Chronicles Of The Return

The last few weeks have been tough. I’ve been battling a recurrent infection, one that seems to crop up once a year. It’s pretty dreadful. By the time it is in full swing I am lethargic, full of malaise and generally feeling sorry for myself. I told myself, last time it occurred, that I would go to the doctor immediately once the symptoms appeared. Due to America’s horrible health-care system I had to wait two weeks to see a specialist, which was more than enough time for the symptoms to worsen. I walked into the doctor’s office with a significant gait in my left leg. He looked at me and shook his head. “Why didn’t you come earlier,” he asked.

“Had to wait for approval from my HMO. Took a week. You were booked the next week,” I said.

The doctor looked at me kindly and said, “next time call me and I’ll prescribe you something before you come in, okay?”

He’s certainly one of the best doctors I’ve ever interacted with. He has an exceptional bedside manner, listens to everything I tell him, queries me fully, often time spending upwards of thirty minutes with me. For a doctor that’s priceless.

The prescription is for a heavy anti-biotic. The kind where you spend 10 minutes in the sun and it leaves you feeling like you’ve crossed the Taklamakan without water.

As a side note, I’ve read on several occasions that ‘Taklamakan’ means ‘goes in, doesn’t come out,’ in an ancient Chinese, or possible Tokharian dialect. Having flown over the Taklamakan several times and circumambulated its edges, I have to say that I agree.

One May when my father and I were in Dun Huang, the last great oasis before the Taklamakan, I got to thinking about Xuanzang, a 7th century Buddhist monk who sneaked his way past the T’ang guards at the Jade Gate, into the Taklamakan. He then proceeded to cross it, disproving its meaning as a toponym, but no matter. He then crossed the Tien Shan, chilled at a Buddhist monastery in Samarkand–just a few years before the Arabs irrupted into Central Asia, and then did a backwards dogleg into Afghanistan and India where he spent a decade plus collecting Buddhist manuscripts to take back to China.

Buddhism was not new to China, but it’s safe to say its roots were nothing compared to those which dug deep after Xuanzang’s return to Chang’an, the capital of the T’ang empire. What course might Chinese Buddhism taken were it not for Xuanzang’s efforts at travel, discovery and exploration? And what course might my life have taken had I not been exposed to Chan Buddhism in China in 1999?

This diminutive monk spent his remaining days translating the Buddhist corpus is a spartan monastery cell, eschewing all glory and worldly goods and his good works echo down the centuries to my own time and my own debt of gratitude to him.

Now that’s a character with character. Central Asia is littered with them, from the monstrous Timur–aka Tamerlane, who left a trail of human skulls from Damascus to India–to the poignant Omar Khayyam.

I tend to think about people like Xuanzang and Polo and ibn Battutah when I am feeling sorry for myself. Sometimes it works: I feel better, realizing my pedestrian concerns, minor ailments and the general discontent I feel with my post-modern life do get the better of me.

But sometimes it fails: I want to be Polo, or Rabban Sauma, Wilfred Thesiger, people who lived a full life so far away from home. People who made the world their home, citizens of this great and tragic blue ball spinning off into eternity.

And then I get a text message and the world comes roaring right back at me.

How many of us have had the thought that somewhere in the universe, or perhaps in an alternate reality we have a doppelganger, an identical twin, doing the exact same things we are doing, making the same mistakes and pondering the same thought of a doppelganger at exactly this moment?

Perhaps it is a measure of the new relationship I find myself in that makes this particular bit of graffiti reach me, but I confess: the idea of doppelganger poetry is too fun not to comment on.

They are not poems written by “us” but poems written about “us.” As if they exist on their own, in their own reality–and perhaps all good poetry does this?

And do “we” really exist? What is it that happens when two individuals collide on some random Tuesday afternoon? How do they manage to break through the inevitable small talk and reach a deeper understanding of each other? It’s all so random, but like a virtuous circle it feeds on itself until one of them takes the ultimate risk and says, “I love you.” And then that love is reciprocated.

Perhaps somewhere in the vastness of existence, the dual reflections of these two people reflect off a mirror and then by chance their visages carom into some alternate reality where a poem writes itself.

Where can I find this cosmic archive of doppelganger poetry? Who’s the publisher? More importantly, who’s the editor?

Here.

Fucking manuscript.

And damn Mannion’s eyes for calling me out.

It languishes, the manuscript, orphaned in the corner. It’s gaze is all glowering guilt. I haven’t written a word in two months. Too much has happened. Too much good, too many surprises. Staring down at the pile of printed paper I see blue and red ink stains, editorial recisions, suggestions and I think how far I’ve come from this time last year.

And that was after all the cute tweets about my zombie-filled dreams (there must be a message in this metaphor) I composed to waste time, or the Facebook updates, like this one: “Sean Paul advises against taking Frost’s Road Less Traveled this morning. Usually it’s quite nice, flower-lined and empty, but right now it’s full of petite bourgeois with fanny-packs and guidebooks.” Chuckle, chuckle. And yes, sometimes I write about myself in the third person. Sue me.

Damn Mannion and his “impulse of psycho-spiritual atavism.”

And damn Mannion, most of all, for reminding me that I need to write. And it’s a compelling need, forceful, and, well, damning.

