Forward
Dmitri Ashkanov first crossed my path in the early 1990s at Nelson’s Books where he worked as a clerk. For a couple of years, we spent a fair amount of time together, in the bookstore and in the taverns and coffee shops down around van Buren. Dmitri didn’t bother with personal resumes when he met a new person. He just started talking about something other than himself. I enjoyed that characteristic, and enjoyed the melodies and rhythms of his voice, and the odd things he noticed. At some point, he gave me permission to record him when we were having a drink or ten and he was rolling. These are the transcripts I’ve culled from many hours of tape.
Dmitri just disappeared one day without leave, without a trace. Not even Harry at Nelson’s Books knew where he’d gone or why. If he’d fallen victim to one of the city’s victimizers, his body never turned up, so far as I knew. I prefer to hope that he just felt it was time to cross some other paths on some other streets than Chicago’s.
I gather it’s now considered mannerly to warn potential readers that they may be made to feel unsafe, unhappy or uncomfortable by some of the words that follow. I suppose that might happen. Dmitri was often intemperate and he had had more than enough of political correctness in his native land. I would be remiss if I failed to add that safety, happiness and comfort are not often characteristic of life in this particular universe.
***
Magic
All knowledge is awakening to larger dimensions of what is unknown.
– I Ching: Shih Ho
Long ago, when Johnny Carson young,
Dmitri see machine on show,
plain, black box length of inventor arm,
one silver button on top corner of long side.
When inventor push button,
lid slowly lift, as top of coffin, and from it emerge
one white-glovèd hand with index pointing,
rise up on mechanical arm,
pause, pivot, descend
to poke button which set it free,
ascend, pivot, pause
and then retreat beneath closing lid.
Remember Dmitri tell you this,
while he tell you something else.
Dmitri don’t know.
You don’t either.
