Strange Days - a Sketch

Strange Days

Morning, timid this far north, approached my window, where it hesitated.

Within, her brother and enemy lingered in many places though the sun had long since risen; on the windows and along the floor as frost, in the cold hash pipe as ash, in the lava lamp as yellow and red bubbly ghost still rising and falling and rising and falling.

On the table as story.

The sun rose higher still before sister morning finally pried herself through the frosted glass and heavy curtains and onto my face where she settled and with the help of pure physical needs found and excavated me.

I opened my eyes to wonder at the ceiling, then turned to my left to wonder at the wall and at the many little letters there, then turned to my right to wonder at the table, to wonder at the large sheet of paper on the table with many more inky letters scrawled all over it, all mine. And I wondered indeed, for I could not remember what I might have written.

I heaved myself halfway up and onto my elbow to wonder a little harder. So many letters, all running around scratchily on stiff paper in my barely legible hand. And so it came back to me, oh so little by oh so little: that long single exhaling under the spell of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D-Moll. I sat all the way up, picked up the sheet, wrapped the blanket around me, noticed my own breath, leaned back against the wall behind me, and began to read.

Reading, I returned to the arms of brother cold and dark despite both gas burners on as high as they would go and hissing heat into his icy heart and the little kerosene heater that could doing its part in the frosty corner. Barely more than gestures. We are talking capital N North here, a meter of snow outside my window, glittering and would be sharp to the touch, I could tell, and would squeak underfoot, I could tell, and two almost meter-thick walls colder than death—the outside walls, one nearly as cold wall facing the hallway, and one not at all warm wall which I shared with my neighbor. Making a tall rectangular box of frigid space. Me and brother night inside. Cold and stoned both.

I had swung across first one ocean and then a continent to reach the next ocean and the big city there they call Los Angeles and in it lived the Doors and Strange Days through all of side one and then all of side two and still my frosty wings were spread and eager to go places so I carefully lifted the Doors record off the turntable and instead carefully lowered Bach onto it. Then I took the stylus and lowered it, slowly, respectfully, the way you always lower even the most eager stylus onto Bach.

I have a theory that Bach is God. I think it will survive scrutiny if you follow and allow it. If not God God then at least of the same substance. I have no doubt.

Of sounds there are none as God-like as those first measures of the Toccata and Fugue in D-minor, or D-Moll as my German pressing said. They arrived through the ceiling, from a lost somewhere up there in the darkness, descending lashes of beauty to kill the silence. Stunned, I reached for pen and paper as would a photographer for his camera when stumbling upon aliens unseen—slowly, carefully, centimeter-by-centimeter—hoping not to draw attention, spook them. I knew I had to capture him. Him God. Him Bach. Were I not to let him flow trough me and out of me as ink and onto stiff paper I would satiate and drown in beauty. Not a bad end mind you, but I was young then and not ready to go just yet.

But not slowly enough, not inconspicuously enough. Those first few measures, midflight, spotted my movement, saw me, rushed me and wrestled me to the floor where part of me, some sandy sunny part of me, somehow remained in Los Angeles upon Santa Monica beach, upon Santa Monica beach sand, warm ear to the ground listening to Ocean, to wave upon wave reaching sand like wind in trees but part of me, most of me, was in the here and now and in Stockholm hearing Bach/God, and he got back on his feet and found a pen in his hand and stiff paper on his table and he began to write down all that Bach said.

Those first few measures again, resurrected, circling, then entering like so many lovers. Through my ears, my eyes, my skin, embracing me each as they entered. My body sang. Then the vision:

The ever dawn of North Wind and his shifting lights. Shimmering pipes icy organ rising sparkling mid winter making snow sing. It was God coming down through my ceiling as the aurora borealis and I knew then and there that Bach and God are indeed one and the same. I kid you not.

