Leaving Las Vegas

When JP Moonsberry speaks, his words become a boat, and the ship grows as out from a shell; the air around becomes abuzz with tiny ghosts, who pick and gulp at the strings. The ghosts gather around the edges of things: a tree, a wall, a shadow, and the light beyond the arc is where they sip, as the redness takes them. Some of the ghosts are not ghosts but moths, the size of a small hand; these nest inside moonflowers. The flower pulls its center up from roots so that the ovum eat.

JP Moonsberry is standing beside Darwin with an umbrella, shielding the enormous bird from the summer sun.  \\\ (He also comes in the rain, and he whispers to the timeless, lapping sea.)

Moonsberry looked towards Paradise Park, and there, suddenly, there she was: a white opalescence moving out from the grass. She had gold crystals around her neck, crystals which fell from man’s knowing about her, and she wore white gloves, though her fingers were free—she had the most beautiful hands anyone had ever seen—and on her ring finger she wore an enormous amethyst. Gold wire was wrapped around the stone and around her skin. It was not difficult for men to know what to give, as the things became a part of her, the jewels and stones and shells. She had an abalone pearl in the shape of a seahorse. She was as a bird but belonged to a species of lily; this was Stella.

Stella had come from a pond in the desert, only a one hour car ride from Las Vegas. She had been the housekeeper for the town’s hotel and their café. She was most beloved by the owner of that town and all the people there. Her air was as mycelium. She had no need to eat or drink because she ate directly from the sun. She drew from the soil.

In the morning you could feel her as a ghost come crawling next to you, her long soft hair smelling of a floral lawn, the rooster crowing already and her silk nightgown flowing in droves in the air around. The space she made was infinite, but could fit perfectly beneath your desk.

Well,                Stella               said JP Moonsberry. [[and the first two little ghosts: bzz bzz, grabbing at the words]]

Moonsberry had given Stella the gifts she most treasured: a little cloth pouch containing seven tiny dolls---a a family, made of little sticks and colored string. She told them her worries and what made her frightened. The dolls stayed with her all night. Of course Moonsberry had also given her the night, had given it to her on a dish with almonds and cranberry. It was Moonsberry that had given her the amethyst in gold wire and with it, he gave her the sphere.

At night Stella prepared her body for ghosts. Ghosts from all places and all times preferred to visit her; once she had had an old man come from the apple country. His body was light as snow, just flurries from the dark sky. She had white foxes, some of them made of paper, some of stone, some of them crumbling to sand or a fine mist, bringing with them the scent of their deep, green woods. She had a messenger once from her pond, and the messenger was a cat and her kittens, as well as a hummingbird. The lilies on that pond opened at night.

Stella was visited by the black widow, the very one she watched at night from her chair on the patio, stars from the spider’s eight feet sticking into Stella’s hair and unfolding upon her.

At this moment, Stella was walking from the park where she had gathered crickets and some thick nettle. (For even though she need not eat but for the sun, she often took dried insects, tied with a loop of string and baked with salt and sesame, and the bitter grass she took for calm.

{{        I can see vaguely the shore of some distant world      }}

Moonsberry's words were a great vessel moving towards the park. The ship was called True Love. The ghosts were spreading off of it, slipping in and out of one another, their sounds of verdant flame and wings.

In Paradise Park, there are growing many mulberry trees but only one which bears fruit. Sparrows and grackles and magpies eat the berries from the branches, and for Stella the tree lays its fruit on the ground.

A house is burning. This is just after a crack had been opened in the mouth of history; Rip was a Cherokee man, robust and healthy, running quick out of the dwelling place, rearing towards the meadow who loosed itself upon the night, so that he bit the ear of this man, so that he bit the ear clean out of the man’s head. When the man screamed it was the sound of a whale. The only one able to hear the sound was Darwin, and out of his eyes fell red and glowing roses, raised from Castilian seed.

Moonsberry was still holding the umbrella over Darwin’s body, his own body become as a stack of plates in the hot sun.

Stella knelt and spread her hands around the falling roses, the flowers coming apart so that the petals were carried by the wind down the sidewalk, through the wire fence and into the city’s flood channel.

The roses did not stop letting go. Stella laughed. JP Moonsberry looked down and a smile pressed across his lips.

Stella could not hear anything he said. The ghosts were in their own separate frenzy, having bound themselves; they were as a spider, the circles spreading out now, beyond the park and the burning house. [[The Indian would be found years later in a cave by himself; men would take a photograph beside his bones.]]

Darwin was steadying himself now.  

Stella, Moonsberry said again, and the ghosts went wild.

Stella heard an eagle in the distance, and she saw herself beside Lemongrass pool. She could see the eucalyptus towering over the field and something small falling past the trees.

