I was watching a girl's reflection try on a winter coat in front of a mirror the other night. What made her interesting was how interested she was in what she was doing. She was inside a bright, hygienically lit department store with puddles of squeaky light gleaming off the ground beside her feet. The cosmetics section and a large window divided us. I was outside in the cold watching my white breath fog up the view against the window and frantically wiping it off while a street light hung over me on Howe Street, drooling its sad creamsical glow into a puddle in the gutter that'd be frozen before I'd get into my front door that night. The girl's reflection swiveled her hips a helluva lot of degrees in one direction then swung the other way just as far, both times looking over her shoulder with a downward glance that didn't betray a result. I felt less cold when she took another crack at it and bit her lip. She stood on her tippy-toes and tucked a strand of hair behind an ear. She arched her back a little, leaned over; kept tabs of the results but never tipped her hand to me by the expression on her face. Without even once shoving her hands into the pockets of the big puffy coat she discarded it, returned it to the rack, and abandoned the whole mission for a few squirts of free perfume over in the cosmetics department and started talking up some cosmetics female atrocity of a salesperson and I went on my way.
Even a winter coat is all about a girl's ass looking okay. Don't get me wrong, the concern has plenty of merit. My theory on fidelity is firmly planted in the conviction that a man needs a face he can marry and an ass roughly 36 inches beneath it that makes it an enticing idea and practice to cheat on it with enduring satisfaction. Lingerie has a similar cheating element built into fidelity thing, too. It's still YOU under there all right, but it's covered in PINK for the 3.4 seconds it takes me to see it and tear the motherfucker off. Next time BLUE! Shucks...
But the girl's reflection kinda got to me. Mostly because I've never tried the pockets of a coat in my life when I was looking around for a coat to keep me warm when it's cold outside. And I've never bought a coat other than when it was, that day, that hour, that minute, WAY too fucking cold to not impulse buy, in cold blood, a coat.
I've gone for plenty of girls that were like coats without pockets. No comfy place. But it takes me a while to even realize it. Which is pretty fucking dumb.
That girl's reflection kinda reminded me a bit of this girl I used to watch at night through a telescope when I had an apartment in the Westend. When I moved in I didn't have a TV so I borrowed a telescope off a crazy neighbor of my mom's whose dad was shot in the face with a 357 magnum and for the last thirty years he collects shit off ebay. One of those things was a really impressive, expensive telescope complete with a laser scope thingamabob. To make the telescope into my evening entertainment I needed dependable story lines. Over a few evenings I cased about 400 windows for activity and bought some different colored pieces of scotch tape and made a constellation of all the interesting rooms on MY window so that I could easily point the telescope to the tape and, in turn, the room, and tune in. I never once caught anybody fucking. Which at first was VERY irritating. Until after some examination I discovered that I barely caught any couples even TALKING to each other. Even LOOKING at each other. It was frightening. Not too many people live alone, but everybody just ignores each other. She watches TV, you go on the computer; after a while, SWITCH, shower separately, phone call, leaf through US magazine, go to bed.
I'd kinda hoped there'd be SOMETHING perverse out there in the world of apartment life, but nothing prepared me for how perverse the reality actually was.
Then it got way more creepy: this one girl became the star of everything. A Japanese girl of 20 or so who arrived home to her apartment around 1130pm and went about trying on 20 dresses or so from her closet in front of a tall mirror. One after another just working herself up and tearing herself down until a big fat breakdown against her bed, fists plunging into the mattress, bawling her eyes out. And all of it like clock work every weeknight (weekends I have no idea where she went). She always tried on the same red dress last every time.
But that was over a year ago. Maybe in another 15 minutes or so she's somewhere or other near that red dress working her way up to it. Or maybe she's wearing it right now with somebody she loves who doesn't even suspect there's any particular significance to what lies in her closet. Who knows. The stars were out tonight---and maybe hers' were too---and I always feel okay being in this cozy place walking over a bridge to get home with the water calm and checkered like a dance floor, the moon fat as Orson Welles' cheek buttering the sky and the clouds clumpy bits of chalk.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Christmas, 2007
I'm double-parked in this shit but whatever...
I was 3 the first time I saw fireworks. I remember it cause I was on my dad's shoulders nodding off beside the noise of a couple hundred thousand people crowded around English Bay. Everybody tense and waiting for it to kick off and start. It was a warm summer night, sticky, and my parents weren't old. The sky looked like a huge fat man of blue lying beside the slim purple silhouette of the mountains. My knees were jerked suddenly and I opened my eyes and those greens and blues and yellows torched up the sky, spidering off in clusters and fountains and I could feel the ahhhhhs and ohhhhhs as much as I could hear them from all the people around me. Then one really lit up and ignited the sky like an angel on a Christmas tree and involuntarily I joined the chorus. We were all wooed by some magic finger finger-painting sky just for the fuck of it. Cause it's easy to forget how important green and blue and yellow are most of the time maybe...
Every other set of fireworks I've seen sucked. No magic, no pull, no dice.
Today I was walking around the beach with a friend and after when we were heading back for home we slipped off and passed a parking lot where I saw the hugeass car I'm pretty sure my first girl is driving these days. I've seen her in it before. A few times actually. And in that neighborhood too. But I never got a license plate or anything like that. And Cadilac Escalades aren't all that uncommon a fish. Siouxie's color was black. She loved tinted windows. Secrets in general. And big, scary things. When she drives you can hear that stereo for a good mile. And that's how she likes it. Always has. Everything about her this narcotic revolving door feeling about it. Sucked me up every motherfucking time.
I took a look around hoping I'd catch sight of her. Nothing. So we headed up the hill for home and decided to take a coffee before we made the last couple miles of the stretch. There was that same car parked directly in front of the coffee shop. I checked the meter and it had 2hrs left. I asked my friend if he thought it was her. He said he had a feeling it was. Okay, fuck it. You up for this shit? Does it make any difference, Brin? Not really. So we tracked down a book store for reading material and a notebook, stole the pen I used to sign the credit card statement and started back for the coffee shop to wait to see her. Just a glimpse of my first fireworks again.
I was gone 5 minutes to that book store but by the time I got back she was gone...
It's a weird thing to admit to anybody, even to yourself, that you'll never care as much about anyone as you did for your first. Mine was basically a psychotic maniac who specialized in stringing out a relationship for 4.5 years on a steady diet of revenge fucking. It's not the most romantic form, but it might be the most urgent. There's the cliche bullshit about what you're trying the hardest to conceal is what you're dying the most to reveal... but I was all the way there after 5 minutes and when I mentioned anything by way of confession all she said was, "what took you so long?" And that was perfect. I like violently beautiful things. Scars get chicks. I never danced with her at prom but I've never seen her drive by since without following in that direction for a while... she had the same color of green eyes that I was sure Gatsby was staring at out over the water from Daisy's dock. Gatsby Green, man. No matter what light was on them, no matter how dim, they shone. Bermuda Triangle action every time.
Even with the breast implants I heard she's got, along with baby boy, I just couldn't keep smiling to myself that maybe I'll get a crack at seeing her again. I don't even know if that was her car or not. But I felt it was. Maybe she was with the dad of that kid. Maybe the guy who encouraged the fake tits. Paid for them even. Paid for them through construction work! Good fuck, best to leave that side alone.
There's that first mainline when you see that person who stole your heart before you knew you had one---it's pretty for a second cause all you can feel is this little rejoice inside that at some point she was yours, and whoever enjoys her never knew what it was like to get that I SAW YOU FIRST feeling and risk everything on it and get lucky and wake up next to it and have it a little better than going to sleep with it.
A very small part of me gets why dragon chasers, once they're off junk, say the most depressing thing is they know they've already had their best day. Which is bullshit kinda---cause I've had others who could top or ace most of what she had. But I never can get back to what I had going in with her. And that's sorta weird. Cause you know you can get over stuff. You won't break or get undone or unraveled. You can over it. And it's funny and a bit tragic that maybe nobody in the whole world could really push you over that edge. But maybe there is.... but not Her, not like you thought she might.
But fireworks are another bunch of months off, so no reason to mope.
I was 3 the first time I saw fireworks. I remember it cause I was on my dad's shoulders nodding off beside the noise of a couple hundred thousand people crowded around English Bay. Everybody tense and waiting for it to kick off and start. It was a warm summer night, sticky, and my parents weren't old. The sky looked like a huge fat man of blue lying beside the slim purple silhouette of the mountains. My knees were jerked suddenly and I opened my eyes and those greens and blues and yellows torched up the sky, spidering off in clusters and fountains and I could feel the ahhhhhs and ohhhhhs as much as I could hear them from all the people around me. Then one really lit up and ignited the sky like an angel on a Christmas tree and involuntarily I joined the chorus. We were all wooed by some magic finger finger-painting sky just for the fuck of it. Cause it's easy to forget how important green and blue and yellow are most of the time maybe...
Every other set of fireworks I've seen sucked. No magic, no pull, no dice.
Today I was walking around the beach with a friend and after when we were heading back for home we slipped off and passed a parking lot where I saw the hugeass car I'm pretty sure my first girl is driving these days. I've seen her in it before. A few times actually. And in that neighborhood too. But I never got a license plate or anything like that. And Cadilac Escalades aren't all that uncommon a fish. Siouxie's color was black. She loved tinted windows. Secrets in general. And big, scary things. When she drives you can hear that stereo for a good mile. And that's how she likes it. Always has. Everything about her this narcotic revolving door feeling about it. Sucked me up every motherfucking time.
I took a look around hoping I'd catch sight of her. Nothing. So we headed up the hill for home and decided to take a coffee before we made the last couple miles of the stretch. There was that same car parked directly in front of the coffee shop. I checked the meter and it had 2hrs left. I asked my friend if he thought it was her. He said he had a feeling it was. Okay, fuck it. You up for this shit? Does it make any difference, Brin? Not really. So we tracked down a book store for reading material and a notebook, stole the pen I used to sign the credit card statement and started back for the coffee shop to wait to see her. Just a glimpse of my first fireworks again.
I was gone 5 minutes to that book store but by the time I got back she was gone...
It's a weird thing to admit to anybody, even to yourself, that you'll never care as much about anyone as you did for your first. Mine was basically a psychotic maniac who specialized in stringing out a relationship for 4.5 years on a steady diet of revenge fucking. It's not the most romantic form, but it might be the most urgent. There's the cliche bullshit about what you're trying the hardest to conceal is what you're dying the most to reveal... but I was all the way there after 5 minutes and when I mentioned anything by way of confession all she said was, "what took you so long?" And that was perfect. I like violently beautiful things. Scars get chicks. I never danced with her at prom but I've never seen her drive by since without following in that direction for a while... she had the same color of green eyes that I was sure Gatsby was staring at out over the water from Daisy's dock. Gatsby Green, man. No matter what light was on them, no matter how dim, they shone. Bermuda Triangle action every time.
Even with the breast implants I heard she's got, along with baby boy, I just couldn't keep smiling to myself that maybe I'll get a crack at seeing her again. I don't even know if that was her car or not. But I felt it was. Maybe she was with the dad of that kid. Maybe the guy who encouraged the fake tits. Paid for them even. Paid for them through construction work! Good fuck, best to leave that side alone.
There's that first mainline when you see that person who stole your heart before you knew you had one---it's pretty for a second cause all you can feel is this little rejoice inside that at some point she was yours, and whoever enjoys her never knew what it was like to get that I SAW YOU FIRST feeling and risk everything on it and get lucky and wake up next to it and have it a little better than going to sleep with it.
A very small part of me gets why dragon chasers, once they're off junk, say the most depressing thing is they know they've already had their best day. Which is bullshit kinda---cause I've had others who could top or ace most of what she had. But I never can get back to what I had going in with her. And that's sorta weird. Cause you know you can get over stuff. You won't break or get undone or unraveled. You can over it. And it's funny and a bit tragic that maybe nobody in the whole world could really push you over that edge. But maybe there is.... but not Her, not like you thought she might.
But fireworks are another bunch of months off, so no reason to mope.
December 10th, 2007 (Hotel Ingleterra)
Few hours before the flight. Didn´t quite duck the whole winter but spring´s around the corner and Vancouver wears it like a dress. All the highrises across the bridge just lego---after-dinner-mint pastels of green and blue until the sun sets and and paints their windows molten. On a clear afternoon maybe the sail boats blowing off out to sea like dandilion confetti gonged to the horizon. Empty
tankers stewing in the habor like a herd of Eeyors beside the blue mountains changing blues with distance in some paint by number childish portrait of them but it just happens to be
real.
No news reports indictaing Fidel croaked. I was thinking about him on the walk at 5am over here. What a strange melody that guy has with these people---maybe the catchiest one I can think of. Like George Washington molested by Napoleon or something---but really it´s his own deal. Like he took over this place on the craziest fucking dare anybody ever came up with.
It gets you thinking tho, what´s your melody with people? When you leave a room or enter it. Is it nicer if somebody knows you or better if they don´t?
