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6
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HOROSCOPE
What to do when you turn the light on
and discover a closet
BY SOUP
CAN SAM
BY JAY THIEMEYER
STAFF
P S Y C H IC
n 1979, in melting Hotianta, I met up
with my friend who worked in the
nearby plasma jointto help pay her way
through Atlanta University’s master’s
program in social work, the one she’d
traveled to from Alabama where she’d
gotten her baccalaureate (a concept I don’t
associate with Birmingham, then or now,
but she addressed'racism her own way) by
way of her upbringing. She had a beautiful
upbringing as the daughter of a single
mother outside Portland, Maine, in Gorham
(her brother was a gardener for the
university there). And she would meet me
occasionally at the bench I colonized,
presided over, wound up in, at the end of
similar drunken-“Country Club 800”*
besotted-malt-liquor days in Atlanta’s famed
Piedmont Park by the smallish, cruddy lake.
As it grew dark, and finishing, my twelfth
or so “Country Club 800” 16-ouncer, I
would grow absorbed in the herringbone
wake of ducks that would invariably appear
to slowly make their way across the water,
their traipse lighted by a streetlight
opposite me across the lake. It was
something from “Lumiere,” a’prototypic
rough-hewn film that captured the spirit of
my days then; days both free and tired to
the point of discovery and dismissal. Days
mounting iri number, directionless, or sod
assumed. They were in fact headed
somewhere that was of little account (but
freedom), amounting to little but empty
mirrors, empty squats, and memories hard
to communicate andnot easy to forget.
It looked timeless, there on the lakei and
I
Leo (July 24-Aug. 23) Football’ American
style - is revving up. So should your team spirit. Soup
Can recommends Green Bay, Indianapolis and the •
occasional Chicago event. Of course, Soup Can's
been known as somewhat of a fair-weather fan.
Don't let your loyalties flap in the windI.
Virgo (Aug. 24-Sept. 23) Somewhere,
between telling people whatthey already know, or
, saying that which is better left unsaid, you bleet out
the perfect little pearl of wisdom that keeps us
. listening a little more closely with each passing day.;
Don't abuse the gift.
Libra (Sept. 24-Oct. 23) Sometimes a yellow
feather is just a yellow feather. There is no giant
yellow bird out there, just a man in a giant yellow
bird costume. But the kids can't tell the difference.
You can choose to skip along in time, or realize that
you know better. •
Scorpio (Oct. 24-Nov. 22) The campaign is
on, the one that purports downtown P-town as the
wild west of hooligans and hoodlums, hell bent on
jaywalking and lounging their way behind the reins
of our stagecoach to New Jack City;. Soup Can thinks
they doth protest too much, because if you need
^olrloculars/^surve^nceperc^^n}c^walí<?^^^aes^o,l^
nail down litterers as the bane of good livin'
downtown, then maybe whoever is steering this
coach needs replacing anyhow.. .
Sagittarius (Nov. 23-Dec. 22) There's an
island of trash of our making floating in the Atlantic.
Make this a plastic-free month.
Capricorn (Dec. 23-Jan. 19) Contrary to
what you've been thinking of late, you don’t have to
either build up or tear down. You can bridge;
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) Far from the
madding crowds is a patch of grass with your name
on it. You won't be seeing it for a while, but a nice
groundskeeper will be taking care of it for you until
you get there. Thank him when you arrive.
Pisces (Feb. 20-March 20) Doubt is an
incredibly healthy emotion, and one you w ill have n o ■
need for in the coming weeks. You need all of your
brain waves concentrating on the people right in ,
front of you. They will be a cagey lot until mid-
September.
Aries (March 21-April 19) Your moons are |
messed up. You have many options for restoring
order, but Soup Can recommends taking a moment,
of silence ever day for the next two weeks. It's
simply the cheapest way to deal with anything. Try
it.
Taurus (April 20-May 21) The mayor will not -
street r o o t a lB
Education ^Dialogue * Independence
. ---- _
was the end of the now-dead “strip.”
Haunted Fourteenth.
. The original renters of my squat had left
just ahead of the law. An official paper still
stuck to the door explained it all in faded
print that I couldn’t read, but no one ever
came round, and I’d rarely been there
except to sleep, so I had been safe. By this
time I was staying on a piece of cardboard
laid out on the dirt of the abandoned boiler
room in an abandoned apartment’building
which sat inits growing idleness oh
Piedmont Avenue across from the park. It
looked like what if had once been, a
building cheap to live in and so inhabited
largely by students. Students living on the
cheap, working and going to school on
It was something from "Lum iere," a
prototypic rough-hewn film that captured the
spirit of my days then. Days both free and
tired to the point of discovery and dismissal.
Days mounting in number, directionless, or
so I assumed. They were in tact headed
somewhere that was of little account (but
freedom), amounting to little but empty
mirrors, empty squats, and memories hard to
communicate and not easy to forget.
this particular night, when myfriendfroni
Alabama by way of Gorham,; Maine, found
me, I was-sitting in th e mesmer of those
ducks once again telling time for me. They
made their passage just after twilight
dimmed to darkness every night, as though
they knew I was watching; would be
watching.
She sat down, said a simple angelic
“Hey,” and we got up to go. The night’s day
was bound to begin now she was here.
I suggested we check out Cha Gio again,
the Vietnamese restaurant up the Street
from the park. The woman who owned it
and, with her extended family, ran it, had
been an interpreter for Sen. Teddy Kennedy
when he visited her country during the war.
This was ’79; I don’t have any idea when
Teddy visited Saigon during the war. But
her translation translated to a free ride out
just ahead of the collapse several years
before.
had moved out of my former squat, where
I’d last seen Elizabeth, into an old
Victorian house with multiple floors and
squeaking doors and boards beneath. It was
hear Colonial Square, a newly rising tower,
some 80 stories high; a prototype and
magnet for new development for residents
who loved the High Art Museum, extended
like a cinder block across the intersection
on Peachtree and Fourteenth. Fourteenth
I
cheap tuition. Some of them I’d known at
the beginning of the ’70s. An apartment like
they would havehad or mySelf back then,
would have cost no more than $100 with a
$50 deposit — and that would have been
approaching affluence. Rents were still so
cheap back then. Gas was 35 cents per
gallon; miles per gallon in the teens. The
place next door to where I’m currently
living in St Johns here in Portland is being
advertised as renting for $1,599 a month
with a deposit of $799. - ’
When I stayed on the cardboard, the
building was completely vacant and in
disuse, waiting for the wrecking ball.
hings have changed in the brief spread
of time between then and now. But I
imagine ford certain turn of mind, the sight
of a trio of ducks moving across water after
dark, their dark forms staged bya
streetlight^ their wake a subtle serration
reflecting tiie light still has appeal. Sòme 8
things don’t change. And approach being
free. I remember sitting on the bench late
in the day, reading Steve Biko’s “Last ’
Testament” of all things, a review copy from
the Atlanta Constitution, and finding myself
anticipating the ducks. It was clearly a
different time. Time told by ducks.
■
g re e n s
be recalled, not on this effort. Sadly, that's the best
information the stars are coughing up right now.
Slackers. You too, Pluto.
Gemini (May 22-June 22) Eyes in the sky are
watching you, and you're paying for it. Give them a
■close look back.
Cancer (June 23-July 23) This isn't the time
to be shy, Cancer. Sing. Sing a song. Make it happy
to last the whole day long. Don't worry if it's not
good enough for anyone else to hear. Just sing, and
bang a gong...
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