Up against and for

Another beautiful day in Solana Beach and another beautiful morning and another beautiful song by the great Elliot Smith, speaking for anyone standing, smiling on some fantasy island waiting for the moon to pull again.  But the tide's coming in.

I dreamt I was in the stone streets, walking without direction into the thick haze of night fog that blankets the hot breath from the mouths of vagabonds and floating blind spirits.  Corporeal and heady, the city of scoundrels took very little notice of me.  Someone struck a match and watched it land on the top of a roof below, a thin line of flame dancing and reaching its way higher with a snap of its flagellate red tendrils.

They screamed then.  All of the silent wraiths and yesterday's gentlemen, shouting with unabashed joy as the flames danced for them, sending up wispy whorls of smoke.  The smoke mingling with the fog, spreading the haze across miles, mountains and great rivers.  

One of them came to me and grabbed my hand and told me to dance, to dance before the flame went out.  I asked him if it would be too late after the flame was gone.  He didn't know, and he wrote nine words on the wall with his finger dipped in a pile of soot.