Fidel just reminds too much of Orpheus. All Orpheus had to get his girl back from Hades was a melody. Ever wonder what it would sound like? What he played to make Sysephus take a break from pushing that
rock so he could strain to listen?
Was it sad or happy? Powerful or soft? About the past or the future? A girl he was with, or being away from her. Something he saw as a kid or something he made up?
They sent something into space, a capsule of sorts, called the Voyager Probe in the late 70´s. Partly it was a picnic basket for aliens to find about us, and partly it was meant as a defense of us. Here's what we've done. Here's the best we can do. Here's the best reason we're worth something. Here's the best reason not to rub us out. Beethoven´s the first thing on there on a gold record. Of all the things to protect us if something hostile latches onto that probe, it´s just a melody.
Yeah, so. I´ve been asked about 2000 times whether or not I need girls over here---always GIRLS, never the singular---and god knows I DO need a girl but I always have to say no. I´ve never verfied it, but I´ve been pretty sure they can´t supply the one I want. So I arranged halfway along this trip to go back and see her.
And last night I couldn´t sleep and walked up an alley and saw some little kids playing, faces like they had the world on a string, and I didn´t feel so nervous about this girl having my number. People come swing by where you live here all the time offering stuff. Bread, fruit---biscotti for fucksake. Door to door stuff. And sometimes the frustrating shit about here makes me really confused how nobody goes Grand Theft Auto. And I can leave. But at night all the stars come out, all over the place---not just the sky but with the sounds, faces, even the smells from homes cooking for people they look forward to seeing.
Fidel was penciled in to bat cleanup for this place in the baseball game of people´s lives. They risked getting tortured or murdered to see him do it. But they´ve mainlined that rush of playing long odds when you get that first tingle that you might´ve pulled it off. Like all of them double-dared Fidel to walk up to the country as if it were a girl he´d never met in his life and make her fall in love with him, and he´d be the last kiss she ever had... and with so many people they don´t regret it. I had a grandpa who lived 96 years with one woman he kissed his whole life. There was something a little cocky about the way he grinned mentioning it, maybe the way he did when he first came up with the idea in his head. I dunno.
But it´s done. And tonight all over Havana you´d hear groups of friends together pulling up chairs in the darkness, just a little street light gleam glazing their faces. Bite off an opening of a juicebox full of rum and they´d set up for dominoes and start talking and laughing and throw down some pieces and smoke and their women might come over and hastle everybody or do their own things, kids might race by in the street chasing something, the zombie dogs will go on limping and scratch in conspicuous obscurity---and the more I try to duck the things I miss about this place the more I feel like every evasion is a confession. What the hell´s the difference between a suicide note and love letter anyway in terms of the content? Sum some kinda bullshit up. Same notes really. Trying for them, anyway. So what´s anything you have to say about here? You never get to dance but you can watch them do it.
It´s their last song. Not mine. Even tho it just keeps playing and playing...
tankers stewing in the habor like a herd of Eeyors beside the blue mountains changing blues with distance in some paint by number childish portrait of them but it just happens to be
real.
No news reports indictaing Fidel croaked. I was thinking about him on the walk at 5am over here. What a strange melody that guy has with these people---maybe the catchiest one I can think of. Like George Washington molested by Napoleon or something---but really it´s his own deal. Like he took over this place on the craziest fucking dare anybody ever came up with.
It gets you thinking tho, what´s your melody with people? When you leave a room or enter it. Is it nicer if somebody knows you or better if they don´t?
Fidel just reminds too much of Orpheus. All Orpheus had to get his girl back from Hades was a melody. Ever wonder what it would sound like? What he played to make Sysephus take a break from pushing that
rock so he could strain to listen?
Was it sad or happy? Powerful or soft? About the past or the future? A girl he was with, or being away from her. Something he saw as a kid or something he made up?
They sent something into space, a capsule of sorts, called the Voyager Probe in the late 70´s. Partly it was a picnic basket for aliens to find about us, and partly it was meant as a defense of us. Here's what we've done. Here's the best we can do. Here's the best reason we're worth something. Here's the best reason not to rub us out. Beethoven´s the first thing on there on a gold record. Of all the things to protect us if something hostile latches onto that probe, it´s just a melody.
Yeah, so. I´ve been asked about 2000 times whether or not I need girls over here---always GIRLS, never the singular---and god knows I DO need a girl but I always have to say no. I´ve never verfied it, but I´ve been pretty sure they can´t supply the one I want. So I arranged halfway along this trip to go back and see her.
And last night I couldn´t sleep and walked up an alley and saw some little kids playing, faces like they had the world on a string, and I didn´t feel so nervous about this girl having my number. People come swing by where you live here all the time offering stuff. Bread, fruit---biscotti for fucksake. Door to door stuff. And sometimes the frustrating shit about here makes me really confused how nobody goes Grand Theft Auto. And I can leave. But at night all the stars come out, all over the place---not just the sky but with the sounds, faces, even the smells from homes cooking for people they look forward to seeing.
Fidel was penciled in to bat cleanup for this place in the baseball game of people´s lives. They risked getting tortured or murdered to see him do it. But they´ve mainlined that rush of playing long odds when you get that first tingle that you might´ve pulled it off. Like all of them double-dared Fidel to walk up to the country as if it were a girl he´d never met in his life and make her fall in love with him, and he´d be the last kiss she ever had... and with so many people they don´t regret it. I had a grandpa who lived 96 years with one woman he kissed his whole life. There was something a little cocky about the way he grinned mentioning it, maybe the way he did when he first came up with the idea in his head. I dunno.
But it´s done. And tonight all over Havana you´d hear groups of friends together pulling up chairs in the darkness, just a little street light gleam glazing their faces. Bite off an opening of a juicebox full of rum and they´d set up for dominoes and start talking and laughing and throw down some pieces and smoke and their women might come over and hastle everybody or do their own things, kids might race by in the street chasing something, the zombie dogs will go on limping and scratch in conspicuous obscurity---and the more I try to duck the things I miss about this place the more I feel like every evasion is a confession. What the hell´s the difference between a suicide note and love letter anyway in terms of the content? Sum some kinda bullshit up. Same notes really. Trying for them, anyway. So what´s anything you have to say about here? You never get to dance but you can watch them do it.
It´s their last song. Not mine. Even tho it just keeps playing and playing...
December 7th, 2007 (Hotel Ingleterra)
My last night in Havana was yesterday. In a few hours gonna take a bus out to Trinidad for the weekend with a twice black-eyed Dutchman from the boxing gym, come back, catch the plane to snowy homeland.
The Latino film festival is on right now. Boxing's done. Some girl was at the gym yesterday, I couldn't tell from where, photographing everybody training. All the kids who hang around raced up and down the bleechers to catch her eye. It's an outdoor gym, so usually some apartment nearby has music going, the roof across the alley had construction workers toiling away with cheesy techno blaring so the kids went ape-shit shaking their asses 50 feet above us, grownup-moves, then kid-giggles after they broke down when she stopped taking their pictures.
The girl went over to one of the coaches who she found out was a 2x world champion and 2x olympic gold medalist. Click-click. He's a sullen guy of 35 who smokes while he lies sprawled out on the canvass. He's the only Cuban at the gym who doesn't make any effort to shake my hand when I arrive. So I watch with interest when girls perk up his spirits. It's the only time he ever smiles. He coulda defected and made a few million maybe. But no more family. He made his choice. But he certainly doesn't have much to say about it---not with me, anyway.
Last night a few drinks with this Dutch guy hatching a plan for today's trip. Late night after a movie at a theater next to Kid Chocolate in Old Havana. It was the wrong street to be on because all the hookers were out. "Coo joo buy me waan dreek?" one girl said through the wooden bars separating us from the street. I find hooker's eyes very slippery. I get shy in a hurry. "Jass waan?"
We started home. It was dark enough that I couldn't see my friend's black eyes. They annoyed him a fair bit and amused me. Both were cheap shots he'd got sparring. We're both leaving very soon. Him in a few days after me. He's been traveling for a great deal longer, several months in South America. Job to find back home. Sort shit out. Make sense of this trip. Girl stuff. Where will life settle...
We hadn't said anything to each other for a block. It was quiet. Traffic was dead. Street lights were dim. Stray dogs were roaming.
"Dat wass deezgusstin'."
"What's that?" I asked him. My favorite quality of his is how he registers disgust.
"Dat ol' man weeth dat prossdeedute. He shud be ashamed."
"She was pretty. Maybe he's gotten over his shame."
"Haav heez age, man! Motherfuck."
"Yeah well."
"I cood nevah do dat."
I looked over at one mangy dog chasing another in the middle of the street, then he caught her finally, hopped on top and went to town. Nothing spooks me in this town like the strays. So I looked up at the moon and on a rooftop some guy was perched like a gargoyle over the edge, gazing up at the stars. Such a strange melody to the nights here. Like the real business-end of it is fucking with your dreams more than your mind.
This place punishes you with it's beauty. It gives more than it takes, but it wants to fiddle with your values just to see the look on your face. You can't put your finger on anything. Any sight that takes your breath away---the moment it comes back you get a stink from something that gives you a migrane. Everybody pools and slums their dirty stuff with everybody else's. Soupy kinda deal. But real. Always real. Like how you feel swimming naked.
Kinda makes you wonder about the poetry of why somebody with Van Gogh's eye always had a weakness for diseased whores. And he never recovered from that kinda taste of domestic family life with one of them. Ah well... goofier shit abounds.
I hate goodbyes. Hate'em. The whole time I was here I was secretly hoping Fidel might die. I don't want him dead. But I wanted to see what would happen. No dice. Have to catch it on CNN. "The most trusted name in news". Note not "The most TRUST WORTHY name in news"---but as long as a bunch of suckers buy it, good enough for me. Consensus usually adds up to truth anyway. Yep.
What a lame note to end on. I saw that girl up on her balcony last night tho. Leaning into her hands over the railing. That was an okay goodbye-thing. It was so dark I couldn't even make out the color of her dress. No accidents in this place...
The Latino film festival is on right now. Boxing's done. Some girl was at the gym yesterday, I couldn't tell from where, photographing everybody training. All the kids who hang around raced up and down the bleechers to catch her eye. It's an outdoor gym, so usually some apartment nearby has music going, the roof across the alley had construction workers toiling away with cheesy techno blaring so the kids went ape-shit shaking their asses 50 feet above us, grownup-moves, then kid-giggles after they broke down when she stopped taking their pictures.
The girl went over to one of the coaches who she found out was a 2x world champion and 2x olympic gold medalist. Click-click. He's a sullen guy of 35 who smokes while he lies sprawled out on the canvass. He's the only Cuban at the gym who doesn't make any effort to shake my hand when I arrive. So I watch with interest when girls perk up his spirits. It's the only time he ever smiles. He coulda defected and made a few million maybe. But no more family. He made his choice. But he certainly doesn't have much to say about it---not with me, anyway.
Last night a few drinks with this Dutch guy hatching a plan for today's trip. Late night after a movie at a theater next to Kid Chocolate in Old Havana. It was the wrong street to be on because all the hookers were out. "Coo joo buy me waan dreek?" one girl said through the wooden bars separating us from the street. I find hooker's eyes very slippery. I get shy in a hurry. "Jass waan?"
We started home. It was dark enough that I couldn't see my friend's black eyes. They annoyed him a fair bit and amused me. Both were cheap shots he'd got sparring. We're both leaving very soon. Him in a few days after me. He's been traveling for a great deal longer, several months in South America. Job to find back home. Sort shit out. Make sense of this trip. Girl stuff. Where will life settle...
We hadn't said anything to each other for a block. It was quiet. Traffic was dead. Street lights were dim. Stray dogs were roaming.
"Dat wass deezgusstin'."
"What's that?" I asked him. My favorite quality of his is how he registers disgust.
"Dat ol' man weeth dat prossdeedute. He shud be ashamed."
"She was pretty. Maybe he's gotten over his shame."
"Haav heez age, man! Motherfuck."
"Yeah well."
"I cood nevah do dat."
I looked over at one mangy dog chasing another in the middle of the street, then he caught her finally, hopped on top and went to town. Nothing spooks me in this town like the strays. So I looked up at the moon and on a rooftop some guy was perched like a gargoyle over the edge, gazing up at the stars. Such a strange melody to the nights here. Like the real business-end of it is fucking with your dreams more than your mind.
This place punishes you with it's beauty. It gives more than it takes, but it wants to fiddle with your values just to see the look on your face. You can't put your finger on anything. Any sight that takes your breath away---the moment it comes back you get a stink from something that gives you a migrane. Everybody pools and slums their dirty stuff with everybody else's. Soupy kinda deal. But real. Always real. Like how you feel swimming naked.
Kinda makes you wonder about the poetry of why somebody with Van Gogh's eye always had a weakness for diseased whores. And he never recovered from that kinda taste of domestic family life with one of them. Ah well... goofier shit abounds.
