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Chaconne, 3e Livre

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By Michael Onofrey

Sky gray, clouds roiling, ocean chopped, wind lifting mist off the chop. It was the kind of day Randal Carr liked to be out and walking.

He saw her hurrying along Ocean Front Walk at about ten in the morning. Her torso and head were wrapped in a length of khaki-colored cloth, face visible, hands clutching the fabric and holding it against her body. Levi’s were on her legs, sandals on her feet. She moved in front of a beige stucco wall like a picture, and that’s what she was in Randal’s mind, for he had taken her picture the previous year in Mysore, India.

Randal went to stop her but she avoided him as if he were a bum asking for a handout, Randal hunkered inside a jacket, hair blowing, stubble on his cheeks.

“I know you,” Randal said. “I know you.”

She tried to get past him but he persisted.

“Listen. In Mysore. Mysore, India. You were on your haunches in front of a bone lady. Mysore Baba was with you. I knew Mysore Baba. I took your picture. I’ve got it in my apartment.”

She stopped. She looked at him. She hugged herself with her arms. Her complexion was smooth, her eyes hazel, her lips thin.

“Hey, really,” said Randal. “It’s true. I got your picture in a box in my apartment.”

Her eyes went over his face.

“Who are you?” she said.

“I’m Randal Carr. Who are you?” There was no one about, beach empty, Ocean Front Walk vacant. It was a Tuesday.

“I’m Rebecca.”

They stood, wind running at their clothing.

“This is important,” Randal said.

“I know it,” responded Rebecca.

“Come with me,” said Randal. “I’ll show you the picture. You have to tell me about the picture.”

“I can’t. I’m already late.”

“Give me your phone number.”

She shook her head, a twist of blond hair falling onto her forehead. She made to leave but Randal leaned and blocked her path with his shoulder, the stucco wall wedging her in on the other side.

“This is important,” Randal repeated. “This is some kind of crazy coincidence.”

She looked at him anew.

“Who are you?” she asked again.

“I told you. I’m Randal Carr, but it’s only a name.”

Again her eyes went over his long face, flint-gray irises, prominent nose.

“Where are you going? Is it more important than this?” asked Randal.

She looked away. Randal waited. Then he looked to where she was looking — sea buckling and throwing spume at the shore. Randal brought his eyes back to her. She looked at him.

“No,” she said. “Nothing is more important than this.”

She shifted her weight and then she said, “Let’s go over there and sit on that bench. I know you have the photo. I know what you are talking about. I brought the English-speaking Baba with me so he could tell me what the bone lady said, she among others on that sidewalk where the green parrots roost in the trees.”

“Yes,” said Randal, “let’s go over there and sit down.”

They walked to the bench and sat down and looked out across the sand to where the ocean fumed, wind at their faces, temperature moderate. Cold would follow the storm, follow the rain that was approaching Southern California.

They leaned and spoke into one another’s ears to be heard, his or her view toward the ocean, his or her lips at the ear of the other, Rebecca having pulled the khaki-colored fabric back a bit to expose her right ear.

“I wanted the old lady to throw the bones,” said Rebecca. “She threw the bones. She told Baba what the bones said. Baba translated.”

“What did the lady say?”

“She said the usual stuff about a man coming into my life and about marriage and about children and about the sadness of losing a child and about how that grief would be bearable because of the joy other children would bring. I told Baba to tell her to stop it and to tell me the truth.”

Rebecca turned toward the sea. Randal leaned and said, “Did she do that?”

Rebecca smiled as if to the ocean and its bruised horizon. She put her lips to Randal’s ear and said, “Yes, she did, but only after I gave her more money.”

“How much did you give her?”

“I emptied my purse into her shriveled hand.”

Randal’s tongue came out to moisten his lips. His lips were chapped.

“Did she throw the bones again?” asked Randal.

“No, she didn’t. She only looked at the same bones as they lay on the sidewalk from the first and only time she cast them. As you know, it was sunset.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that the positioning of the bones is determined in the convergence of possibility — time, matter and movement — all of which are unlimited and thus unknowable because unlimited is infinite and we cannot understand infinite. Perhaps someone would kick the bones or perhaps she would pick them up. In any event, either by hand or accident or malice, their positioning on the sidewalk the next time, and for all time to come, would in no way reflect where they had fallen this time no matter how often it was repeated, for their positioning would be unique each and every time.”
Rebecca brought her mouth away from Randal’s ear. She smiled, teeth well cared for, face without cosmetics.
Randal nodded.

“The old lady said, ‘The bones lie in the present.’”

A sheet of newspaper flew over the sand and Rebecca and Randal watched it until it went by them as both its sound and its image disappeared in back of them.

“The positioning of the bones is random. Present is random. There is no foretelling it. But it seems to fall into a pattern. It seems to repeat itself. Yet how can this be?”

“Yes,” said Randal.

“It only repeats itself when it is of use, which is when we perceive it to be of use. Description is past, and past is our story about what happened. We see pattern. We see repetition. This is how we describe it because it is of use. This is science and religion. But the bones tell us that phenomena is coincidence.”
“Coincidence?” questioned Randal.

“Yes,” said Rebecca. “Things, be they animate or inanimate, coming together at a certain time and at a certain place. This is coincidence and it resides only in the present. It is no different than the present. It is the magic of this world and it brings us everything, both joy and suffering. We throw the bones and they stop on the sidewalk before our eyes. We read them. We make up a story, which is description. If it fits our needs, it is truth. If it doesn’t, it is ignored or scorned. The truth of a recipe is that it meets our needs.”

