He didn’t know it… We were lost on purpose.
I had to see it. At least some of it, I hadn’t been here in 20 years… Home. My streets. He couldn’t understand. Didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t care… Time was wasting.
I took advantage of this slight cave in to my desires.
To see this gray sky, these gray streets barely standing out against those tall gray buildings in the distance.
I wanted to see what had happened to all of those great grande dames… I settled for just the ones on Monticello. Unfortunately the town had changed too much for me to manipulate my circumstances too effectively.
The Late Show… Gone, gone… The Trolley… looked the same. Downtown, way too much now. Too big, too strange. I missed my dark and crowded little haven… The Ramada, gone…
And then I saw something odd… Heading up the road I saw a tiny coffee house. I was lost in my reverie, ghosts and tears welling around blurred my view but it was there, it had some familiar traits and I wondered if they knew…
If they knew that almost right across the street from them was the home and grounds of a people that made legends out of the world around them.
That dirty little brown brick building there… It looks completely different now and the old lovey who owned it… Must have finally given up the last breath of painted air.
It pains me.
I see the no smoking sign on the coffee house door and I know that they cannot know… Or it’s illegal now… I wonder.
I wonder if they know of that beautiful black queen who ran the downtown nightlife? The one who gave shelter and home to so many lost children of the night.. Do they know of him?
Do they know of a surreal picture of a woman. Long black braids with huge mocha eyes. Skin like the coffee she used to drink but didn’t like… She was the Venus of this town…
Do they know of the skaters making acid in their kitchens? Do they know of Ezra or Jamie?
These are the legends we are made of. No coffee house in this town should not be aware of the very first ones.
I am indignant. I feel bitter.
I think of pharmaceutical companies and life and death and a million things in between. I think of those legends struggling to stay alive today and they don’t know why, and they don’t know how anymore…
Some things are sad. Some things are wrong. But art does not tell you this. Art simply is and we were, are, Art. Fine Art. Crazy and bright, dull and dying… Whatever it is is the flow of paint on a breeze. Sometimes it lands on a canvas and sticks… Sometimes it gets washed away.
You kids should know… You should seek out those who came before you. We have knowledge that you will need. Strength, resilience and then, sometimes we have nothing… Sometimes nothing is all that is needed.
I do not have time to see the pagoda… It’s a shame, it was my favorite spot. Google shows me it is still there… At least in 2016.. I wanted to go by the parking lot that now is the Cab… The place where legends were born. Made.
This is the Underground. It’s not on camera. If it were, we’d have been in jail. It can’t be done anymore what was done then. The Underground is not dead, it is in our hearts… Traveling with those of us that are left.
And one day… some day… When there is room again. Space, privacy… Small tables with no cameras, no phones…where secrets and the mysteries of the Universe can be solved between a few personal individuals…
We will be there… Look for us, you will need us… It’s all we were born for my friends. And we will have coffee…