M Train by Patti Smith
Credit 19.3
Virginia Woolf’s walking stick
—
I removed my Saint Francis tau from around my neck, then braided my hair, still damp, and looked around. Home is a desk. The amalgamation of a dream. Home is the cats, my books, and my work never done. All the lost things that may one day call to me, the faces of my children who will one day call to me. Maybe we can’t draw flesh from reverie nor retrieve a dusty spur, but we can gather the dream itself and bring it back uniquely whole.
I called to Cairo and she hopped onto the bed. I looked up and saw a singular star rise above my skylight. I tried to rise as well, but all at once gravity had the better of me and I was swept by the edges of a strange music. I saw the fist of a babe shaking a silver rattle. I saw the shadow of a man and the brim of his Stetson hat. He was toying with a kid’s lariat, and then he knelt down, untied the knot, and laid it on the ground.
—Watch, he said.
The snake ate its tail, let go, and ate again. The lariat was a long string of slithering words. I leaned over to read what they said. My oracle. I checked my pocket but I had neither pen nor script.
—Some things, the cowpoke breathed, we save for ourselves.
It was the hour of showdown. The miraculous hour. I shielded my eyes from the punishing light, dusted off my jacket, and threw it over my shoulder. I knew exactly where I was. I fell out of the frame and saw what I was seeing. Same lone café, different dream. The dun-colored exterior had been repainted a bright canary yellow and the rusted gas pump was covered with what appeared to be a massive tea cozy. I just shrugged and sashayed in, but the place was unrecognizable. The tables and chairs and the jukebox were gone. The knotty pine panels had been stripped away and the faded walls were painted colonial blue with white wainscoting. There were crates of technical equipment, metal office furniture, and stacks of brochures. I leafed through a pile: Hawaii, Tahiti, and the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City. A travel agency in the middle of nowhere.
I went into the back room but the coffeemaker, beans, wooden spoons, and earthenware mugs were all gone. Even the empty mescal bottles were gone. There were no ashtrays and no sign of my philosophic cowpoke. I sensed he had been heading this way and most likely, spotting the spanking-new paint job, just kept on going. I looked around. Nothing to hold me here, either, not even the dried carcass of a dead bee. I figured if I hustled I might spot the clouds of dust left behind where his old Ford flatbed passed. Maybe I could catch up with him and hitch myself a ride. We could travel the desert together, no agent required.
—I love you, I whispered to all, to none.
—Love not lightly, I heard him say.
And then I walked out, straight through the twilight, treading the beaten earth. There were no dust clouds, no signs of anyone, but I paid no mind. I was my own lucky hand of solitaire. The desert landscape unchanging: a long, unwinding scroll that I would one day amuse myself by filling. I’m going to remember everything and then I’m going to write it all down. An aria to a coat. A requiem for a café. That’s what I was thinking, in my dream, looking down at my hands.
Credit 19.4
Wow Cafe, Ocean Beach Pier, Point Loma
ILLUSTRATIONS
1.1 Café ’Ino
1.2 Fred, Maroni River
1.3 Guide, Maroni River
1.4 Quartier Disciplinaire
1.5 Bars, mass cell
1.6 Cayenne River
1.7 Patti Smith
1.8 Fred Smith
2.1 Roberto Bolaño’s chair
2.2 Silver balloon
2.3 Bedroom dresser
2.4 Monk coffeemaker
2.5 1972 Championship table
3.1 Bison, Berlin
3.2 Wall, Pasternak Café
3.3 Tower, Berlin
3.4 Awning, Pasternak Café
3.5 Statue detail, Berlin
4.1 Tolstoy’s bear, Moscow
6.1 Arcade Bar, Detroit
7.1 Author, spring 1954
7.2 Pavillon de la Reine, Paris
7.3 Wind-Up Bird, Café ’Ino
7.4 Font, Buenos Aires
7.5 Schiller’s table, Jena
8.1 Frida Kahlo’s bed
8.2 Frida’s crutches
8.3 Frida’s dress
9.1 West Fourth Street Station
9.2 Fred, in Nawader
9.3 Willows, Saint Clair Shores
9.4 Bungalow, Rockaway Beach
10.1 Remains of boardwalk
10.2 Alamo with flag
12.1 Golden temple, Kyoto
12.2 Ghost robe
12.3 Ace and Dice, Kamakura
12.4 Kita-Kamakura Station
12.5 Incense burner
12.6 Akutagawa gravesite
12.7 Comic mask
13.1 Café Collage, Venice Beach
13.2 Saint Thomas à Becket Church
13.3 Sylvia Plath’s grave
13.4 Interrogation room, Criminal Intent
13.5 Café ’Ino, closing day
14.1 Robe of Parsifal, Neuhardenberg
15.1 Statue detail, Berlin
15.2 With Paul Bowles, Tangier
16.1 Jean Genet’s grave, Larache
16.2 Fred, Father’s Day Lake Ann
19.1 Desert tracks, Namibia
19.2 Hermann Hesse’s typewriter
19.3 Virginia Woolf’s walking stick
19.4 Wow Cafe, Ocean Beach Pier
Photographs © Patti Smith except where noted:
1.3, 1.4, 9.3: Fred Smith
7.1: Courtesy Greg Mitchell Archive
7.3: © Yoshie Tominaga
15.2: © Tim Richmond
16.1: © Lenny Kaye
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PATTI SMITH is a writer, performer, and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has released twelve albums, including Horses, which has been hailed as one of the top one hundred debut albums of all time by Rolling Stone.
Smith had her first exhibit of drawings at the Gotham Book Mart in 1973 and has been represented by the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. Her books include Just Kids, winner of the National Book Award in 2010, Wītt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, and Auguries of Innocence.
In 2005, the French Ministry of Culture awarded Smith the title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, the highest honor given to an artist by the French Republic. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
In 1980, she married the musician Fred Sonic Smith in Detroit. They had a son, Jackson, and a daughter, Jesse. Smith resides in New York City.
Patti Smith, M Train