others

The man who on his fiftieth birthday decides to dedicate the rest of his life to dredging his mind for the names and faces of forgotten friends and brief acquaintances-- from old elementary school buddies to the wino who lay on a particular street corner of his childhood-- and he will return to that street corner, find everyone with the help of a private detective if necessary. And, one by one, for the rest of his life, he will show up on their doorsteps. But he doesn't expect the thousands of faces that will float nameless to the surface, all of whom he will christen, out of necessity, Narcissus.

A decrepit man who one frightening night wants desperately to possess the skull of his long deceased wife. He remembers her distinctly high cheekbones, her narrow jaw, which might make her barely recognizable. He could flesh it with memories, he thinks; cradle it in his hands as he did when they were separated only by her thinnest skin and fine hair. Merely a crutch for conjuring memories, he thinks; and her teeth, those teeth he loved to lick and kiss, still in the naked state he always knew them. . . . Yes, his increasing need for three dimensions as he admires her face in their old photographs.

1 a.m. in the laundromat alone. Dryer tumbling; I, falling asleep . . . Then, a waking jolt from the sound of something falling, someone pleading, "help me." A quadriplegic face-down under his motorized wheelchair at the bottom of a three-step landing. I step into the pool of blood visibly surrounding his head-- it must have spread to a diameter of three feet within thirty seconds-- and lift the chair and the man strapped into it upright. 911 at a nearby convenience store and the ambulance arrives.
***
The following year. While I'm standing in line at a local bagel shop, he motors up and thanks me. I wouldn't have thought he would recognize me.
***
For some reason I question the possibility of my having so blatantly saved someone's life. But he was pouring blood at 1 a.m. with only one other around.

I watch her approach from down the street, watch her pass and turn left around the sharp granite edge of a corner building-- a bank. In ancient Egypt the royal funeral processions followed a corridor which turned left at a precise right angle. The turning of this corner was the ritualistic symbol of the dead's disappearance into the invisible beyond. I consider this turn and the turn of the woman on the street related.

You first began following her, you thought, because you were a man and she a woman; because she was beautiful and blind to her beauty, being blind; because she clutched in her left hand the taut leash of her harnessed guide-dog, which she followed with prudent stride, her posture locked like a Roman charioteer's; because, together, she and her shepherd appeared to be the six-legged mythical animal that would lead you to the exit of your private labyrinth.

A man who exudes from every pore of his skin a filament of spiderweb silk. See how thousands come pouring from all directions of his body, undulating, hovering, catching the sunlight as he walks through the still summer day.

He wore not only rose-colored glasses, but hyacinth-scented nostril filters and a chocolate-soaked tongue sheath.

A girl, age fifteen or so, at the beach, lying on her stomach, reading a book, frowns, suddenly, props herself on elbow, and, without interrupting her reading, alternately and very deliberately punches beneath her two sand wells to comfortably acommodate her budding breasts.

Two of the sweetest sights: a baby's face and a woman's breast. No wonder a mother nursing is such a vision.

An American vision: a nine-year-old girl, barefoot, with long, uncombed blond hair, wearing a large white T-shirt that hangs just below her knees.

Who first boiled an egg? And what a strange experience it must have been to witness the result: viscous, clear liquid turned into soft, white solid.

There are birds. There are bird watchers. There are bird watcher watchers. There are bird watcher watcher watchers. The watchers stepping back infinitely for a better view with the secret desire to become birds.

She never met a mirror she didn’t like.

Dance performance. I always focus on a dancer's eyes. Same with my dentist. Intimacy of this sort.

In the woods he hears an owl hoot and thinks, "That's the most amaturish owl impersonation I've ever heard"; in a foreign city, "Looks like I've wandered onto a Hollywood movie set."

He walks into and out of thoughts and ideas as though they were rooms (and sometimes closets) rather than their entering and exiting his head, so to speak.

Missing cathedrals as one would certain people.

Hotel room. Business. Briefcase, accordion file, address book, calculator, calendar, spreadsheets and memos: Who is this assembled other laid out on the bed beside me?

Over there (in the mirror?), the super-scrubbed suit with the hangdog countenance.

Bolt-loosened gear breaking away from the machine, rolling to rest in the middle of a spring field.