But the white screen of death is too fucking daunting today. And the memories too painful, painful remembering and reliving that frightfully lonely spring in Istanbul and the equally frightfully beautiful light and the view across the Golden Horn. It wasn’t all bad. As a matter of fact, it was easy. And amazing. Glorious. The right place at the right time. And yet Mannion reminds me of all the B-52 carpet bombs of anger and anti-personnel guilt-mine emails slung back and forth between my father and I that spring. And the simple anguish of just being alone, the powerful hunger for a woman’s caress, a knowing smile, the smell of long hair, the electric touch of fingers joined together in silence, eyes lit up by the moon and cheeks rosy on the wind. Damn Mannion for forcing me to write such loathsome purple prose, and for reminding me of all of that and how it needs to be written down, remembered, acknowledged and owned.

In moments like this I fear the book will never be complete, that the re-write will remain nothing but potential, all glowering guilt.

Damn Mannion for dragooning me out of my comfortable complacency, as well. Too much easy living and not enough reflection.

And like Mannion this morning it’s raining and I’ve nothing better to do than surf the web, waste time, watching a thousand little gloaming droplets of rain occlude the sun and reduce my mood to little more sniveling gibberish.

Alas, I’m grateful to Mannion for providing some inspiration. At least I wrote this.

Sean Paul walks into the ring, headgear is on, gloves laced up tight. He wobbles his head left to right fantasizing he is Muhammed Ali. Before he puts his mouth piece in, tells Barton, “no head shots, alright?”

Barton–also known as Cauliflower Ears–smiles. “Okay.”

Barton circles around Sean Paul. They’ve known each other since high school and have been sparring partners for almost as long.

Barton’s got, not so much a Chesire grin, as leonine, cheetah-like. He comes in from the right. Launches a jab. Then a combination. Sean Paul fights them both off. He backs away. They circle each other. It hasn’t been thirty seconds in the ring and already Sean Paul is panting. For the first time in many years he cannot deny his age. Not so much old, as slower.

“Man,” he tells Barton,” I’m outta shape and boxing is hard work.”

“Wimp. I do this three times a week,” he says.

“Probably why you are brain damaged,” says Sean Paul.

“At least I’m not a heavyweight like your fat ass. I’m still Welter, bitch!”

Barton sneaks in a jab from the left, lands in Sean Paul’s ribs. He staggers back into the ropes. Shakes his head and moves into the center of the ring. Barton and Sean Paul dance some more. The bell sounds. Round one is over.

Sean Paul sighs in relief, as he trudges back into his corner. Sips some water. The bell rings. Round two begins.

Sean Paul sees an opening. Goes in for a right hook and lands a good one in Barton’s ribs. Barton winces as Sean Paul closes in for a better shot.

From the corner of his eye sees Barton’s devastating left hook land right on his face.

Time stops.

Sean Paul hits the mat.

“Damnit Barton,” he says on one knee, wiping the blood from his lip. “I said no head shots!”

“It was just one. Why you so twisted up about a head shot? You’re usually the aggressive one.”

“Because I have a hot date tonight!”

“Haha,” says Barton a touch of guilt in his eyes. “You’re screwed now.”

Sean Paul walked with Reyes down the narrow medieval streets in the false-dawn. He screeched like a little girl when a gargolye-zombie lurched out of a hidden passage, looking like a sick, pale harpy.

“Chill, Pablito,” said Reyes, “it’s just my ex-wife.”

After the zombies ruined my breakfast this morning I decided I should recite the few remaining outside my window some poetry:

We All Must Die, by Horace:

Alas, dear friend, the fleeting years
In everlasting circles run,
In vain you spend your vows and prayers,
They roll, and ever will roll on.

Should zombies each rising morn
On cruel Pluto’s altar dye,
Should costly loads of incense burn,
Their fumes ascending to the sky:

You could not gain a moment’s breath
Or move the haughty ghoul below
Nor would inexorable death
Defer an hour the fatal blow.

In vain we shun the din of war,
And terrors of the stormy main,
In vain with anxious breasts we fear
Unwholesome Zombie’s sultry reign;

We all must view the Stygian flood
That silent cuts the dreary plains,
And Cruel Solanum’s bloody brood
Condemned to everduring pains.

Your shady groves, your pleasing wife,
And fruitful fields, my dearest friend,
You’ll leave together with your life:
Alone the cypress

After your death, the lavish heir
Will quickly drive away his woe;
The wine you kept with so much care
Along the marble floor shall flow.

Sean Paul ducked behind the door, but then peeked back around at a half dozen shambling and armed ghouls. All were pasty and pale.

“FTW?” he mumbled, “Reyes, when did zombies start carrying guns?”

Reyes shook his head, his neck fat wobbling like jello, and said, “dumbass, those aren’t zombies, that’s the NRA’s board of directors!”

Sean Paul conducted a once in a lifetime interview with Jesus Reyes this afternoon at a local Austin coffee shop to determine whether he really exists:

“Reyes, my friends all want to know, do you really exist? They believe you are simply a manifestation of my Id.”

“Don’t you just wish I were said manifestation!” Reyes replied, bleary eyed and tequila sodden. He really needed the coffee.

“Reyes, to the point: do you exist or not?” Sean Paul asked.

“Well, we’re talking right now, aren’t we. Isn’t that proof enough?”