The tiger and the rose are white as the sun.

The ghosts erupted in a roar. Darwin opened his eyes and from them came the sign of the bird onto the sidewalk.

Stella saw a swallow and a dove.

Take out the space

The bird appeared to be flying up from the ground, so that the arc between each wing and its tail made the shape of the letter m.

Stella was hungry; Darwin knew this. Inside she was already crawling towards the man who had lost his ear, and the spirit which had come from the hole. It was the basket-maker that materialized in this man’s death, entered into the shape of music, the shape of an owl.

It’s cleaning me, you see, I’m getting clean.

The ghost was on Stella’s hands, wet and clear between her fingers. She could hear the air going around and around and, as she held a petal to her lip, she could feel that which descended upon her; inside her every fold, its shadow moving.

Joseph, someone said.    

The sign of the dove appeared again in the cement, now inside the flood channel, now on the wall of the Burlington Coat Factory. It beat its wings.

Love is not rest. Neither is love a timepiece.

At this moment a man inside the flood channel started becoming a bowl of fruit. First his body became a tangerine, and then an apricot, and finally an orange and an apple, a plum and a strawberry. He became the bowl as well. [[To be at that moment one of the blue figures painted on the wall behind him—to have seen that transformation.]]

The sun was getting near the mountain, and so JP Moonsberry would return home. He closed his umbrella and patted Darwin on the back of the head. He turned and started towards the sun and the red rock. Darwin stayed motionless on the sidewalk, breathing.

IVANPAH

 there are three

Have you got the largest crystal? Called a man in a hat.

I’ve got it! Cried JP Moonsberry. [[He had the crystal in the back of a big rig. The door to the carriage was open and the pink crystal sphere was bulging inside.]]

Are all the children on board? Called the man.

Yes, here we are! Cried the children.

Have the children got all their dogs and pets?

We’ve got them!

How about a lunch box? Have you all brought one?

We have!

Well then! Shouted the man in the hat. Well, let’s be off!

Hurray! Shouted the children.

Bring the crystal! Called the man. Go to the Mulberry tree!

And with that JP Moonsberry began driving slowly across the park. [[Paradise Park marked the eastern edge of the heart of Paradise, and so also the heart of Las Vegas, and so too the heart of America. The citizens of the park are about to secede from the town of Paradise (and so from Las Vegas and so from America). If they do this, the rest will be left with a hole where there was its heart, and no one can be quite sure what this will do, though some are certain that it will give the place a certain buoyancy, so the body might become as a reptile, or a bird.]]

And what about the fabric of space eternal? We think that this cannot exist.

And what about the fabric of time and of timelessness? Well, nothing is certain. And yet, how should there be more than one piece? We think there is only light.

And…

We don’t know. This is the key to our awareness.

Make certain you’ve got your lunchboxes!

Now sing! [[And the children and JP Moonsberry begin to sing: For beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain!

                                For purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plain! ]]

                                America! America! God shed his grace on thee!

                                And crown thy good

                                With brotherhood

                                From sea to—]]

Stop singing! Hollered the man. It’s good, very good! You’ve got it!

Now, what would happen if the crystal rolled out of the big rig? (There is nothing holding it in.) JP Moonsberry drove carefully, watching for places where the earth rose and receded, driving as smooth and steady as he could. It was not easy to drive a big rig this way, on account of it being so large—containing the world’s largest crystal! [[ the stone did concede to this, though whether or not it was contained is a question. And you know sometimes chicken that has been cooked long and well falls right off the bone, even when it isn’t expected, because the night has come for it at last. ]]

Now SING! Yelled the man once again.

Stop singing!

And when the time had come, nobody knew it. The man and the children and JP Moonsberry—everyone looked through the air as if it were an animal, and all of their breathing took the form of a raincloud, and the crystal was blushing in its big round—indeed, it could hardly contain itself—and the children were looking up at the man and the man could see beyond the trees; he was the only one who could, and in the distance he saw something coming down, something big. It was a series of discs, a kind of spiral, like a slinky.

Hey! The man yelled. And time around them actually stopped. Except for the mulberry tree and the world’s biggest slinky, which was coming down slowly, past the treeline.

And so the ball rolled out of the big rig. Carpe Diem! Yelled the ball, and time was still stopped.

In the sky, a soft cloud appeared. It was being played by a violin and a candelabra. The cloud could see the rosa rotunda, rolling fast now towards the conservatory. The cloud put its face out as if to kiss the thing, of course knowing she could not be kissed, because she was a kind of bait; if the cloud touched her, the whole place would go back to being music: an orchestra with a section of trombones and a piano.

