SOME THINGS IN LIFE shatter us into pieces. There’s nothing solid left. We become free-floating mosaics, like those icy rings surrounding Saturn and Neptune. When viewed at a distance, we almost look whole. Get a closer look and you can see the light between these diverse leftover chunks of soul, feelings and memory. They are suspended there in time.
This was the condition I found myself in while wandering through a strange place. The name of the place was Crown Heights, at least as far as I knew, but it looked a lot more like the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC. It had snowed for days and the landscape was thickly white. But the sun had come out and various soul brothers from the neighborhood were out catching some rays. I could tell they were soul brothers because they were all wearing leather jackets and sunglasses. Some of them built little nests out of snow and ice and sat back there, soaking up the sunshine on this January day. A few of them were jazz cats of the old school and were holding conversations about Miles Davis and the Coltrane Quartet.
I slipped inside a house nearby, which was surrounded by small children. They were Dutch or Danish. Blonde children with slight accents. They were building snow forts and having snowball fights. In the house, there were only more people coming in and out. Through a shadowy hallway, I was approached by Celeste, who I hadn’t seen in forever. She was wearing a white t-shirt and she looked as beautiful as ever. Jungles of redgold hair bobbing all over the place, plus those fierce and somewhat frightening blue eyes. She walked past me several times, ignoring me each time she came by, as if she was allergic to me. I tried my best to be invisible.
At last, Celeste looked up and said, “Why have you been such a jerk to me?” I hugged her at once and said, “I haven’t been a jerk. I just loved you.” “If you really loved me, you would be happy for me,” she said. “See how happy I am here!” “I am,” I said. “I am. But this is the kind of sadness that just never goes away.” I started to weep then. I wept so much, I soaked us in tears. Her shirt was all wet. It was embarrassing. There didn’t seem to be any remedy for these blues.
They were neverending.
north! 