TRAPEZE ARTISTS

Zim stood against the wall beneath a highwire act while Colleen locked the back
door to the bar. The carnival murals and running lights continued all the way around the
outside of the building even in the back where the smell of rotten food, vomit, cleaning
fluids was most pungent, the saloon seawrack of effluvium dark and wet across the
asphalt.
-

I appreciate the walk home, she said, I have to admit I had a little too much of the

poison myself tonight. May need someone to catch me.

-

Im glad I could stay awake long enough to be here.

Seems like I saw quite a bit of you tonight. Every time I turned around, there you

were, then there you werent, then there you were again
-

How else would I have spent my birthday.

I could think of better ways, but how was it?

Let me say it has swung from the banal to the sublime.

And the banal was?

Watching a guy puke in your parking lot.

The sublime?

Watching you leap from counter to counter, never so much as dropping a drop.

You caught me on a rare night.

Funny, my hands look empty to me.

So you will have to tell me about your article on Joyce.

I thought that was thoroughly explained to you by Monk.

He seems to know it pretty well.

Doesnt know it at all. It is something I am writing to help me with something else.

I used to write all the time. Must be years now though.

I decided I needed to understand my characters thesis before I had them go on about

it in a piece of fiction.
-

Poetry mostly, about movement, words and movement, it always fascinated me how

the two just dont seem to go together.

-

So I am not sure how much of it is made from my ideas or my characters.

Sign language seems so clumsy, almost as if we are forcing our fingers to do

something they dont want to do, like eating with our toes.
-

Which makes me wonder whether any ideas are important at all.

While we often have to think about what we want to say, we rarely have to think

about how we move.

-

I used to think perception was all that matters.

I used to think that how we moved was all that matters.

Through perception we exercise our unity with the world outside

Through movement we become one with the world outside

And begin to understand how our brain is a part of the world

And find our rightful integration into the physical universe

Not a mirror...

Not a strange being

Not separate.

Not a dream.

And so I guess I have resigned myself to writing even though I often feel I have

nothing of significance to write about.

-

Human wayfinding I guess you can call it.

What are we if we have nothing to leave behind?

I used to think navigation was a directory of places in my head.

You have a child, probably the greatest thing you can leave behind.

Then I came to understand that wayfinding was based on something even more

simple than symbols.

-

Joyce had his literature.

Finding ones way was simply allowing the cells in your head find that way for you.

Einstein his vision of the universe.

And so I quit dancing when I realized that I had no place go, no place to call a

beginning or an end.
-

But what do I have?

What did I have?

I was a creature brought up with nothing but the trivial to contemplate, without a

single need, a single overbearing concern, a reason to die, a need to be fulfilled, a desire
too dark to admit
-

Then I had a child.

So I often wonder if I need to do anything at all, that maybe the noble thing to do is to

exemplify the basest form of existence, of just being here.

-

And she cant walk let alone dance.

Maybe that is the true artist today

She cant talk, let along give me further ideas on inner monologues

The one who can reduce life to the barest of existence

Sometimes I think I was given this situation to devote myself to her, seems so little

room for anyone else

-

Where the artist has nothing, has no one

That there will come a moment when I need to be there with hands and arms, but will

I have the strength, can I do it all by myself

-

No responsibilities, not even to himself

And so the fear that I may need someone, or else I may lose her and so lose

everything
-

And thereby be a true witness to all that is around him

Sometimes I look at her and wonder if she is just a face passing through my life

And not fall prey to the self

Or if I need to reach out and hold on to her

Or the demands of even life itself

And so I look for any sign of fear

Be an observer who has nothing, no stake, no goals

But she is all smiles

And yet continue to smile

She is so unselfish, she has made me realize that I need to look past her

And so defy the others

That every second is a new chance to live

I have all the experiences I need, I think

And all of life must be a search for new experiences

Maybe I could come see you, he said.

Well now is not a good time, you know? she said.

Ah. Didnt mean tonight, he thought. Perhaps too late, but this is the end of her

day. Daughter at home. And Mum. Bit of a crowd. But says shes leaving tomorrow.
Last chance? Should I? Maybe Aunt Marthas monthly visit. No wonder the dogs are
howling. Beasts smell it. So it is a curse. Odor of: stay away, wait, do not enter, come
back later. But maybe she means yes by saying no. What do I say, yes and mean no? Yes,
I can smell it, but it says come in, come closer. The red and the white, what a wonderful

I could he said.
She looked at him and touched his hand.

