notebook of a night watchman, part II

23:40 hours. "It’s the pigeons break the windows," the guard whom I relieve informs me. During the day they fly in through the windows, which have been locked shut since the day the dairy closed, which occurred sometime before my birth. And though most swoop through the secured window frames with ironic ease, entering the meager shelter of this shriveled tit with little trouble, there is still the rare and fatal occasion of one shattering the odd virgin pane. These guillotine windows may have accounted for the dead bird presence decades ago, but every new night or so of rounds I seem to encounter a fresh pigeon corpse, smashed as if bludgeoned, alongside the older, their degrees of spoilage reeking side by side, in different states of decomposition, their stench making me thankful that the windows were so profoundly opened in the first place. (Please excuse the logic.) And just as with the doodled nudes discovered earlier, or rather that image my mind brought forth sooner, I am unsure as to which of the other two guards-- my relief or the one whom I relieve-- is the culprit. I should even suspect myself, had I in my hands the implement of destruction-- a broken length of banister, for example; but I haven’t, and so don’t. Of course it may involve both my fellows, one doing the killing, the other occupying himself with beating the dead. . . .
***
00:30 hours. All secure on premises.
***
01:34 hours. Many times in this renegade architecture I’ve traveled back in my mind (some 600 miles?) to that little bronze statuette, no more than nine inches high, of Venus. She’s still standing on her pedestal in the Renaissance gallery on the second floor of the museum in which I’ve stood as a guard, Tuesday through Saturday, from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon, ever since I can remember. It’s Tuesday morning, the gallery is void of patrons, and the curators are working quietly behind their closed office doors. And I, as if hoping to caress from within her bronze body imprisoned and responsive flesh, I run my fingertips ever so lightly over her cold solidity which, in time, seems to gain a degree of warmth and softness, until I feel my fingers tripped up by the atrophied wing . . . I step back to look at the knotted heap of feathers I can no longer call a pigeon. It is alone in the middle of this vast concrete floor, and I, a few feet away, stand agape. Isolated by space, it acquires the greater metaphysical value common to those works of art displayed sparingly in museum galleries.
***
02:29 hours. Perhaps this is what is important: I increasingly view things within the context of their own isolating space; that is, in this cluster of a world I see each thing as yards apart, as if each thing were on display in a labyrinth of gutted museum galleries cancerous and increasing in number with every spasm of the clock; although each thing I see in this way no doubt remains the same thing, I must acknowledge a difference sensed by me in the thing, the difference being philosophical.
***
03:39 hours. Things isolated by space. And somniloquies by time? Dream time for the somniloquist. But night time for the insomniac other. Who lies parallel to. Awake. In the same bed as.
***
05:40 hours. All secure on premises. Sun coming.
***
06:30 hours. The tip of the index finger-- the tip of the index finger of my right hand-- meandering along a crack in the wall-- any of one of the many cracks in this wall, which is any one of the infinite number of walls constructing this labyrinth-- which by my scale represents some 600 travelable miles. This representation of directed distance through space, its very existence, a consequence of time. Ruptures of direction charted by time across the expanse of an unadorned wall.
***
22:04 hours. Seen from across the street: silhouette of a night watchman sitting at his post in a lighted window on the fourth floor of an abandoned dairy. Really just a uniform stuffed with ontological insecurities-- so much straw-- a rusty old milk jug set on top for the head.
***
23:38 hours. Perhaps if I were entrusted with a key, a real key . . . a key to the door of an important room . . . a room still showing some signs of life in this abandoned dairy . . . a room I would be required to unlock and enter during my rounds . . . a room located climactically along my rounds . . . one I might one night accidentally lock myself inside . . . lock myself in with my demons, so to speak, and be forced to corner myself some time before morning, when I would be set free by my relief, during the denouement of dawn! Then I would perhaps be able to write a novel. But the only keys at my command are those chained to the walls along the designated guard route, the keys to the security clock, and so the most I can do is try to unlock time by marking with a turn of the key and pen the somniloquies as they come, with the hope that things will eventually tell themselves.
***
00:38 hours. Secure on premises.
***
01:36 hours. Secure.
***
02:35 hours. After passing through the spacious, high-ceilinged room in which the portrait of night in my blue uniform hangs, I enter a stairwell and walk down yet a third flight, which leads to the low-ceilinged basement lighted at both ends only, by the run-off light of the stairwell just descended, and the stairwell opposite, for which I must pass through the hinterland of darkness between these faint reachings of light, to ascend. This meager light I do have hints at the numerous stout pillars which arch and vault, buttressing each other across the ceiling, and giving the basement of this abandoned dairy the presence commonly commanded by the catacombs located beneath cathedrals, which I have often seen pictured in books. I suppose that I should mention the bats which reside in this basement, bats which flicker like flame-cast shadows along the walls, floor, ceiling, and pillars, disturbed by my hourly descent. I believe these bats to be the shadows of the pigeons, the trapped spirits of the pigeons bludgeoned above and left to decompose slowly on a floor of cement; shadows able to exist only on the buried walls of this basement, this catacomb, this underground cave in which the shadow cast is taken for the real, for I’ve heard these shadows beat their wings, free in the stagnant air, and have felt them brush past me in the dark.