I hate goodbyes. Hate'em. The whole time I was here I was secretly hoping Fidel might die. I don't want him dead. But I wanted to see what would happen. No dice. Have to catch it on CNN. "The most trusted name in news". Note not "The most TRUST WORTHY name in news"---but as long as a bunch of suckers buy it, good enough for me. Consensus usually adds up to truth anyway. Yep.
What a lame note to end on. I saw that girl up on her balcony last night tho. Leaning into her hands over the railing. That was an okay goodbye-thing. It was so dark I couldn't even make out the color of her dress. No accidents in this place...
December 1st, 2007 (Hotel Ingleterra)
I was trying to figure out the allure of raggaetone when a street light cut out and I couldn´t even see my hands, anything, and I got scared when I heard yelling off in the distance. I was in a bad neighbourhood at night. The street felt like it was in a vice, and it wasn´t really a street, just dirt and potholes and stench. One light down the street jolted on for a second and I saw a band of kids chasing after a street animal. Just smudged and smeared shadows really, violent shapes, giggling. Most of them had their arms cocked back while another one reached down to pick up a rock. They were tucked behind the corner when I heard the stoning of that poor beast and it´s cry silenced to an echo that bounced around with one well placed thump. Then the light cut out again and there was nothing. Just ink outlined by the moon. Everything eliminated. So I jogged out of the slum for a busy street and got there okay.
And so I went on thinking about reggaeton. An ex of mine, one that I kinda got engaged to and last April went to Vegas to marry but didn´t---actually we basically spent nights falling off opposite sides of that hotel bed---was a hired dancer for the biggest raggaeton band in the world right now, Calle 13. I have a hunch she´s banging their lead singer even though he´s marred to Mrs Puerto Rico. But I could be wrong.
As my Spanish has come along I can actually disipher 45% of the lyrics of this stuff. And the general theme seems to be this...
A guy is trying to get a girl by confessing that he´d like to give it to her DURO. Meaning HARD.
And she replies, ¨But can you give it to me REALLY duro?
He says, sure he can. You like it duro?
Then SHE says, I have a boyfriend. But he doesn´t give it to me duro. Are you sure you can ALWAYS give it to me duro?
Then chorus kicks in and 500 crazy Puerto Ricans scream DURO DURO DURO.
The ex was a Puerto Rican herself and she danced for these fellas in PR and NYC and LA and I was just tossing it around in my brain for the helluvit just to get the taste out of my mouth and sound out of my ears of that poor dog.
It´s such a drive-in experience over here at night. It´s a city you need to arrive at night rather than the day. It blossoms at night. Most cities I´ve been to are reaching for that fun-park bullshit, ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds. But here it´s always a drive-in. Cause you can get caught at a drive-in. And there´s an expectation that really important stuff could be going on in your car while some sedative movie is up on the screen. Which is fucking cool. And sneaky. Even tho, like in a dream, everybody´s in on your scam.
So the stars were all clanged that night, the sky line of Havana rooftops was a wet painting, I got to the big strip near the Habana Libre hotel and the movie marquee had people lined up for an American feature and plenty of people were holding hands and across the street massive snakes of communist lineups for communist-affordable icecream were set up in the park at Coppelia´s icecream stands. Warm, palmy air you can kiss blowing girls hair into their guy´s faces. Buses roar by. Hitchhikers lean into old car´s windows and grin. Itchy hobos collecting bottles, smoking butts.
You look up the skirt of this city and somehow don´t feel that guilty. Maybe cause like any girl that´s worth a damn, the more time you spend and the more you find out about this one the less you know. It´s easy to find the kyptonite to most city´s or people´s bullshit. Under bruisey skys and wash lines full of whole family´s clothes it´s not as easy here. Trap door and trampolines everywhere you look, with the right kind of eyes. And little girls chasing around trying to find every last one like an easter egg hunt. And the harder I look the more tight the whipping post I get tied to. Cause if I have a little girl and she opts for videogames over this kid´s serenade of a life---eeek, that´s a rotten expectation. Every night feels like an Indian Summer back home. Smuggled, stolen season just given away to everybody. Why not? And some guy´s stroking his girl´s hair in the soft light and I can´t see their expressions and I´m glad I can´t. Another hobo starts fishing in his pockets for a lighter, finds it---scar face t-shirt on another kid... right.
I could get married to a girl over here for busfare.
A friend of mine says it´s a jail. But isn´t jail where people are supposed to make promises to themselves to have to the right to live when they get out? Rehabilitation or something?
Ah... I give up. Chop Suey. No arguments. Go to fucking Miami. Get a big car, house, listen to fucking Calle 13 even if my ex is banging him.
Nobody looks like movie extras here. I think I know why. It´s already real. Even though nobody makes any sense. Ali said there are no jokes, the truth is always the best joke.
And then there are these guys where every step is over a plank insteada what´s really there. At the end of the world there´s always a tourist and a whore fucking in a cheap hotel room. But here the whore´s mom made the bed and had coffee ready for after.
It doesn´t feel like a place imagined so much as created off a double-dare. And I don´t have one fucking photo to show anybody, not even my kids. No snapshots. I wonder if they´ll have any sympathy for me and my wagging tail reasons. I doubt it.
This place isn´t even a poem. Just a rumor. A big lie that can´t be stretched. Walking around like Orpheus trying his best not to turn around cause he´ll lose that prize if he does.
My strange friend who really gave me the key to this place wanted to be in the ground, soil, earth here. Now he is. Where some people live without seeming pinned to their lives. Kids throw up dust in the afternoons with a soccer ball rolling around between them. And laugh and laugh.
The pretty thing about sandcastles is when all that work gets washed away. And the more work put in the better it feels to see something bigger take it and flatten it. Nothing personal. Unless you let it be personal. Scratch and sniff the meaning of that fucker, sand castles of all stripes, and I´m no closer now than I was the first time I built one with my dad at 4 and didn´t get why he smiled the whole time the tide ripped open and melted those beautiful baroque towers of his he spent so much time and energy creating. It was just kinda sweet beyond words.
A shame about that dog, tho.
And so I went on thinking about reggaeton. An ex of mine, one that I kinda got engaged to and last April went to Vegas to marry but didn´t---actually we basically spent nights falling off opposite sides of that hotel bed---was a hired dancer for the biggest raggaeton band in the world right now, Calle 13. I have a hunch she´s banging their lead singer even though he´s marred to Mrs Puerto Rico. But I could be wrong.
As my Spanish has come along I can actually disipher 45% of the lyrics of this stuff. And the general theme seems to be this...
A guy is trying to get a girl by confessing that he´d like to give it to her DURO. Meaning HARD.
And she replies, ¨But can you give it to me REALLY duro?
He says, sure he can. You like it duro?
Then SHE says, I have a boyfriend. But he doesn´t give it to me duro. Are you sure you can ALWAYS give it to me duro?
Then chorus kicks in and 500 crazy Puerto Ricans scream DURO DURO DURO.
The ex was a Puerto Rican herself and she danced for these fellas in PR and NYC and LA and I was just tossing it around in my brain for the helluvit just to get the taste out of my mouth and sound out of my ears of that poor dog.
It´s such a drive-in experience over here at night. It´s a city you need to arrive at night rather than the day. It blossoms at night. Most cities I´ve been to are reaching for that fun-park bullshit, ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds. But here it´s always a drive-in. Cause you can get caught at a drive-in. And there´s an expectation that really important stuff could be going on in your car while some sedative movie is up on the screen. Which is fucking cool. And sneaky. Even tho, like in a dream, everybody´s in on your scam.
So the stars were all clanged that night, the sky line of Havana rooftops was a wet painting, I got to the big strip near the Habana Libre hotel and the movie marquee had people lined up for an American feature and plenty of people were holding hands and across the street massive snakes of communist lineups for communist-affordable icecream were set up in the park at Coppelia´s icecream stands. Warm, palmy air you can kiss blowing girls hair into their guy´s faces. Buses roar by. Hitchhikers lean into old car´s windows and grin. Itchy hobos collecting bottles, smoking butts.
You look up the skirt of this city and somehow don´t feel that guilty. Maybe cause like any girl that´s worth a damn, the more time you spend and the more you find out about this one the less you know. It´s easy to find the kyptonite to most city´s or people´s bullshit. Under bruisey skys and wash lines full of whole family´s clothes it´s not as easy here. Trap door and trampolines everywhere you look, with the right kind of eyes. And little girls chasing around trying to find every last one like an easter egg hunt. And the harder I look the more tight the whipping post I get tied to. Cause if I have a little girl and she opts for videogames over this kid´s serenade of a life---eeek, that´s a rotten expectation. Every night feels like an Indian Summer back home. Smuggled, stolen season just given away to everybody. Why not? And some guy´s stroking his girl´s hair in the soft light and I can´t see their expressions and I´m glad I can´t. Another hobo starts fishing in his pockets for a lighter, finds it---scar face t-shirt on another kid... right.
I could get married to a girl over here for busfare.
A friend of mine says it´s a jail. But isn´t jail where people are supposed to make promises to themselves to have to the right to live when they get out? Rehabilitation or something?
Ah... I give up. Chop Suey. No arguments. Go to fucking Miami. Get a big car, house, listen to fucking Calle 13 even if my ex is banging him.
Nobody looks like movie extras here. I think I know why. It´s already real. Even though nobody makes any sense. Ali said there are no jokes, the truth is always the best joke.
And then there are these guys where every step is over a plank insteada what´s really there. At the end of the world there´s always a tourist and a whore fucking in a cheap hotel room. But here the whore´s mom made the bed and had coffee ready for after.
It doesn´t feel like a place imagined so much as created off a double-dare. And I don´t have one fucking photo to show anybody, not even my kids. No snapshots. I wonder if they´ll have any sympathy for me and my wagging tail reasons. I doubt it.
This place isn´t even a poem. Just a rumor. A big lie that can´t be stretched. Walking around like Orpheus trying his best not to turn around cause he´ll lose that prize if he does.
My strange friend who really gave me the key to this place wanted to be in the ground, soil, earth here. Now he is. Where some people live without seeming pinned to their lives. Kids throw up dust in the afternoons with a soccer ball rolling around between them. And laugh and laugh.
The pretty thing about sandcastles is when all that work gets washed away. And the more work put in the better it feels to see something bigger take it and flatten it. Nothing personal. Unless you let it be personal. Scratch and sniff the meaning of that fucker, sand castles of all stripes, and I´m no closer now than I was the first time I built one with my dad at 4 and didn´t get why he smiled the whole time the tide ripped open and melted those beautiful baroque towers of his he spent so much time and energy creating. It was just kinda sweet beyond words.
A shame about that dog, tho.
November 30th, 2007 (Hotel Ingleterra)
I keep thinking I oughta balance the stuff over here that picks me up with the other deal. But I don´t really feel like it. I nearly always have to stop and check to see that the dogs and cats sleeping in the gutters aren´t dead. And 10% of the time they ARE dead. The idea that vets are gainfully employed here is still one of the great mysteries of my life.
This´ll have to be brief and I don´t think it´s worth much. But last night I was dog tired and walked a long ways to get home---and I kept wondering what it is about this culture, that every person you have a THING with when you make eye contact, looks BACK. It stings. Not as bad as the goodbyes you´ve had to make here and there with certain people or relationships---but it counts. There was one time about 6 years ago I spotted a girl a block down the street in Madrid. It was cold as shit that December and we were a block or two from the prado. She was a blond. And I coulda sworn she had my eyes zeroed in from her gaze even though we had a football field between us. And she did. But I didn´t have the guts to do anything but look back. After ten paces or something of her having passed.
Love is a duel.
But that´s Kerouac´s line. Still.
I always think about that girl, once a month or something. I´ll never see her again in my life. And she´ll always be walking along just that little stretch of sidewalk. And no matter how many times I went back to the Prado just to find her, she was never there. But she was, too. Haunting that block.
Here you get a crack at those. They stop. And insteada having your insides dragged through mud on acct of cowardice you gotta buck up. Or smile. I opt for the latter.
Havana´s okay to say goodbye to once you have a bridge to or from it. That´s the difference with this place. There are bridges and tunnels everywhere with these people. Millions. Everything´s conspiratorial. After 2 days on my block I had people from a mile off at, say, an icecream stand, who knew where I lived. It´s a strange feeling.
I just get a kick coming home at night seeing all the girls leaning on balconies. I thought it was just the one across the street from me. Nope. There´s plenty. I keep waiting for one to get pushed off in a fit of rage by a jealous husband so I´ll be marked by the site of it for life... but fortunately it never happens. I might have to use it though in a story. It seems a fitting number one cause of murder over here. Or something.
