Staying and Going

　

　

1.

IN THE DISTANCE, I SAW a figure emerge from pockmark in the hillside. It was warm and heat shimmer blurred the tiny figure that appeared on the slope just below an outcropping of pinkish rock. The tiny, indistinct figure took a few wobbly steps away from the bluish shadow that marked the cave-opening. The slope was yellow with sun-bleached grass and veined with gullies lined with loose gravel and it took the apparition a long time to reach the base of the hill and the prairie.

Later, I saw this person struggling through ravines shaded by ancient trees and, then, passing through a village beneath the steeple of a church and several steel grain bins tall as towers and enclosed in metal rigging. The figure walked along the edge of a lake and, then, followed a stream past the ruins of an old mill where water rolled in warm, bright sheets over the lip of a concrete dam.

Moving more swiftly now, the figure entered a city, not by marching along the highway past the glass skyscrapers operated by software firms, but, instead, following the old route, along the disused shipping canal, walking the towpath and passing the cast-iron bridges and, at last, entering the sector of abandoned warehouses with collapsed tin roofs and brick walls undercut by saplings growing in the deserted places. The figure was remote and moved with haphazard gait, clambering over piles of debris and, at last, entering downtown through narrow, moist, and foul-smelling alleys.

Then, I saw the figure on the windy plateau between the two metropolises, a wasteland where pyramids of tires were burning and bullet-trains commuting between the city-centers shrieked past. The figure was like an ant crawling on a sidewalk where someone has broken a beer bottle or a pocket mirror.

I lost sight of the figure, briefly, when it entered the park and hiked the boardwalks along the grey sedge and the marshlands. But the figure, still impossibly remote, merely a speck to my eyes, emerged from the woods, came past the ruined fountain and the terraces where the basketball courts used to be, and descending the hill, by the rut made by the toboggan-run, crossed the bridges on the meander, walked through the shopping mall (perhaps to take advantage of the air conditioning or the food court), and, after, using the toilet at a McDonald’s first, and, then, a few miles later, the rest-room in the public library, entered the suburbs and approached the cul-de-sac where I live. I squinted my eyes to see if I could identify the approaching figure, a man or a woman (impossible to tell at this distance) who limped up the hill toward my garden and, then, came through the sweet corn and my ruby-red tomatoes growing on their vines, closer and closer, until I could see that it was you, it couldn’t be anyone but you. So you stood at my threshold and I said: "I have always known you would come to me."


(After Frank O’Hara)

　

　

2.

GUILLAME, whose name is pronounced with a hard Anglo-Saxon "g", was one of those persons who are forever booking trips to remote places and, then, not going on those pre-planned journeys. Guillame had not gone to Argentina and Buenos Aires with a side trip to Iguaszu Falls. He had not gone to Paris despite reservations at a fine downtown hotel on Rue Haussmann. He had not gone to see the Great Wall of China, notwithstanding a non-refundable ticket to Beijing and had not gone to Rome at the height of the tourist season. Although he had paid to take a bus tour with senior citizens to Branson, Missouri, and another trip by bus to Vermont during the height of the autumn colors displayed by deciduous trees there, in fact, he didn’t take either trip and forfeited his deposit. Guillame arranged for a packet tour to Sumatra and Bali, but didn’t go and, although he reserved a spot on a river cruise through the Baltic countries events conspired to prevent him from traveling. He didn’t tour the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and saw neither the Kremlin nor waxy Lenin in his mausoleum. The planned excursion to Cancun fell through as did the all-inclusive stays at Cozumel and, later, at a resort in the Dominican Republic. He prepaid for a professional seminar on the Big Island of Oahu but didn’t attend. On the fishing trip north of Kenora, his friends were sorry that he couldn’t come, although the sporting expedition had been in the works for many months and Guillame had paid his share of expenses in advance.

There are certain restaurants in our city that are very exclusive and highly rated. If you wish to dine at those establishments, reservations are required six to eight weeks in advance. Guillame was always making reservations for exquisite dinners that he never ate.