diary Archive: February 2008.

february, 2008

"the piano district"

When she wasn't doing anything else, she was cruising the piano district, picking up quarters from underneath the bench. She says, "This is some shit, those quarters don't fall like they did way back when." She's got her favorite skirt on. She should have had breakfast today but there wasn't time.

"It's the moon and the stars," she says, "my biorythms are way off track today." Shakes her head and has another sip of black coffee. It's her favorite taste - it tastes like the future. It helps her plan her way. She says, "Life is just a map, all those blue and red lines, sometimes I don't know what's a river and what's a road." She laughs at this. She thinks it's funny. It doesn't play well with the big crowds but she gets a bang out of it anyhow.

"It don't matter what they think," she says to herself, "they don't pay the bills, they didn't gamble on my resolve." She laughs at this too, but not as hard as she does at the map. Everything's poppycock. Everything's a bag rocks. She smiles.

"Life ain't so bad," she thinks on the bus, "You just gotta watch out for your stop. It's a long ride the second time around." The black coffee's not enough, but there's a diner on the next street. the street's dirty but the breakfast is cheap and the waitress is her friend. Every waitress is her friend, they comfort her when the breakfast doesn't. Their little uniforms are so hopeful, so much a part of the landscape. They're of historical interest and she longs for some kind of preservation for a life she only observes. They don't have diners in the piano district and that makes her sad. It's just fast food these days, the diners fall back in an invisible mist.

It's just her on her stool as the morning unwinds. "This place is from another time," she tells the pink suited waitress as her eggs arrive, "ain't that some sad?" The waitress nods - she doesn't quite get it but she knows the longing and the sentiment in her tone. The waitress never goes to the piano district she doesn't understand. "I coulda been a waitress," she says to herself, "but the pay is bad and pink was never my colour anyway." She smiles slightly. The piano district waits and it pays really well - that makes her smile for real this time. "A career in the piano district ain't for everyone, but it suits me fine." She doesn't apologize.

When the check arrives she pays with bills and leaves twelve shiny quarters on the counter.

It's not a bad walk to the piano district - she always takes her time. Lots to see on the way and she doesn't like missing any of it. The men on the streets ask her for change and she gives it to them - she doesn't know why but she does it anyway. She does it quietly, presses the quarters in their outstretched palms or into their little coffee cups and just smiles. Some say thank you, some don't - she never says a word, just smiles. They know about the piano district - they aren't allowed there. But it doesn't make her sad. "What can you do," she thinks as she doles the quarters out, "there's gotta be a solution but I surely don't know what it is or what it was in case it's already passed."

She looks in the windows of the little junky antique stores. When she sees something she likes, she makes a mental note - she'll buy it on her way home. "Mmmm, hmmmm," she says, "A precious little ashtray - only seventy five cents. A pretty purple box - only four dollars." It makes her happy to know these treasures are waiting for her return. She'll give them a good home.

There's a gay bar on the next corner and when she passes by at night she marvels at how pretty the boys are that go inside. "Well, good for them" she thinks to herself, "pretty as they are they surely don't need a woman." She's glad for them. The lesbians she doesn't quite understand, though. "To each their own, but I can't for the life of me, see it," she thinks, "They're like some kinda funny puzzle - but the pieces don't lock together - how do they make a picture?" She laughs nearly at loud at this, but controls herself - she doesn't wish to make fun of anyone. But she's not making fun of them, really, she just likes having fun conceptually.

"No time for me gawk and philosophize," she tells herself as the Piano District looms just ahead of her. "I ain't Dorothy and it sure as hell ain't the Emerald CIty, but there's magic in it sure enough".   The abandoned piano factory rises like a fortress in the middle of the block - stately still after a century, though closed long before she was born. There are no windows on the building. She wonders why this was so - was it to shield the sound? "Maybe them pianos made some kinda unholy racket," she smiles and longs for the music that must surely have played.

But it's the side of the factory with the painting of a grand piano and it's grand bench emblazoned on it that she loves the most. It's paint miraculously untouched by weather or graffiti - that's the magic of it. "Just as pretty as the day it was painted," she knows this without a doubt. And tries to feel certain that she herself is as pretty as the first day she painted herself and stood under it's bench. It's under this twenty-five foot high piano, ("fit for ten Liberace's" she's said) that she does her best work. It's where the quarters fall like sequins from Liberace's cape. She knows that men can broken into quarters - the past, the present, the future - and a side time as well - another dimension like the Piano District itself - the time that they spend in her warm company.... when their dollars break into her quarters.

"They say it's the world's oldest profession," she muses now while she waits, "and it's the piano districts of this huge world that keeps it young... keeps me young too." She laughs at this too - but she also knows there's more than a little truth to it.

It may be only her truth but this doesn't sadden her - she knows that an individual truth is a fact. A fact as true as the landscape, as true as the piano looming above her head... as true as the future. The future that tastes like black coffee. She wonders if, maybe, coffee is the world's oldest beverage. She laughs at this... and for a second swears she hears a piano playing nearby.

Maybe not Liberace but something just as good. She knows she'll buy a record and another cup of coffee on her way home. She smiles, the quarters fall and the future tastes good.

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