flying buttresses
Saturday, October 23, 2004
chapter two
MAN CONTINUES TO WALK ALONG THE EDGE OF THE PARK, ALONG SIDEWALK AND A CLOSED BARBERSHOP WITH A STOPPED BARBERSHOP POLE, FROZEN IN MOTION ON THE CORNER, A HARDWARE STORE, ITS WINDOWS DARKENED. A FEW LIGHTS WINK ON FROM THE APARTMENT WINDOWS ABOVE, FRAMED IN RED BRICK. MAN LOOKS UP AND DOWN THE STREET AND STOPS WALKING AGAIN.
MAN: One hand belonged to Joseph P. McGee. I walk a tightrope for a living and no, it’s not as glamorous as you may think. No bevy of blonde, blue eyed and buxom snake charmers here. My father was a tightrope walker and so was my mom. My dad’s father before him was a rope walker too and his father before was and had shook hands with P.T. Barnum back when he was the big thing. Those must have been the days for the big crowds. I can imagine what it was like, the smell of much of what is illicit nowadays, but the scent was still basically the same- the crowds, the sounds, the oohs and the ahhs, and the thrill of watching man do what he is not allowed to do. Man flying on a trapeze act or tightrope is not something that most mortals experience. We are let on this earth to walk upon it and no more.
MAN CONTINUES TO WALK ALONG THE NARROW STREET, DUSK TREES HANGING OVER THE BLINKING TRAFFIC SIGNAL FLASHING YELLOW AND TOWARDS A LONG, LOW SQUAT BUILDING ON THE END OF THE STREET. FLUORESCENTS STUTTER ON AND OFF IN ITS WINDOWS. FROM WHERE HE IS STANDING, WE CAN JUST SEE THE OUTLINE OF LIGHTS AROUND A BOWLING BALL AND PIN ON THE SIGN ON THE CORNER OF THE PARKING LOT. THERE ARE SCATTERED CARS AND PICKUP TRUCKS PARKED IN THE LOT. SOME PEOPLE TALK EXCITEDLY FROM CAR WINDOWS.
MAN: I rose into town that morning thinking of Marie and how much she used to enjoy this feeling of a new town and new faces and the stares that we got. Marie would have understood this, but today I rode the Midwest dream with Ernest, “chicken liver” Ernest as we all knew him. Strongman, general equipment manager and tent erector extroidinaire, Ernest was all three, but had earned the chicken liver title through losing a wood sawing competition in Klamath Falls, Oregon to a 77 year old woodsman because Ernest lost his guts when his mouth got him carried away and the anvil was plunged into the fire. A bigger man, you almost never saw, but Ernest was a chicken at heart.
“Ahhh... another shitty little town and another shitty day, another bunch shitheeled locals.” ¶ 5:11 PM 0 comments
MAN: One hand belonged to Joseph P. McGee. I walk a tightrope for a living and no, it’s not as glamorous as you may think. No bevy of blonde, blue eyed and buxom snake charmers here. My father was a tightrope walker and so was my mom. My dad’s father before him was a rope walker too and his father before was and had shook hands with P.T. Barnum back when he was the big thing. Those must have been the days for the big crowds. I can imagine what it was like, the smell of much of what is illicit nowadays, but the scent was still basically the same- the crowds, the sounds, the oohs and the ahhs, and the thrill of watching man do what he is not allowed to do. Man flying on a trapeze act or tightrope is not something that most mortals experience. We are let on this earth to walk upon it and no more.
MAN CONTINUES TO WALK ALONG THE NARROW STREET, DUSK TREES HANGING OVER THE BLINKING TRAFFIC SIGNAL FLASHING YELLOW AND TOWARDS A LONG, LOW SQUAT BUILDING ON THE END OF THE STREET. FLUORESCENTS STUTTER ON AND OFF IN ITS WINDOWS. FROM WHERE HE IS STANDING, WE CAN JUST SEE THE OUTLINE OF LIGHTS AROUND A BOWLING BALL AND PIN ON THE SIGN ON THE CORNER OF THE PARKING LOT. THERE ARE SCATTERED CARS AND PICKUP TRUCKS PARKED IN THE LOT. SOME PEOPLE TALK EXCITEDLY FROM CAR WINDOWS.
