I have never felt so small, standing under the African sky. I wish you could be here to see it; sprawling diamonds falling out of the Milky Way, meteors arcing overhead over staccato lightning beats. Bolts. This moment feels like a memory, déjà vu reversed again. Tomorrow, I will wake early and have coffee. Tonight, [...]
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I am at the clothes market on Christmas Eve, trying hard not to feel foolish. It is difficult because 1) I have terrible Mandarin abilities and 2) I’m really not that interested in buying anything. The vendors believe otherwise, convinced I’m playing games with them. “Come on,” one of [...]
“Listen, Drew” Mike tells me, “They cut off my general assistance a long time ago. I got no money to pay the phone bill.” We’re standing in front of the ghetto again, and Mike’s pacing back in forth in front of his milk crate. He rattles off a long list of errands he’s got to [...]
With a City like this, calamities are bound to happen. A elderly man slips down a narrow stairwell and dislocates his hip. Sirens interrupt throngs of hungry shoppers as two ladder trucks rush down the Market. A red-headed biker caroms off a distracted SUV, and snaps his collarbone. Blaring phones put 911 operators on edge. [...]
There is nothing ahead but firelight, sweet chamomile tea, four ounces of froth and eraser dust. Suddenly, we too are children; we too are poppyleaf flowers riding rogue gusts of unbridled wind. The solace you seek lies one octave above, above the cloud cover, above the sorrow and heavy matters of dirt, scandal and earth. [...]
I. When the restlessness again enters my legs
We dare do what mere men dare not! We linger in the rain when mothers worldwide would frown, wagging their fingers at us children lollydallying in the puddles, stomping on muddy daisies, the rain soaking our pores. We run exclusively when it’s wet, through throngs of umbrellaed [...]
Let’s love when we’re young, and let our freckles shine in the dark. Let’s love hastily and recklessly because we fear the cousins of the unknown. We might stumble and we might fall, but we have time, fearful, dreadful time on our side.
Let’s love when we’re old, and let our wrinkles count our bottled years. [...]
Six AM sun still slow
bite the chill of morning air and
a window left ajar
sirens and city noise are your serenade
as you stretch and shake off
cobwebs of yesterday.
Seven.
-8/28/2004
There are four of us in this room, keeping the six-o’clock watch marking the sun’s descent in this myrtle-green nightclub undergoing transformation to a sacred space, sawdust filling our nostrils and uncovering shafts of light leaking from skylights (and I sneeze).
One corner of the room is a cafe in a half-constructed state with orange walls, [...]
There is a strange art installation in the side of the Vuitton store here in the mall that my family walks through each night–a neon-rimmed iridescent parabolic reflector behind wall-to-wall glass, a bright bulb in the middle directing light into the center of the mall. Returning the gaze of the giant iris evokes a haunting [...]