“I have many names, and none of them matter.�- Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
TFH 17
ANONYMOUS CHAPBOOK #2 (The use of travel)
A Postcard From the Philippines Dearest, I have been in the Philippines these last few weeks Manila mostly. It’s been desperately gray here, and I miss that California sun. I haven’t heard from you in a while, but I trust you’re well. I’m fine. I miss you. Love, Me.
Walking down 7th Street I see JESSICA GLASSMAN AGED 17 YEARS chalked on the sidewalk. At first I think it’s written there in memorial of a life lost too soon, but that seems too simple, too cliche. I wonder if it wasn’t written by Jessica herself. I imagine she chalked her name on the sidewalk so that she wouldn’t be forgotten. (But why then, such an impermanent medium?) Is she a runaway, homeless, one of the many nameless squatters who populate the East Village? Alone? Frightened? The Invisible Girl, lashing out at obscurity, reaffirming her existence. Hoping a stranger would notice the writing on the sidewalk. Obviously I’m in denial.
Starless Night And she, clutching her bible to her breast like the last life vest on a sinking ship, drifts aimlessly along the latitudes and longitudes of the city’s latticework roadways.
Lost in an ocean of vice and sextantless, she’s directionless beneath the starless nighttime skyswung hard to port, starboard whirlpooling until direction is a simple matter of staying alive.
The sea green streetlight signals the riptide, a crossing current impossible to overcomeshe is swept away with the tide.
The Morning After (after Sappho)
The sun has risen and the multitudes: it’s the middle of the morning, and time passes, yes, my love, passesyet I awake alone.
But how can this be? Dreams don’t leave their scents on pillows, between sheets.
And what will evening bring? The moon, the stars, and myself searching for the touch of your name by sense of smell, and time passes, my love, yes passesand I wait alone.
A kind of sadness overtakes me as I leave Penn Station on a Pittsburgh-bound train. I watch my much beloved New York City and its landmarks- the twin towers, the Empire State Building - shrink away to nothingness, seeming to sink into the horizon at my back as I travel further and further away from my Alphabet City apartment.
Avenue A, June 20, 10PM At 3rd Street, above Two Boots Pizza, a sax churns out jazz like chocolate syrupsmooth and sweet. Its dulcet tones sooth in summer heat. This is what Hughes meant and I’m there. But this is Avenue AHarlem’s the other way.
The melody fades. All the way home - sirens. An ambulance on 2nd street, lights flashing, doors open imply someone else’s misfortune a violent end full stop. And there’s plenty to go around, when on Houston I’m almost run down by another ambulette, a black & white, and a fire engine. It’s not jazz tonight.
I’m feeling red and yellowagitated and excited (not in a good way).
Each bleat an omen to my ears, sirens after jazz sax is a shower running cold when you least expect it.
And at that same moment across the East River in Brooklyn Heights a B train jumps its tracks 80 injured, it’s just one of those nights.
It should be about 7:30am now, and that means I’ve already been up for two hours. I should try to get more sleep, but I can’t; it’s too sunny. At least I’m showered. Yeah, I could probably use a shave, but what else is new? Well, the day, today is a new day, so I’ve got that going for me. I’m off to Pittsburgh again. I’m sure I’ll be glad once I get there, but for now, I’m looking at ten hours on this train. The thought of it doesn’t lighten my mood. It’s an important trip, though- a sort of pilgrimage, a spiritual journey as well as physical- to the end of an era. A close college friend is getting married. He’s the second so far to go that route. The difference this time is that there’s no twelve gauge firearms involved. Don’t get me wrong, I love his fiancée to bits. They will be awesome together - really meant for one another. It’s enviable. The fact is, and I’m not afraid to admit it, I’m jealous.
City of the Perpetually Looming Thunderstorm It seems that the city is not only alive, but is making a concerted effort to keep me uncomfortable.
Jacket on sun comes out hot.
Jacket off the clouds return chilly.
With each change of wardrobe the weather reverses spitefully.
Pittsburgh is alive, and is a person I do not get along with at all.
Ah, sunny Pittsburgh, always threatening often delivering.
Somehow I manage a three hour nap, and I guess I slept through Philly. Then Harrisburg, Altoona, Greensburg, and finally the Pitts. There are a few other stops along the way, but these are the ones I mark. It’s a long ten hours from Penn Station to dahntahn Pittsburgh, so I still have a few hours to kill. I finish Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster. No joke, the very last book I read was Huckleberry Finn, and I can’t help but notice the parallels Auster deliberately draws to Twain’s work. I usually love Paul Auster’s books, but this makes me a little sad. Disappointed really. Then again, maybe I’m just a bit peckish. It’s always the same thing with me: finish the book first, then eat. I go to the food car and get a ham and cheese sandwich. Hot or cold, it still tastes like shit. I should have packed a lunch. The train finally arrives at about five pm. It never ceases to amaze me how small the train station is here. I mean, for one of America’s major cities, the place is miniscule. What? Didn’t they have any steel to spare? Even Syracuse has a larger station and there’s nothing up there, but back-water hicks who spend all of their time fucking up the traffic patterns on Erie Blvd. I catch a cab to my hotel, the Holiday Inn on Fifth Avenue by Pitt. The wedding is tomorrow, and I need to eat something.
—a note on the text— The text of this chapbook is in Calibri. Calibri is a humanist sans-serif typeface family under the Microsoft ClearType Font Collection. In Microsoft Office 2007, it replaced Times New Roman as the default typeface in Word[1] and replaced Arial as the default in PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and WordPad. It continued to be the default typeface in Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft Office 2013 applications. Calibri was designed by Lucas de Groot for Microsoft to take advantage of Microsoft's ClearType rendering technology. The font features subtly rounded stems and corners that are visible at larger sizes. The typeface includes characters from Latin, Latin extended, Greek and Cyrillic scripts. OpenType features include small caps, subscripts and superscripts, and extra ligatures. As with other Sans Serif ClearType Collection fonts, it includes unique italic type features, which are common in modern typefaces. The typeface is distributed with Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, Microsoft Office 2010and Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac The typeface is available in Google Docs as of September 2010. This font, along with Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Corbel and Constantia, is also distributed with the free PowerPoint Viewer, the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack and the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac. The typeface is licensed by Ascender Corporation for use by end users, consumer electronics device manufacturers and other users. The typeface is also licensed by Monotype Imaging to printer manufacturers as part of the Vista 8 Font Set package. Calibri won the TDC2 2005 award from the Type Directors Club under the Type System category. (Wikipedia)
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