There are snippets of songs, not whole melodies, but enough that your capitalistic spirit draws you in and you pull out a credit card with a $516,498.22 limit on it. You could buy anything! The Czech Republic! Cotton candy! Enough Nalgene bottles to fill the old community center on 32nd street!
My friend is becoming a famous actress in Chicago, and now she can't eat falafel sandwiches in peace. She doesn't mind, really, because people ask her about cheese in Wisconsin and if she believes in post-modernism. (Or is that not believe? Or not not believe without the connotations of a double negative?)
Anyway, she still doesn't fork over the quarters for clean sheets, and she still notices that, in time, they smell like avocados - OS NOT OES - and everything is very much a bridge OR EVEN a Brigitte Bardot song.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Sunday, July 8, 2007
drop the machete you call history
Phrases will surface unexpectedly, and your seven-year-old self will emerge from the depths of rainy tents and modern-day tales of red-haired Swedish heroines. The words you've used your entire life no longer seem adequate, as you try to remember how it is that the person you once were uses the same words as the person you are now.
Current self : we wait patiently, for the mountains to erode, for the glaciers to melt, to remember why it is that you're here, munching on peaches and not wearing gingham-dresses in a cottage you've built yourself. There, you could forget proper pronouns.
Former self : I've waited for you to return the letters I wrote you; it's been years and the excuses I've heard include boring notions of time and space.
Current self : we wait patiently, for the mountains to erode, for the glaciers to melt, to remember why it is that you're here, munching on peaches and not wearing gingham-dresses in a cottage you've built yourself. There, you could forget proper pronouns.
Former self : I've waited for you to return the letters I wrote you; it's been years and the excuses I've heard include boring notions of time and space.
scarred boots
It was late and hot - not a sidenote by any means - and the driveway seemed to be more of an island, floating somewhere in disconnected thoughts. I was eating a mango and it was a continuous past tense, there in the hot night time when everything was not not-sterile-bordering-on-a-tango.
I often chewed gum with my front two teeth then, tapped my pointer finger and rarely my pinky and the windows were always the same : remember Virginia? remember Buenos Aires? remember Rosemont/Ottawa/Chicago/Omaha/Wyoming/New Haven/Casablanca?
I fingered my mango pulp, creating obscene gushing noises that hit everyone in the Chevy that passed by. They didn't mind, it was too warm, their air-conditioning was broken and to top it all off, they were playing Jackson Browne. As for me, the glory of it all faded and I sang with the fireflies.
I often chewed gum with my front two teeth then, tapped my pointer finger and rarely my pinky and the windows were always the same : remember Virginia? remember Buenos Aires? remember Rosemont/Ottawa/Chicago/Omaha/Wyoming/New Haven/Casablanca?
I fingered my mango pulp, creating obscene gushing noises that hit everyone in the Chevy that passed by. They didn't mind, it was too warm, their air-conditioning was broken and to top it all off, they were playing Jackson Browne. As for me, the glory of it all faded and I sang with the fireflies.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
stars, stars
I woke up early that day, years ago, when I believed a place that named itself "the city of drama" would prove to be my alternative salvation. The kind that comes not from steeples or spilled holy water, but from feet on gravel and mint tea. It was already hot before the sun rose, and my South African traveling partner was still cradling her pillow, a glass of rosewater and a book about an ideological continent on her hostel bedside table.
I slipped on the too-large orange slippers, bought in the 4 p.m. medina where the children beggers asked for coca and the store-owners drowned you in tea and "Insha'Allah" was a way of accepting life instead of religion.We had drank too many bottles of red wine and smoked too much hashish the night before, and I remembered to grab my last-ink-filled pen to write my own impromptu ode to the place where I would feel more lost and more at home than I ever would again.
After I climbed the stairs to the roof, where the man from the coast was dozing in the corner, I watched the world begin in shades of snapped-open blue shutters and old men in white robes selling mangoes. My face pressed to the rose-colored concrete, I took off my mask and promised the Everyday I would never forget this.
I slipped on the too-large orange slippers, bought in the 4 p.m. medina where the children beggers asked for coca and the store-owners drowned you in tea and "Insha'Allah" was a way of accepting life instead of religion.We had drank too many bottles of red wine and smoked too much hashish the night before, and I remembered to grab my last-ink-filled pen to write my own impromptu ode to the place where I would feel more lost and more at home than I ever would again.
After I climbed the stairs to the roof, where the man from the coast was dozing in the corner, I watched the world begin in shades of snapped-open blue shutters and old men in white robes selling mangoes. My face pressed to the rose-colored concrete, I took off my mask and promised the Everyday I would never forget this.
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