Orpheus Descending

I was born out on the peninsula that juts out into the lake like a heavy scythe, eternally poised but never pendulant, never keeping time but staying in time and out of time - ominously at attention like a ridgeback, its median hills running along its backbone, jutting from the lowlands leading from the city to the rainy no-man's land where the prevailing winds brought snow and rain down from north, passing west of the city, but straight across the neck of the peninsula, leaving marsh and swamp and deep snow and ice in the wake. In the summer, the sun emerging from the passing tempests would shine its last orange gleam making the concrete of the never-finished interstate burn gold in the late of the day.

I was in the Shea Road Bar listening to Hank Williams over and over again. I tapped my fingers in time with his reedy lament, when Death came for Eurydice; Death, wearing shades and looking like Roy Orbison; making a mighty running scared, each place we go...so afraid that he - here I had run outside to catch sight of them driving off in his Corvette, 6.49 Liter V8 with side exhaust pipes, and he pointed at me and smiled in scorn - that I might show. Tires spun and gravel flew... I could not fire my gun... gravel flies and tires spun... I was helpless watching and I hummed the rhyme of spun..gun in despair, like a mozart  cat stuffed into a bag and falling over and over again into a river.

O, Death,
O, Death,
Where now is thy Sting Ray?
O, Death,
O, Death,
Let her stay... but one more year!

I set out. I could see the lightning from the storm coming across the bay towards the neck of the peninsula, towards the big marsh, Drowned Loon marsh. It was a zydeco storm, it was stark fiddling contest of wills. The atmosphere bellowed in and out like a furious squeeze box. The storm ran up the old interstate - never finished, never to be finished up by Lancey Meadows - and followed Death's track towards the honky-tonk, anointing every head above fifteen feet high, creating a corridor marking Death's journey back to his home. The doorway was in the city across the bay, with a lintel of Avernine marble.

**1** 9/30

The director said "Cut!", and I sagged a little. The continuity girl had just missed being hit by lightning, and for some reason that reminded me of Gordon Parks - just saying. The sky was bright enough to write outdoors, so I decided to work on the script. The thunderstorm towards the northwest was either a Godzilla movie special FX, or it was pandemonium on glass - made quaint - like Duchamp's Bride and Bachelors... even.... chocolate grinders of fate grind slow...

We were packing up, getting ready to chase Death, but not too close... his exhaust was all the toxins people used to pour into the air and water everyday, but now we were Chernobylized and everything was carcenogenic like gang-busters. Man, everyone was just downstream from the Pripyat Marsh. How many nuclear mausoleums were there, how many reactors interred by grace of the rites of modern society scared witless?
We'd follow when the pall lifted, and  make our way to Death's concert backstage door, in Averno, singing orbisons of praise like Mulholland Drive and sniffing bongs that nebulize gunpowder smells of small revolvers. If he was anything, Death was forever and we could take our time to make sure I'd get Eurydice back to the daylight.
We were heading from the Gap to what was left of the Core, the remnant of the great nations. We had to consider that some of the lightning might be predator drone strikes for the pleasure of what was left of the Core nations and their illusions of wealth. Nothing was easy. It was a age of heroes. There weren't any around, so we had to do it.

**2**10/01

to be added to. each section will be marked as **x**.