Oz Letter
By Matthew Abrams
I once heard someone say the first generation makes the money, the next protects it and the third runs out of it. People talk of those who grew up in the depression as the greatest generation. The ones who earned it. That would make generation xyz, my generation, the third generation. The ones who blow it.
People say today’s truth has fled. We’ve traded in Cronkites for Geraldos, Murrows for big boobed broadcasters with names like Summer Crest. The virtue of tomorrow has sold out for short lived highs of today as we, the youth, pop out of plastic molds and roll into our dotage on the dog leash of conformity. Yeah, those people are probably right.
It was a Tuesday when I met Kyle Shike. The heavens opened upon Sydney’s King’s Cross district. Rivers ran down the sordid street of Darlinghurst. Hookers in scarlet spandex and black steel tip boots took shelter under denim jackets and canopies which glimmered in the red and blue hues of neon sex joints. The pavement glistened silver under street lights. Curry, pizza and beer filled the air as an intoxicated commotion swirled like cigarette smoke in a Biloxi pool hall through the night.
Out the bar and into all of this we went. The rain seized and everything wet wore diamonds when the light hit it right. I ran my finger along the banister of a bar knocking a row of hanging drips to the sidewalk. There was music. I ran ahead to an old timer sitting on a milk crate slapping his six string beside a Guerrilla amp. His carnival face moved as his frayed rubber-soled shoes tapped and slid upon the midnight sidewalk. Kyle caught up; along with a Dutch couple we met at the bar. The song: Van Morrison’s brown-eyed girl, but tonight it was ours. I don’t know who started dancing. It was a reaction. A blink to a fly in the eye. The four of us twirled and howled into the night. We sang our throats sore and it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. “Hey where did we go? Days when the rains came. Splishin’ and a splashin’ all along the waterfall, with you…My brown eyed girl.”
Da Vinci said “Humanity could reach God through a study of nature and passionate investigation into the world in which we live.” This is bullshit. We reach god through Music. A beautiful girl with eyes of ripe olives took my hand and lifted it, spinning beneath my arm. She pitched on her bare footed tip toes and whispered in my ear “Phoebe.” Over the black cotton spaghetti strap of her smooth naked shoulder Kyle danced with a drunk forty year old woman His twenty year old, 130 pound frame was rocked like scallop shell in a tidal wave. I laughed. She spun him out like a top. Instantly her hand split between me and Phoebe’s like a knife through trailer park butter as she squeezed the bones of my fingers. She had a grip like a logger and danced like a jackhammer. Quick jolts, arm jabs into the air, forced dips. Her face was made of Texas leather, her fragrance, Kentucky Bourbon.
Kyle was now kissing a punk girl with short black and bleached blond spiky hair. Brown eyed girl danced herself still as the song ended. And just then the music man played what we didn’t even know we wanted to hear: Blister in the Sun. We were now a dozen spinning with another dozen standing to watch. The night was ours. I looked at Kyle, who now danced on his own. He looked at me. It was at that moment I knew.
If the soul is alive the body is well. Those of pure form appear as the soul, not the body. This is the language of the brotherhood.
Three nights later, five hundred miles north when Music would open god’s door once again. This time me and Kyle, three Spaniards, and Brit named Joe. Whitman says ‘I do not seek good fortune for I am good fortune.’ That night the lot of us were rich. Our treasure: four hands on the side of a camper, an empty bottle of Stella, a spoon, keys, a bed post, a fan blade, a harmonica and six willing hearts. Again, when the door to the deities opens you don’t hesitate, you don’t question, you don’t ask for clarification, you just go.
And we went.
Joe and one of the Spaniards pounded pink open faced palms upon the walls of the trailer making them sound like Cherokee rawhide. One of the Spaniards tapped the belly of the Stella bottle with a spoon as another racked a set of keys upon the bedpost. Kyle, always appealing to customs, took the metal grate off the fan and played the plastic blades with his fingers. And me, well I was in the middle of it all, the beer cans, the heat and the grime, sitting on my shins, torso arched, abs flexed, sweat dripping from my face, as I wailed the most beautiful sounds through that harmonica my swollen heart could offer. The spirit was alive in all of us. It must have been past two in the morning when we finished. All of the two dozen trailers in the park must have heard our orgy of sound. And I’d like to believe they set off to dream with a smile on their face.
Saturday, two hundred miles north. Two German girls we stayed with wanted to go to the bar, Kyle, Joe and myself were too busy drinking moonshine with one foot dipped in the maudlin night, writing poetry and talking life. By the time we got to the bar the chairs were upside down on the tables as bartenders and bouncers stood on tired feet bumming cigarettes. The German girls talked of going to find the party as the three of us stared at the ocean in silence. One of the girls said “Vee are goving now” and left. Our girl glittered under a million chipped rhinestone pieces of moon. She was our checkered flag. And for some alchemy of the cosmos it dropped at the same time for us all. And we ran to her. And as we did, off came our clothes until we were three naked silhouettes running on the sand under the moonlight. Children of the night. Tap, tap, tap went our naked feet through the skin of the Pacific until we dove. For the next hour we splashed and laughed in those warm Australian waters, belonging to them.
It is now, Da Vinci, I must give you the credit you deserve and disagree with myself. You Ocean, you allowed me a dance with god. Woody Guthrie said, “Our best and most delicious truths are naked truths.” He was right. And as we walked out of the waves, warm breeze upon our flesh, soft sand between our toes, the past and future melted yielding pure life in our collective palm. I stared at Kyle’s back as he walked ahead of me. Lit by the moon, a tattoo etched in black cursive across his shoulder blades pebbled my skin.
All Is Not Yet Lost
And finding it hasn’t a goddamn thing to do with money.
