A Triptych Character Coffin or Shortcomings #2

1-1

Some things you just know, others, well, require investigation. Bring your best friend.

It began with an impossible night in front of a glowing piece of white paper which bore no resemblance to paper other than it was white.

It began with a story. In writing, to most, it was only a story. Even the author made mention it was only a story, something written to appease a momentary emotion or thought. Why else would someone write a story, unless they really had something to say? Funny thing is the author did have something to say, whether it was an emotion or thought at the time, he had something to get out; a message to someone who probably never received it. With only one person in mind a single message, lost and retrieved later from an old white cabinet is still a blank document in need of an author’s signature. Perhaps she knew this when she read it. Unfortunately for her, she read it as a contract for future endeavors and thus signed the contract with her own name.

She was preparing for her double date. She was to bring along her best friend who was soon to be married. This however was not her intentions behind the definition of the “double date”. She was hooking up with a fellow that remained her friend. Her friend was a lover of her best friend who was soon to be married and then they would leave. And as if that was not confusion enough, there would be a bit of a scuttle as to which of the males would pay the bill; the guy who banged both or the proud person who was to be marrying one of them. The one who worked in the joint would probably insist on paying, cutting the other a break, as that is what he always did and she and her best friend would leave debt free to spend what money they had brought along on booze to meet the mysterious author of the story they had found, one of which who had signed as a contract for future endeavors.

1-2.

When the two arrived at the bar they knew where they were, they were sure they had been there before and for the most part could remember who they had been with, charmed to take simple delight in each other’s stories as they waited to meet the author.

“You remember being here with so and so”

And

“Oh my gosh do you remember such and such, we did this and that”

Of course

“If word ever got back to my family that I was here it would be hellish.”

They sat and were chatty. Their words were excitement. Their wrists were barren of time and as the walls formed around them they realized how the place had changed since those days and how nostalgic they were really being. They could see the age and in themselves felt how old they had become. Neither doubted their intentions or backed out. They both assumed their roles and one offered up a game of pool. They hung about the pool table and plotted for their angles before the author would arrive.

1-3

She must have been standing behind the table for five, maybe ten minutes. Already accustomed to the amount of times a man behind her coughed and guffawed, she used this auditory stimulant as a marker for the minutes. She was hiding in the shadows beyond the hanging bar lamp, stylized like a tiffany only in its mosaic of broken beer logos and fragmented brands.

Her friend was ready to meet this man, this author man, for he must have just been a plain old man and not a god amongst his friends if he had made them wait already nearly a half an hour. They knew he would be riding a bike and both snickered a little at the thought of either of them involving themselves with a man who tramped on a bike.

He lives with his mother; he is either poor or pontificating. He will probably try to pass himself off as another hippy or claim he will be joining the Peace Corps next year after he talks with us, so there would be no point in getting involved in a relationship. 

"Why be so pessimistic, he is probably a lovely guy with sexy legs that make him great in bed."

"I suppose I never think of those things, you should definitely work in a gym and watch the sexy guy-men as they walk out to their cars."

It was the attraction of the laugh, their smiles meeting each other’s face, the wholly pure illusion of two women involved in a congenial personal matter, engaged in a thrill that excited the author as he entered the worn down wormwood bar. This was the only bar he had been to in the town and couldn’t give a nickel or a dime to care whether he had ever been in another or would ever compare his experiences invested with those that might appear more glamorous. He had been in better places and he had been in much worse and either way he could sit on a stool and be as righteous as a preacher or preach to the choir about where he had been.

Immediately he fell in love with the moment of the two being together, locked in their smiles. He jaunted past them both though without the flicker of a diverted eye in their direction and returned with two drinks. A casually polite smile while friendly eye to his date and cordial words of greeting to his familiar, he set the drinks on the eagle table next to them and turned to acknowledge more completely this encounter; she was still but not completely hiding in the shadow. Emerging slightly she was tenderly red faced, if not embarrassed for her somewhat luscious imbibe which caused an abrupt bashfulness seeping down to her panties.

Her friend came fourth and explained she had already had one long island ice tea and she was then working on her second, as if this was an explanation to something more than a declaration of her inebriation. The author turned his lips to the side of his cheek and then again turned around to place the drinks. He downed the first and slowly sipped the next. His demeanor had only changed slightly when he wheeled around again to face them. Both responded as if he had suggested they were adjunct to his pleasure, either way the author was privately content with his actions and their probable outcome. He was standing at the center dot of the table and decided he liked the distance better viewing them together from a far. He lifted his attaché case and walked it down the pew like bar bench and with his left hand placed it on the end; there really was not further commitment but time.

***

2-1

He spoke to the group about pleasure and nothing that could be discounted. His friend John was his best man whom he talked up affectionately. He also talked compliments and impressions of his left hand man Jeff, a tall red headed ball player.

He had talents for things that no one could relate to. He spoke in other people’s shoes and patens that had never been developed. He was concerned with intellectual property and adding asset values to those that were developing. He was first concerned with health patens and later, with his friend James grew wealthy from diagrams and operations.

