by Patti Smith
Back in my room I was surprised that someone had untaped my diagram from the wall and rolled it up. I laid the Jerry shirt on my pillow, plopped in the easy chair and opened Aurélia, but barely got past the alluring first sentence. Our dreams are a second life. I dozed off briefly into a revolution dream, the French one that is, with young fellows dressed in flowing shirts and leather breeches. Their leader is bound to a heavy gate with leather straps. A follower approaches him with a torch, holding it steady as the flame burns through the thick binding. The leader is freed, his wrists black and bubbling. He calls out to his horse, then tells me he has formed a band called Glitter Noun.
—Why Glitter? I say. Sparkle is better.
—Yeah but Sparklehorse already used up Sparkle.
—Why not just plain Noun?
—Noun. I like it, says the leader. Noun it is.
He mounts his spotted Appaloosa, wincing as the reins fall across his wrist.
—Take care of that, I say.
He has dark wavy hair and one wandering eye. He nods and rides off with his band toward the distant pampas, stopping to draw water from a rough stream where the same misspelled wrappers turn in the current like small multicolored fish.
I woke abruptly and checked the time, hardly a dent. Distractedly I picked up one of the Bible archaeology magazines. I’ve always enjoyed reading them, like offshoots of detective digests, always on the verge of uncovering an Aramaic fragment or tracking down the remains of Noah’s Ark. The cover was pretty enticing. Death at the Dead Sea! Was King Saul impaled on the wall of Beth Shean? Searching my memory, I could hear the resounding mantra of the women, celebrating as their men returned from battle. Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands. I checked the drawer for a Gideon Bible but it was in Spanish, when I remembered that Saul, having been wounded by an enemy arrow, purposely fell upon his sword, saving himself the humiliation of being mocked and tortured by the Philistines.
I scanned my room searching for another diversion, then grabbed my blanket and returned to the patio, spending several minutes examining the Peanut Chewz wrapper but channeling nothing. I had the distinct feeling that something was going to happen. I feared it would be a piercing event, a right-out-of-the-blue thing or worse, a profound nonevent. I shuddered thinking of Sandy.
Hours slipped by. I went for a walk, half circling the hotel and passing the plaque honoring Jack O’Neill, the famous surfer who invented a new kind of wetsuit. I tried to picture surfers from old Gidget movies. Did Troy Donahue wear a wetsuit? Did Moondoggie? Did they actually surf? I was careful to avoid glancing up at the Dream Motel sign, when the wind suddenly picked up, the palms bent and swayed and I was assaulted by a temperate haughtiness.
Ayers Rock, Uluru
—Dreaming in, are we?
—No, not a thing, I insisted. No dreams. No dreams. All is the same as it was, nothing has happened at all.
The sign became absolutely animated, prodding me with insinuations, leading questions, riddling my mind with obsolete phone numbers and demanding to know the sequencing of certain albums, such as the song before White Rabbit, or the song between Queen Jane Approximately and Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues. What was it actually? Oh, Ballad of a Thin Man. No, that wasn’t right at all, but the thought of it brought the chorus looping—something is happening, but you don’t know what it is. Most likely just another piece of provocation. Somehow that darn sign was aware of everything, my comings and goings, the contents of my pockets, including the wrappers, my 1922 silver dollar and a fragment of the red skin of Ayers Rock, that I had not yet found, on a walking path in Uluru, where I had not yet walked.
—When are you leaving? It’s a very long flight, you know.
—Wherever do you mean? I’m not going anywhere, I said smugly, attempting to conceal any thoughts of future travel, but the great monolith stubbornly crowned, surfacing in my mental sea like a drunken submarine.
—You’re going! I see it! The writing is on the wall. Red dust everywhere. One need only read the signs.
—How can you possibly know that? I demanded, completely exasperated.
—Uncommon sense, replied the sign. And please! Uluru! It’s the dream capital of the world. Naturally you’re going!