No, not tonight, she said, sweet prince.

They are at an alleyway that steals off the road, inside it is dark and shadowy. Her

place down in the darkness, he assumes, where a yellow light hangs beneath some vines.

He knows this place well. To the left an elderly woman always in a nightgown, comes to
the porch when her terrier starts to yap, watches him, makes him want to pick a flower so
as to validate her vigilance. At the end of the alley, a couple and two young kids: he is a
mechanic, always covered with grime. She is a feeding apparatus, once came out with a
dug hanging free, kid screaming. Colleen must be in the bungalow with the wrought iron
fence, bougainvillea, ceramic elves watching the gate. Never heard a noise from there.
Not a subscriber. She does not invite him any further. This is the place to say good bye.
-

Have you ever wondered what could have been, she asked.

All the time, he said, but I would like to stop.

Good night then, she says. Soft kiss upon his lips, still.

Good night, he says.

As he leaves, he thinks he hears another voice, man or woman? Aunt Martha

perhaps? Mum? Old woman in her nightgown? No, no yaps. An intruder? What does he
do? No, he cannot return, cannot seek her door. All is okay. Wake up tomorrow and
read about a tragedy. Murder. Disappearance. He was the last to see her. Named in all
thirty. Would DNA free him? On her lips. Could convict him.
He walks, then sits by the bridge that looks over the railroad tracks. Climbing
lights of Mount Helix ahead of him. Joyce sat upon tracks like these. One century ago.
On this day perhaps? Zs B-Day? JJ said: upon those tracks Ulysses took shape. July 12:
same day Poincare died. Story someone made up? P: father of chaos theory. Ignored by
AE. Some think AE stole relativity from ol P. P a celebrity, his newspaper obituary in
Joyces hands, crossing the tracks in Zurich. Perhaps Joyce took a math class from P in
Paris, and P gave him a C. In P, J got a C in P. Death of the old guy was the release J

needed to proceed. Distance needed to study a subject they say. Stop taking it seriously:
make fun of it. Birge: hes gone now. Harrys escape on this day too. All comes together
huh? My escape what am I free to do? What masterpiece can I conjure? JJ. Jimmie.
Rejoyce. Joyous. Never Joyless. Where it all begins, where it all ends. How could I
have known Id have to belly over your grave to get there, anywhere. We all took you to
be insane, old fart. Obsessed with inherent order of things. Stricken by a need to layer.
Obfuscate. Confuse while laying hints of insight, your hindsight. You built a monument
to modernism and then created a new field of criticism which disturbed you. At the same
time sketched out the first tenant of postmodernism: became an example for all to see the
fractured future. Finally, you decidedly created a literary temple for the new scientists,
with their theories of chance and kismet, and so you became the fractal standard in the
stuffy turbulence of the new Modernism which spreads icily around us today. But you
will have the last laugh.
Need to finish the article: We could not overlook a few things Jimmie. First,
your eye not for detail but for what matters: the small, the little, the minute, the trivial.
No heroes, no heroics, nothing beyond the day to day of the day. Second, your love of
language. The musicality of the ordinary. Your love of lovers of language. Third: your
love of people. You saw right into the heart, the mind, the veins, the loins, the soul, the
atoms and molecules of those you so loved. You knew their fears, their fetishes, their
memories, their aspirations, you knew their disappointments, their successes, their
desires, their phobias. Our necessary humbleness before the forces and purposes of life.
Finally: your Joy, Mr. Joyce. Your Joy of life, of people of history of laughter of talking

of sex of eating of of of... faith in the nascent opportunities in life. Cant think. Must
be love. Ah, Js question: or is it mine: how can we act, finally, without hope?
The cool darkness the flowed below him suddenly gave him chills. Ghosts appear
like this. Homeless burrowed beneath the shrubbery just beyond the tracks. The
stonerattles of someone walking unseen. A whistle. Why? What? Some kind of signal.
Need to leave. And so he took his car and drove towards Mount Helix.