MAN: I rose into town that morning thinking of Marie and how much she used to enjoy this feeling of a new town and new faces and the stares that we got. Marie would have understood this, but today I rode the Midwest dream with Ernest, “chicken liver” Ernest as we all knew him. Strongman, general equipment manager and tent erector extroidinaire, Ernest was all three, but had earned the chicken liver title through losing a wood sawing competition in Klamath Falls, Oregon to a 77 year old woodsman because Ernest lost his guts when his mouth got him carried away and the anvil was plunged into the fire. A bigger man, you almost never saw, but Ernest was a chicken at heart.
“Ahhh... another shitty little town and another shitty day, another bunch shitheeled locals.” ¶ 5:11 PM 0 comments
chapter three
Ernest flicked his cigarette out the window at the edge of the road before we began to pull off into the fields.
The fields were new and just mown in anticipation of our arrival. You could feel the hay dust already crawling like bugs under your skin, fighting to come out. It was gathering dusk already and we would have to pitch tent and call it a night soon. The battered sky was falling in the west the colour of beautiful snowfalls in the middle of July.
New towns, new faces, all indiscriminate, all odd and foreign until the moment that they form a crowd to wow at you on the tightrope. Is that what my parents and grandfather felt as trapeze and tightrope artists? All dead now, however, unable to tell the tales that they richly deserved to. Ah, if only ghosts could really tell tales. But I can tell a few of mine own now. I think that I know exactly how they felt as they donned their costumes and climbed upwards. I know that they made a pact with the devil called gravity and that one day, he would come back to collect in full when his whims were satisfied and he would let man know that that what he had grown to know, he should never had had knowlege of. The lie of flying that when we knew it was indeed a debt and a promise to be called in at any point in time that they splayed their toes upon the wires. And it was a debt that was always collected in time. ¶ 2:11 PM 0 comments
The fields were new and just mown in anticipation of our arrival. You could feel the hay dust already crawling like bugs under your skin, fighting to come out. It was gathering dusk already and we would have to pitch tent and call it a night soon. The battered sky was falling in the west the colour of beautiful snowfalls in the middle of July.
New towns, new faces, all indiscriminate, all odd and foreign until the moment that they form a crowd to wow at you on the tightrope. Is that what my parents and grandfather felt as trapeze and tightrope artists? All dead now, however, unable to tell the tales that they richly deserved to. Ah, if only ghosts could really tell tales. But I can tell a few of mine own now. I think that I know exactly how they felt as they donned their costumes and climbed upwards. I know that they made a pact with the devil called gravity and that one day, he would come back to collect in full when his whims were satisfied and he would let man know that that what he had grown to know, he should never had had knowlege of. The lie of flying that when we knew it was indeed a debt and a promise to be called in at any point in time that they splayed their toes upon the wires. And it was a debt that was always collected in time. ¶ 2:11 PM 0 comments
Thursday, October 21, 2004
A LARGE SWIRL OF LEAVES KICKS UP.
OPENING: DAY. LIGHT FILTERS THROUGH OVERHANGING TREE BRANCHES IN SMALL TOWN PARK. A MAN SITS ON PARK BENCH HANGING HIS HANDS BETWEEN HIS KNEES. THE BENCH IS HARDENED WITH TIME AND THE RECENT RAINS THAT IT HAS ENDURED. THE MAN IS MIDDLE AGED, BUT RISES WITH THE EFFORT OF AN OLD MAN.
MAN: (MUTTERS TO SELF) Gravity... I wonder if they know how easy they have it and how so I envy them.
HE RAISES AN ARM SEEMING TO PART THE AIR, BUT STOPS AS HIS ARM SIMPLY AND HEAVILY FALLS BACK TO HIS LAP.
MAN: (OUTLOUD TO SELF) Gravity is aburden for us creatures of the land. Not like birds and such, see? But for we poor beasts who must be content to stand upright on two or even four legs and walk around, following the contours of the ground, at the ground’s whim.
HE STRUGGLES TO RISE AS AN OLD MAN ARISING FROM AN EASY CHAIR THOUGH IT IS APPARENT THAT HE IS NO OLDER THAN 25 OR 26 YEARS OF AGE.
MAN LOOKS AROUND CAREFULLY.
MAN: The town that I walk tonight is a small one, but that isn’t any concern to me. They usually are. See that bulding over there? (POINTING TO RED BRICK WAREHOUSE.)
MAN: That over there, whatever it is, warehouse, supermarket, abandoned whatever... that is where I will fly tonight. (SMILES BROADLY TO SELF.) I am with the circus. I am a high wire artist, my father was and my father was before him. It runs in the blood, enough to wet my whistle.
MAN LOOKS AROUND AGAIN STILL, TALKING TO SELF, PANNING THE AIR ABOVE HIM.
