Crossing Guard

Mardi gris

He eats alone on Tuesdays, forsaking the company he loves with desperation. Within the silence he dwells, the calmness, the smooth fertile stillness whence images are birthed. He sees different versions of home he knows, same to the untrained eye but he sees their subtle variance, as the hues of a newly-minted morning sky are kind of, similar, but not quite the same. Kin surround him, cantankerous Luciano whose gray eyes were heavy with judgment, stressing, yelling, you always falling short of expectations, never making him forget, old man Vittorio, pounding him with words, gesticulated foreign hurtful words that strike down every fiber of his impious existence, Carmela, under whose shade he grew, defiant and tenacious woman, ineluctably fortunate, and she would cheat even death if it please the gods. He hears music, the one Ferrando always played, the father ever the gifted man of lyric. How haps it, they wondered, not the son? Who always had too much of Rachmaninov playing in his head--vespers--it's always the vespers--the protracted, liturgical hymn by the hours that plays in anticipation of the Day, the Hour, the Moment of the Feast. Within anticipation he characteristically places himself, going but not getting there, fleeing before the day arrives, with a confused past behind him, a missed future up ahead, upon nary a present he chooses to dwell, having had withered roots and impulsive wings, he rushes getting to nowhere, the only proof of his peripatetic predicament a rucksack of stories, succulent and fat and juicy stories for those who have the time to spare, an ear to lend (but never, oh never, pity to bestow), except not a one will be found; because on Tuesdays, on gray Tuesdays, Tuesdays like today, he eats alone.

Par CdG @ 8.2.05