Cartography 5: Five of Hearts
On places I have lived, on spare prose, on rivers
Cartography is a 52 week essay series mapping the interior life.
Misery is the river of the world.
Everybody row.Tom Waits
V: Acheron
The crossing of a body of moving water is an impossibility to the dead, without proper payment. We pay the toll.
Every day, for one thousand days, I crossed the French Broad River and drove by the abandoned cattle yard. The signs of the old auctions peeling off the stained tin, the scent of composting manure long gone but the shit still permeating the air.
The cattle are dead already, they’re just moving. Alive and on an unchangeable trajectory. Their ghosts linger here though, the waystation.
To ride in your car by the cattle yard for a thousand days is the entry to Hell. The misery is felt far and wide.
I was starving every day and never once did I consider eating flesh.
IV: Styx
The first time I drove into Philadelphia it was raining. I made a crack about it not always being sunny.
We couldn’t see until we got onto the Girard bridge, driving over the Schulykill river. The rain was cut by the upper level, providing a brief respite. We were cold and miserable and unsure of how the day would pan out.
I moved there a year later, almost to the day. Crossed the same bridge, this time at night. I could cross the Schulykill anytime I wanted; by car, by bus, by foot, by bike. Every time I did, without fail, I was dipped in the waters.
Achilles was made invulnerable by his mother holding him in the River Styx, except for the place the water never touched, his ankle.
That first spring, that first month, I rode my bike back and forth and back and forth across the river hoping for some sort of internal protection. I wanted it to make me strong, and it did. Whenever I couldn’t stand myself, I went down to the polluted water and sat and got to know my misery.
III: Lethe
After 300 miles, the Delaware River empties into the bay and forgets the branches and tributaries in New York that put it together.
After 2200 days in Philadelphia, I’m standing on the end of South Street, looking out at the Delaware river and across the water to Camden.
South Street marks the beginning of the Mason-Dixon survey, the line between Baltimore and Penn, the South and the North.
I have not forgotten where I came from.
But to leave, to go back where you came from, you have to forget. You have to forget where you are, and you have to forget why you came, why you left in the first place.
II: Phlegethon
The James River is always a short walk away. No more than 5 minutes out the backdoor if we walk at a proper pace.
The coming storm has turned the entire sky violet and orange, red and pink. It’s on fire, and the water below picks up the colors.
Capaneus sat in his river of fire with his eyes pointed skyward, and even in the depths of misery swore eternal vengeance on God. The Hell of blasphemers is eternal rage, eternal vindictiveness, eternal hate against the shaper. But the field and the river are open; there are other ways to live.
When I see the coming storm, I keep my eyes not to the sky but to the porch where the wind whips cloth around. I keep my eyes towards the earth. Matter and material.
But in my mind, I see the sky on fire. I see the river burning. I see condemnation and I see curses and my tongue sharpens against God.
I: Cocytus
In the 19th century, the East River froze over no less than 8 times. In the 21st century, the East River has yet to freeze over completely, but it produces ice floes, chunks of the stuff that float along and hide the slow-moving water.
One person dies in the East River, on average, every 15 days. One person dies in New York City, on average, every 9 minutes. Inevitably, some of these bodies will be caught on the ice, chewed up between the teeth of the river. Bodies that go underwater when the temperature is below 40F stay underwater until the spring, when the bacteria decomposing them come back to life and fill the stomach with gas.
Misery in the middle of winter will drive a person to do anything. The lack of sun, the lack of companionship, the lack of ready-made presence: all do their part to betray. Judas, Cassius, Brutus of humanity stealing on the doorstep with the cold.
There are betrayals we will think about the rest of our lives. There are betrayals we will never know about, kept hidden and secret until the day we die.
All for the best. Treachery eats you up from the inside. Treachery pushes icy teeth against your skin and pushes you under the waterline until the spring thaw. You know it, piece by piece, tooth by tooth, disaster by disaster, winter freeze by eternal winter freeze.
You can drive out nature with a pitchfork,
but it always comes roaring back again.Tom Waits