This´ll have to be brief and I don´t think it´s worth much. But last night I was dog tired and walked a long ways to get home---and I kept wondering what it is about this culture, that every person you have a THING with when you make eye contact, looks BACK. It stings. Not as bad as the goodbyes you´ve had to make here and there with certain people or relationships---but it counts. There was one time about 6 years ago I spotted a girl a block down the street in Madrid. It was cold as shit that December and we were a block or two from the prado. She was a blond. And I coulda sworn she had my eyes zeroed in from her gaze even though we had a football field between us. And she did. But I didn´t have the guts to do anything but look back. After ten paces or something of her having passed.
Love is a duel.
But that´s Kerouac´s line. Still.
I always think about that girl, once a month or something. I´ll never see her again in my life. And she´ll always be walking along just that little stretch of sidewalk. And no matter how many times I went back to the Prado just to find her, she was never there. But she was, too. Haunting that block.
Here you get a crack at those. They stop. And insteada having your insides dragged through mud on acct of cowardice you gotta buck up. Or smile. I opt for the latter.
Havana´s okay to say goodbye to once you have a bridge to or from it. That´s the difference with this place. There are bridges and tunnels everywhere with these people. Millions. Everything´s conspiratorial. After 2 days on my block I had people from a mile off at, say, an icecream stand, who knew where I lived. It´s a strange feeling.
I just get a kick coming home at night seeing all the girls leaning on balconies. I thought it was just the one across the street from me. Nope. There´s plenty. I keep waiting for one to get pushed off in a fit of rage by a jealous husband so I´ll be marked by the site of it for life... but fortunately it never happens. I might have to use it though in a story. It seems a fitting number one cause of murder over here. Or something.
November 29th, 2007 (Hotel Ingleterra)
There's a beauty that certain people find in failed journeys. Some people object to bullfighting because it's an unfair sport. It's not a sport. It's a tragedy. And anybody who's pulling for Romeo and Juliet to make it and have dull kids with physiques like slave traders on acct of all the pasta they guzzle down---nah. I'll pass.
The boxing championships are done. And I'm glad. Six hours a day of it was too much. But I've only got another 10 days over here. And I don't like that it's on my mind when I'm bumming around.
This town has a magical ability to get you away from yourself. It doesn't blow you away into somebody else exactly. But there's no self-consciousness here. People move differently. You know how you walk when somebody you love holds your hand, or how you sing when you don't think anybody can hear---even though you'd never dare sing like that even with somebody you were in love with---that's every day with these people. And even though I know I'll never get that---not by a mile---it pleases me alot to know humanbeings still do that. And it's everywhere. And sometimes it's like the whole island, which is shaped like a crocodile anyway, got carried up like a kite in a sky so blue it hurts to look at it and somehow a helluva lot of people have smiles like they've got a hold of the string back down here. It breaks your heart a little.
Ernesto Lecuona was the name of that composer I heard while I was put on hold. I called back twice more and listened to it some more. First time in my life I called somebody I knew wasn't there just to be put on hold. Even there ON HOLD music has charm. Mother fucking Cubans.
I guess disoriented people... and I'm certainly one... admire so much ANYTHING specific. Even quite brutal things like bullfights, or boxing, or Cuba. Even to back a dumb thing feels safer to me than riding a fence on anything. I think Enya and the Enya-crowd should, for the good of humanity, be exterminated. And very very slowly. Some bars play it over here and if ANYTHING makes me subscribe to capital punishment...
But it's time to go. Very quick. Time to go from Cuba to my favorite Cuban. Cubana. And see how that plays out. She knew that composer just from how I described his music. And everything else down here that gets to me. And it scares the fuck out of me. The joke is to reiterate as many times as possible... NO CHEMISTRY, NO CHEMISTRY, NO CHEMISTRY. But then it wasn't a joke when I asked if we'd be okay if I came here. You'll forget me. No I won't. Yes you will. But I didn't. I didn't even really mope, either. And the slippery bit about it, when I get over there to see her... even if it goes to shit or she gets scared or I do or whatever calamity---I can't regret for a second meeting a girl who made trying to find one down here ridiculous.
Which is a wee bit strange. There is something kinda special and pretty about a shipwreck. How else does anybody really describe the feeling of getting to know this place? All 2nd hand info. But then it just feels like home at some point... I wish I knew why.
10-4.
The boxing championships are done. And I'm glad. Six hours a day of it was too much. But I've only got another 10 days over here. And I don't like that it's on my mind when I'm bumming around.
This town has a magical ability to get you away from yourself. It doesn't blow you away into somebody else exactly. But there's no self-consciousness here. People move differently. You know how you walk when somebody you love holds your hand, or how you sing when you don't think anybody can hear---even though you'd never dare sing like that even with somebody you were in love with---that's every day with these people. And even though I know I'll never get that---not by a mile---it pleases me alot to know humanbeings still do that. And it's everywhere. And sometimes it's like the whole island, which is shaped like a crocodile anyway, got carried up like a kite in a sky so blue it hurts to look at it and somehow a helluva lot of people have smiles like they've got a hold of the string back down here. It breaks your heart a little.
Ernesto Lecuona was the name of that composer I heard while I was put on hold. I called back twice more and listened to it some more. First time in my life I called somebody I knew wasn't there just to be put on hold. Even there ON HOLD music has charm. Mother fucking Cubans.
I guess disoriented people... and I'm certainly one... admire so much ANYTHING specific. Even quite brutal things like bullfights, or boxing, or Cuba. Even to back a dumb thing feels safer to me than riding a fence on anything. I think Enya and the Enya-crowd should, for the good of humanity, be exterminated. And very very slowly. Some bars play it over here and if ANYTHING makes me subscribe to capital punishment...
But it's time to go. Very quick. Time to go from Cuba to my favorite Cuban. Cubana. And see how that plays out. She knew that composer just from how I described his music. And everything else down here that gets to me. And it scares the fuck out of me. The joke is to reiterate as many times as possible... NO CHEMISTRY, NO CHEMISTRY, NO CHEMISTRY. But then it wasn't a joke when I asked if we'd be okay if I came here. You'll forget me. No I won't. Yes you will. But I didn't. I didn't even really mope, either. And the slippery bit about it, when I get over there to see her... even if it goes to shit or she gets scared or I do or whatever calamity---I can't regret for a second meeting a girl who made trying to find one down here ridiculous.
Which is a wee bit strange. There is something kinda special and pretty about a shipwreck. How else does anybody really describe the feeling of getting to know this place? All 2nd hand info. But then it just feels like home at some point... I wish I knew why.
10-4.
November 28th, 2007 (Hotel Ingleterra)
I think if Vancouver is your mom, you're gonna have a tricky time making another city your wife. Maybe everybody wants to fuck their hometown some place new. I've been kinda fucked up ever since I had my best kiss 7 years ago with a girl who turned out to be a hooker. But I didn't know that going in. She worked at a cafe, went to UBC, her dad was a dentist. Lucky for me several drug stores didn't have to be swallowed on acct I didn't fuck her---but still, she left her mark. And it eats at me that the one and only thing she'd deprive a john is what stained and made me dismiss a bunch of girls who were otherwise pretty good for me. She had that Natalie Portman viciousness thing going from Closer, too---and she bore a pretty pleasing resemblance to Portman. Anyway...
A story I wrote about this girl nearly got in with Dave Eggers magazine while I've been over here in Havana. Just about. And they've asked for some more. And I've been working on "girl stories" lately. Henry Millerish tales of conquest with a dash of Kierkegard's Diary of a Seducer... even tho I've yet to be able to spell Kierkegard yet alone read that story. But I've heard the bastard surmised quite nicely and name dropping gets chicks. You have no idea the quanity of ethnic nude photography these notes generate. Actually none. But I know they're just holding back. I'm talking to YOU, Panama women.
All these girl stories take place at home (most of them, a few times I've flown other places, usually disasterously, sometimes otherwise), which is weird scenery to describe. I always feel a little shy writing anything about Vancouver even though it's a town that feels like the one you'd really wanna spend time with if you skipped class compared to other cities. People leave you alone, give you some room, are generally pretty nice. But then drugs kinda reduce me to a shy Tom Sawyer keen to eavesdrop and spy pretty things... so who knows.
There are three stories I'm gonna try with Eggers. One is about a weird fling at 11 with my cousin where I know she was gonna try something. And it nearly went through as a kinda real wet dream---but it didn't pan out. Her mom swiped her before anything untoward could happen. Obviously I'm counting on a little innocent incest sexually programming a young author being compelling subject matter for a SF based magazine's readership.
Another is about a pen pal I had last time I was down here 2 years ago. But the catch was she was permanently injured, quite savagely, while she was working on a cruiseship and a piece of the ship broke off and fell on her and crushed her spine. This relationship, from the get go, really felt an awful lot like joy riding on the Titanic, hanging off the rails. But I always wanted to see for myself that if things got really catistrophic, could you be like the orchestra on that ship when all the life boats were doled off for women and children and none for you so you just take how fucked up it all is and play until you get dunked under for keeps.
I can't make up my mind about the 3rd one. There was a drunk girl I found at 2am tossed out of a bar. Two American tourists were trying to pick her up so I walked her home and she was so drunk she was convinced I was a guardian angel. This made arriving at her door and her pushing really hard to get laid very very strange and unsettling. I went back the next day to where she worked to see if she was okay and she had no idea who I was. She was pretty indignant about the whole thing. Which pissed me off enough to remind her where she got the pack of cigarettes in her pocket when we both knew she had no money from the night before and they were my brand and not hers. 12 hour blackout carved a very strange expression on her face indeed.
Anyhow, no Cuban stuff today. Boohoo.
A story I wrote about this girl nearly got in with Dave Eggers magazine while I've been over here in Havana. Just about. And they've asked for some more. And I've been working on "girl stories" lately. Henry Millerish tales of conquest with a dash of Kierkegard's Diary of a Seducer... even tho I've yet to be able to spell Kierkegard yet alone read that story. But I've heard the bastard surmised quite nicely and name dropping gets chicks. You have no idea the quanity of ethnic nude photography these notes generate. Actually none. But I know they're just holding back. I'm talking to YOU, Panama women.
All these girl stories take place at home (most of them, a few times I've flown other places, usually disasterously, sometimes otherwise), which is weird scenery to describe. I always feel a little shy writing anything about Vancouver even though it's a town that feels like the one you'd really wanna spend time with if you skipped class compared to other cities. People leave you alone, give you some room, are generally pretty nice. But then drugs kinda reduce me to a shy Tom Sawyer keen to eavesdrop and spy pretty things... so who knows.
There are three stories I'm gonna try with Eggers. One is about a weird fling at 11 with my cousin where I know she was gonna try something. And it nearly went through as a kinda real wet dream---but it didn't pan out. Her mom swiped her before anything untoward could happen. Obviously I'm counting on a little innocent incest sexually programming a young author being compelling subject matter for a SF based magazine's readership.
Another is about a pen pal I had last time I was down here 2 years ago. But the catch was she was permanently injured, quite savagely, while she was working on a cruiseship and a piece of the ship broke off and fell on her and crushed her spine. This relationship, from the get go, really felt an awful lot like joy riding on the Titanic, hanging off the rails. But I always wanted to see for myself that if things got really catistrophic, could you be like the orchestra on that ship when all the life boats were doled off for women and children and none for you so you just take how fucked up it all is and play until you get dunked under for keeps.
I can't make up my mind about the 3rd one. There was a drunk girl I found at 2am tossed out of a bar. Two American tourists were trying to pick her up so I walked her home and she was so drunk she was convinced I was a guardian angel. This made arriving at her door and her pushing really hard to get laid very very strange and unsettling. I went back the next day to where she worked to see if she was okay and she had no idea who I was. She was pretty indignant about the whole thing. Which pissed me off enough to remind her where she got the pack of cigarettes in her pocket when we both knew she had no money from the night before and they were my brand and not hers. 12 hour blackout carved a very strange expression on her face indeed.
Anyhow, no Cuban stuff today. Boohoo.
November 27th, 2007 (Hotel Ingleterra)
The other day I was sitting front row with Habana´s 2nd coach and a kid from the gym I train at over here pulled up a chair. ¨Hola Gringo Tyson¨. So I nod and slap his hand. ¨Joo know I saw Mike Tyson een Habana. Doo years beefoo¨ ¨Yeah?¨ ¨He berry strong but fat. Muy triste tambien.¨
I know he´s sad. But it´s weird when anybody drops his name around me. I only picked up a book because of him. Fifteen in a house full of books, both my parents live more in books than in their homes, seemed a pretty good way to fuck'em over. Fuck myself over. Tyson was interviewed in jail back in 95 and a french interviewer asked him what he was doing with his time. He said reading. Especially in solitary confinement. What are you reading, Mike? Voltaire, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Dostoyevski, Dumas. Why, Mike? Out of boredom more than anything. I´m not on a quest for knowledge.
I wanted to know what a convicted rapist was doing reading that sorta thing. What use did a living nightmare have with good books?
Tyson´s a strange one. Havana has a nightmarish quality. A poetry about it that´s spooky in its purity. Like some little girl looking at you in a sexual way. You can´t stop thinking about how this place is one man´s struggle for 50 years, his life´s work, a very poetic one against a country that no matter what you say about it has some truth. One guy, who went up into a mountain with a handful of othere guys after his boat crashed into the shore here, and he came down 2 years later and has been the Man for 50 years.
