thththt (a study in parenthetical remarks)

      Under the breaking light Aaron lay, defeated and turned aside as if by a final fist (purely and strictly speaking, this in a metaphorical or allegorical sense, the man himself not having been involved in an altercation or fisticuffs in some time, a week or two possibly). And an arch above him, two columns hard sided and erect: each stroke of sprayed paint which covers them (and there are so many strokes) lay against the concrete, lay as if in wait, lay in neons and blacks, each chip and crack (an army, a host, of deviations) a testament to age and entropy (or entropy's colloquial consideration anyways)... The arch a former double doorway, its guts pulled out and demolished, a fence (flimsy and temporary) in place in an attempt to dissuade that exact action Aaron is accomplishing at the very moment.
      The light anyways: in a cascade, an awakening wash and tint across his face and body (bull-ragged as it is) and the ground as well, its tawny and drab touched surely as the rest, not transformed, no never transformed (as nothing is transformed by light, every object is always the same light or dark, always the same, the light only alters it in our eyes (which are, truth be told, woefully under-equipped to assess these very surroundings with their ambiguous surfaces, their transference and transmittance and reflectance and whatnot, at least truthfully, truth be told)) but rather are...altered, yes altered let us say, altered in a thermal and energetic way, very subtle (very, very subtle but present nonetheless), and Aaron unaware of this on a conscious level but (arguably) though aware in a very deep, very ancient pineal sort of sense, again here we see a change in surface energy and subtle interactions.
      The man then waking after some time. Waking (not as one might expect in the usual protracted 'gauzy' way, the light for example 'silking its way beneath and between his long and grit ridden eyelashes' or 'slowly forming images in his cloudy mind, sleep dimmed and obtuse') but abruptly, anxiety ridden, not with a start maybe, but of a sudden certainly; from a deep REM or REM analogue (the usual eye movements curved and altered (the accelerations lessened, decelerations amplified) to a very alert (if not terribly aware or cogent) wakefulness. This anxiety he feels is a direct (and opposing) product of his actions of the night before,
                                                                              and of this? let no more be said.
      At this point let us consider Schubert's symphony number 9 to have commenced. The great. The sleeping great, as it were.
The single french horn, that single lone french horn dictating the theme, alone and rather timidly. The strings then entering, bucolic, pastoral, hopeful.
      It is of course, a distinct feeling, this anxiety, seething and winding, and twining through and through. Touching (inconsolably) every thought and notion, those just created and those long held, and as the music rises, in the initial allegro (as it builds, the strings and such, the horns and such) his eyes begin to open.

Though...can you know this?
   You in your limited feeling and imagination?
       You in your limited experience and confining logic?
You in your dreams and persuasions? What does the new day bring to you?
But this new day, the dawning and all its glory...
       Oh God! And all its glory!
Listen! Listen! As the strings build and build! Dance and fly!
Here it is! The day
          The Day! Each particle, each God-given particle in its very corporeal existence each twirling atom and it's hoary partner! Dozing through the air in its required path, its predetermined and preternatural step and trace.
          Before Aaron is this ordered mess, this float and draught of meaningless movement bereft of knowledge of itself.

