Some people would call me crazy
But I find labels make me itch.
Often they don’t fit anyway,
like a small knit jumper, clinging in all the wrong places.
A friend said spoke of dreams today,
of holding on when nothing else is left.
Mine are content to slip away
flashing at me teasingly, like collarbones in winter,
displayed only when a scarf slips.
In the background a voice croons softly along with an acoustic guitar, singing about memories, photographs and regrets. This afternoon the caravan seems suspiciously small and for once the yellow was just don't seem right. I just won’t think and immerse my self in the black and white melody that spills across the pages of my book.
An advancing warm front had begun to curdle the clear blue of the sky.In the North End, a slender neon boot named ITALIA kicked a monstrous neon boulder named SICILIA. It was impossible to escape the words MEAT MARKET. The Italians that lived here- old women who stalled on the sidewalks like irrationally pausing insects, their print dresses gaping at the neck; young car owners with hairstyles resembling sable pelts -seemed harried by a wind the tourists and moneyed intruders couldn’t feel, a sociological wind laden with the dank dust of renovation, as cold as society’s interest in heavy red sauces with oregano and Frank Sinatra, as keen as Boston’s hunger for real estate in convenient white neighbourhoods.
My friend with the soothing voice is still singing. The tune has changed but the song is still the same. The theme seems to be regret, before it was past; now its love, but all the time regret. Its what makes us what we are. That little six letter word and its consequences. Its a little like bacon really. Optional, but it adds a whole new dimension to the flavours of our existential cheeseburgers. I guess its what makes us human. After all isn’t everything defined by how its broken?
MEAT MARKET. MEAT MARKET. Midwestern tourists surged up the hill. A pair of Japanese youths sprinted past Louis, their fingers in Michelin guides, as he approached the Old North Church whose actual setting immediately and quietly obliterated the more wooded picture in his mind that had formed before he saw it. He skirted and ancient cemetery, thinking of Houston, where summer had already arrived, where downtown smelled of cypress swamps and the live oaks shed green leaves, remembering a conversation from a humid night there- You’ll be lucky next time. I swear you will.
We had an oak tree at school when I was kid. They pulled it down after a storm, when it nearly fell on the library.
**excerpts from Jonathan Franzen’s Strong Motion
Midnight. A migraine of senses and if I just lie still enough I can begin to separate them.
The crashing hum of the pedestal fan as it seeps, like water, through the pillow I have so desperately wrapped around my head, drowning me in a single sensation. Round and round it goes, happily buzzing as it constantly completes its purpose. A single journey of endless rotation.
And if I lie really still I can feel the very atmosphere of the room moving. The air is cool as it whispers across my skin. While it touches my arms, it moves against something deeper, touching me in places I never want a lover to reach. A hard part amongst the softness, questioning. Asking me how I got like this and why something so cold and numb can feel so much. Reminding me that the scars on my skin are so much deeper.
Strange how a breeze can make you feel so exposed.