***
03:31 hours. Ascending through the stairwell four flights, from the bat-infested catacombs, I reach the top floor of the museum, which appears to have spread, for the most part, horizontally, having multiplied only one level into the earth and only one level above the second story. It is on this uppermost floor I must pass through an enormous room, high-ceilinged and vacant, surrounded by windows which have been shattered by pigeons or the high stiff wind which howls and waltzes with whirlwinds of pigeon shit, plaster dust, and culled feathers. I might dash across this dance floor, over the slivers of glass, past window after window, portrait after portrait of Night and his twin sons, Somnus and Death, past generations of identical darkness. . . . But there is the fear of being tripped up by the depressions and upheavals of this rickety floor, of falling through the planks which are much too high-- high as a hangman’s platform, I imagine. And so I inch across it, fully expecting a trap door of sorts to open, suddenly, the moment I can feel the noose around my neck, the rope extending upwards like the most vital marionette string, the one controlling the head, the one that makes the mind dance as I watch stray feathers blow skimming across this floor insubstantial as air.
***
04:40 hours. All premises.
***
05:44 hours. Dawn. I have discovered the broken length of banister with which the pigeons were bludgeoned. It is wooden and painted with dried blood. To think that this was once a helping hand for those moving to and fro between the irrational depths, with its subterranean forces, and the more rational, clear-minded heights, as Bachelard might have mused, And to think that it was right where I suspected it would be.
***
06:19 hours. All.
***
Day off. Night off. How to describe my Fall. Afternoon. I have already stepped off the sidewalk carpeted with leaves, over the leaf-clogged gutter, and am walking slowly in my heavy and highly polished patent leather shoes down the smooth black asphalt of the right lane of a quiet city side-street. It is mildly liberating to be walking with such slow care along a strip of asphalt reserved for the travel of cars. Observation: the number of fallen leaves dwindles toward the broken yellow line. I take care to step between the few tawny brittle leaves in my path; their edges curling up from the asphalt, they seem to float like little boats on black water; the tips of their serrated edges raised, as if aspiring back toward their branch, accentuating the grim solidity of the asphalt below. I look to the branches: the leaves have all fallen. The world has once again become bottom-heavy. This bottom-heaviness brings on the pang of despair which in turn calls the dependability, the very solidity, of the asphalt into question. The only answer to this question is the clopping of my footfalls: hollow, echoic concepts.
***
Weeks later. Insomnia: Awake all day. Day of switchblade shadows, long and razor-sharp; we, their crafted handles, are again in the hands of the psychotic sun. Flashed open in the morning, folded closed by noon, then brandished once more before evening; twilight is our slipping concealed into the sun’s back pocket: night.
***
Next day. The belief that our shadows roam free during the night I reject. As a child I imagined at night the shadows of all things locked up inside their respective bodies; that for the duration of twilight my shadow entered my body like a soul. And hasn’t my shadow always served as a soul during my adult periods of darkness?
***
I am in bed, but not to sleep. Here I have remained since waking. I wake and wait to rise to the call of duty, admiring the postcards I’ve over the years purchased from the museum gift shop-- miniature copies of the works of art viewed therein-- and have organically-- no, aimlessly arranged them on my most continuous white wall. I count them: 54. They are held to the wall with thumbtacks: 54. Soon enough I am reminded by the setting sun that there is a moment in the midst of twilight when the picture postcards are obscured to dark rectangles, for lack of adequate sunlight-- I never use the electric, a practice resulting from my work schedule-- and the maze of white wall between them becomes more pronounced, vivid, and seems to glow. And for the moment my thoughts dance against the wall, dance the Crane-- that ancient dance consisting of labyrinthine evolutions, trod with measures steps to the accompaniment of harps-- as though on the dancing-floor Daedalus built for Ariadne, which copied in white marble relief the maze pattern of the Egyptian Labyrinth.
***
A now dark enough to hush the harps and still my thoughts. An imagination-demanding dark. I conjure the Magritte postcards of the lost jockeys hurling on blindered horses through landscapes majestic and surreal; Rouault’s bold, black brush strokes structuring luminous sections of color as though the led skeleton of a stained glass window; Giacometti’s sculpted figures of people as seen from a great distance, exposing us for the marvelous lightening rods we all are, and laying bare our vertical horizons. . . .
***
"Two or more unrelated objects placed upon a plane unrelated to both" was de Chirico’s working definition of surrealism. Every individual thing was for him a building block. He remembered that metaphysics was first grounded in architecture, and that architecture was essentially built metaphysics. Philosopher and architect reunited in the painter de Chirico. Lugging the laws of perspective and a load of unlikely bricks in his head, this bricklayer-metaphysician surpassed the aspirations of both philosopher and architect: he more than articulated space; he cornered the sky!
