The Rules Of The Road In Rome & A Snippet From A WIP.

This is true:  All road signs and Rules of the Road in general in Rome are merely suggestions.  Suggestions often ignored.  Even the lines down the middle of the street--who cares?  I've gotten tickets in the states for what qualifies as the norm here.  And if you don't have an aggressive bone in your body, don't even consider driving here.  Everybody is inching forward at all times, if not simply ignoring the stop light and zipping on through.  Tiny cars swarm as ants over a fallen beetle at every street corner, fighting for their place, a taste, the possibility of being The First To Turn!  Probably explains why most every car is covered with little dents, nicks, scratches.  It's a War out there!

If you think I am kidding, think again.  It's fairly outrageous...though Alessandra only laughs and says some day she'll have to take me to Naples, where, apparently, this lack of acknowledging the Rules of the Road is amped up to unbelievable, and Road Warrior gear is mandatory...

And...

Here's a clip from something in progress.  One of, perhaps, five shorter pieces in progress, though one of those shorter pieces is currently at 15k and climbing.  


It's a rough draft but taking shape.  Called, "Heirloom."

***

     The rumpled collection of smeared colors—algae greens to serene, cerulean ocean blues all trimmed with sun-dappled, coral sparkles—hung slack, the fabric glossy as the lips of your fantasy girl, any fantasy girl, dew-kissed and anticipatory.  The kind of girls I write about in my songs; the kind of girls who always lead you to trouble.

     Kind of like Delia, whose fingers cross-hatched mine, more a cage, barb-wire clutch, than a sign of affection or even caring.  She had dragged me here out of some compulsion I was not privy to.  Sure, I’d made initial contact, the connection, but it seemed more kismet that our meeting a mere month ago and this trek through an imaginary southwest of my soul, one that would work well for another ode to love, dark love, dark souls, well, it was more steeped in something she needed than me.  She knew things.  I wanted to know things.  Hence, our venture.  Hence, her compulsion and the sense I was being dragged inexorably to some place I should probably avoid.

     But that was never my way.  Fool that I often can be.

     Instinct extended my hand toward it, this mesmerizing suit, when the slack posture stretched upward, as if awakened, an impossible possibility--alive, she cried!--or perhaps the dream of life being realized before my stunned countenance.

     I’m sure I jerked my hand back sharply, as if the fingers had met a skillet spitting grease, and let out a tiny, “Oh.”

     Something lifted itself from within the dark, silken ocean, and turned to face me, teeth an ivory brigade, eyes, polished ebony, yet dancing.

     “Can I help you find anything?”  The voice carried history on a taut string between perhaps a hundred years ago and this moment. 

     I wondered if he’d been sleeping that long and if I had really awakened him just now.  As if it all had a purpose.

     The figure was a man, though the distinction was only clear because of the deep intonations that reverberated from within a skeletal architecture that revealed no windows, no doors, no revelations of self, of gender, while the face was deeply carved, the sensation of the chiseled edges of bones shaping the appearance there as well, from the inside; of lines aching to tell stories I could almost read as I stared wide-eyed at him. 

     He seemed still to be adjusting himself to his status as alive and kicking.  He moved without grace, bones firecracker popping with every twitch.

     I again got the impression I’d just awakened him and was ready to simply leave my quest by the side of the road and move on, move on.  It was all too weird for me to comprehend, yet that’s been the road I’ve travelled for months now, ever since my father died and him bequeathing his only son a coin, an heirloom, smudged fingerprints shading the designs beneath and me not too anxious to polish it to see its beauty or horror, its message, perhaps.  I didn’t know what I was doing.  I didn’t know why I was really here.  I thought again as the man hunched his shoulders and yawned, mouth wide as Nietzsche’s hungry, monster-riddled abyss, if I had awakened this man and why was I really here.

     “No, sonny. Been wide awake and waiting for you for years.”  There seemed a sliver of recognition, a shooting star slashing the polished ebony eyes.

     Great!  He could read minds, too!

     “It’s not mind readin’, sonny.  It’s mind knowin’.  You carry the same vibrations as your great-great-grandaddy.”

***

Hmmm, what the heck is this fella looking for? Funny, as usual, the writer in me was tweaking things even here, mid-post.  haha...


Anyway, one of a few pieces in progress.  Next week I jump back into revisions for the Sex, Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll...and Cicadas novel, still in need of a title, a temporary one pasted on it--The Mantra of Metamorphosis--but that doesn't quite do what's necessary.  Or does it?  And perhaps with B-Movie glee, I should simply call the damned thing Sex, Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll...and Cicadas,with those words spattered across the cover like the Bams and Whams and Bonks from the old Batman show, or the Michael Keaton Batman movies--didn't they do that in those, too, during the battles?  Whatever, stuff in progress, what am I doing here?

;-)

Here's a picture from the movie, Cars, which looks a lot like the clutter at every stop sign in Rome, though I forgot to add there's a ton of motorcycles and scooters weaving between all vehicles as well.  Crazy!