An amorous couple passed by, and just like that the sign was simply a sign, mute and unassailable. I stood before it assessing the situation. The trouble with dreaming, I was thinking, is that one can be drawn into a mystery that is no mystery at all, occasioning absurd observations and discourse leading to not a single reality-based conclusion. It was all too reminiscent of the labyrinthine banter of Alice and the Mad Hatter.
On the other hand, the sign had gleaned my all-too-real desire to journey to the center of the Australian wilderness to see Ayers Rock. Sam Shepard often spoke of his solitary trek to Uluru, and how one day we might go together, lingering in border towns, driving through the outback and skirting the edges of the spinifex-starred plains. But Sam had been stricken with ALS, and as his physical challenges mounted, all loosely woven plans unraveled. I wondered if destiny, in the voice of the sign, was suggesting the possibility that I might yet see the great red monolith on my own, surely taking Sam along, secured in some uncharted sector of my being.
* * *
—
IT WAS TIME to find something to eat. I bypassed the active pier and walked aimlessly down some side streets, stopping before the Las Palmas Taco Bar. Somehow, though I had never been there, the place seemed familiar. I sat in the back and ordered black beans and fish tacos. The coffee had an Aztec chocolate edge. Definitely a Sandy thing. Could this be his secret taco place? Something seemed to have a hand in my so-called improvised movements. I had a second cup, drinking it slowly, beginning to feel irrationally attached to the Dream Motel perimeter. I better get out of here, I was thinking, lest I wind up like the soldier in The Magic Mountain who goes up a hill and never comes down. I closed my eyes, picturing my room, and could see the sliding door opening onto the roar of the waves obscured by a low wall, just a cement wall, maybe whitewashed, unless cement can be white in itself.
—It can be any color, for goodness’ sake. Pigments. Pigments.
Had that damn sign followed me all the way to Front Street?
—Did you say pigmeats? I whispered. A strange by-the-sea gastronomic suggestion. You should be talking a blue-plate special with mackerel and some of that darn obligatory coleslaw, a dish I’ve never relished.
—Coleslaw is not a dish, it’s a side. And it’s PIGMENT, not pigmeat.
Refusing any further transmission, I gulped my coffee, paid my check and hurried back. I had a few words for that sign in person.
—You seem a bit nettled, I said, gaining the upper hand.
The sign sniffed.
—And looking pallid as well. You could use a little pigment yourself, perhaps a dab of cerulean blue to touch up your sorry star.
—Humph. I could tell you a thing or two about pigments, piped the sign. For instance, the secret color of water, and where its pigment can be found, several leagues underground where there is no water at all.
Obviously I had struck a nerve, for I was suddenly spun and encased in swirls of translucent wind. A thundering below and a chasm opened. I dropped to my knees and beheld a maze of hollows harboring mounds of precious stones, golden bric-a-brac and parchment scrolls. It was the wondrous subterranean world that I had imagined as a child, with its elves and gnomes and the caves of Ali Baba. I was filled with happiness that such things truly existed. A joy swiftly followed by remorse. A stubborn cloud moved past the sun and the chill in the air lightened, then all was as it was. I stood before my worthy opponent waiting to be chastised.
—There are many truths and there are many worlds, said the sign solemnly.
—Yes, I said, feeling quite humbled. And you were right. I did dream,
many dreams, and they were much more than dreams, as if originating from the dawn of mind. Yes, I absolutely dreamed.
The sign became very quiet. The palms ceased to bend, and a sweet silence enveloped the hill.
* * *
—
WHILE SITTING BENEATH the oversized letters spelling coffee, I met a couple who were driving to San Diego. I took this as an auspicious sign. An eight-hour drive, and I could ride along for eighty-five dollars. We arranged to meet in the morning. No talking was the rule. I hastily agreed, not really thinking anything of it.
That evening, though chilly, I walked the length of the Santa Cruz Wharf, the longest wooden pier in America, a half mile long. It was once used for shipping potatoes from San Francisco to the mining camps in the Sierra Nevada during the gold rush. Though normally lively, there was hardly a soul on the pier, no planes overhead, no vessels in sight, only the groans and wheezing of the sea lions sleeping.
