Spoiler
Shelter From the Storm
I became young again that night. In an aging bar in Manhattan, amidst the blinding neon lights, the senseless debauchery and the comings and goings of passersby, I caught myself dreaming. It came to me in between the bustling crowd of New York’s tumultuous night-life; the rosy-cheeked Ivy League academics, the dead-beat wannabe poets, the esoteric, unemployed jazz pianists - you know the type. Anyway, the bar was playing Bob Dylan’s ‘Shelter From the Storm’. I only caught fragments of the song in between all the commotion; I’d missed the first half entirely, but to hear Dylan’s raspy voice was to be taken adrift on the vessel of reminiscence all the same.
***
I remember when I first heard it. I tried to visualise all the sorts of things I associated with that memory. I remember the fiery haired girl, in the adjacent dorm, blasting it from her radio, I remember my roommate and I flipping a quarter so as to see who would go ask her to turn it down, I remember walking to her room and I definitely remember being glad I’d lost the toss once I laid eyes on her.
However, I couldn’t tell you, accurately at least, the chronological order of events that ensued after that and even if I tried, I suspect I’d embellish it a little. That’s the thing with remembering. Each time you call upon a memory it seems that in one way or another, whether it be the smallest detail, such as if the bed was made, or a major aspect, such as who were with, it becomes distorted. In fact, I think I’ve lived to have multiple experiences just by trying to remember one event from one point in time.
To be frank with you, I don’t even really remember her name. It might’ve been Lilya, or Lilly, or something completely different. I do remember three absolutes about her though. First, she had an affinity for Ginsberg, second, Shelter From the Storm wasn’t even her favourite Dylan song and third, I only ever really met her twice after that confrontation
***
THUD! Suddenly I’m back in Manhattan, on a rainy day, in some dingy dive bar. I’m thirty years older again, my hair’s thinning and I’m by myself. I turn to my left and some kid has fallen off his stool; couldn’t handle his drink I guess. I turn my ear towards the poorly mounted speakers;
‘’She walked up to me so gracefully
And took my crown of thorns
"Come in," she said, "I'll give you
Shelter from the storm"’’
I promised to take her to see Dylan live when he made his rounds through New York, it never happened though. I sorta didn’t come through with that promise, much like many of the promises I’ve made in my life to be honest. I wonder if she hates me for it. I wonder where she is now. She wanted to be a journalist or an editor for the New Yorker, I doubt it happened though and even if it did, I don’t think she’d be working on her own terms.
That’s the thing I’ve learned about the world. The creative minded are left behind or forced to assimilate. Maybe that’s just me being bitter about the way my life turned out. God, when I was young and full of life I thought I could do so much. I was starry-eyed and ready, ready to make the mountains malleable, the seas would become tamed under my rule but sometimes it takes poignant music in a dilapidated bar to teach you that the mountains are fixed in place and the waters will forever be undomesticated.
That’s the thing with with dreamers; they’re the first to die. And not of any anatomical ailment but rather insidious pains of the soul. It’s like they’re the suitcases that never get opened on vacation, the books that never get read, the portraits that never get hung. They’re empty, save the rotting corpses of dreams that never came to fruition; dreams that died on the vine. Looking at all the oblivious teenagers at the bar, I was certain I knew which ones would be spending their nights at this same place, thirty years from now. Funnily enough, all of them had smiling faces.
‘’I've heard newborn babies wailin
Like a mourning dove
And old men with broken teeth
Stranded without love’’
***
The stools of the bar became park benches and the wooden flooring, matted with peanut shells, became the green fields of Central Park. It must’ve been twelve years after I graduated but my degree hadn’t done me any good. I remember looking at the snow-tipped bristles of the maple trees when some kid, with some funny hat - looked like a normal cap but it had two flaps on the side, comes asking me ‘Would you happen to know what happens to the ducks when the lake freezes over? Would you happen to know by any chance?’. To tell you the truth I had no idea, I hadn’t even really thought about it until then.
***
It’s funny how much you learn about yourself and the world simply looking back through a time machine. Thirty years on, I’m a little dishevelled, sure, but I’m the same guy, drinking at the same bar, thinking about the same things but with totally different eyes. It’s one of those nights, those really rare nights, I mean those one-in-a-lifetime sorta nights when the sun comes down to earth to meet the people in between the crevices of the skyscrapers.
Looking back at it retrospectively, would I do it all again? Probably not, I mean I figure it’s times like these, when we learn to look back, that we learn the most.
‘’If I could only turn back the clock
To when God and her were born
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you Shelter from the storm"’’