         It makes him sick.
The concrete is a cold mat below him, below his face and hands and body. There was cardboard beneath him but it has shifted and moved and is away and away and away. The is no one on the street now, no cars and no foot traffic. Aaron picks himself up with great effort, the cricks and cracks smoothing themselves out, his legs and joints and other bendy, rended and spent parts settling into shape and their natural orientation after these many hours cold and dormant and locked into wholly unnatural and vile positions, the dull and growing pain signals blocked (obviously) from full circuit-completion.
       Up and over, up and over the hurricane fencing, wobbly and unsecured, though Aaron's own wobble offsets it well, pendulum for pendulum the wild arcing tamped down.
      Down Roosevelt way, and it's low mid century retail space.
      Ah...the day, the very day.
      The 9th of June.
This is the day for Aaron, the annual day of remembering and an annular event for which ritual is baked and limned into the very settled dust of his pores (rusted and shut they are). The sun's bright (so current it is) and the previous night (in the far past, and gone forever) hold him back no more and, grumbling and glum, he picks up pace (though very slightly only) up to the cemetery.
     No money, no money not even a Jefferson's gleam or a Lincoln's shine to poor Aaron's hand and heart, not a slip to transfer or a word to beg (the bus and it's driver will be so very uncompassionate), the ride is not even worth a thought. Yes, yes, this will be a trek, a bit of a journey. The cemetery (land of the dead) is...what? 3 miles hence? South as the crow flies and flaps and dips perhaps but alack, alas, the cut and lock of the watery straight, blocking off and snipping the straight line. Not to mention the hill, rising and rising all the way to the tippy top. Yes this will be some way for poor old Aaron (infertile and barren, not a child to his name and never will be poor old man (though perhaps best off for the unborn...)) but the deal must be done, and in a certain sense Aaron has little say in the day's events, as mentioned earlier (and to expand upon) it is not so much Aaron walking to the cemetery but the day in a way taking him over, controlling him, driving him forward and walking though him. Aaron rarely strays from the university districts, going as far south as the international district and as far west as Ballard (though rarely) this being the case as far back as he can remember in his adult life (almost 10 years now). Yes in a way Aaron is propelled on this day as a piece of bark or a stray leaf (which may have little forward momentum in an eddy of a stream) will, under the right conditions, become caught up in a stray current which exists for a few moments only, and be pulled along with the general tide of the river, only to find a new temporary home swirling in the arc and flow of a trailwater.
     So up Roosevelt he goes, to 45th then taking a left starts and stops and starts again with the lights and the people until reaching University way. Here, Stacks (spun as all hell) is in the middle of the fourway intersection pulling off his hoodie, now whipping it and yelling, yelling, a screaming demon. Aaron crosses and, in the lagging traffic, Stacks finds an exit, cue ball eyes and rapid clenching jaw muscles. He walks next to Aaron, unnoticing, his lips mumbling and head rolling back from time to time. Aaron begins to speak to him but Stacks stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk. \
Stops and just stares directly ahead.
      Aaron walks on, only a few bodies on the sidewalk at this point, no eye contact, they always seem to look away as he passes. It is only once over the bridge, taut webs of metal and brick (almost ancient), that he fully begins to see the world around him, the rusty sleep wiped from him. The elegance of these homes annoys him, stokes him. Makes him feel rated and grated to the seedy core. The trimmed grass and the white windowsills ask to be defiled. The flush bricks and flagstones scream for entropy, to be returned to their home states. Aaron considers himself an 'entropizer' now, never having had a 'real' job. His only occupation to live and travel the world, to bring objects and personalities and ideas down to their most perfect, basic, realized state. To free matter and their inscribed potentials from unnecessarily high levels of energy, to move the universe forward on it's continual and glorious journey toward total equality.
      He kicks over a garbage can.
     To the top to the top, and a right on Aloha, through the stately homes and quiet virginal air. Families now preparing, leaving, moving into cars and off to the city or other parts more distant. Brief glances, Aaron uncomprehended, rife with out-of-placeness which translates to an unbelieving and then to mental blocks. To 15th then back around, the cemetery only blocks away. He begins his approach with great reverence, the air around here imbued with glory and sedition. Along the long fence, wire topped and barb tipped, to the sole gate and in.
     The field of death.
     The great spanning, arcing and rolling field of buried bodies and their requisite monuments, standing stone pieces. Stone pieces buried in the valley of babes, the polished red stones of the Chinese and Vietnamese with smiling faces of their residents enscribed upon. Occasionally a sky reaching obelisk or sculpture. Aaron stumbling and lost now (having come here last exactly a year ago the way), the graves looking the same to him, the lanes and alleys stretching off and down, along and out into repetitive eternity. Here the block of memoria to the crematoriates, panels wall adherent, the volume of the thing implying something inside. The depth behind the wall hinting that the bodies may be more than just ash, full human carcasses (attendant host of worms and blanket of rot) are maybe held inside, or perhaps even the souls (largger still by many oders of magnitude than the bodies) are retained in this small building. Aaron, reaching the highest point of the graveyard, stops. Stares out: lakeward
                                            then to the Cascades,
                                            Penninsular
                                            then Ranierwise.
                  Then down,
                   right there.
     The name intaglioed double deep into the stone so that the shadow and light cause forms to arise within the valley of the stone. Atop the stone a small sculpture, roughly the size and shape of a sleeping cat, the name there causing bells distant and faint to ring within Aaron's head.
       She had been a poet, Swedish born, and lived in America her whole life. She wrote short vibrant poems indicting the architects of the Vietnam war long before it was a popular cause. She had achieved a fame, the forgotten fame only a counterculture poet would hope for. Aaron had met her as a teenager, she living down the hardpacked dusty road from his parents. This being, for many years, only the broken down house kids would throw firecrackers at from moving cars. He could never remembered how it had started but it came to the point that he would skip class, five days a week, to stay with her, in that ramshackle house (she by this time already world-wracked and body weary, though her mind a coursing, buzzing ampule). Some days she spent releasing her angers and hatred of the world to him: uberarticulate rants about the government, the abuses, the evils she had seen. Other days they spent silent, reading and drinking tea. Aaron had been timid and small then and she loved that about him. She gave him books, many books: Thomas, Cummings, Joyce, Faulkner, Ginsburg.
       And he was the one who found her.
       So her returned every year, on this day. As if measuring the decay of her headstone to his own decay (a few events, but genes mostly, had conspired to put him deeper and deeper under the arches (or some equally desolate bed) every night). He spent the whole day there, as they had many years ago.  The first few years his ritual was to spend the day writing (and after she had died, this was the only time he would), releasing a whole year's worth of pent up verse, line after line on loose leaf ruled pages. As the sun would set he would spread the pages out and set them alight, sending the fumes as an offering to her. This ritual became less about writing, maybe a page or two came out through the whole of the day, and these he would not even set alight. Simply left them to rot in the rain or blow away.
      Now he came just to sit, sometimes sleep over her grave. He would watch the sun move across the sky, watch the other visitors (though always to other graves, never to hers) or feel the wind blow across him for a day.