I called Lenny, telling him I wasn’t returning for a while. We talked of Sandy with heavy heart. We had all known one another so long. We met in 1971 after my first poetry performance, Lenny accompanying me on electric guitar. Sandy Pearlman was sitting cross-legged on the floor in St. Mark’s Church, dressed in leather, Jim Morrison style. I had read his Excerpts from the History of Los Angeles, one of the greatest pieces written about rock music. After the performance, he told me I should front a rock ’n’ roll band but I just laughed and told him I already had a good job working in a bookstore. Then he went on to reference Cerberus, the dog of Hades, recommending I delve into its history.
—Not just the history of a dog, but the history of an idea, he said, flashing his extremely white teeth.
I thought him arrogant, though in an appealing way, but his suggestion that I should front a rock band, though improbable, was also intriguing. At the time, I was seeing Sam Shepard and I told him what Sandy had said. Sam just looked at me intently and told me I could do anything. We were all young then, and that was the general idea. That we could do anything.
Sandy now unconscious at the ICU in Marin County. Sam negotiating the waxing phases of his affliction. I felt a cosmic pull in multiple directions and wondered if some idiosyncratic force field was shielding yet another field, one with a small orchard at its crux, heavy with a fruit containing an unfathomable core.
* * *
—
IN THE MORNING, I met the couple down the road. They were nothing if not unfriendly. I had to pour my coffee out by the curb so as not to spill any, then pay in advance before they would let me in the car, which was pretty beat up. The floor was littered with cans of mosquito repellent and moldering Tupperware, and the leather seats seemed to have been ripped open with a serrated knife. Various crime scenes passed through my mind, but their choice of music was great, tunes I hadn’t heard for decades. After the sixth side, Charlie Gracie’s Butterfly, I couldn’t help myself.
—What a great playlist, I blurted.
To my surprise they suddenly pulled off to the side of the road. The guy got out and opened my door, giving me the nod.
—We said no talking. It’s the cardinal rule.
—Please give me one more chance, I said.
Begrudgingly the guy started up the car and off we went. I wanted to ask if singing along was allowed, or gasping when a really great song came on, although so far, they were all great, from the extremely danceable to the mystically obscure. Oh Donna. Summertime. Greetings (This Is Uncle Sam). My Hero. Endless Sleep. I wondered if they were from Philly, the oldies city, it was that kind of music. I sat in dutiful silence, singing in my head, carried back to teenage dances and a boy named Butchy Magic, a blond Italian from South Philadelphia who seldom spoke but carried a switchblade, cruising across the landscape of homework into dreams to dwell in a silent chamber of a young, unrequited heart.
When we stopped for gas I took my sack and went to the bathroom, washed my face, brushed my teeth, got a coffee to go and returned in perfect silence just in time to see them speed off straight into the horizon of forgotten rhythm-and-blues songs. What the hell? Okay, then. My Hero, I yelled. That was great! Who plays Endless Sleep or Greetings This Is Uncle Sam? I stood there calling out an inventory of all the great songs I had savored in silence.
A security guard approached me.
—Is everything all right, miss?
—Oh yeah, sorry. I just missed my ride to San Diego.
—Hmmm. My daughter-in-law is driving to San Diego. I’m sure that if you share the gas money, she’ll take you along.
Her name was Cammy, and she had a Lexus. I sat in the front seat. The back seat was loaded with boxes marked Pickling and a few marked Avon.
—The whole trunk is full of mason jars, she said. They’re for a friend. She has an organic restaurant. I pickle everything for her. Onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, baby corn. She sells it in her restaurant. And I have a nice order for my relish in a place specializing in gourmet hot dogs.
Cammy was a fast driver, which was fine with me. She was also quite a talker, changing the radio station while talking, and then suddenly starting another conversation with the disembodied voice from the speaker. She wore tiny headphones and had a second phone charging. Cammy never stopped talking. She would ask a question, then answer it from her point of view. I hardly said a word. Still silent, but it was a different kind of silence. Finally I asked her if she heard anything about candy wrappers littering the beach near the OB Pier.