I rent one of four furnished rooms on the second floor of this house from the elderly woman who has reserved the ground floor for herself. The room I rent has a bed, bureau, desk, and seven chairs. The chairs are of all sorts, ranging from recliner to rocker to a swivel on wheels. My three fellow tenants-- all of them men-- have lived here for some time, and I suspect many of these extra chairs were conveniently moved from their rooms to the last one vacant-- mine. The chairs remain in my room because, like my roommates, I have been declined the privilege of moving excess furniture up to the attic for storage. The old woman tells me the attic is already much too full; that she is already afraid of the ceiling caving in. I am still relatively new to the area and therefore lack the number of friends and acquaintances to fill the chairs. I once tried stacking them awkwardly in a corner, but soon dismantled the horrendous construction to redistribute them evenly throughout the room, where they have since remainedabsences I am forced to navigate, to try to fill with dirty laundry, or face to window or wall. I sit on my bed, for when I use one of the chairs a dialogue of silence opens between me and the others. Lying in bed, I think of those chairs with their arms forever open, forever beckoning me. . .

I live a linear life lacking the roundness and fullness of a life filled with old friends and the curving permanence which allows a turning back to one's own beginnings. Every few years, for the length of my entire adult life, I have succumbed to the urge to retransplant myself, leaving places and their people behind. This has given my life the illusion of consisting of many lives-- Trying to achieve a state of immortality through a series of perpetual beginnings?-- has given my life the illusion of consisting of steps toward a goal. These steps do not ascend or descend but, level as the cement floor of a basement corridor, head straight toward my prison cell. And though I am alone I am consoled by the fact that I have always been the prison guard who walks beside me with guiding handcuffs.

Great disappointment at viewing, with the aid of two mirrors, my profile. Disappointment similar to that of hearing my recorded voice. In my experience the frontal view of my face appears quite handsome, yet the sight of my profile makes me wince. Perhaps I’m not enough familiar with my profile to have idealized its inherent homeliness to the radiant beauty with which I’ve endowed my face full frontal. In other words, a glance from the corer of one’s eye may not be covered by one’s rose-colored glasses.

Searching for newspaper articles of eleven years ago that refer to me as a missing person. Suddenly spotting the front-page photo of myself.

What computer keywords would define me, differentiate me from all other humans (past, present and even future) sufficiently so as to single me out during a "search"? Are any of us sufficiently different from each other? If so, is language sufficient to distinguish such differences? Do I dare attempt to put a first word to paper?

I suppose that all towns, however small, have their eccentrics. Ours has apparently squirreled away enough cash to purchase a brand-spanking-new telescope. Does he use it by night to see the stars, you ask? I'm not so sure about that; but I've watched him tote it up and down Main Street, his fire engine red telescope and its tri-pod-- such an unseemly display. With the blatant exhibitionism of a flasher he tries to catch the attentions and interests of the youngest college girls, frequently setting it on its tri-pod and leveling it out to peer horizontally up or down the street. I ask you: Does he feel as distant from his fellow men as men do the stars?

The invalid, suddenly able to run, feels like he's flying.

The recluse who attends church mass every Sunday morning, not from a need for religion, but from a need to feel flanked by the bodily warmth of others. Warmth from both sides, from bodies sitting beside him in the pew-- angel wings of warmth unfolding, commingling.

The instant of silence after a crowded Paris Metro stops before passengers exit. That instant extended, yes, until an elderly French gentleman breathes life into us with a perfect Phhhaadon.

Pensively she runs the tips of her fingers across the cactus pricks: she is playing a ballad audible only to herself.

Respite: The unhappy housewife steps back to admire the fresh vacuum tracks in their now cloudless sky-blue carpet.

She approached his grave from the rear, coming up behind him as when he sat too long at his desk, laying her cold hands on his sloped shoulders of (today, mercifully) sun-warmed stone.

What wounds are the man's who dresses his knees and then his head with toilet paper in the men's room of the public library?

Who is the man who wears a Santa suit for Halloween?

The combination of her age and cosmetic surgery gives her face not so much the appearance of an elderly woman wearing the mask of a young girl as it does of a young girl wearing the mask of an old woman-- this being considered by some in the neighborhood a remarkable degree of success.

The man who throws his chest out and runs his thumbs up and down his labia lapels.

A "fat cat" who, after a downpour, compliments God on His capital car wash.

Why is it everyone appears as in costume and full makeup?
Might it have something to do with the shape of the eyeholes in your mask?

Have met far too many "tortured artists," a role that fortunately shouldn't last another century.

He hadn't yet got in touch with his own insignificance.

