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
I love how you used the words, "black and white melody that spills across the pages of my book." This metaphor crosses over the boundries that often separate the division of the senses. Very creative!
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