So the cloud did not kiss, but he put his face very close, and the cloud’s face and the crystal ball (or was it the space between them?) made the park start up again, the heart shocked as from the entrance to a night circus, the lights in the trees and on the ground as a great glowing nest, and the rotunda—

DARWIN

I feel now that I should write about Las Vegas, since I am going to leave.

For the past five years, I have been living in the heart of Paradise. I had often thought this, and when I looked at a map of Paradise Township I found that it was really the case; if Paradise were a body, this is its heart.

The thing I think is most important to write about is Darwin, a man who lives outside the Sunrise Villas (sometimes) as an enormous bird. He is not there now, and he has not been there for many months. The last I saw him he was in a dentist’s parking lot along Eastern Avenue, just on the other side of Harmon.

I have been watching Darwin for some time, and I have tried to write about him plenty, but it is perhaps a mistake to do so. Anything I write about him will not resemble the fact of him. He is listening to his headset, a sports game, I think basketball, and I think he roots for Kentucky, although I believe he is from Wisconsin.

I think what I want to say about Darwin, is why he means so much to me, why I think he is of course the maestro and somehow holding the strings of this whole place, holding them together in such a way that they make the sound of a mother’s cavalcade.

And too

There are the harmoniums right now in the caves of Mercury, diamond kite-shaped creatures, transparent, eating the song of their planet, eating the vibration, eating their planet’s light.

[[[ we’re a threshold]]

And there is the sound of fruit which Darwin makes, and this is the sound of a body becoming the fruit together: the body becoming an apricot, a cherry, the whole bowl.

The thing is, I like the way he uses space. He sits in an antique chair on the sidewalk, here in the heart of Paradise, with his five or six shopping carts: so that this is a place to sit, under this blue sky.

And there are not many people using the sidewalk, so it isn’t such a problem for him to use the sidewalk for his own things.

And he listens to his headphones.

And I used to ride my bike past him, and we both would wave and say hello to each other, and when we hadn’t seen each other in many months (because he was in the dentist’s parking lot on the other side of Harmon) we met in the office complex lot beside my house, beside the Sunrise Villas 9 and Bigelow Space Mansion, and we waved, red faced, and we both said

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

And to see him was like a train roaring close in the night, and you are asleep in the little upstairs bedroom of a blue house that smells like the rain, and outside there is a tree as big as the big dipper, and there the train tracks; when the train comes by it shakes the house, and your bed moves back and forth like a bowl of pudding, like some wild eye of the sea.

Will you come back?

In another year! I might come back!

Because, I am going to leave.

[[[In war the dark is on nobody’s side; in love the dark confirms we are together]]]]

—J Berger

I like the way other people here use space, here in the Heart of Paradise.

My friend TK is living in a burnt-out house’s garage, one block from Paradise Park. When I first met him, it was four years ago and he was living in the flood channel. He was living with RIP, Melissa, James the young boy, and an older man whose name I cannot remember. They called their dwelling HELMS DEEP, because the entrance to it was like The Narrows. TK had, and still has, a dog named Spanger, who could hold a skateboard in his teeth, who can put his head into your real name.

There was a kitty refuge that they made when they lived in the garage that is now burnt down—Rip and TK—because the woman who lived in the house really owned two properties, though they were foreclosed, so there was a lot of space, maybe an acre of land in total, and so the cats got their fare share, they had at least half of it, and when the place burned down a lot of those cats died, and one wonders what Spanger the dog can smell now, what he thinks of this whole catastrophe.

I call TK my friend, but I do not act as a friend to him. I say friend in that the world has limits, and the sky only goes so far.

When I think about Darwin, and I think about TK, I think about what it means to survive here, in the heart of paradise, what it means to use this place as a cell to hold.

And I will not say too much about myself.

And you see, there are seven palm trees around me, and they are in the sun. It is the evening and it is August 17, 2014. And I have been told that it is the scorpions that are the keepers of these palms. Up there is a scorpion palm-tree council, and they are counting out our names in groups of three, and they are erasing them from the book.

I have never seen a scorpion. This whole time. Except for the two which are dead in a jar inside my house. They are on the table in the living room; Candy and Al gave the jar to me, with the two dead scorpions in it, because they had been hunting those things, hunting them at night with a special light, and these two were not the Mexican desert kind, they were the Palm Tree kind; they are small.

And my neighbor Nick helped clean my house and he said there were two baby dead scorpions in the ceiling vent in the master bathroom, though I never saw them.

It was Candy and Al that first told me about scorpions, told me the scorpion king would come in the sky and he would be riding on top of a pyramid and all of history would be open between these bricks.

Candy is pink and she floats in the pool.

I want to say

That the sky is so big here