“Is that what the old lady said?”

“This is what Baba said she said.”

Randal brought a hand up to stroke his jaw and then lowered it.

“Did this meet your needs?” asked Randal.

“No, not this — something else. But it was then that I stopped searching. I don’t know why.”

“What happened?”

“I took a train to Delhi and bought a plane ticket and flew home.”

“That was the answer. That was the future.”

“No,” said Rebecca. “Future is speculation. It is guessing. It is fantasy. It is hope and fear.

“I’m glad you stopped me,” said Rebecca, “because I often forget that coincidence is with us all the time. It is the uniqueness of this world. It is vibrant, vivid, and precise. It is never the same. It sometimes takes something as extraordinary as a stranger walking up and saying that he’s got a photo from when I learned this truth. The lady with the bones on the sidewalk was what I needed even though I didn’t know it, for what I needed was to see myself as part of coincidence. It wasn’t what the bone lady said. It was what the bone lady said while the bones lay on that sidewalk in front of me and Baba and her when the sun was setting and the parrots were returning to the trees. It was coincidence, and I was inseparable from it.”

Randal looked at her face, at her ear, at a tiny red stone tucked into the lobe of that ear. Randal was stalled, for everything in his vision was absolutely vivid. He turned and looked out — sand beveled, sea boiling, clouds scudding.

They sat, Rebecca and Randal, and when their silence was the beach and the ocean and the sky, Rebecca leaned and whispered, “The bones — a snapshot of coincidence. It is why we are here.”

Michael Onofrey grew up in Los Angeles, but now lives in Japan, where he teaches English as a Second Language. His stories have appeared in The Evansville Review, Oyez Review, and The William and Mary Review, as well as in other literary journals.

DANCING WITH DEBORAH

When dancing with Deborah
at our Freshman Fling
it was not alone that our feet took wing
but more ~ like ahhhh ~ this was all I’d waited for.

Waited ~ but no more ~ as
her lithe body, seamed to mine,
and our thighs roved synchronistically aligned
all suggesting ~ more than this in store.

But Deborah, a mystery persists
how did I resist a wish to grope your breast ~
what deterred me ~ from the rest?  Did
ghostly others then intrude:

Their thoughts colluding otherwise
(four unborn children balking me and
whispering, beware the fog-lands of Chablis)
each secret wannabe insisting ~ on another
for its mother?

~ Syd Knowlton

CARDBOARD BOXES IN THE  RAIN

I sing a threnody
to dreams discarded,
no longer needed; cardboard boxes
gone soggy in the rain,
icky ~ muddy-brown and slippery ~
they were once forts of travertine,
a castle
for a king,
the pavilion
for a queen,
and too ~ an oh-so-private room
where one
might wall away the world
and be no parent’s vassal. A place to be cocooned
from playmates cruelty. Very much
a churchy place
where one’s sacred self
was celebrated
as the reigning monarch.
Cardboard boxes
gone soggy in the rain.

~ Syd Knowlton

SMALL TALK

He stood in line in front of me.
He could tell I was hurting.
He moved aside, made a courtly gesture,
And said, “Why don’t you go ahead of me?”
“Thank you, that’s very kind,” said I, moving to his place.

“I know what pain is,” he said. “I nearly
died … just got out of the hospital a few weeks
ago. I was in there for six months.” There was
a pause, I didn’t know whether to encourage
conversation with this young stranger … or not.

I took the bait. “My goodness, what happened?”

“Oh, I was hit by a car. Freak accident. A drunk driver
hit a light pole, but instead of stopping there, the
car flipped, flew through the air, then slid into me as
I stood talking with some friends at the curb. Everyone
Expected me to die, but I fooled them all.”

I gave my sandwich order, touching the bags of
potato chips in front of me longingly.
“Those are very bad for you,” he said, smiling gently.
I smiled back and said, “Oh, yes, I know. I used to tell
myself I could work it off at the gym.
But no more.”

Then he asked, “What happened to you?”

“Life happened, My Dear. I’m very ill and will die soon.
But until I die, I want to soar … live my life to the fullest,
enjoy every moment. Life is a miracle. I intend to live it well.
Your time to go has not arrived.
But mine is near at hand.”

His cell phone rang.
He took the call.
The line moved forward.
I wanted to say more, but instead, I paid
and went to a table.

He held out his cash for his order, so glad to be alive,
smiling and kidding the cashier,
who didn’t answer or smile in return.
My young stranger took his bag and left the store,
I watched him go. He never once looked back.
—LaVonne Taylor, December 19, 2008

HOARY

AUTUMN

WIND

Austere and nonrelenting hoary wind,

why do you come with angry voice

to ravage and steal away these tresses
which decorate my limbs?

Why did you, first, deosculate my beauty,
then come to bare and rip away
my dignity and splendor
with your mighy thrust?

Vermillions, ochers, rusts and greens
are shorn to leave me naked, here, and cold.
Why did you come to weather and scatter
my assemblage ­­– to let it be trod underfoot?

The wooded hills, my home, provide no place
for me to keep and hide my colored gems.

I have pleased the eye of many,
but your bold charade of undulating billows
offers no respite and will not be postponed.

Is there no stationary spirit of respect
to hold, encompass and protect me?
Trapped by nature’s laws of motion and change
I must abide by your will.
Can you feel and hear my silent cry of pain
mingling with your angry voice

that echoes through the hills?

By Mary L. Ports