He felt he was exceptional-just like everyone else.

We see ourselves as something more than we are simply to get through the day.

One who dismisses ideas which do not flatter him.

Funny how some offer as evidence of ability in one area their lack of ability in others.

Her definition of immoral: whatever she happens not to do.

He who pisses ants down the sink drain.

He was indeed sturdy as a rock, but with worms and crawlers seething underneath.

Following his shadow, the sun at his back, who, for no reason, turns to walk towards the sun, dragging his shadow behind like a sack.

One passed-out, drunk, on the street corner: his tireless eyes moving beneath their closed lids, a round hole in the sole of each of his shoes.

A misanthrope in theory only. Meeting an individual, I am more often than not pleased with the encounter; it is the idea of man I abhor.

The claustrophobic one who couldn't leave his apartment; so claustrophobic, he couldn't wear clothes.

The man so frightened of heights, not only could he not stand upright, he could not sit up in bed.

A brontophobic funambulist.

The good girl who could be a very good bad girl.

Within the walls of her unhappy house, a little girl finds refuge in the imaginary residence of her doll's house, painted white. She prefers her doll's house; it has no basement. (Houses within houses.)

The apiary-hearted arsonist.

The ambulance silenced by eyelashes.

Red wine and chocolate she was.

Reading you I feel like I've written you,
Then like I wish I'd written you,
And then like I could only hope to write you.

Four urinals, old and haloed with the overlapping hand-prints and forearm grime left behind by the tired and the drunk, on a wall already yellowed with cigarette smoke and age, save for one clean square once protected by the mirror above the dusty sink. But a mirror is still there, a small corner clenched in the upper right bracket with which to catch a glimpse of the face, just enough to eye yourself, suspiciously, because there are reasons why some guy might have put his fist through that challenging glass, baring that portion of wall, before returning to the men he drinks with, all regulars, who don't need the mirror, and haven't missed it, never washing their hands of any of this.

A born graphomaniac, Bubba’d written all 26 letters by the age of two, dozens of words by the age of three, a string of sentences by four. His paragraphs then turned into pages, his pages into reams, his reams into rooms of reams. His life’s work ended as all life’s work ends: with a conclusion, a corpus, and a corpse.

The actor who, after a lifetime of failed auditions to play the part of Hamlet with the Royal Shakespeare Company, in his last will and testament, bequeaths his bleached skull to be used for the part of Yorick. Unfortunately, the R.S.C. is legally bound to use only synthetic skulls, and so his final audition, or rather that of his skull, whose performance would doubtlessly have been authentic, was flatly rejected.

The taxidermist whose labor of love it was to recreate the mythological composite creatures born from Echidne and Typhon: Cerberus, the three-headed Hound of Hell; Hydra, the many-headed water-serpent of Lerna; Chimera, the goat with a lion's head and a serpent's body for a tail; Orthrus, the two-headed hound of Geryon; and his most challenging, the Sphinx, with its serpent's tail, lion's body, eagle's wings, and woman's head.

Strewn across this city side-street, beneath the only window open this winter afternoon, the aftermath of an eviction: A man's wardrobe, crushed and twisted-- mass suicide of his several selves; a photograph of a man-- perhaps this man-- caught unawares, as in a hallway mirror; his razor, his toothbrush, in the gutter; his hair comb, a lame black wing I'll keep close to my heart; a white handkerchief, which must have come down like a confused parachute; and a wounded bird in a dented cage, which must have flapped its wings against the uncompromising fall.

The homeless guy holding the beat-up cardboard sign handwritten in very careful, almost calligraphic penmanship with the word Famished.

The gray of a street beneath green sneakers worn by a little blond boy on a misleadingly clear March day, when the clouds are static and highly defined and surrounded by a speculating sun. Little blond boy, holding his mother's high hand, the hand which guides him, which allows him to hang his head in boredom and fix his eyes on the momentary ground before him as he walks light-headed, light-hearted, as though on water, on the concrete stream of street flowing back toward home. . . . That March day, misleadingly still and clear, he lifts his head and invents his game. . . . He has learned that as he holds his mother's hand he can walk with eyes closed, and so does, but for only so long as he can stand it, until they open of their own accord, suddenly, and randomly locking his vision on the first person he sees. And he watches that first person, without even a blink, until the stranger has vanished into a little shop, has turned a corner, or has simply disappeared into the distance behind him, leaving him, the little boy, neck-craned and looking back. . . .