Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith

Author:Patti Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

BIG RED

Sam’s Stetson

April Fool’s Day. A trickster grappled with the reins of action, as balls of confusion rolled toward us, scores of steely shooters, tripping us up, keeping us off-balance. The news pounded, and minds raced to make sense of the campaign of a candidate compounding lies at such a speed that one could not keep up, or break down. The world twisted at his liking, poured over with a metallic substance, fool’s gold, already peeling away. Rain and more rain, April showers, just like the nursery rhyme, it fell straight across America, to the west, over Marin County, a melancholy witness to Sandy’s struggles. I tried to shrug off unease, do my work, say my prayers, bide my time. More rain pelted the skylight, a thousand erratic hoofbeats, munificent energies racing toward earth.

I sat at my desk and opened my computer, slowly wading through a long chain of requests. There were plenty of them, mostly work-related, and I set about the task of considering each potential job, stopping excitedly somewhere in the middle. I was offered work in Australia, in a year’s time, concerts in Sydney, Melbourne and a festival in Brisbane. I closed my computer, pulled out an atlas and turned to a map of Australia. It was quite a trek and a long time away, but I knew exactly what I would do, perform nine concerts and then, with the band gone home, hop on a prop plane to Alice Springs and hire a driver to take me to Uluru. I answered immediately. Yes, I will do the work, and marked the days in the 2017 calendar, which was completely empty. Several As across the following March, Australia to Ayers.

The sign at the Dream Motel inexplicably gleaned that I longed to see Ayers Rock, as did Ernest. Decades ago my young son, inspired by a favored Australian cartoon series that we watched together, drew pictures of it with red crayon inside my notebooks, obscuring the writing beneath. The hopes of one day going with Sam were dashed, but I would make my way surely with his blessing. In the closet my boots were waiting, their soles curiously embedded with the red soil of a place I had never been.

I called Sam a few days later but didn’t yet mention the great red monolith. Instead we talked about red horses.

—It was Secretariat’s birthday a few days ago.

—Now, how would you know the birthday of a horse? Sam laughed.

—Because it’s a horse you love, I said.

—Come to Kentucky. I’ll tell you the story of Man o’ War, another big red. We can bet on the Derby and watch it on television.

—I will, Sam. I’ll take a look at the field before I do.

On May Day, I sat on my porch in Rockaway. There was nothing but blue wildflowers growing in my little patch, as if it had been seeded by sky. Out here, though only a long subway ride away, the worldview falls away. What remains is a smattering of butterflies, two ladybugs and one praying mantis.

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