Smith - M Train

M Train

M Train

Patti Smith

for Sam

Stations

M Train

Its not so easy writing about nothing.

Thats what a cowpoke was saying as I entered the frame of a dream. Vaguely handsome, intensely laconic, he was balancing on a folding chair, leaning backwards, his Stetson brushing the edge of the dun-colored exterior of a lone caf. I say lone, as there appeared to be nothing else around except an antiquated gas pump and a rusting trough ornamented with a necklace of horseflies slung above the last dregs of its stagnant water. There was no one around, either, but he didnt seem to mind; he just pulled the brim of his hat over his eyes and kept on talking. It was the same kind of Silverbelly Open Road model that Lyndon Johnson used to wear.

But we keep on going, he continued, fostering all kinds of crazy hopes. To redeem the lost, some sliver of personal revelation. Its an addiction, like playing the slots, or a game of golf.

Its a lot easier to talk about nothing, I said.

He didnt outright ignore my presence, but he did fail to respond.

Well, anyway, thats my two cents.

Youre just about to pack it in, toss the clubs in a river, when you hit your stride, the ball rolls straight in the cup, and the coins fill your inverted cap.

The sun caught the edge of his belt buckle, projecting a flash that shimmered across the desert plain. A shrill whistle sounded, and as I stepped to the right I caught sight of his shadow spilling a whole other set of sophisms from an entirely different angle.

I been here before, havent I?

He just sat there staring out at the plain.

Son of a bitch, I thought. Hes ignoring me.

Hey, I said, Im not the dead, not a shade passing. Im flesh and blood here.

He pulled a notebook out of his pocket and started writing.

You got to at least look at me, I said. After all, it is my dream.

I drew closer. Close enough to see what he was writing. He had his notebook open to a blank page and three words suddenly materialized.

Nope, its mine.

Well, Ill be damned, I murmured. I shaded my eyes and stood there looking out toward what he was seeingdust clouds flatbed tumbleweed white skya whole lot of nothing.

The writer is a conductor, he drawled.

I wandered off, leaving him to expound on the twisting track of the minds convolutions. Words that lingered then fell away as I boarded a train of my own that dropped me off fully clothed in my rumpled bed.

Opening my eyes, I rose, staggered into the bathroom, and splashed cold water on my face in one swift motion. I slid on my boots, fed the cats, grabbed my watch cap and old black coat, and headed out toward the road many times taken, across the wide avenue to Bedford Street and a small Greenwich Village caf.

Four ceiling fans spinning overhead.

The Caf Ino is empty save for the Mexican cook and a kid named Zak who sets me up with my usual order of brown toast, a small dish of olive oil, and black coffee. I huddle in my corner, still wearing my coat and watch cap. Its 9 a.m. Im the first one here. Bedford Street as the city awakens. My table, flanked by the coffee machine and the front window, affords me a sense of privacy, where I withdraw into my own atmosphere.

The end of November. The small caf feels chilly. So why are the fans turning? Maybe if I stare at them long enough my mind will turn as well.

Its not so easy writing about nothing.

I can hear the sound of the cowpokes slow and authoritative drawl. I scribble his phrase on my napkin. How can a fellow get your goat in a dream and then have the grit to linger? I feel a need to contradict him, not just a quick retort but with action. I look down at my hands. Im sure I could write endlessly about nothing. If only I had nothing to say.

After a time Zak places a fresh cup before me.

This is the last time Ill be serving you, he says solemnly.

He makes the best coffee around, so I am sad to hear.

Why? Are you going somewhere?

Im going to open a beach caf on the boardwalk in Rockaway Beach.

A beach caf! What do you know, a beach caf!

I stretch my legs and watch as Zak performs his morning tasks. He could not have known that I once harbored a dream of having a caf of my own. I suppose it began with reading of the caf life of the Beats, surrealists, and French symbolist poets. There were no cafs where I grew up but they existed within my books and flourished in my daydreams. In 1965 I had come to New York City from South Jersey just to roam around, and nothing seemed more romantic than just to sit and write poetry in a Greenwich Village caf. I finally got the courage to enter Caff Dante on MacDougal Street. Unable to afford a meal, I just drank coffee, but no one seemed to mind. The walls were covered with printed murals of the city of Florence and scenes from The Divine Comedy. The same scenes remain to this day, discolored by decades of cigarette smoke.

In 1973 I moved into an airy whitewashed room with a small kitchen on that same street, just two short blocks from Caff Dante. I could crawl out the front window and sit on the fire escape at night and clock the action that flowed through the Kettle of Fish, one of Jack Kerouacs frequented bars. There was a small stall around the corner on Bleecker Street where a young Moroccan sold fresh rolls, anchovies packed in salt, and bunches of fresh mint. I would rise early and buy supplies. Id boil water and pour it into a teapot stuffed with mint and spend the afternoons drinking tea, smoking bits of hashish, and rereading the tales of Mohammed Mrabet and Isabelle Eberhardt.

Caf Ino didnt exist back then. I would sit by a low window in Caff Dante that looked out into the corner of a small alley, reading Mrabets The Beach Caf. A young fish-seller named Driss meets a reclusive, uncongenial codger who has a so-called caf with only one table and one chair on a rocky stretch of shore near Tangier. The slow-moving atmosphere surrounding the caf so captivated me that I desired nothing more than to dwell within it. Like Driss, I dreamed of opening a place of my own. I thought about it so much I could almost enter it: the Caf Nerval, a small haven where poets and travelers might find the simplicity of asylum.

I imagined threadbare Persian rugs on wide-planked floors, two long wood tables with benches, a few smaller tables, and an oven for baking bread. Every morning I would wipe down the tables with aromatic tea like they do in Chinatown. No music no menus. Just silence black coffee olive oil fresh mint brown bread. Photographs adorning the walls: a melancholic portrait of the cafs namesake, and a smaller image of the forlorn poet Paul Verlaine in his overcoat, slumped before a glass of absinthe.

In 1978 I came into a little money and was able to pay a security deposit toward the lease of a one-story building on East Tenth Street. It had once been a beauty parlor but stood empty save for three white ceiling fans and a few folding chairs. My brother, Todd, supervised repairs and we whitewashed the walls and waxed the wood floors. Two wide skylights flooded the space with light. I spent several days sitting beneath them at a card table, drinking deli coffee and plotting my next move. I would need funds for a new toilet and a coffee machine and yards of white muslin to drape the windows. Practical things that usually receded into the music of my imagination.