June 25, 2004

• repetition

   

  In a bruised blue rotation,
  In the least dramatic fashion:

  She/he takes a vise-like hold

  And hugs the rind or

  Your capacity for inspiration

  Leaving pulp stories and the

  Need for at least, a waning sweetness.
  
  In a bruised blue rotation,
  Like flashing machines, she/he’ll
  Bounce bearings that ricochet
  Off smart and tall, wry and small or
  The Kennedy’s or Pinochet’s.
  
  In a bruised blue rotation,
  She/he’ll monitor revolution
  And splash us with befuddlement
  Down a steady drain for feeble attempts

  To make light of the heaving
  Click of sunrise turnstiles.
  
  Or rather,
  In a bruised blue rotation,
  They’ll take the profound and holy
  And wring it like a towel
  Snapped without decorum
  In a locker room.
  
  –
  
  
  
  –
  
  letters
   

  Recently, I visited the Del Mar fair with Carol, my lively neighbor.  (I don’t want to hear it.)  But beholding giant pumpkins and waddling sows, I won a stuffed bear for her.  We drank lemonade mixed with sweet tea and I enjoyed the conversation.  Sitting on bleachers, I really opened up.  I told her a fading story about you.

   

  I still remember picking you up at Aunt Cathy’s and how my reception was strained with a weird mix of sympathy, disdain and condescension.  Of course, that may have been all in my head but in fact, it was a room of nervous smiles and I remember that you had grown and that my hands shook when I held your face.  Driving home, I remember looking at you sitting there in the front seat like a big girl and how I struggled to make you laugh; at that point, I was just a vague concept as two-dimensional as a colouring book.  I cycled through radio stations, looking for a song you might like.  I remember singing cartoon theme songs.  I remember the small thrill of hearing you hum quietly with me.

  
  About nine months after your mother left, I took you to the carnival.  It was a rusty place and had come from far away, big trucks lugging rides and booths and elephants across state lines.  But to you it was gypsy magic.  We spent twenty dollars tossing rings, dead-set on winning you something.  It was the price of a dollar toy and the taste of victory in your eyes.  You were quiet for years but that night, you sat on my shoulders and you were bigger than me.  You ate buttery popcorn and reached down to feed me, one at a time.  You ate cotton candy to comb my hair with sticky fingers.  My eyes must have shined like diamonds for depth of feeling.  Do you remember getting tired?  So, we decided to sit on one last ride.  It was a classic Ferris wheel and we carefully waited our turn.  You were scared of the people around us with their cussing and spitting and pierced skin.  I put my hands on your shoulders and we shuffled our way to the front.  Seated safely, the gears began to crank and up we rose.  You were wide-eyed and silent; I smiled in your direction.  Sine and cosine, peak and trough, we took in the view.  At ground level was all the muck and mire and it was selfish, rowdy, indifferent and lewd.  But that night on the Ferris wheel, you held my arm tightly as we soared above the city, a man and his baby daughter and the lights of a world he wanted to give her.  
  
  

  Darling, there are fisherman philosophers and there are hobos on a train.  And the lack of adventure can wear at you with insidious onset.  We rumble along in search of dreams, stopping for sandwiches and the camaraderie of fellow travelers.  It’s like the simple pleasure of sharing coffee from a thermos out near the engine on a frosty night.  Or alternately, like musing about the Lord and the hereafter over a load of argent scales and gaping mouths of tuna.  Or think of me sitting on the roof of a coal caboose, singing songs through the Great Plains, lost to the tatters in my clothes.  It wouldn’t last forever but for as long as I could, I piggy-backed you as far as you’d let me. 
  
  On the way home, you slept.  I was very much alive, watching the road, catching the skyline, squinting to see street lamps blend into dreams of fire – orange and red, gold and silver.  

  
  —
  
  
  
  may the rope break (goya)
  
  
  —
  
  Let’s go diving!  But first, kayaking.  And sleep.
  
  —
  
  Shoot, it’s thundering pretty fierce right now.  The weather here is strange.  For one, it’s humid as heck.  I’ve got t-shirts still drying in the bathroom because after runs, they’re soaked through and through.  If I told you I jumped into the pool, you wouldn’t know any different.  But the days are hot.  It’ll storm over come lunch and the evening; in turn, you’ll see steam rise from aching asphault. 
  
  —
  
  I experienced hypoxic hypoxia yesterday.  It’s nature’s high altitude drug.  Yeah, man.
  
  —
  
  name game (cato’s take)  or more
  
  for the gipper (per will)
  
  political forgetfulness (said the spectator) 
  
  selective memory = politics = gross (bleah)
  
  red pavement! (warned Driver’s Ed)
  
  you’re a lamo leader! (shouted the editors of La Stampa)
  
  read: engaging.
  
  disturbing
  
  —
  
  I literally swam through the rain during my run this afternoon.  I’m cold but I feel like Superman.  I don’t know if people were honking to cheer me on, to call me crazy or to draw attention to mustard on my nose.  But they were honking.
  
  —
  
  Yes!  YES.
  
  
  how bazan!

  
  —
  
  hope
  
  Afterwards we sat for a while discussing different matters. The hall was busy and everyone was chatting and laughing loud. They had Al-Jazeera on (something I never managed to convince them to stop doing). Then suddenly Mr. Bremer appeared on TV reading his last speech before he left Iraq. I approached the TV to listen carefully to the speech, as I expected it to be difficult in the midst of all that noise. To my surprise everyone stopped what they were doing and started watching as attentively as I was.
  
  The speech was impressive and you could hear the sound of a needle if one had dropped it at that time. The most sensational moment was the end of the speech when Mr. Bremer used a famous Arab emotional poem.

  The poem was for a famous Arab poet who said it while leaving Baghdad.
  Al-Jazeera had put an interpreter who tried to translate even the Arabic poem which Mr. Bremer was telling in a fair Arabic! 
  
  “Let this damned interpreter shut up. We want to hear what the man is saying.” One of my colloquies shouted. The scene was very touching that the guy sitting next to me (who used to sympathize with Muqtada) said, “He’s going to make me cry!”

  Then he finished his speech by saying in Arabic,”A’ash Al-Iraq, A’ash Al-Iraq, A’ash Al-Iraq”! (Long live Iraq, long live Iraq, long live Iraq).  …
  
  From a dentist in Iraq.

  Matt11:28

  • 10:51 pm
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