Tyson was the most picked on kid in his neighborhood in the Bedsty in Brooklyn. "Faggot Mike" was his name until he puffed up to 190 pounds when he was 12 and became "Big Head Mike" when he rolled with a gang called the "Jolly Stompers". He lisped, he had no friends, he spoke in a high girlish-voice, his parents where drunks. He had nobody and nothing and knew he´d end up dead before he was 17. The only thing he had was pigeons on the roof of an abandoned tenement that he liked to fly because of the colors they made against the sky and that they were free.
One day a kid followed him up there and saw that this was what Mike cared about and he went over, opened the cage and Mike begged him not to hurt the bird and the kid laughed and literally ripped the pigeons head off and laughed. And for the first time in Tyson´s life, he stood up to a bully and pummeled him. And I think that´s what always interested me about Tyson. One time somebody asked him why everybody cares so much about a train wreck happening over and over in Tyson´s life. Tyson said it was simple, ¨I´m angelic.¨ And I looked at him very closely after he said it and realized he was the only one who GOT IT. Only somebody as innocent as Tyson obviously is---he looks like a baby all the time, he can´t hide a single emotion and they hit you like a baby´s-- could become something, twisted, into such evil and rage. Which is why it kinda makes sense the US is so fascinated by him. Nobody gets the purest virgins becoming the purest whores---if you apply a little rape into the equation---like they do.
One time somebody asked Tyson what fighting really was to him. ¨What are notes to Beethoven, or words to Hemingway, or theory to Einstein... It´s aggression.¨
I told my dad that after I heard it and it took him 30 seconds before he could even reply, ¨Tyson said that?¨
But boxing gets you down here. I mean, back in the US when they first introduced gassing a convinct as a means of humane execution---gee whiz who woulda thought that a black guy was the first one they tested on it---they recorded what was said in the chamber. ¨Save me Joe Louis. Save me Joe Louis....¨ I see the looks in their eyes down here watching champions stroll out to the ring and it´s that same quality of devotion. It hurts to see it a little. Because a guy selling gum on the street is making the same as a world champion. And they both know and respect it.
We´ll catch up with some boxing in a sec.
Two cycles here... Dawn with Hitchcock birds by the 1000´s in the trees yelling as loud as a highschool caferteria. Coffee thermoses poured by old women huddled in doorways into shot glasses then flipped into plastic cups. Geezers peddling newspapers. The free birthday cakes being biked around to kids (when I found out that it´s by law that kids 16 and under get cake... I was sold on this place). The fisherman dot the Malecon and smoke while they watch to see one point bobbing in the ocean drop. It´s a good town to write in.
Then night time. I tried calling a girl back home---that feels funny to say considering she´s in my country and I´m in her hometown over here---but when they put me on hold this classical number started and I was sure it was Chopin even though I´d never heard it before. They told me her number was restricted but I kept badgering the operator, WHO IS THIS COMPOSER? QUIENES ESTO! QUIENES ESTO! ¨I danno, sir.¨ ¨Find out, woman!¨ ¨What composer?¨ So I called back and get put on hold and dragged the doctor who owns the house I´m living in downstairs and jammed the phone against his ear. ¨AHHHHhhhhh...¨ ¨Chopin?¨ ¨No... Cuban. From the 30´s.¨ He tried to put it on the stereo but he had no batteries. I ran out and bought some and he played the same song in it´s entirety.
Then boxing. Fuck I was humming on-hold-song all the way down here to Old Havana for the 2nd to last day of the nationals of boxing. It´s capped off on wedsneday but the night fights are the hometown kids. They fight Gitmo tonight. And Felix Savon coaches them, the 3X olympic champ with meathooks the size of cantalopes. All he does is walk around shaking hands. And what impresses me more than anything is how he has this immensely bright say-cheese smile for every photo he gives. The best boxer in Cuban history, Teofillo Stevenson, was offered a million bucks in the 70´s to defect and turn pro and have his first fight against Ali. All he said was, ¨What´s a million dollars against the love of eight million Cubans?¨ Five hundred of them make more noise in Kid Chocolate than a Canucks game during the playoffs.
The final fight a man from the crowd rushed down the stands with a towel in his hands, dashed across the gym floor and hurled his town into the ring in protest of the beating the hometown champ was giving to a kid from the countryside. The crowd roared approval and roared louder when the cops hauled him off but the fight WAS stopped. And the tossed guy raised his hands in triumph just before he was dragged out of view and everybody applauded...
But after, when it sinks in, is the musicans in the forest at night. Always alone. Sillouttes with a trumpet extending playing Miles or Bird or their own thing. I like their own thing better. Cause when they play Miles or John Coltrane, it just reminds you that some artists hunt feelings as if they were butterflies and all they use is their finger tips. Copycats use a net. And it has holes. But when they go off on their own thing I get to go off on my own thing... and it´s a little less lonely under the stars.
And along the Malecon it´s better still. The kids glaze the cement, sticky in embrace, with waves just over the edge. And I heard one trumpet, lodged between two fisherman playing and it reminded me of my favorite animal, the bullfrog. The bullfrog´s love call plays out over the swamp and it´s such a sweet song that despite it garnering 1000´s of female bullfrogs who pile in for groupie privledges... the bullfrog keeps singing. Because he forgets in the beauty of his song that it´s intended as a mating call... and he just wants to keep listening to himself. The trumpeter I was listening to had some tourists gathered for him but he never paid the least bit of attention. People came out to their windows to see him but you couldn´t see him. Just hear. And turning a corner to head back down a narrow shit-smelling street he was still there, the song winding along with me for company in the dark...
I know he´s sad. But it´s weird when anybody drops his name around me. I only picked up a book because of him. Fifteen in a house full of books, both my parents live more in books than in their homes, seemed a pretty good way to fuck'em over. Fuck myself over. Tyson was interviewed in jail back in 95 and a french interviewer asked him what he was doing with his time. He said reading. Especially in solitary confinement. What are you reading, Mike? Voltaire, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Dostoyevski, Dumas. Why, Mike? Out of boredom more than anything. I´m not on a quest for knowledge.
I wanted to know what a convicted rapist was doing reading that sorta thing. What use did a living nightmare have with good books?
Tyson´s a strange one. Havana has a nightmarish quality. A poetry about it that´s spooky in its purity. Like some little girl looking at you in a sexual way. You can´t stop thinking about how this place is one man´s struggle for 50 years, his life´s work, a very poetic one against a country that no matter what you say about it has some truth. One guy, who went up into a mountain with a handful of othere guys after his boat crashed into the shore here, and he came down 2 years later and has been the Man for 50 years.
Tyson was the most picked on kid in his neighborhood in the Bedsty in Brooklyn. "Faggot Mike" was his name until he puffed up to 190 pounds when he was 12 and became "Big Head Mike" when he rolled with a gang called the "Jolly Stompers". He lisped, he had no friends, he spoke in a high girlish-voice, his parents where drunks. He had nobody and nothing and knew he´d end up dead before he was 17. The only thing he had was pigeons on the roof of an abandoned tenement that he liked to fly because of the colors they made against the sky and that they were free.
One day a kid followed him up there and saw that this was what Mike cared about and he went over, opened the cage and Mike begged him not to hurt the bird and the kid laughed and literally ripped the pigeons head off and laughed. And for the first time in Tyson´s life, he stood up to a bully and pummeled him. And I think that´s what always interested me about Tyson. One time somebody asked him why everybody cares so much about a train wreck happening over and over in Tyson´s life. Tyson said it was simple, ¨I´m angelic.¨ And I looked at him very closely after he said it and realized he was the only one who GOT IT. Only somebody as innocent as Tyson obviously is---he looks like a baby all the time, he can´t hide a single emotion and they hit you like a baby´s-- could become something, twisted, into such evil and rage. Which is why it kinda makes sense the US is so fascinated by him. Nobody gets the purest virgins becoming the purest whores---if you apply a little rape into the equation---like they do.
One time somebody asked Tyson what fighting really was to him. ¨What are notes to Beethoven, or words to Hemingway, or theory to Einstein... It´s aggression.¨
I told my dad that after I heard it and it took him 30 seconds before he could even reply, ¨Tyson said that?¨
But boxing gets you down here. I mean, back in the US when they first introduced gassing a convinct as a means of humane execution---gee whiz who woulda thought that a black guy was the first one they tested on it---they recorded what was said in the chamber. ¨Save me Joe Louis. Save me Joe Louis....¨ I see the looks in their eyes down here watching champions stroll out to the ring and it´s that same quality of devotion. It hurts to see it a little. Because a guy selling gum on the street is making the same as a world champion. And they both know and respect it.
We´ll catch up with some boxing in a sec.
Two cycles here... Dawn with Hitchcock birds by the 1000´s in the trees yelling as loud as a highschool caferteria. Coffee thermoses poured by old women huddled in doorways into shot glasses then flipped into plastic cups. Geezers peddling newspapers. The free birthday cakes being biked around to kids (when I found out that it´s by law that kids 16 and under get cake... I was sold on this place). The fisherman dot the Malecon and smoke while they watch to see one point bobbing in the ocean drop. It´s a good town to write in.
Then night time. I tried calling a girl back home---that feels funny to say considering she´s in my country and I´m in her hometown over here---but when they put me on hold this classical number started and I was sure it was Chopin even though I´d never heard it before. They told me her number was restricted but I kept badgering the operator, WHO IS THIS COMPOSER? QUIENES ESTO! QUIENES ESTO! ¨I danno, sir.¨ ¨Find out, woman!¨ ¨What composer?¨ So I called back and get put on hold and dragged the doctor who owns the house I´m living in downstairs and jammed the phone against his ear. ¨AHHHHhhhhh...¨ ¨Chopin?¨ ¨No... Cuban. From the 30´s.¨ He tried to put it on the stereo but he had no batteries. I ran out and bought some and he played the same song in it´s entirety.
Then boxing. Fuck I was humming on-hold-song all the way down here to Old Havana for the 2nd to last day of the nationals of boxing. It´s capped off on wedsneday but the night fights are the hometown kids. They fight Gitmo tonight. And Felix Savon coaches them, the 3X olympic champ with meathooks the size of cantalopes. All he does is walk around shaking hands. And what impresses me more than anything is how he has this immensely bright say-cheese smile for every photo he gives. The best boxer in Cuban history, Teofillo Stevenson, was offered a million bucks in the 70´s to defect and turn pro and have his first fight against Ali. All he said was, ¨What´s a million dollars against the love of eight million Cubans?¨ Five hundred of them make more noise in Kid Chocolate than a Canucks game during the playoffs.
The final fight a man from the crowd rushed down the stands with a towel in his hands, dashed across the gym floor and hurled his town into the ring in protest of the beating the hometown champ was giving to a kid from the countryside. The crowd roared approval and roared louder when the cops hauled him off but the fight WAS stopped. And the tossed guy raised his hands in triumph just before he was dragged out of view and everybody applauded...
But after, when it sinks in, is the musicans in the forest at night. Always alone. Sillouttes with a trumpet extending playing Miles or Bird or their own thing. I like their own thing better. Cause when they play Miles or John Coltrane, it just reminds you that some artists hunt feelings as if they were butterflies and all they use is their finger tips. Copycats use a net. And it has holes. But when they go off on their own thing I get to go off on my own thing... and it´s a little less lonely under the stars.
And along the Malecon it´s better still. The kids glaze the cement, sticky in embrace, with waves just over the edge. And I heard one trumpet, lodged between two fisherman playing and it reminded me of my favorite animal, the bullfrog. The bullfrog´s love call plays out over the swamp and it´s such a sweet song that despite it garnering 1000´s of female bullfrogs who pile in for groupie privledges... the bullfrog keeps singing. Because he forgets in the beauty of his song that it´s intended as a mating call... and he just wants to keep listening to himself. The trumpeter I was listening to had some tourists gathered for him but he never paid the least bit of attention. People came out to their windows to see him but you couldn´t see him. Just hear. And turning a corner to head back down a narrow shit-smelling street he was still there, the song winding along with me for company in the dark...
November 25th, 2007 (Hotel Ingleterra)
There's a mangy mural of Kid Chocolate, a 30's Havana boxer, out front of his gym where the national boxing championships have been taking place the last 3 days. It's across the street from the Capitolio, the bizzaro Cuban replica of washington's most famous building. There's plenty of bizzaro take-offs. A friend of mine over here asked me to meet her the other day. "Where?" "I dunno, what about at 42nd and 5th avenue?" What the fuck is that? To get over there you have to walk by a tower straight out of Star Trek with black cuban vulture-eagles circling in the grapey sky. I waited on the corner while a couple whores approached me and asked if I liked mangos. The shy one asked me if she was strong. Which seemed an even more interesting approach than the other one. "Tu fuerte?" She was 5'1 and 100 pounds. "NO. Jew." Oh yeah, me. "Yep. I lift trucks."