MAN: One main street where the circus processional walked its way down it like a conquering Roman general this afternoon. We moved off into the fields outside the town limits to bed down for the night. We became a drunken beggar walking off with the stolen laundry from the wash line, so soon would we be gone.
HE CUPS A HAND OVER HIS EYES SCANNING THE HORIZON.
MAN: This town is as green around the edges as the corn surrounding it.MAN PAUSES, THINKS AS HE WALKS ALONG STREET SLOWLY, HANDS IN POCKETS. A few people stood around the main street watching us. Mainly farmers in town for the lunch hour dressed in the stereotypical blue jean bib overalls that you think you only see in the movies. Little kids transfixed by the gaily colored stranger who waltzed by them. No wonder kids used to run off and join the circus. They were transfixed in a way that made them get off their bikes and lay them down on the sidewalks with a clatter as they were on their way to the park or baseball diamond. they were the little tow head who had waved, his hands moving in an outsized bright red hand me down t-shirt, the boy who leaned over his bicycle bars trying to look like James Dean on a motorcycle as though he were disinterested and unaffected by all of this, the little girl in a green dress flanked by two boys and as she watched us pass, she dragged the boys with her in a tight grasp. A few hands extended from the cabs of the passing trucks and flicked up a palm of welcome while some just flicked cigarette ash listlessly in our direction. ¶ 7:34 AM 0 comments
OPENING: DAY. LIGHT FILTERS THROUGH OVERHANGING TREE BRANCHES IN SMALL TOWN PARK. A MAN SITS ON PARK BENCH HANGING HIS HANDS BETWEEN HIS KNEES. THE BENCH IS HARDENED WITH TIME AND THE RECENT RAINS THAT IT HAS ENDURED. THE MAN IS MIDDLE AGED, BUT RISES WITH THE EFFORT OF AN OLD MAN.
MAN: (MUTTERS TO SELF) Gravity... I wonder if they know how easy they have it and how so I envy them.
HE RAISES AN ARM SEEMING TO PART THE AIR, BUT STOPS AS HIS ARM SIMPLY AND HEAVILY FALLS BACK TO HIS LAP.
MAN: (OUTLOUD TO SELF) Gravity is aburden for us creatures of the land. Not like birds and such, see? But for we poor beasts who must be content to stand upright on two or even four legs and walk around, following the contours of the ground, at the ground’s whim.
HE STRUGGLES TO RISE AS AN OLD MAN ARISING FROM AN EASY CHAIR THOUGH IT IS APPARENT THAT HE IS NO OLDER THAN 25 OR 26 YEARS OF AGE.
MAN LOOKS AROUND CAREFULLY.
MAN: The town that I walk tonight is a small one, but that isn’t any concern to me. They usually are. See that bulding over there? (POINTING TO RED BRICK WAREHOUSE.)
MAN: That over there, whatever it is, warehouse, supermarket, abandoned whatever... that is where I will fly tonight. (SMILES BROADLY TO SELF.) I am with the circus. I am a high wire artist, my father was and my father was before him. It runs in the blood, enough to wet my whistle.
MAN LOOKS AROUND AGAIN STILL, TALKING TO SELF, PANNING THE AIR ABOVE HIM.
MAN: One main street where the circus processional walked its way down it like a conquering Roman general this afternoon. We moved off into the fields outside the town limits to bed down for the night. We became a drunken beggar walking off with the stolen laundry from the wash line, so soon would we be gone.
HE CUPS A HAND OVER HIS EYES SCANNING THE HORIZON.
MAN: This town is as green around the edges as the corn surrounding it.MAN PAUSES, THINKS AS HE WALKS ALONG STREET SLOWLY, HANDS IN POCKETS. A few people stood around the main street watching us. Mainly farmers in town for the lunch hour dressed in the stereotypical blue jean bib overalls that you think you only see in the movies. Little kids transfixed by the gaily colored stranger who waltzed by them. No wonder kids used to run off and join the circus. They were transfixed in a way that made them get off their bikes and lay them down on the sidewalks with a clatter as they were on their way to the park or baseball diamond. they were the little tow head who had waved, his hands moving in an outsized bright red hand me down t-shirt, the boy who leaned over his bicycle bars trying to look like James Dean on a motorcycle as though he were disinterested and unaffected by all of this, the little girl in a green dress flanked by two boys and as she watched us pass, she dragged the boys with her in a tight grasp. A few hands extended from the cabs of the passing trucks and flicked up a palm of welcome while some just flicked cigarette ash listlessly in our direction. ¶ 7:34 AM 0 comments
