Your Directions (oneiric compositions thirty-four, nineteen & twenty-three)

a musical tag-along

oneiric composition thirty-four

	Oh, indolent boredom — the silence is physical. Its weight, too much on an impassive mind. Aimless days meander for accomplishments — give it what you can . . . 	

	Find a reason — just one reason to leave the house. 

You could buzz to the post office. Mail something — there: the bill on the table. It even needs a stamp. That means there'll be an interaction. You’ve been putting it off. 

(& how will that go? Will one side of the counter misinterpret something from the other?)

Presumably. 

Grab the envelope anyway though.  

Approach the door. Open it up & walk onto the porch. Turn around & pull the knob firmly. Lock it. Check it with a shake. Give the key an extra twist. 

Pinch the sunglasses out from your jacket pocket. Swiggle'em on with a hand on each earpiece. Do they feel strange — bent or something? Move'em around. Do they fit the same as usual? Whatever . . . 
 
(Temples can abstractly swell from the heaviness of distilled indifference.) 

Step down carefully — not too fast. Hold the rail. Turn towards the street. More steps. 

(Dream a one-second scene of a hospital emergency room after a bad fall.) 

Look down. Step again. Watch that last one.

	A few houses away, a scrawny, lifted pickup truck will do a slow peel-out as though happening in fifth gear, chugging low but moving, then picking up a slight speed & burning rubber. It'll move past your house, squealing at a walking clip like it's on a leisurely stroll. Look down the street to the address where the feat's tire marks seem to begin.  

There'll be a tubby kid of about ten on a porch with a rebel flag on a pole. He'll give it half a baton-spin like a lazy race marshal before a woman will come out of the house & tell the boy to come inside. He'll drag the flag behind him as he walks past the screen door that the woman is holding open. Once he's in, she'll look away from the door & see you standing near the street. After the glance, she'll go in & shut the door. There'll be a muffled fog of voices from inside. 

	Turn & look to the other end of the street. A few blocks down, at that Polish Hall/Catholic Church compound, the street Ts. Take the right & follow it up to an overpass that rumbles sometimes — but not right now though at this mid-afternoon hour, with no cars passing below.  

No one else will be on the sidewalk ahead, either. Good.  

No right or left pass-negotiating to do — no brigade of side-by-side walkers who make you watch & guess as they march towards you with not one of them blending into the pack to allow you clear sight of an easy passage until the last second, after you've preemptively stepped into the gutter & caught a few chirps of their chatter as they ramble on their way.

	Ahead will be an intersection — its aerial-view layout is imagined as that of a mangled chicken foot.  

If you go straight ahead, down the leg of the overpass, the middle toe road passes a chain of row houses where cage-to-cage conversations & small children spill onto the sidewalk. 

A sharp left would take you up a hill to persevering Victorians which overlook the river. They seem judgmental — maybe even feeble. 

The slight right you'll make instead leads you up a grade past a few peeling shacks with tarped roofs attached to open garages. 

Next, a drop-off of land seems to rise out & then sink into itself as though something was partially exhumed by nature & left unfinished. 

Then, a paved yard with a set-back vinyl-slatted trailor-ish-but-not residence sits beside a cinder-block auto repair place. It’s always closed, but with dusty cars inside floating on lifts as if a permanent museum installation.

	Cross the next corner with that beautifully abandoned two-story perched above the intersection at the stoplight. It’s veined in leafless vines except for the vestibule which gives it its death-gasp open-mouth facade. Above the stoop are those windows, eyes with blinds bent violently in the middle, leaving spaces like pupils that, in person, might be too large for a lucid exchange.

	The street you'll be on lines the back of a hospital where scrubs on break pace & smoke while talking on cell phones.  

A few years ago, you saw about ten or so of them in various healthcare-attire t.p.ing a "Just Married" coupe parked across the street. They were laughing & circling quickly in opposite directions. 

As they were working, one of them dropped something metallic-sounding & picked it back up quickly, put it in their scrubs shirt pocket like it hadn't happened, looked around, then went back to the task, unwrapping rolls above or around the others surrounding the car, murmuring, some pursing a butt, giggling low. 

	The next intersection is a five-point. Go soft-right for a little while, then make a hard left at the funeral home. There's usually a memorial service going on, morning or midday — whenever. They seem to be casual affairs there: T-shirts, jeans, Uggs; supermarket shopping-wear. No action today, though. 

Maybe someone got lucky . . .

	Cross the RR tracks. The post office will be at the end of the block cater-corner that lounge that opens early for the postal workers, off in afternoon, who come in for post-route cocktails & free meatballs or wings warming in a chafing dish over a sterno. 

Upper wall shelves exhibit apparently-homemade plaster-cast headless torsos interspersed with trophies, photos & postal ephemera.

	Inside the post office itself, there'll be a long, cane-shaped cue to the counter. In fact, it'll be all the way to the door, so wait outside, looking in at the line until it moves. When a customer leaves & the door opens up, slip inside behind the last person, but immediately focus on the greeting card display against the wall, taking off your sunglasses & fake-reading, as if you've been there for a while, in an attempt at seeming as though you're not the new last guy; that you're one of them, just deep in your world.

As you get closer to the counter, an older man cuts in line & asks a postal worker something about giving his number to her husband because this thing happened or whatever & the postal worker will smile back as she's listening with a wince like she's looking into a bright light & can't shield her eyes from the annoying glare.

	You'll be called to a window. Hand the envelope over & answer the perishable/hazardous question confidently. Say "nice day" or something & then get out before you say the wrong thing or the right thing in the wrong way.  

Outside, you'll see that the postal meatball lounge across the street doesn't open for another hour, so feel for the sunglasses hanging by an arm from your t-shirt collar & head up towards the main drag to circle around another way back to your house. 

(You locked it, right? Never mind. Too late, now.) 

Just go to the four-lane at the light. Look for a bridge.

oneric composition nineteen