—No kidding, she said, that’s so weird, they had the same thing happen in Redondo Beach, but not on the beach, actually in the back of the gasworks. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Crazy, right?
—Yeah, I said, though it didn’t seem crazy. It seemed tactical.
—Did you hear about the missing kids?
—No, I said.
Her phone rang and she rattled off some ordering information, no doubt connected with her pickling empire.
—The whole world’s going nuts, she continued. I was in Queens last spring and my sister’s azalea bushes bloomed weeks ahead of time. Then out of nowhere there was a frost and they all died. I mean you can cover your plants with burlap if you get some warning, but it all happened overnight. All those dead flowers, she was heartbroken. And the squirrels in Central Park—did you hear about that? It was so warm they came out of hibernation, totally confused, and then it went ahead and snowed in April, on Easter no less. Snowing on Easter! Ten days later, the guys that gather trash with those long picks found them. Scores of them, baby squirrels and their mothers, frozen to death. It’s nuts, I tell you. The whole world is going nuts.
WOW Café, OB Pier
Cammy dropped me off on Newport Avenue by the Ocean Beach Pier, I gave her a fifty and she gave me a wink and took off. I checked into the old San Vicente Hotel, which hadn’t changed much through the decades save in name. I was happy to be back in my same room on the second floor. Once I had imagined living in this room, cloaked in obscurity, writing detective stories. I opened the window and looked out at the long fishing pier with its lone café, a sight filling me with the pain of a welcomed nostalgia. It was a bit windy and the sound of the waves seemed to amplify the call of somewhere else, more surreal than real.
I rinsed my dirty clothes in the sink and hung them to dry in the shower, then grabbed my jacket and watch cap and took a quick turn on the beach. As I poked around I remembered that Cammy hadn’t finished telling me about the missing kids. In any event there were no signs of a siege of wrappers, nothing unusual. I walked the length of the pier straight to the WOW Café. In the distance, I could see a pelican perched atop the seaward wall where café was written in huge blue letters. Another sight that filled me with the well-being of familiarity. People who make the coffee there are in touch with God. Their coffee doesn’t hail from anywhere, not the beans of Kona, Costa Rica, or the Arabian fields. It’s just coffee.
The WOW was unexpectedly full so I sat at the end of the common table, dominated by two guys who introduced themselves as Jesús and Ernest, and a blond pinup type who remained nameless. Jesús was from Santiago. I couldn’t tell about Ernest, maybe Mexican, but maybe Russian; his eyes kept changing like a mood ring, from pure gray to the color of chocolate.
I found myself drawn to their conversation, which was centered on a string of recent hideous crimes, but after recognizing a few key markers I realized they were actually debating whether the murders in Sonoma in The Part About the Crimes, a section of Roberto Bolaño’s masterwork 2666, were real or fiction. At an impasse, they looked at me expectantly; after all, I had been eavesdropping for several minutes. Having read and reread the book I said that most likely the murders were real and the girls he described were symbolic of the real girls though not necessarily the actual girls. I mentioned I had heard that Bolaño had obtained a dossier concerning the unsolved murders of several young girls in Sonoma from a retired police detective.
—Yeah, I heard that too, Ernest said, though no one can be sure whether the story circulated about the police detective was real, or created in order to give credence to an imagined police report.
—Maybe they were exact descriptions from the police report but their names were changed, Jesús said.
—So, okay, let’s say they were real, does being inserted by Bolaño within a work of fiction render them fiction? asked Ernest, peering at me with his changeling eyes.
I had a potential answer but said nothing. I was wondering what happens to the characters in books whose fates are left dangling by dying writers. The discussion petered out and I ordered chowder and biscuits. On the back of the menu was the history of the café. WOW stood for walking on water. I thought of miracles, of Sandy unresponsive. Why did I leave? I thought to stay near the hospital, keep vigil, coax a miracle, but didn’t, dreading the deceptively antiseptic corridors and invisible bacterial zones, that trigger an instinct for self-survival and the overriding desire to flee.