Then the world rises. It starts somewhere in the engine room of time, his feet on the pedals farthest to the left, hands too to the far left as he begins the lifting. My room vibrates with the effort, with the strength of that rising. I am water I am wave I am ink I flow onto stiffly white frame after frame of captured aliens or no one will ever believe me.

The lifting escalates and crescendos and is done escalating and opens the door onto Spring.

I see and follow with the tip of my very costly fountain pen which I bought just the other day knowing full well I could not afford it. These were the days where a check was automatically good because you signed it and gave it to the clerk who then handed you the pen with smile. I later learned what overdrawn meant, but meanwhile here it is in my hand and anyway, it’s too late to take it back now, no matter how expensive it was, so I do with it what I dreamed I’d do with it and I write.

Onto Spring: The doors are flung wide open, onto crystal steps I see, narrow, dancing, rising too on the morning into sky. No more brother North Wind now, just dawn and dew and those little lakes of silver that form on your petals and leaves and do to sense of smell what Michelangelo does to rock. I wish I could cry. Matching tears.

Though for whose benefit? I am overcome, yes, but not beyond control. I keep writing. I know no longer exactly what I say or why really just that I know that this is a capital M Moment and I am having some sort of epiphany here and maybe just maybe I’m a genius of some kind that someone is waiting to discover and make immensely rich and warm and to move out of this freezing ceilingless room so full of darkness and frost and this immense music.

Sound as Mountain. Physical. And I confess I lose my way. In Him. I reach the end of the paper and there is more to write as I sail on, cast about by waves a soul in blessed turmoil. And then the cresting that lets me sprout wings and out and over I glide. He does this to you, you know, God does. Bach does.

I have taken leave of Stockholm of winter of snow and Boreas’ Light and now there is only ocean reflecting soul and I cannot comprehend how anyone encumbered with arms and legs and fingers and toes could possibly have captured beauty such as this, wings such as these and again I remind myself that I am in His presence, sailing His air, and that for Him all is possible.

I turn the sheet over. The one sheet. I only have the one sheet? Why have I only the one sheet? But wondering does not turn it into several, so instead I turn it over and continue this scribbly dance and I hope that at least some small vestige of what enters actually exits as I race on over one inky Swedish word after another and turning I see a path that perhaps can be followed or I will never find my way back.

What goes through God’s mind when he writes music like this? What could possibly inspire Him, source of all inspiration? But something does and did and am I really the first to hear this? To hear what He meant. To see what He saw.

There are islets below. Could be Greece could be Australia could be our own Stockholm archipelago in the summer I don’t know and really don’t care as long as my wings carry me and I don’t get too close to the sun.

My speakers make a faint hum from an inverter I need in this old apartment, so old it has direct current electricity which needs chopping up into little AC bits and that’s what makes them hum but God doesn’t care and I no longer notice. Now there is only space and the tapestry of pipes as I approach the edge of the second page and there is so much more to say but nowhere to say it so I turn to the wall and now I have sheet to last me.

We sail on, Bach and God and I for the final measure.

Timid sister sees all this of course which is perhaps why she finally risked it through frosty panes and heavy curtain to find my face, beneath which I sleep the sleep of last night’s frost and though I slowly know her on my face up there on the somewhere surface I choose to ignore her for a while. But she has come to stay and soon manages to dispel her brother to some nether, even colder, region, to under my bed and to into the corners where he will sulk till the sun sets again and she tugs me gently and tells me to wake up, to wake all the way up and to open my eyes.

“So what do you think?” I ask.

My friend gets to the bottom of the stiff sheet and mumbles, without taking his eyes off the text, “Amazing.” Turns the sheet over.

“You think your dad will publish it?” His dad is an editor of some sort. Small magazine, but quite prestigious I’m told.

“I think so,” he says and keeps reading. “Surreal,” he adds.

He gets to the bottom of the second page and says, “Does it end here?”

He turns the sheet over again and over again and over again looking for the ending. “Where is the rest?”

“On my wall,” I remember.

Thoughts? I'd like to hear them.
Ulf Wolf

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