The Aesthetic

And so the invading armies confronted the same sorts of mishaps that others had experienced over the years on the approach to Los Angeles — most related to their own hubris, but ultimately to the impenatrabilty of the great city itself. Waldeman’s forces from the north stopped to take the waters of Malibu only to find themselves inhaling unbreathable air, and then surrounded by fire on all sides. Ramirez, coming from the east, stopped to camp beneath the San Gabriel mountains, when a sudden rain sent a wall of mud and rock down the from the hills into the heart of his artillery. Anselmo’s cavalry made it all the way to Stadium Way before a light earthquake struck fear into the horse, sending them scattering into Highland Park and Silver Lake, their riders unable to control them. As it was, Cabrillo’s small defensive unit never had to fire a shot to repel the invaders and, in fact, never had to deploy away from the Fairfax district, where it had been so welcomed by the citizenry and fed quite well.

When Reggy was a young boy, maybe seven, he had a dream where he was at a party, and someone asked what he was thinking. He answered, “In the future, everything will be made of chrome.” And he distinctly remembered waking up from that dream and wondering what chrome was.

And so, with his award tucked safely under his arm, Milo announced to his friends that it was his wish to have a good meal. “I’m thinking Italian,” he said. “Perhaps a nice little place, a trattoria perhaps, or maybe a ristorante. No, a caffe. Or maybe a bistro or a cantina. But never a cucina. Not for me, not a cucina, not ever.”

In Robertson’s dream, he was speaking with his father about a favorite street of his near the port of the big city. And his father spoke of a bustling street with a clock tower, a bank with high columns and a hotel called the Alexander where celebrities and dignitaries would stay the night after stepping off the ship, resting before taking the long journey to the city itself. And then Robertson was walking the place his father had spoken of fondly, finding it decayed, empty, buildings falling down. Storefronts that had once been dress shops long ago were shuttered liquor stores. It was a lonely, diesel wind that blew down these streets that no one wanted anymore.

When he awoke, Robertson remembered the dream clearly. Three years later when he found himself back in the town to care for a sick friend, he went down to the street of his dream and found it all gone, scraped clean by something called a redevelopment agency. And it occurred to him that it wasn’t the ghost of his father that had visited his dream, but rather the ghost of Beacon Street, fighting to be remembered, even if by the son of another country.

When the reading was over, the dozen or so in attendance began to stand up from their folding chairs, stretch and make their way away. Isabella, the featured reader, approached a man wearing an pressed white shirt, and asked him over the sound of the espresso machine if she would like to purchase one of her chapbooks. “I’m off books,” he said. “I’m into gaming.”

You wake with the undeniable feeling that something is wrong. Your first thought is that maybe you are in the middle of a mild earthquake – one that is tearing down hospitals, skyscrapers and schools a hundred miles away but is just barely perceptible in the swing of a hanging fern in the kitchen of your apartment. So, you lay in bed completely still, eyes closed, trying to determine if the mattress is moving. Yes, the room is rocking, you decide. Then, you’re not so sure. Then, yes, of course, you definitely feel it now, getting stronger by the second. Ultimately, you decide that it’s just your imagination. The earthquake, that is, not your feeling that something is wrong. That’s definitely not a mistake.

When Roger waved his library card over the automatic self-checkout machine’s reader, he got a message on the screen instructing him to visit the main desk. Dutifully, he picked up his books and did so. “Must be something wrong with the machine,” the woman behind the counter said with a shrug. “Your card seems fine.” But then the same thing happened with his card again the following week, and then the week after that. And Roger could clearly see that there was nothing wrong with the machine. Other people were using it right and left.

So when it happened a fourth time, Roger asked the woman behind the counter why he was unable to use the self-checkout machine if there was nothing wrong with his card and nothing wrong with the machine. The woman opened her mouth as if to say something, but stopped short and said, “Let me just check with the head librarian.” She ran off and came back a minute or so later, followed by a slightly older woman of the same general appearance. “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with your card,” she said to him, as if that were an explanation, and then she proceeded to help him check out his four or five books on political history and electrical engineering that he had chosen this week. Before he left, he glanced at the original librarian, who was staring back at him with a sorrowful look, making expressions with her eyes as if there was something obvious that he didn’t understand.

Upon first glance, Milo formed the opinion that Mr. Dax was the kind of person who would eat while sitting on the toilet. And the image was so clear — this picture he had of Dax sitting on the toilet, his pants around his ankles, a bowl of high bran cereal resting on his knees, his mouth full of milk and chewing — that Milo simply could not stand to look at the man for the rest of the day. Which made the drive from Lodi unbearable.

“Oh God, oh crap!” he yelled, and threw the book across the room, knocking a tattered sock monkey off the television set. “I can’t believe I fell for another one of these oh-pity-me-the-suffering-writer stories. Is there anything more pathetic than reading a book by a writer who obviously has been published describing the suffering of an unpublished writer, nonetheless his internal suffering as he struggles to find his voice? I mean, who gives a shit? What are the struggles this dork next to somebody who actually works all day, like a coal miner or a grape picker?”

He leaned forward in his seat and pushed aside the empty plate in front of him. “All this talk about the readers — the audience — it’s never made very much sense to me. I just don’t know who that is.” He then folded his hands in front of him on the table and looked at them for a moment, before continuing. “I mean, I understand that there must be an audience. After all, who do we expect to be watching our movies, reading our books, looking at our paintings, whatever. But because I always think of myself as the artist, I just never think of myself that way.

“Sure, I know these people must be out there — people who just pay their money and experience what other people create with no thought whatsoever of doing anything themselves. But I’m just not like that. I’m always thinking about creating, getting ideas for the next thing. I have no idea what people on the other side experience.”