It's about 1:30 A.M. on this lovely Sunday morning. The chill of Winter has returned and destroyed many a hope for an early Spring, sending the rejuvenating feeling of rebirth back into its cave, hiding from that frosty air of death that surrounds us all.
Or some shit like that.
It's not time for a cheap attempt at poetics. It's time for a party - time to force that rebirth and that renaissance of man to SPRING forth. As of today, I am an official "published author" in a manner of speaking. I am of the few who followed through with their convictions and charges of completing a "novel" and distributing it to the masses at large. Granted, selling and earning some money is an entirely different kind of animal... ALTOGETHER!
But that's not what I'm thinking about.
I mean, it is, but it isn't.
I've had a few Jack and cokes tonight. No beer for a change. Tonight was a Jack and coke night in that it pleased the female bartender with the nice rack. 'Cannons' as I called her, as she enjoyed showing them off in earnest hope to grab a bigger tip (cash tip, not penis). She even proclaimed it to the Heavens, telling all us rowdy boys that her mother used to say, "If you've got it, flaunt it." Uncreative and cliche.... but still a saying worth adhering to, I suppose.
Cannons was lovely though. She danced beautifully behind the bar, her perfect body swaying with such rhythm and grace that even a blind man could feel she glimmered in a manner more picturesque than the Taj Mahal at night. It was her eyes that frightened me though. They were dark and pained. Anguishing eyes that spoke of horrors and atrocities she tried to kick under the rug with her tantric dances. Her beauty hid a forlorn secret sealed away in a deep tomb, one that didn't want to be open. It was like the Ark of the Covenant in a sense, something that one had to avert their eyes too.
The bar in general was such an atrocity - a dive bar with more dramatic interludes between the players than a daytime soap. One could feel it in the air and hear it on the breaths of all those sullen drinkers. They all fucked and fought with one another, isolated in their own little Carpentersville strip mall.
But Cannons.... She was the broken gem in all this.... And she was all I could think about as I sat there, listening to the crew for "Boys Night Out" riff one another about each others' mothers.
Driving home, escaping that dismal void of oblivion, I let my inner werewolf loose. He had been building within me all this time as Cannons danced - hungering madly, a depraved beast lurking in the darkness like some ravenous animal. It was the atmosphere that brought him out, the hopelessness that put the published author in a daze. The logical, nonsensical one went to sleep while I puffed on a cigar outside the madhouse, and the inner beast clawed at the gates. I could feel my lips raise in a snarl as tobacco plumes flared from my nostrils. My eyebrows furrowed. My fingers bent into crooked paws.
Once I hit my car and the clutch was engaged, he was free to bellow out and howl at the moon. His breath fogged the frozen windshield, and his eyes peered through the cover of frost caking all viewpoints. Locked inside this vehicle, the monster was free to be himself. His incessant howling gave way to the sore, scratchy throat I feel now, as the wolf hungered for "Jump Into the Fire" by Harry Nilsson on the way home.
You can climb a mountain
You can swim the seaaaaaaa-eeeeeaaaaaa
You can jump into the fire
But you'll never be freeeeeeeeeeeee
You can shake me up,
Or I can break you dooooooooown!
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH
OOOOOH OOOOOOH OOOOOOOH OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH
(repeat)
"We can make each other happy!" he belted. "We can make each other haaaaappy! We can MAKE EACH OTHER HAPPY!"
It wasn't Cannons the wolf was thinking about. She was just that gem in a mine of sorrow. It was the rejuvenating Spring shining forth that glimmered in his hoarse howls. It was the thought of being published, of being a writer, of possibly getting paid to tell stories and entertain. It was the thought... of HER. Of a twinkling memory of days gone by. Of a goddess among mortals. A woman so divine that the writer who held the wolf at bay failed to achieve many moons ago.
But this was a new moon. This was a new eve. A new dawn. A new opportunity. And he was a newer, more evolved creature.
The physical manifestation of constructing imagination into reality was back. The Gene Wilder "Willy Wonka" ingenuity and persona was rebuilding itself, and it was ready to impose such a wonderment on the outlying dark world.
Like Cannons, the wolf, in his own way, was a shimmer of hope in a desolate, dead wasteland. He had the power to bring anew blooming plants and lush greenery like Arthur after sipping from the Holy Grail. Personal achievement had been ascertained, and it kept going... kept pushing forth from the brain... through the hands... to the paper... Infinite Nonsense was channeling into the world from another dimension.
On this day, hope was reborn. Hope not just for building an empire of a changing thought, but hope for feeling the warm vibrations of love, accomplishment, and strive again.
May the werewolf stay unleashed.
