Wednesday, 11 November 2009

• Cry of the Loon

  Deep into the thickness of a blackened night we drank the very bad wine and smoked the most awful, resinous leavings of leaves once kind. All potent. All horrid. The crest of the summer of 1986 had passed on into a vibrating fecundity that tickles at the corners of eyes. By then the moon was gone too.

  It was my last day on earth and I was celebrating in style.

  Eomneon, my best friend then and now, had invited me up to sit on the Rock with him for possibly the very last time. We agreed we should have some of that wonderful Gallo port in a giant glass jug.

  On The Rock
  The Rock is one among a family of epoch-rounded red sandstone sediment that pokes up sporadically along the crook between the Hogback and the first actual rising slopes of the Rocky Mountains – kin with the very same sediment that made Red Rocks Park Amphitheatre, Roxborough Park and Garden of Gods, all up and down the Colorado Front Range. (The Hogback is the first sheared plate of violated rock directly west of Denver that is unquestionably not a foothill – so named for its resemblance to the spine-side of a razorback hog. I climbed a segment once to confirm that it does indeed peak at an extreme, almost knife-like angle for miles along its length.) The Rock, this particular node of sandstone, is the centerpiece of a posh subdivision where Eomneon's family had been fortunate enough to settle, for a while – until divorce set them asunder. The east-facing slope of it is mild enough to walk over to the lip of the other side: a small cliff with a long, level recess carved into it by the millennia that provided just enough shelter from rain and noonday sun to make it a perfect outdoor hideaway hangout. It's necessary to drop down into it without twisting an ankle. One could easily imagine a Native American brave making camp on the hunt, looking out over the overgrown, nearly impassable marshy swath of reeds and giant grasses and that generous view of the valley and its massive western wall.

  So that's about the Rock.

  My Last Day On Earth
  The wine we drank from its large glass jug was sweet like sunset candy and cheap like barato cheap – affordable like the kind Jack drank – to be fair his might've been a tokay but hey, not dissimilar unto – when he was out here forgetting how write nicely and getting ready to die. We poured it into tall kitchen glasses. We swallowed in gulps because there was a lot of it.

  We had to smoke the pipe scrapings that night because some Republican war pig was in office and pot was ridiculously hard to find. "It's worth its weight in hash" if you can get past the cruel taste.

  It was probably my last day on earth. One could never be certain. Tomorrow my cousin would arrive from out of California. Our plans were to step together away from this world of plain scientific and moral descriptions, through the Castanedaean gash between and beyond into the limitless inconceivable. I had a great need to see if it was true what I had been warned about all my life.

  I have since learned that every last thing I was ever warned about is true indeed.

  If things went well we would not be defending ourselves from packs of dogs in the moonless mornings or evading trailer park denizens or starving in places not so certainly either public or private. If things went well I wouldn't find myself trying to climb a red sandstone cliff wall (the very same stuff already mentioned, only hidden this time just outside Colorado Springs) to reach the nest of noisy crows with the foolhardy hope of feasting upon one. If things went well, we would not soon become a laughing stock among friends and families and have to get food stamps and live homeless in Boulder for a short while before we were at last separated and my cousin went on get beat up, eat from dumpsters and have all his shit stolen. If things went well.

  But for the time being, out on the Rock with Eomneon, the night was dedicated to the celebration of my last day on earth.

  Being my last day on earth, there were some critical, final matters between me and my great friend that I knew must be settled.

  Cheers.

  "I admit," I said, "it sure sounds like Fripp playing that solo in Two Hands. I was just going off this article I read once that said Belew was taking more leads."

  "That's such a great solo, man," Eomneon said. And I knew he had let it go. At last, even my Jewish friend had learned how to forgive.

  Emboldened, I said what was really on my mind, "I know you're thinking about my sister."

  He shrugged.

  "I'm not saying anything. I mean I don't care and it's none of my business," I continued. "But I don't think she's gonna go for you, man. You need to get in shape."

  It was no secret he was looking pretty dumpy by then, all raw pizza dough and pear-like.

  Eomneon was gracious, but miffed. "Naw, man. You're wrong."

  "All I'm saying."

  "Dude." He fished around his fanny pack, pulled out a brass protopipe. "Let's smoke some of this delicious pot resin."

  To his credit, at this time Eomneon is probably the most fit, toned individual I know. But I doubt he ever got with my sister.

  Shortly thereafter I heard a hideous sound.

  A long, shrill, descending shriek that cut through the pitch of night like a madding meat cleaver. Simply awful.

  It was horrible. It was the sound of merciless midnight lunacy.

  "What. The fuck. Is that?" I asked.

  Eomneon looked at me, ever amazed at how little I know. "That's a loon, man."

  "A loon," I repeated.

  A crazy bird screaming with stone-cold abandon into the heart of my moonless last night on earth.

  "Yeah, a loon."

  The Cry Of The Loon
  "Aw man," I stood up suddenly.

  "What?"

  "I gotta go. Let's go." Which basically means what was left of my last day on earth had begun to spin violently in seven directions. We made it up, somehow, in that blackest of summer nights only by the light of stars, over the precarious lip of the Rock and down the east side without incident. Once or twice ambling back toward his home I heard them again.

  Terrible nightmare screams!

  "Loon?" I asked. "You get that shit a lot out here?"

  He only laughed.

  We reached his back porch where I tried desperately not to get sick, clutching a beam and hanging my head over the lawn. My stomach was already in my throat and I was only vaguely aware of his dogs coming around to sniff at my ankles and my ass. I wasn't sure which way was up.

  "Hey man," I said. Eomneon drew closer. "Hey man, forget about it."

  "What?"

  Just then the loon cried out to me: a lunatic's wail. 

  "RALPH!!!" I groaned.

  "Ralph?" he asked, but then heard all of my jug wine and whatnot coursing back the wrong way of me and splashing out onto the rocks and grass. He knew what I meant. Stepped back.

  "Loon," I gasped finally. "Forget about it."

  The spins were already mounting again. After a while I moaned, "Wow man, that loon sounds just like a crazy bitch's scream."
  

  Eomneon, my best friend in the world, agreed, "That's the sound of one nutty lady. You ready for some more wine?"

  "Oh no..." Spins spins spins.

  Then, again, from out of the deep and unknowable fathoms of night came the loon's horrific sound:

  AAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

  "RALPH!!!"

  It went on for some time just so: the loon screaming at me and me wretchedly retching for Ralph.

  I would have to face my last day on earth with a jug wine hangover.

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  • 11:34 AM
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