El Colonel is smiling,
writing with his cigarette’s smoke in that great page, the sky . . . that great
page, ever open to all, in which all eyes may read---and there, their readings
being writings . . . find also the writings of others . . . moving, living, in
skies of their own among these sometimes shared skies, these skies sometimes
encountering each other . . . these writings, readings readers & writers .
. . meeting among these skies . . . so that—
I.
El Colonel is
smoking. Writing in the skies, on the
varying hues of blue that shift with their proximities to the horizon . . .
writing on the clouds scattered carelessly about . . . his eyes like fingers
move, inscribing texts often in no known languages, at times in ones he barely
knows from tattered texts come across—languages foreign to him—and, at times,
even in the two languages he knows well . . . writing in the skies essaying to
convey the dream states that float among memories---involuntary memories called
out by the random touching of a shadow at the foot of a tree on the ground next
to him—events long forgotten vividly alive—
El Colonel is
smoking. These memories & dreams he
is inscribing in the sky are not of large events at all. Thank God! No!—No,
these are all the small events, happenings, that one is unaware for the most
part that one is even noticing as they are passing—
II.
In a room, in some other
place, a city—somewhere—she is sitting, smoking, writing in her journal . . .
some time ago she had begun to interpret her life in terms of events, of
writings, of images, documents—come across in her continual perusal and
construction of her own “Kennedy Collection”—comprised primarily of books and
old magazines, but including also stacks of Xeroxes of fotos of the JFK
Assassination, which she keeps for cutting up and rearranging—into collages—and
these slowly through time finding their ways into various scrapbooks she keeps—
This “Kennedy Collection”
she periodically pours through, finding each time a differing sequence, a
differing set of clues as to the “meanings” she is to interpret from them
regarding her own existence.
Increasingly, her own days
are intercut, shot through, with those “Days in Dallas”—especially as Autumn
advances, inexorably—to the annual return of That Day—among “Those Days”—yet
not only “those Days”—but all the Days surrounding them through time—the entire
lifetime especially of Lee Harvey Oswald dominates certain areas of her
consciousness, including the continually growing storehouse of memories which
she associates directly with the Life of Oswald.
Thus, one October, during
visits to her sister’s, she became aware that certain patterns in the linoleum
were directly related with constellations which must have been embedded in the
kitchen, say, of the houses where Marina Oswald had been living with, say, Ruth
Paine—and others, perhaps also—where the Oswalds had lived after their New Life
in America had begun--and these intersecting patterns and constellations found
in linoleums were in fact reconstructions of some other events in
consciousness, a consciousness greater than her own—indeed, one comprising, as
it were, chunks of the Twentieth Century itself . . . even though now well into
the Twenty-first century, she felt that these secrets exuded from expiring
linoleums scattered through time and across the “interior landscapes of the
late Twentieth Century” . . . yes—she distinctly, most definitely felt!—that
these secrets being exuded had traversed the “line between Centuries,” as
though transgressing a forbidden, or, at least—forbidding-- border—not unlike,
say the border that Oswald crossed from Finland into the Soviet Union during
his “defection”---yes!-- she felt, she distinctly felt-- these “secrets” had
been, were continually—seeping, invading surreptitiously, as though entering in
as soldiers do in moving through ground brush, on their bellies . . . that
these secrets were arriving, day by day, night by night, at the very entrance
to the battered small house she lived in on a battered small side street in a
battered small section of the battered small city which she envisioned always
as the one sacred place where these rites could take place, observed and
participated in only by herself, their one initiate . . .
One October Sunday . . .
as the late afternoon golden glow began to fade from the hallucinatory reds,
oranges, dark greens and near-blacks of the heavy leaves—as the first shadows
of the suddenly much cooler twilight began to etch their ways across the small
battered lawn . . . one October Sunday, she indeed felt more strongly than ever
the presence of the seeping secrets exuded by the linoleums of those kitchens
Lee Harvey Oswald had entered in, in visiting with his estranged wife and
children . . . she felt that these secrets were unfolding before her very eyes
there on the shadow etched small battered lawn . . . sounds were reaching her
from a neighbor’s TV—set to the NFL football games . . . Oswald she remembered
had watched football during his last visits with his family . . . (more likely
college football, on Saturdays? . . . some part of her mind registered the
question—hanging there in the air—have to look it up, some part of her mind muttered,
making a mental note of it—almost certain of it—were after all the pro games on
then, before there was more than just the one then much smaller pro league . .
. ? an important detail to come back to--)—yes—Oswald had watched football
games . . . her eyes moved among the patterns etched by the twilight shadows on
the small battered lawn, seeing in them the slow emergence of patterns seeping
in from those long ago linoleums . . . as though the “action” of the plans
gathering in Oswald’s mind—whether his own or those being planned and planted
there by others---as though the action now was moving outdoors . . . from out
of those rooms in the cheaply furnished homes, those flimsily constructed
rooming houses he moved among . . . was moving outdoors and there, in the
gathering twilight, taking form, gathering its thoughts as it were, in the
patterns emerging—the very same patterns that had been observed in the
linoleum—she now saw quite distinctly etched there, there in the backyard, on
the small battered lawn . . .
III.
El Colonel is smoking . .