But you get caught. I bought one of these goofy juice boxes of rum for the last of the fights on friday night. It was late, I was tired, I miss the movies. After the final heavyweight tussle ended without much excitement a fight broke out in the crowd. I was on the floor next to the Havana team's 2nd coach, the guy who takes a huge towel and whips and flaps as much wind as he can in his boxer's face between rounds, and we both were watching the cops race into the crowd and haul people out of the gym until we saw one girl in the crowd with this grin on her face. Ellen Barkenish face, only spiked and molested by latin curves and this Betty Page wink she kept giving to people looking at her. Innocence dipped in sleeze. Everything about her was provocative as an exposed tan line. Slaying us. Especially me all punch drunk on juice box rum.
Outside the fight was over, the icecream stand was dead, the girl got taken home by a tourist with a cane (a GARISH cane, mind you)---and there wasn't much to do but by a pack of smokes and make the 4 mile hike home throught the scenic route, along the Malecon sea wall. But I couldn't find cigarettes until some scumbag hustler pointed me in the direction of a bar. I get scammed twice the price on the cigarettes and accosted by 5 hookers all asking about my girlfriend---my girlfriend being an extremely popular topic over here despite her non-existence---they try and scam this and that but all I want is my cancer for the lonely stroll home.
Which I get, with all the kids folded into each other like oragami sillouttes. Strange shapes writhing until they spot you and freeze up---or not, tip over the edge of the cement and go a little further on the rocks...maybe all the way with the risk of a wave slapping you. So many kids out there and adults too... but my mind was way too g-rated and embarressed so I watched the fisherman cast into the black ocean, smoking along with them, hearing the pitter patter of what they caught tapping the cement beside their feet until the fish petered out and went limp.
I've been here nearly a month now. And it's weird on acct of it's the easiest place on earth to find a girl and every motherfucking time I get here I'm stuck in that shitty but very fine in other way position of knowing if I snag one here it'll only make me miss a different one, 1000's of miles away, more. The whole cure thirst with seawater phenomenon. But assholes like me are given a dimple for a reason. So the joke isn't entirely lost.
I got back late that night. I had my last cigarette of the night on my quiet little residential street. Right on the curb. It was a warm night. And across the street and up 2 floors was a girl on a balcony I'd never seen before just leaning against the edge of the cement rail. She cupped her face in two hands, and the street light had her in copper glow, and she kept leaning and longing for something I didn't know what it was, but she looked so pretty up there. Maybe it was the whole Romeo and Juliet angle. But this Juliet never spoke so I couldn't even THINK "she speaks!". But I wondered all the same what her deal was. Who the guy was. What he'd done to her to make her so poetic that night. So poetic it was cascading down waterfallish onto me, no filter on her or the cuban cigarette I was a few drags from finishing, and the shitty taste in my mouth that Colgate would soon make clean with the added scope tossed into the whitening formula. Gee whiz.
People disappear... sometimes forever... some of them, all it takes is them leaving or going back to a room. That was what happened with Juilet on her perch. I looked down at my shoes for a second and back up and she was gone. I was all alone until some stray dogs and cats in a pack moseyed on by, two of them limping but trying to keep up.
I went to sleep sober.
But you get caught. I bought one of these goofy juice boxes of rum for the last of the fights on friday night. It was late, I was tired, I miss the movies. After the final heavyweight tussle ended without much excitement a fight broke out in the crowd. I was on the floor next to the Havana team's 2nd coach, the guy who takes a huge towel and whips and flaps as much wind as he can in his boxer's face between rounds, and we both were watching the cops race into the crowd and haul people out of the gym until we saw one girl in the crowd with this grin on her face. Ellen Barkenish face, only spiked and molested by latin curves and this Betty Page wink she kept giving to people looking at her. Innocence dipped in sleeze. Everything about her was provocative as an exposed tan line. Slaying us. Especially me all punch drunk on juice box rum.
Outside the fight was over, the icecream stand was dead, the girl got taken home by a tourist with a cane (a GARISH cane, mind you)---and there wasn't much to do but by a pack of smokes and make the 4 mile hike home throught the scenic route, along the Malecon sea wall. But I couldn't find cigarettes until some scumbag hustler pointed me in the direction of a bar. I get scammed twice the price on the cigarettes and accosted by 5 hookers all asking about my girlfriend---my girlfriend being an extremely popular topic over here despite her non-existence---they try and scam this and that but all I want is my cancer for the lonely stroll home.
Which I get, with all the kids folded into each other like oragami sillouttes. Strange shapes writhing until they spot you and freeze up---or not, tip over the edge of the cement and go a little further on the rocks...maybe all the way with the risk of a wave slapping you. So many kids out there and adults too... but my mind was way too g-rated and embarressed so I watched the fisherman cast into the black ocean, smoking along with them, hearing the pitter patter of what they caught tapping the cement beside their feet until the fish petered out and went limp.
I've been here nearly a month now. And it's weird on acct of it's the easiest place on earth to find a girl and every motherfucking time I get here I'm stuck in that shitty but very fine in other way position of knowing if I snag one here it'll only make me miss a different one, 1000's of miles away, more. The whole cure thirst with seawater phenomenon. But assholes like me are given a dimple for a reason. So the joke isn't entirely lost.
I got back late that night. I had my last cigarette of the night on my quiet little residential street. Right on the curb. It was a warm night. And across the street and up 2 floors was a girl on a balcony I'd never seen before just leaning against the edge of the cement rail. She cupped her face in two hands, and the street light had her in copper glow, and she kept leaning and longing for something I didn't know what it was, but she looked so pretty up there. Maybe it was the whole Romeo and Juliet angle. But this Juliet never spoke so I couldn't even THINK "she speaks!". But I wondered all the same what her deal was. Who the guy was. What he'd done to her to make her so poetic that night. So poetic it was cascading down waterfallish onto me, no filter on her or the cuban cigarette I was a few drags from finishing, and the shitty taste in my mouth that Colgate would soon make clean with the added scope tossed into the whitening formula. Gee whiz.
People disappear... sometimes forever... some of them, all it takes is them leaving or going back to a room. That was what happened with Juilet on her perch. I looked down at my shoes for a second and back up and she was gone. I was all alone until some stray dogs and cats in a pack moseyed on by, two of them limping but trying to keep up.
I went to sleep sober.
November 21st, 2007 (Hotel Ingleterra)
Nat King Cole's syrupy voice swooned out a barred window in the old part of the city, repeating that seductive little slippery word: "MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE..." And across the street somebody ordered a pizza and I heard the guy selling it yell up inside the building to his woman 3 floors up with the oven and a minute later she dropped a basket on string with the food steaming and he picked it up over a towel and handed it to a guy who got back on his bike and doubled and then tripled his girl and kid brother. If childhood had a hometown... shucks. Then it gets dark and the streets are caught under the glow of pennies from whatever lights bother to burn, and the stars poke out and gather rust... but a swamp of clouds swept over and I finally had a chance who owns the place I'm shacked up in way over just behind Castro used to give his speeches behind the stencil 8 stories high of Che.
I was talking my home owner about Nancy. Nancy was the prettiest girl I ever saw in Cuba bar none and STILL the prettiest girl I've seen in this place. And I saw her the first minute I got out of a cab when I got here initially, cherry popped, back in Feb 2000 right after Elian Gonzalez jumped up into his daddy's arms. Door opened and there she was, BREEEEN?. Blink Blink. "YOU'RE Nancy?" "Jes." She leans in for the cheek kissing thing. "Jes, I yam Nancy." "Wow." "Jes. But, jew are nhat stayang weez me." "Why not?" "Jew wheel stay weez, Jesus." "That's okay, I'll stay with you." "EEs not possibeel." The cruelty inflicted in this place, human rights attrocities right from the get-go. Long limbed, elegant, doe-eyed, pony-tail, full lips always threatening smile---all of this in JOGGING PANTS at 2 in the morning---and that librarian thing with invisible glasses perched on hair ready to be thrown off and crushed under stilleto spike... the walk 3 houses down still felt like a stroll down death row.
But she ditched Havana with her husband 6 months ago. And we're left on a rainy night and me and the doctor are under his roof smoking, me trying to finish off whisky without much luck, talking about what made her so pretty. She never had to try. Every breath she took was a provocation. And the more she tried to subdue it the more everybody felt like we had a Cuban Sofia Loren all to ourselves in the cage of the street, feathers far far far too bright for our own good. But it didn't matter how miniscule the sound back when she strolled around bringing home groceries or saying hello to neighbors---I was on Nancy-invasion watch whenever I got back to our street. And after it got out I was nuts about her the whole fucking neighborhood, kids to parents to grandparents would point off to one side of the street or the other, BREEN, NANCY! and it never failed and some unforseen person would catch me doing it and snort.
But everybody's ditched our street these days. Miami, various towns around Spain. Checked out for keeps. Kinda creepy.
I was talking my home owner about Nancy. Nancy was the prettiest girl I ever saw in Cuba bar none and STILL the prettiest girl I've seen in this place. And I saw her the first minute I got out of a cab when I got here initially, cherry popped, back in Feb 2000 right after Elian Gonzalez jumped up into his daddy's arms. Door opened and there she was, BREEEEN?. Blink Blink. "YOU'RE Nancy?" "Jes." She leans in for the cheek kissing thing. "Jes, I yam Nancy." "Wow." "Jes. But, jew are nhat stayang weez me." "Why not?" "Jew wheel stay weez, Jesus." "That's okay, I'll stay with you." "EEs not possibeel." The cruelty inflicted in this place, human rights attrocities right from the get-go. Long limbed, elegant, doe-eyed, pony-tail, full lips always threatening smile---all of this in JOGGING PANTS at 2 in the morning---and that librarian thing with invisible glasses perched on hair ready to be thrown off and crushed under stilleto spike... the walk 3 houses down still felt like a stroll down death row.
But she ditched Havana with her husband 6 months ago. And we're left on a rainy night and me and the doctor are under his roof smoking, me trying to finish off whisky without much luck, talking about what made her so pretty. She never had to try. Every breath she took was a provocation. And the more she tried to subdue it the more everybody felt like we had a Cuban Sofia Loren all to ourselves in the cage of the street, feathers far far far too bright for our own good. But it didn't matter how miniscule the sound back when she strolled around bringing home groceries or saying hello to neighbors---I was on Nancy-invasion watch whenever I got back to our street. And after it got out I was nuts about her the whole fucking neighborhood, kids to parents to grandparents would point off to one side of the street or the other, BREEN, NANCY! and it never failed and some unforseen person would catch me doing it and snort.
But everybody's ditched our street these days. Miami, various towns around Spain. Checked out for keeps. Kinda creepy.
November 18th, 2007 (Hotel Ingleterra)
You know that feeling you get on a low sorta day or night when you overhear Billie Holiday purring from some speakers gently off some place... just this sorta balm over everything inside you. And if it's clear out looking up at the sky feels like making eye contact with a friend and if it's nightime little changes happen but they don't, the moon butters the sky in some nice way and all the stars out remind you of other people letting all their stars out at different times. People over here make good use of benchs and nighttime things at night. I don't like people praying in a church but I've seen hundreds of these kids blessing the night together in shadowy bunched up shapes that always cheer me up.
I guess I was just out late the other night and got to thinking about a friend who showed me around Havana a few years ago. I met him on the plane. A traveling salesman who was trying to get in shape for Havana by only drinking a case of beer a day. He said this with no humor. His liver was shot. And his liver got him about several months ago. But I didn't know till I got here and talked it over with the people he'd introduced me to. Where the hell was I in April 06? I don't remember.
But he came here. And he came here to die. And they buried him here. This goofy salesman of books who bought cheap and sold expensive back home and drank himself to death and always had several girls over here running at the same time and could never understand why I didn't (a girl back home---which he found a hilariously asinine excuse---"at yeer age breen...i 'ad bent-eh").
I just can't shake working on that level. The jigs up. Where do you wanna be when you have to pay the bill for the whole fucking meal you've been chewing on your whole life. I guess this is as good a place as any. Nobody makes a big deal of anybody chasing dragons over here no matter how big or fast or dangerous.
But I couldn't help thinking that maybe Havana is a girl in the mold of Billie Holiday. She looks after everybody and makes tough things a little easier. And she's always talking about herself but you at the same time. I dunno how that's done. But it is.
And the food still fucking sucks.
I guess I was just out late the other night and got to thinking about a friend who showed me around Havana a few years ago. I met him on the plane. A traveling salesman who was trying to get in shape for Havana by only drinking a case of beer a day. He said this with no humor. His liver was shot. And his liver got him about several months ago. But I didn't know till I got here and talked it over with the people he'd introduced me to. Where the hell was I in April 06? I don't remember.
