“Abandoned”- An Essay By Christina Lynch

Abandoned lot on the corner asks for an activity to be done there. I need a picnic. I need a blanket. I see this being for ghosts more than it is for you. Which ones? Perhaps if I approach the night, in the nightmare, I may have my humble gathering of souls. If I am asking someone to stay or to go, I would rather be the voice asking them to stay. Then, it may even be helpful. Perfect, the ground would say and it could not be any harder. I would lay out the blanket and set the ceramic down so that it will not blow away. I will turn my eyes in the four directions around me, and wait for eyes. For what else would I wait? The long wind never came back. I spent a long time planning. I changed the names of the days of the weeks to call on the gods. I asked if I belonged over or under it. I didn’t hear from anyone else for a long time. I got into the 90’s. I wiggle around and make the smallest face to remember my fate line. I ignore it because I feel I cannot have one and still observe the other-still there, still there, dancing wildly. It does not inform me as the wind informs me. Is it not a sacred configuration? I still seem to know what is going on. The rules and the codes only evoke more of you than I may have and the vacancy is why I stopped. There was nowhere left to count and it is difficult to count what is not present. 

Since the demolition 

they have been bare

the stretch before sunrise

Is your voice speaking 

only what you do not believe 

or is it your art 

that frustrates me 

Refined classic works of art belong to none other than the museum, and the house only belonged to its inhabitant. “Where did you go” was the question for the table. What about the moving castle? They hold panels for this in Paris. They hold panels to compliment them for standing the tests of time; the paintings. If you look up, you will see the stars. The point was to ask, “who would accept me if there was no system” and who would stay to watch it fall again? I wrote a song about houseboats that sail beneath you. Maybe the soul is just the name given to the trade of free music. I wonder if it happens here against the will of the thousands? 

There’s only one and it will leave. 

The house is still missing. I thought of making prints on linoleum or wood to ask where the missing house had gone. I could construct it like an architect of dream in my mind’s eye and see it before it was ever there. I could adjust mono-sound dials until I can see in shapes and colors instead of just black and white. I could post them and leave them on the doorsteps of the other empty-looking houses. The space underneath my eyes would hollow and darken until it is the only space left. I don’t know if I would ever step inside, but at least they would know something happened here and it was important. I would want them to know. 

The listening ear is never too far away from alignment. Kurt Vonnegut always drew and caught wind of it, but so did you. I traced it with my tongue when I first saw the cover. The ear will first ail if it wants to remember anything, and it won’t remember anything. They won’t remember if no one listened or took the time to sit down. It was his own ear that he drew again and again, as I, the first woman, drew my own nose on paper and in the thinner air. Would they set my face to it if I were behind it? I would assume that they would ask someone else. It sits next to me in a circle as the tip draws lines around like an auric field, as I look around for the first one. If I want to hear anything, let alone to perform, I should turn it down. The shadow, however, would remain impressed. It would perform its own wreck and I would simply have to follow it. 

My classic list of music and songs is a conversation and not a battle of era or timepiece. I kept telling it no, like some symbol of this time. And then little hints like, “what did I say”? What was granted was the ability, not the congratulations I get when you finally speak for it. I must have given it away a thousand times before the moments I call transcendent. I did not call you. I always go back for the Damned and Sinead O’Conner. Sometimes, I need help. Old Hollywood deteriorating its own characters and the sincerity of one solitary voice do go well together. The world only became wrong because that is what you called it. There are thousands of words and the only ones that matter are the ones that are said the most. They were really there. I watched all of the Lynchian TM videos after seeking out the students of the Maharishi near by me, with a sullen success. I went back. Something about them no longer is and does not get to be; the houses. I imagine them being taken into space instead of by machine. I worry about my hands looking without vein or growing too tired to pick anything up. I ask, how may I care for you, our dying planet? Its words are scientific and are not here for you at all. They insist  that I do not go to space and I can’t tell you why. They are above us, still, and I feel all I have to do or to say is to call you down from the tower and into the empty lot. 

“Machine Gun Etiquette” is the first record by the Damned that I found while assessing British culture. My mother is something of a self-proclaimed anglophile and joked in an accent when I was young. I lived in one of the show-houses, one of the only ones still standing in town, called “English Manor”. If there is a building to save, I think it is that one. It is bastardly and fast. The love language is subtler than the vocals. I was so afraid of leaving because I had worried that I lost your voice while there. I jot down, “don’t forget your turn of tongue while you go because you might forget how it sounds”. Is it a mother tongue?  “Strawberries” may be one of my favorite records. The pagan image of the Pig’s head is sacred and awaiting the feast. But what of freshly harvested fruit? 

It is considered uncouth to spend so much time alone listening to you. The winds whisper in humble little lashes around my ankles after I have taken off my shoes. What of Sinead? Why did she show up here without saying anything? I’m not sure that the loud words of my so-called guests would really affect her too much. I mean, who would try to fix Sinead O’Conner? I guess because the head that did blink was not the head that you might think. We as the little second hand writers would take note of this. If there are hands that intervene over time in the housing war, in the war for home and for heart, it is surely an invisible one that arrives solely for nightfall, solely for you and for this. Only those of sound-mind could even stand-accept. It would pour liquid into everyone’s cup, except for yours, and that is because you are the one that saw it. 

The boat builder is always thinking of how to make something that will not ruin. The house builder is always thinking of a time that has already passed. I, however, will cover myself. Water was not the reason that they avoided the discussion, I assure you, but something much more complex than that. They would hush the still-crying children until they could hear the sounds again. I would fucking scream. They would come back to the empty space and understand why it is there. They would see the reason behind the stillhouse and ask everyone who loved it before doing anything.