He rarely talked about anything but for the most part knew that was the right way to go. His friend John, the math genius developed a catheter, perhaps he was afraid of waking up one day like a veteran pissing in his depends and in need of something more scientific and expensive to serve him, at the same time he was sick of the drunken bums he had witnessed in the streets pissing in flower pots in the wee hours of the morning.

His friend John had issues with many things and thus kept little around, save his wife whom had left early in their relationship and returned when she realized her love for him was greater than the differences he rejected.

2-2

He was always honored to express his bright openness to the forums and skillful. His words were money. His words were the future. Always speaking on the future and current participation brought other words of progress and motivation.

He spread his wealth to the youth. Once he gave a group of five year olds each a two dollar bill, just because it represented his work. The other grownups mocked him for giving kids a picture of President Jefferson, the parents saw him as a pompous rich fool, but the kids, after his speech, believed he was a leader. Not because of the money, they really hadn’t discovered the value of that yet, but because he talked about building bridges and friendships across an open sea but most of all because he was a successful story teller. He was dedicated to life and a master of his craft. He had vision and faith, goodwill. He had a cause and everybody who was somebody knew that nobody could do it better than him.

2-3

He felt the world need direction. He held tight to the reigns of every conversation he found himself engaged in took the reins like the mighty Poseidon grasping the (ropes) on the bridge which spanned the sea.

He claimed that everything is important therefore nothing really eventually became. He had a strategy for explaining this that made sense like a whirl-wind. He words blew over audiences and each that remained strong like the (pillars) of a bridge were the ones he would continue to cohesively discipline for his team. He would grow with them enabling clarity from creativity forming a unity from a laundry list of repetitive positive words. It was through this repetitive use of these words which he spoke his mantra to himself and communicated effectively the purpose and intent of the direction he was giving. It was important for him to be consistent; therefore he was always growing more creative with his approaches to saying the same things. Nobody really took notice of this. As he spoke whether his words rose or fell, there was a message for each individual and motivation in the great vast finale which would support his multiplicity and reinforce the truth of his own wisdom.   

President Jefferson, however, had an alleged affair with his slave and people didn’t believe in slavery or the illusion of mixed races, or even the constitution. They cared less about money and more about fairness and equality. Their children came home and gave the money to their parents because they didn’t know what else to do with it. The parents tithed twenty cents and parted the rest to meet their needs, except for a dollar, which was put in a jar by the parents and sent to the speaking man along with a card which read:

“Thank you for your entertainment.”

***

3-1

He was on the plane, though there were no wings nor seats or wheels to be lifted. He was rising above the earth ascending to the bright energy masses of chemical reaction. Two pulsing reflections splintered and grew, their centers expanding as they became closer together then shattered into fractals and split further in segmenting lines that cut through and beyond the circumference of their natural size.

He was on a plane but there was no grass, no shrubs no climate and no animals. He drew in his breath and floated further into the great vast beyond. His lungs were weightless with the inspiration of the gaseous elements and as the bronchial sacs distributed the particles throughout his own matter he released the tension from his body and released his body from the tension. He was a free spirit, an immaculate soul.

His soul spirit floated further and with greater speed as it reached the pulsing lights. The shattered fractals pierced the elements he had become. He was no longer his body. He was no longer a soul.
He had become a conscious world set amongst the other energy masses of chemical reaction.

3-2

As a one heart cell neared the other they pulsed like the stars. They pulsed first at their own interval and as while growing closer beat with the same rhythm before joining as any bonding molecule. Synchronicity was at critical distance. Their unexplained phenomenon had become a fragment for a functioning organ.

As he walked on the plane in complete consciousness he fluttered not about who was where and which was who. He looked down at his ticket, looked up again at the seat numbers. He put his carry on in the overhead luggage rack and took his seat next to a gregarious old lady who had been interrupted only momentarily while he was doing this, from chatting up a young man who sat curtailed and gleaming with tooth to ear grin past the chatty lady on a young fawn looking woman brushing salt from in-flight pretzels off her fingers while dusting dry scalp skin from her shoulders.

3-3

Like the molecules of water two hydrogen atoms merged then inspired to find oxygen.

He lay on his back in the field of grass and peered from beneath a plum tree his father had planted in his youth. The moon often reminded him of his father. The tree made him think of his mother. Each fruit became the women he had plucked from the tree with reasonable likeness. Those that his ate ended with a hard pit he worked his lips around to remove the last of the fleshy fruit. Those that he left would fall and re-fertilize the land, sometimes he would observe certain fallen ones until they sunk in the soil or torn at by crows, he was curious to know which ones would survive as a seed and navigated through them to find a place to rest and look through the branches and stare at the moon. There were many pits and many ways to lie to avoid them. He adjusted himself with the flow and the fall of each and each day of fruiting enjoyed the juices from the fruit, till there was none.