But he came here. And he came here to die. And they buried him here. This goofy salesman of books who bought cheap and sold expensive back home and drank himself to death and always had several girls over here running at the same time and could never understand why I didn't (a girl back home---which he found a hilariously asinine excuse---"at yeer age breen...i 'ad bent-eh").
I just can't shake working on that level. The jigs up. Where do you wanna be when you have to pay the bill for the whole fucking meal you've been chewing on your whole life. I guess this is as good a place as any. Nobody makes a big deal of anybody chasing dragons over here no matter how big or fast or dangerous.
But I couldn't help thinking that maybe Havana is a girl in the mold of Billie Holiday. She looks after everybody and makes tough things a little easier. And she's always talking about herself but you at the same time. I dunno how that's done. But it is.
And the food still fucking sucks.
November 15th, 2007 (Hotel Ingleterra)
a girl got bit the other day. i was resting tired feet under dusk haze
on stone bench. a variation on a golden retriever, smaller and more useless, snapped at a little girl´s hand trying to pet it. boy the face she made. erupted in horror. i remember in NYC seeing somebody die in a department store. fat mexican guy with a garish silly belt buckle and thick mustache spying prices at a tie rack, slam, on the ground, goner. some motion on the ground, just spasmic, and the paramedics rushed in pretty quick, this was just off broadway on 60th, there was a hoard of us taking this in---3 girls strolled by... one looked over nonchalantly. ¨is he dead?¨ ¨probably just looked at the pricetag...¨ hahaha. but this girl would never touch a dog again. ever. she´d probably end up bombing PETA clubhouses.
or maybe she WOULD pet a dog again.
what the hell makes some people flexible on that point and others fixed, for life, hardened against something forever.
no idea. i was hell bent on finding some icecream after a couple hours boxing across town with all these cubans staring at me in a 300 yearold gym, the olympic coach smirking at me, ¨leedle by leedle, breen. leedle by leedle.¨ i went over to the unversity and took a crack at what i wrote a while ago but it came out differently. it´s always different when a girl´s on your mind...
havana´s the usual back alley with the gasoline
rainbow trickling down sweetening the eyes of
everybody, valentines day everyday kisses blowing like
a danlion bashed to pieces slapping cheeks and ears
and it´s kinda like virgin snow at recess getting a
juice box poured on it and scooped up into your mouth.
and it´s fucked up. but fucked up in real ways. always
a movie. some real movie playing somewhere that got it
right where ours is just a mexican soap opera on
prozac. the only meal that´s worth a damn is soda crackers
and some of the people from last time are dead but
died here... and i don´t think that´s an accident...
and that´s a weird consideration to have in the
morning. like waking up on a monday but FEELING like
it was sunday and having to drag your ass somewhere
you don´t wanna go. and that makes me a little sad.
cept here people would take the news in stride. which
would make your little dance have some ok music i
guess. and the little kids are everywhere playing.
rolling in the dirt. next to chickens sometimes. and
the dogs are horrible. like knawed off erasers and
pencils. 47th-world nightmare goya beasts you´d be
afraid to piss or spit on. and the art deco blasts up
to the sky but not as sky scrapers, cause the sky
ain´t itchy over here. i don´t know why. day or night,
dawn or dusk, it´s just happy, like some mysterious
but tranquil expression on an old woman´s face. one
big jowel of popsical blue. and it gets sliced in the
morning into brilliant yellows and pinks, and the
cotton candy of the clouds sponges some up and it
greases the roofs and sillouttes the men lumbering to
work, and it even gets in the spokes of the bicycles
that two people share, one side saddle with the other
kicking at the pedals, wind worried tires... and
always eye contact. and there´s no prophylactic for
how it works on your insides. they´re done. and they
know it. and you aren´t the same. and you don´t want a
photo. and there´s always tile under your feet. and
the back alley has thimbles of coffee to keep you
sharp even tho everybody´s kinda bored. it´s one big
shipwreck community. nobody even remembers the siren
let alone her song. even if it was slavery. it seems
like it musta been a girl. same rules might apply. who
knows.
but all the girls back home know how to break your balls but they forgot how to break your heart. and if this is my garden a flower was stolen and lives about 3hrs north of here.
a rose festers where it smells sweetest first...
too early to quote shakespeare. no nicotine working in the brain. suns out. the boulevard looks like linen hung out waiting for somebody happy to come home.
on stone bench. a variation on a golden retriever, smaller and more useless, snapped at a little girl´s hand trying to pet it. boy the face she made. erupted in horror. i remember in NYC seeing somebody die in a department store. fat mexican guy with a garish silly belt buckle and thick mustache spying prices at a tie rack, slam, on the ground, goner. some motion on the ground, just spasmic, and the paramedics rushed in pretty quick, this was just off broadway on 60th, there was a hoard of us taking this in---3 girls strolled by... one looked over nonchalantly. ¨is he dead?¨ ¨probably just looked at the pricetag...¨ hahaha. but this girl would never touch a dog again. ever. she´d probably end up bombing PETA clubhouses.
or maybe she WOULD pet a dog again.
what the hell makes some people flexible on that point and others fixed, for life, hardened against something forever.
no idea. i was hell bent on finding some icecream after a couple hours boxing across town with all these cubans staring at me in a 300 yearold gym, the olympic coach smirking at me, ¨leedle by leedle, breen. leedle by leedle.¨ i went over to the unversity and took a crack at what i wrote a while ago but it came out differently. it´s always different when a girl´s on your mind...
havana´s the usual back alley with the gasoline
rainbow trickling down sweetening the eyes of
everybody, valentines day everyday kisses blowing like
a danlion bashed to pieces slapping cheeks and ears
and it´s kinda like virgin snow at recess getting a
juice box poured on it and scooped up into your mouth.
and it´s fucked up. but fucked up in real ways. always
a movie. some real movie playing somewhere that got it
right where ours is just a mexican soap opera on
prozac. the only meal that´s worth a damn is soda crackers
and some of the people from last time are dead but
died here... and i don´t think that´s an accident...
and that´s a weird consideration to have in the
morning. like waking up on a monday but FEELING like
it was sunday and having to drag your ass somewhere
you don´t wanna go. and that makes me a little sad.
cept here people would take the news in stride. which
would make your little dance have some ok music i
guess. and the little kids are everywhere playing.
rolling in the dirt. next to chickens sometimes. and
the dogs are horrible. like knawed off erasers and
pencils. 47th-world nightmare goya beasts you´d be
afraid to piss or spit on. and the art deco blasts up
to the sky but not as sky scrapers, cause the sky
ain´t itchy over here. i don´t know why. day or night,
dawn or dusk, it´s just happy, like some mysterious
but tranquil expression on an old woman´s face. one
big jowel of popsical blue. and it gets sliced in the
morning into brilliant yellows and pinks, and the
cotton candy of the clouds sponges some up and it
greases the roofs and sillouttes the men lumbering to
work, and it even gets in the spokes of the bicycles
that two people share, one side saddle with the other
kicking at the pedals, wind worried tires... and
always eye contact. and there´s no prophylactic for
how it works on your insides. they´re done. and they
know it. and you aren´t the same. and you don´t want a
photo. and there´s always tile under your feet. and
the back alley has thimbles of coffee to keep you
sharp even tho everybody´s kinda bored. it´s one big
shipwreck community. nobody even remembers the siren
let alone her song. even if it was slavery. it seems
like it musta been a girl. same rules might apply. who
knows.
but all the girls back home know how to break your balls but they forgot how to break your heart. and if this is my garden a flower was stolen and lives about 3hrs north of here.
a rose festers where it smells sweetest first...
too early to quote shakespeare. no nicotine working in the brain. suns out. the boulevard looks like linen hung out waiting for somebody happy to come home.
November 11th, 2007 (Hotel Ingleterra)
Raul Castro strolled into the Havana hotel I was staying in at three-thirty in the morning. I noticed him all right---along with the two body guards and three blonds---but I didn't know him by name. The bartender told me. And I gave him a harder look and recognized the puffy eyes and the Castro gestures---turning his finger into a hamster on a wheel with little points he was making here and there---while he made the rounds with security staff and maids cleaning up the lobby. It was the president's grandson. And he was a born flirt.
But then so's everybody. Everyday's Valentine's day. You can't walk anywhere at anytime without somebody blowing kisses or whistling to somebody. Nobody seems to mind. Cupid was supposed to be a screwed up kid settling scores with grownups anyway, makes sense to me he'd be a Cuban.
Havana's an alley. One huge alley or gutter with a gasoline rainbow tricking down. Art Deco ruins everywhere, crusty and mangey, but alive. The whole town rips your eyes out and stuffs a microscope in one eye and a telescope in the other. Every five blocks is the bust a poet who went to war to free with this place. Every face over here is a poem. This one great big community of a shipwrecked island made Home. It's kinda wonky coming from a town like mine where the central ambition is to live in a family that relates like strangers in a home that is joylessly yet hygenically unlived in, lives unlived---reduce the poem of your life into a riddle and grind it up into some cornball crossword and make art of your artless by fucking a whore now and again behind your wife's back while she pretends not to notice and blah blah blah---a fucking ghost town haunting souless everywhere but behind a wheel screaming at Chinese people.
But there's boredome here too. Monumental boredom. The expression of disillusionment that I can only imagine some guy set adrift has guzzling seawater by the gallon has trying to solve thirst.
And I kick around with a lousy wife-beater tan making taxodermy of some girls I know---KNEW, maybe---in my notebook. By girls over here are like tripped down an elevator shaft and finding mermaids waiting for you. The smiles and eye contact staining you like the dawn gets sponged up by clouds and rims the beizbol stadium and skims the houses and sillouttes the people hustling and dragging on foot for the morning commute.
And I'm one footnote trying to mainline them and it. And like any girl I've ever fallen for the longer I'm here, the more questions I ask, the more slips, the more Moments---I know less and less and less. And more trap doors open. And more anchors spash.
Somehow, as fucked up as it is, and IT IS, it just turns every other city you've ever seen into that endangered species airlifted over to some Vegas petting zoo.
I'm in the studio audience watching this girl of a city falling down the rabbit hole trying to make sense of the screwy pattern on the wall and for whatever reason I don't need the electric sign to know when to clap. Because what stinks stinks. And when the first dance recital innocence gets to everybody and your little girl starts dancing but doesn't want to smile because her teeth are rotten---it feels like home. Emotionally where you pick up your mail.
Even tho I can't get a motherfucking plate of food over here that doesn't change my fixed address to the bathroom for 24 hours over a toilet.
But then so's everybody. Everyday's Valentine's day. You can't walk anywhere at anytime without somebody blowing kisses or whistling to somebody. Nobody seems to mind. Cupid was supposed to be a screwed up kid settling scores with grownups anyway, makes sense to me he'd be a Cuban.
Havana's an alley. One huge alley or gutter with a gasoline rainbow tricking down. Art Deco ruins everywhere, crusty and mangey, but alive. The whole town rips your eyes out and stuffs a microscope in one eye and a telescope in the other. Every five blocks is the bust a poet who went to war to free with this place. Every face over here is a poem. This one great big community of a shipwrecked island made Home. It's kinda wonky coming from a town like mine where the central ambition is to live in a family that relates like strangers in a home that is joylessly yet hygenically unlived in, lives unlived---reduce the poem of your life into a riddle and grind it up into some cornball crossword and make art of your artless by fucking a whore now and again behind your wife's back while she pretends not to notice and blah blah blah---a fucking ghost town haunting souless everywhere but behind a wheel screaming at Chinese people.
But there's boredome here too. Monumental boredom. The expression of disillusionment that I can only imagine some guy set adrift has guzzling seawater by the gallon has trying to solve thirst.
And I kick around with a lousy wife-beater tan making taxodermy of some girls I know---KNEW, maybe---in my notebook. By girls over here are like tripped down an elevator shaft and finding mermaids waiting for you. The smiles and eye contact staining you like the dawn gets sponged up by clouds and rims the beizbol stadium and skims the houses and sillouttes the people hustling and dragging on foot for the morning commute.
And I'm one footnote trying to mainline them and it. And like any girl I've ever fallen for the longer I'm here, the more questions I ask, the more slips, the more Moments---I know less and less and less. And more trap doors open. And more anchors spash.
Somehow, as fucked up as it is, and IT IS, it just turns every other city you've ever seen into that endangered species airlifted over to some Vegas petting zoo.
I'm in the studio audience watching this girl of a city falling down the rabbit hole trying to make sense of the screwy pattern on the wall and for whatever reason I don't need the electric sign to know when to clap. Because what stinks stinks. And when the first dance recital innocence gets to everybody and your little girl starts dancing but doesn't want to smile because her teeth are rotten---it feels like home. Emotionally where you pick up your mail.
Even tho I can't get a motherfucking plate of food over here that doesn't change my fixed address to the bathroom for 24 hours over a toilet.