***
I remove this last sheet of notebook paper from the box in the bottom drawer of the desk. Scribbling along the lines it provides me, I realize such guidance will soon abruptly end, as a flat world ends. But I continue, every six inches or so to return to the parallel entrance of the line below, trying in this serpentine pursuit to reconcile the linear with the cyclical. Serpent falling from the paper to continue on its belly slithering within the labyrinth, knowing full well the only way out is up. Serpent gliding past bludgeoned pigeons in varying states of decomposition. Serpent coiling in a corner of the labyrinth, pigeon down stuck t its back. Serpent uncoiling, slithering along the wall, over the slivers of glass below the broken-open windows to which it is blind. Serpent leaving in the plaster dust one track slack and long as a severed thread-- Ariadne’s. Serpent reaching half the length of its body up against the wall, before falling to the left, before falling to the right, pigeon down stuck to its sides.
***
In bed, but not to sleep. Each thought thought lost, but then remembered, as my mind wanders after dark the maze of white wall articulated by my fifty-four postcards. Each letter, a step, penned and left, before walking through the door to the right of my desk, into the stairwell where two flights down I pass through the doorless door frame and turn left down the dim corridor. The corridor flows dark and slow beneath the soles of my heavy black shoes as I advance with eyes fixed on the momentary ground before me. The floor of the corridor lightens, solidifies as I reach the end, the fluorescence of the high-ceilinged room where on a wall is the shattered-window portrait of night in my blue uniform, silver badge number 751.
***
Opposing forces: slung over my shoulder, the five plus pound security clock heavy as my head, and around my neck, the noose with rope extending upwards like the most vital marionette string, the one controlling my head, the one that makes my mind dance as I watch stray feathers blow skimming across this floor, insubstantial as air, of the last room through which I must pass before completing my round, the enormous, high-ceilinged and vacant room on the uppermost floor of this labyrinth, this museum, this dairy abandoned before I was born. . . . I stand surrounded by the windows which have all been shattered by pigeons or the high, stiff wind which howls while it waltzes with whirlwinds of pigeon shit, plaster dust, culled feathers; stand surrounded by generations of identical darkness, portrait after portrait of Night and his twin sons, Somnus and Death. I lift a feather with each hand simultaneously from this hangman’s dock, from this floor insubstantial as air, and walk towards one of the windows . . . and stand restlessly on the shards of transparent glass which snap beneath my weight.
***
Perhaps if I had been entrusted with a key. A real key. To the door of an important room. Located climactically along my rounds. I might accidentally lock myself inside. Look inside myself. Corner myself. Denouement of dawn! But no. No shards nestle intact in the two lower corners of this window frame. No irregular V reflecting the blue lapels of my guard uniform. Or the oval badge I wear above the front left pocket of my blue shirt. No portrait of night in my uniform, but night naked. In this window which is not a framed painting, this night which is not a slip of shadow. On this wall without a crack come six hundred miles long. The only crack, the sound of the broken, breaking window glass on which I stand.
***
Bludgeoned with a broken length of banister, corpses of pigeons in various states of decomposition, their degrees of spoilage reeking side by side, their stench making me thankful that the windows were so profoundly opened in the first place. Pigeons bludgeoned with a broken length of banister by my relief or the one whom I relieve . . . or both-- one doing the killing, the other pleasuring himself with beating the already dead.
***
Bats flickering like flame-cast shadows along the buried basement walls-- the entire earth behind them. Catacombed spirits of the pigeons bludgeoned above and left to decompose slowly on cement. Underground cave in which the cast shadow is taken for the real, shadows that fly from the walls and pillars and, free in the stagnant air, brush past me as I stand in the hinterland of darkness between the faint reachings of two distant stairwell lights.
***
Doodled nudes . . . faceless, constructed of cylinders and spheres barely held together with a subtle but continuous contour line of skin which momentarily fades into the paper like a fissure into smooth solid wall to resurface gradually and embolden itself into a considerable crack. Nudes in different stages of erasure and refinement . . . created by my relief or the one whom I relieve . . . or both-- one fleshing them to perfection, the other reducing them again to the old geometry.
***
Or one with no interest in the paper in this desk in this museum transformed by a cancer of rooms and corridors which have multiplied haphazardly in all directions . . . this dairy abandoned before I was born which once irrigated this god-forsaken city . . . this labyrinth I patrol, from which the only way out is up. . . .
***
A culled feather in each of my hands as I stand at a window locked shut but shattered open. A moment of windless quiet, an orchestra between waltzes. No scampering heard from the Daedalian statues which infest the walls of this labyrinth. Only the crackle of glass beneath my feet as I stand fidgeting, face to face with tonight.
***
Splintered Icarus of the window shattered from the inside out. Falling stories from the labyrinth, the diseased museum, the dairy abandoned before his birth, the transparent author of the individual prisms of his current existence which, upon impact, will further disperse. . . .
***
Beckoning break: the road-map crack some six hundred miles long, which for the moment runs submerged within the infinite wall of the linear labyrinth, resurfacing as the initial fissure which grows bolder and more craggy before abruptly being stopped by the right vertical side of a window frame. And through this window
***
Twilight dissolves into night all words, all obstacles and props.