. You have a child’s face—a repulsive chubby face, the dull eyes of a rabid mutt, the size of a midget, a disgusting green coat that looks like vomit. And I—I have a handsome well-chiseled jawline, luxurious well-groomed black, an expensive suit and—“
“You are what has grown out of me. And are you sure you are that much better than me?” the child replies.
I—or he—blinks and the child is gone, and I hear the jazz once again, the laughter of the old hags and the clinking of silverware, and I’m left in deep contemplation. I try to recall that memory of running in winter, but only a small leaflet remains of it for it faded into oblivion like a dream fades away after waking from a deep sleep—like the wind comes and goes. I begin to wonder whether this actually happened—whether I ever experienced this at all, or was it merely implanted into my brain—injected there by someone or something while I was too busy to notice. I try to follow my life back to that past, yet no trace was left of it—no footsteps, no little trinkets dropped and forgotten on the trail, no little memento from that time that I kept and cherished till now—nothing. Nothing is left of me—that child me.
I feel a sudden, strange longing again for that divine state which my child self had achieved—that state of complete equanimity and love where nothing seemed bad or good, where nothing worried and nothing menaced. “Are you sure you’re that much better than me?” echoes in my mind, fanning the flame of this strange desire. Yet, how to achieve it I knew not. It just came one day and went the next, and I was left frizzled and despairing the next day when I had found it was gone, never to come back again.
I—or, no, he—plugs his mouth onto her mouth to bury these strange feelings twisting uncontrollably within him under mountains of love. She makes a little squeal of surprise which is stopped by his mouth, and her eyes gape wide open in sheer surprise at this sudden act of love. She’s perplexed by it yet flattered too at the same time. Soon, she adjusts to him and they shower each other in a heavy storm of kisses and caresses, a violent torrent of orgasmic love. The stirring music swirls into this torrent like two tornadoes swallowing each other in a demonic ritual to become one massively abhorrent mega-tornado. The vocalist, swept up in this same tornado, sings poignantly about the unstoppable blacksmith Time never-endingly splitting and recreating us, his hot hammer ever hitting every second with mechanical precision like a clicking metronome, ever morphing us:
Passing stars rotate in the sky,
giving off the same old light—
always the same old symphony,
replayed so mechanically;
Yet our bodies do not play the same:
a shiftin’, a warpin’, a morphin’
like the worm metamorphosizin’,
like tadpoles always growin’,
Oh, our bodies do not play the same:
a shiftin’, a warpin’, a morphin’
like the seasons always changin’,
like the clouds ever in-makin’,
like the constantly remakin’ species
across evolutionary time,
we remake ourselves one second at a time.