Habana Oct 29th, 2007
Havana's pretty strange... around noon old men drag
80-pound stones tied to their ankles along the middle
of busy streets in Centro Habana. Nobody stares,
nobody even looks. At 5am while I'm running around
places ghostly sillouettes are dragged up hills on the
backs of trucks, their soldier uniforms flapping. Down the
street, beside a building with a huge chimney, a woman
crushes sugar cane for about 60 cents a liter. She
handles the cane like a porn star handles their cock,
just jams it into the hole. There's a transistor radio
beside the crude machine and when a song she likes
comes on she jiggles all over in a frenzy during the chorus. Over
at the boxing gym I have the Cuban National Team's
head coach drives 50 miles into town to work with me for 90 minutes.
Costs 10 bucks a session. No matter what the hell I do all I get back is: "Leedle by leedle, breen. Leedle by leedle. Tanquillo." Dicey weather means the ocean's wild and all the cars beside the Malecon have to hug the center
line 3 lanes in or else a big ass wave will heave over
and slap against their window. Or there's baseball at
night. Cactus green bleechers and olive army personal
rimming the crowd to keep everyone in order.
Tourquoise seashell texture scoreboard, some lights out, worn
billboards spouting the usual propoganda bullshit. Another morning entering a home with little black girls with amazingly intricate hair-dos
who chase after you so they can welcome you with a
kiss. Very neglected cats trickling over exposed roots
under massive trees shading people at a bus stop. Or
the ghettos, near that boxing gym mostly, where kids
stand almost naked hurling stones at nothing, eyes
peering out of barred windows while their bodies
shiver or twitch, eyes pointed at the action but not
catching much of it. Or my friend over here who showed
me his digital camera: "Deez eez ma girlfriend..." prefaces the first photo. I nodd. "Verry pretty." (not really) "Check dis out, man." He
shows me a 3 minute video of her on an operating table
having kidney stones removed. "THAT'S HER LIVER, MAN!
SHIT!" Later, when I can swallow/breath again, I ask him why
anyone would want footage of their GIRLFRIEND's liver
and bladder etc. "Because I wanna know EVERYTHING. I
love her." So I walk home with that in my pocket. Turn
it over in my head. I get to my quiet little street a
few blocks from where Castro gave a 4 hour speech to 50,000
people last week, and Pepe and Jesus Jr. are playing
catch with a tennis ball and Pepe hastles me to play
along and Jesusito laughs when I ask him how he's
doing because he thinks my Spanish is so pathetic and
funny. I make a fist at him. He makes one back and comes at me until everybody spots his dead coming home from work down the street, "HEEEEYYYYY ZZZEEEEEWWWWW!"
80-pound stones tied to their ankles along the middle
of busy streets in Centro Habana. Nobody stares,
nobody even looks. At 5am while I'm running around
places ghostly sillouettes are dragged up hills on the
backs of trucks, their soldier uniforms flapping. Down the
street, beside a building with a huge chimney, a woman
crushes sugar cane for about 60 cents a liter. She
handles the cane like a porn star handles their cock,
just jams it into the hole. There's a transistor radio
beside the crude machine and when a song she likes
comes on she jiggles all over in a frenzy during the chorus. Over
at the boxing gym I have the Cuban National Team's
head coach drives 50 miles into town to work with me for 90 minutes.
Costs 10 bucks a session. No matter what the hell I do all I get back is: "Leedle by leedle, breen. Leedle by leedle. Tanquillo." Dicey weather means the ocean's wild and all the cars beside the Malecon have to hug the center
line 3 lanes in or else a big ass wave will heave over
and slap against their window. Or there's baseball at
night. Cactus green bleechers and olive army personal
rimming the crowd to keep everyone in order.
Tourquoise seashell texture scoreboard, some lights out, worn
billboards spouting the usual propoganda bullshit. Another morning entering a home with little black girls with amazingly intricate hair-dos
who chase after you so they can welcome you with a
kiss. Very neglected cats trickling over exposed roots
under massive trees shading people at a bus stop. Or
the ghettos, near that boxing gym mostly, where kids
stand almost naked hurling stones at nothing, eyes
peering out of barred windows while their bodies
shiver or twitch, eyes pointed at the action but not
catching much of it. Or my friend over here who showed
me his digital camera: "Deez eez ma girlfriend..." prefaces the first photo. I nodd. "Verry pretty." (not really) "Check dis out, man." He
shows me a 3 minute video of her on an operating table
having kidney stones removed. "THAT'S HER LIVER, MAN!
SHIT!" Later, when I can swallow/breath again, I ask him why
anyone would want footage of their GIRLFRIEND's liver
and bladder etc. "Because I wanna know EVERYTHING. I
love her." So I walk home with that in my pocket. Turn
it over in my head. I get to my quiet little street a
few blocks from where Castro gave a 4 hour speech to 50,000
people last week, and Pepe and Jesus Jr. are playing
catch with a tennis ball and Pepe hastles me to play
along and Jesusito laughs when I ask him how he's
doing because he thinks my Spanish is so pathetic and
funny. I make a fist at him. He makes one back and comes at me until everybody spots his dead coming home from work down the street, "HEEEEYYYYY ZZZEEEEEWWWWW!"
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Unsigned
all these clouds outside my window made a nice bib for
an especially sloppy pie eating contest sunrise, all
kinds of berries smeared. now it's pigeon shit gray
with the shopping carts clanking down the alleys. all
the traffic lights winking like betty page.
you read that inscription that i felt a little queasy
and naked writing in my chicken scratch two minutes
before i saw you, but wrote it anyway so you could
find it *later*. maybe when you felt like fishing for
it. maybe stumbling on it drowsy before you went to
sleep. maybe with stuff ahead of your day---hopefully
something nice that you could arch your spine to when
you thot about it, like the way your whole body sighed
and curled a little when you talked about dancing all
over the place.
*LATER* being the key fucking word, natalie.
you shouldn't say certain things to me, you know. when
you told me you read that paragraph i sent you the
other day out loud to yourself---to get the/my voice
right!?---jesus fuck, i wanted to club you on the
spot. toss you over a shoulder and find a nice
hospitable cave with a cool breeze and a mattress with
no sheets or blankets. me as the only alternative
smirking heat source. you can't say things like that.
not in that little unsure voice that changed when it
came out.
especially since you turn me into a pack rat. just
sorta wanting to keep a bunch of stuff that i didn't
have the guts to try and steal even tho i love
stealing. keep your face tucked inside that hood a
little bit longer, just because i like the way it
looks with only a little crinkled, rain-licked hair
against your chin. figure out a way to keep that
antenna inside you bent right so the reception stayed
perfect between your lips and eyes smiling. just
making that sneaky sound in your throat that seems to
surprise and tickle-out certain expressions that i can
mainline. maybe i just love looking at you. i get to say that without feeling guilty because it's true. if somebody pulled out a stop watch over at benny's way back when, i was there in under a second
easy. you don't seem so much painted, as carved. and
you have this effect on me.
i get tense sometimes, nervous, and this fucking
billiard's triangle comes out of nowhere trying to
cram all of me into its ugly shape---so am i allowed
to tell you when i got to touch you the morning you
left this crazy pool cue cracked every ball so hard
inside me, in a thousand directions, all the numbers
burned off?
in oliver there are lots of orchards handy, with
cherries and apricots and peaches hanging out along
the highway eager to be stolen if anyone should happen
to be strolling by. there's a river that snakes thro
the valley for a few miles and i'm told it's higher
and faster than it's been in 40 years and i wonder how
many bridges you've been flushed under because that's
always been my favorite part. there's a lake, half a
mile long, with a raft at one shore shaded by willow
trees, big cozy old thing, that you can take out at
night that drifts a couple hundred yards into absolute
darkness with only the moon drooling on the water and
buttering the sky. and there's a big ass mountain with
the profile of an indian that takes a couple hours to
climb through wild flowers and cactus and the
occasional deer nosing around after you hop the fence
of the farm beneath it and trespass...
this is a little too long, but then yesterday felt a
little too short. your fault on both counts.
an especially sloppy pie eating contest sunrise, all
kinds of berries smeared. now it's pigeon shit gray
with the shopping carts clanking down the alleys. all
the traffic lights winking like betty page.
you read that inscription that i felt a little queasy
and naked writing in my chicken scratch two minutes
before i saw you, but wrote it anyway so you could
find it *later*. maybe when you felt like fishing for
it. maybe stumbling on it drowsy before you went to
sleep. maybe with stuff ahead of your day---hopefully
something nice that you could arch your spine to when
you thot about it, like the way your whole body sighed
and curled a little when you talked about dancing all
over the place.
*LATER* being the key fucking word, natalie.
you shouldn't say certain things to me, you know. when
you told me you read that paragraph i sent you the
other day out loud to yourself---to get the/my voice
right!?---jesus fuck, i wanted to club you on the
spot. toss you over a shoulder and find a nice
hospitable cave with a cool breeze and a mattress with
no sheets or blankets. me as the only alternative
smirking heat source. you can't say things like that.
not in that little unsure voice that changed when it
came out.
especially since you turn me into a pack rat. just
sorta wanting to keep a bunch of stuff that i didn't
have the guts to try and steal even tho i love
stealing. keep your face tucked inside that hood a
little bit longer, just because i like the way it
looks with only a little crinkled, rain-licked hair
against your chin. figure out a way to keep that
antenna inside you bent right so the reception stayed
perfect between your lips and eyes smiling. just
making that sneaky sound in your throat that seems to
surprise and tickle-out certain expressions that i can
mainline. maybe i just love looking at you. i get to say that without feeling guilty because it's true. if somebody pulled out a stop watch over at benny's way back when, i was there in under a second
easy. you don't seem so much painted, as carved. and
you have this effect on me.
i get tense sometimes, nervous, and this fucking
billiard's triangle comes out of nowhere trying to
cram all of me into its ugly shape---so am i allowed
to tell you when i got to touch you the morning you
left this crazy pool cue cracked every ball so hard
inside me, in a thousand directions, all the numbers
burned off?
in oliver there are lots of orchards handy, with
cherries and apricots and peaches hanging out along
the highway eager to be stolen if anyone should happen
to be strolling by. there's a river that snakes thro
the valley for a few miles and i'm told it's higher
and faster than it's been in 40 years and i wonder how
many bridges you've been flushed under because that's
always been my favorite part. there's a lake, half a
mile long, with a raft at one shore shaded by willow
trees, big cozy old thing, that you can take out at
night that drifts a couple hundred yards into absolute
darkness with only the moon drooling on the water and
buttering the sky. and there's a big ass mountain with
the profile of an indian that takes a couple hours to
climb through wild flowers and cactus and the
occasional deer nosing around after you hop the fence
of the farm beneath it and trespass...
this is a little too long, but then yesterday felt a
little too short. your fault on both counts.
Davega Bicycles
There's a shy meadow the size of a football field that slants away from a quiet road down towards a cliff. The road carries on climbing along a drowsy curve toward the university and Wreck Beach. If you drove along this road you'd have trouble seeing anyone lying on a blanket in the grass of that meadow. Without trying it's very easy to get tucked away from prying eyes. At one end the cliff has a steep narrow path of dried mud to take you down, under the shade of trees and beside berry bushes, to the rocks piled up against the sea. You can hear the drone of boats combing the shore but you can't see any of them. Most of the footprints left in the muddy path lead toward rather than away from this meadow. When the sun's out it has dibs on a paint-kit all its own. All the ingredients of this place add up to something like seeing a naked woman washing her hair for the first time. Clouds spread continents of lazy shadows over the long grass, freckled with buttercups and wild flowers. The breeze more often than not floats over you and makes noise in the leaves. Sometimes it dips down and combs the grass, weaves into the feel of the sun against your skin. If you're on your back staring up at the sky water-spiders infect the blue. It feels like a very special place to bury something you want somebody to find. If you're lucky enough to have a private petting zoo of a girl along with you time stands still.
I was there a little over a week ago with a girl who might fit that description. A big thing didn't happen while I was there that I was expecting. With every girl I've ever fallen for, from Murphy (c) on down, I get asked a question from someone I haven't met yet: "Why her?" And it fucks everything up. Because I never have a good answer.
Every couple years after I was sixteen and had my first girlfriend I've written to the somebody who asks me this question in my notebook. Before too long I gathered the somebody was my kid.
The catch of being in that meadow with this girl was that I never got that question. Apparently the conversation wasn't necessary. They already knew the score. I guess one look at my face, by way of explanation, and it was pretty obvious why it was her.
I was there a little over a week ago with a girl who might fit that description. A big thing didn't happen while I was there that I was expecting. With every girl I've ever fallen for, from Murphy (c) on down, I get asked a question from someone I haven't met yet: "Why her?" And it fucks everything up. Because I never have a good answer.
Every couple years after I was sixteen and had my first girlfriend I've written to the somebody who asks me this question in my notebook. Before too long I gathered the somebody was my kid.
The catch of being in that meadow with this girl was that I never got that question. Apparently the conversation wasn't necessary. They already knew the score. I guess one look at my face, by way of explanation, and it was pretty obvious why it was her.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)