. from the stream of involuntary memories which he is writing in the sky with
his eyes . . . begin to emerge, at first in clusters, closely clumped, tightly
gathered—begin to emerge small constellations of images, images each so sharp,
so clearly distinct, that its facets, diamond-like, begin to etch into, cut
open, the adjacent images in the constellation---releasing sudden erupting
streams—like those lone spraying spumes suddenly sliced open and squirting forth
from the sun---those long trails of raging, burning, appallingly beautiful reds
and oranges . . . blasting into space---pure Heraclitean fires . . . of
being---Being released into the infinite of Space---traveling with such
incredible storm-powered speeds that they seem to scream into the eyes . . .
and out of these searing images . . . as though they are cooling in an
acceleration of “the evolution of Time” —out of these released images emerge
suddenly, in single file, as though a slide show being shown in the
skies—images, images long forgotten—no longer singular images, but ones which
open up—as the mouths of caves are said to open—and reveal within them depths .
. .
El Colonel is smoking . .
. leaning, leaning into the slight breezes which are now coming up over the
edges of the hill . . . leaning the better to see—to see within this opening
now so vividly before him—
It is a cinema, its
entrance like a cave mouth—embedded in a seeming cliff, which is in actuality
as its image becomes more distinct to the hard-peering eyes of El Colonel—which
is in actuality the tightly spaced wall of a series of buildings on a street he
had once found in a bombed out small city . . . it came to him now in a howling
rush of clarity—the entrance to this Cinema of Catharsis as he had thought of
it, even before entering into it and finding himself, first, in a lobby
entrance, a very long, extended hallway—at the end of which was the glass
enclosed small booth where a ticket taker would be standing when a show was in
progress—at the start of shows, also—and at all times in between—time now
heaving and buckling, in time with the heaving and buckling of the parquet
floor of the long hallway leading to the interior entrance where the ticket
taker’s booth was standing . . .a heaving and buckling which, nonetheless, did
nothing to disturb the immense lobby card images hanging on the roughly painted
walls of the long hall of the lobby . . . these images, each one of them
belonging apparently to completely different films—gave evidence of the long
history of this particular Cinema—as some of them dated back to the era of
Silent Films—while others showed more recent productions—most of them cheap B
jobs . . . El Colonel finds himself, via the intensity of his gaze, “entering
into” the area beyond the ticket taker’s booth—
El Colonel’s figure,
leaning into the breezes, leaning into the sky—looks for all the world to those
eyes outside himself which he often finds looking at himself—from himself—his
own eyes, detached, as it were—and located at some distance—find his leaning
figure for all the world to look like some shadow figure, a silhouetted shadow
puppet on a wall of infinite space---a wall of pale depths . . .
El Colonel is smiling to
himself, smiling as he enters into the area beyond the ticket taker’s booth—an
area where the once red plush rug is now worn thread bare—literally thread
bare, El Colonel finds himself smiling to himself, smiling to find the time
worn phrase, itself not a bit “threadbare”—to be in actuality, there before
him, the most vivid illustration he has ever found of that thread bare
phrase—and, on this thread bare surface, are scattered the kernels of long ago
pop corn, the ashes of ancient cigarettes, the air still redolent with the
scents of both—the heavy clinging haze of the popcorn smells intermingled with
the ashy tastes, acrid and acrimonious, of the cigarette ashes held in
suspension among the interstices of the threadbare rug . . .
El Colonel smiles, and,
pushing on, as he smilingly puts it to himself:
“as his actions, reversing Aristotelian Poetics, imitate the words—push
on”—pushing through the heavily covered door that opens somewhat unwillingly
into the Cinema itself . . . before entering, El Colonel’s eyes take in this
dim lit arena—picking out the shadowy tops of the lines of the seats—here and
there, like rows of broken teeth—betraying the presence of seats which, due to
the excited or angry gestures of some patron, dim, jerky, faraway—some patron’s
having pounded on them, beaten them, into a kind of slouching submission—so
that the rows of seats are broken up by these gaps, these craggy monuments of
remaining teeth-like chairs—jagged and raw—their blank spaces staring at the
Cinema screen—gaping from their gaps into the as yet dim presence looming there
in the shadows at some distance from El Colonel, who remains for some moments
standing at the entrance . . .
NOTE. Concerning the whole El Colonel series, an evolving “major” work, Chirot, whose work, both verbal & visual, is a great too often hidden resource, has written elsewhere: “it should be noted that El Colonel is not a ‘static’ being—moves through & inbetween as ‘in-beat-we-in’—is rhizomatic—rhythmic—unfolding—in events among Time & ‘consciousnesses’—non-linear-and ‘occurs’ not so much as a ‘character’ ‘by an author’(including himself)---but exists in dimensions which begin to explore the zones which Stephane Mallarme created as ‘poèmes critiques’—& an obsession with El Colonel is a Writing which exists without ‘materializing’—a Journey with the Writing of the No—“there is thus no particular ‘order’ to the pieces, though the ‘first’ appearance as and in print of El Colonel is the Chapbook ‘El Colonel Smiles’—(also published as a prose poem text w/o images in Otoliths online & print Journal-)—the first presentation of El Colonel’s ‘thoughts, those improvised compositions’ which may serve as a kind of ‘Intro’ in re ‘composition’& re composition as an emergence out of ‘decomposition’--appears in ‘El Ojo de Dios Part the First: Insects & Letters,’ which can be linked to at the Sous Rature site.”
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