My tonsil is so swollen it droops down to my tongue. I have to forget about it. Out the door clanks shut behind me and I step onto the sleeping street. Black rain is splattering the street and the dead leaves lie curled and brittle on the ground. It smells good. Musty and natural and real. The sticky air tastes faintly of smoke. I pick up some leaves and rub them on my face. Where do the smells come from? They come from memories. Well where do all the memories come from? They come from encounters. Where do the encounters come from? They come from smells, of course. Strange, no?
Walking home today I saw a child picking up grass from the sidewalk and throwing it onto the street. He approached me with rubber boots and flashed a smile. He cried out in excitement:
"I am cutting weeds!" His little grinning white teeth were three or four years old.
"You are indeed. You're like a lawn mower." Does he know what a lawn mower is?
He picked up some grass in his hand. His bunched up face and fist flung it on the road with style. He turned back to me and smiled again.
"There's so much!"
There was actually much more grass than weed but he couldn't tell the difference. He was pulling all of it out. Clumps were scattered around him, a sand pit for a gardener. He kneeled down and I liked the sound his plastic jacket made, swishing back and forth with his arms.
"Do you want some help?" He nodded. Must get serious now. I bent down and tore a big clump out of the earth. Left a mark. The child was tiny, I nearly stepped on him when he jerked up and down.
"That was a big one!" He was stunned. We were pulling weeds forever, having the most beautifully simple conversation in a perfect state of stasis. I was completely happy with this child, but where were his parents? I turned around and saw a burly woman smiling at us from the laundromat. Folding sheets and watching through the glass.
"You have to pull really deep." I pulled out another weed but made sure to get the roots. "See the dirt? Weeds eat dirt." I was worried this was confusing. He was unsure to pull either the weed or the dirt. He looked at me, at the ground, back and forth, pleading- help me in this one task. But I have to go. The mother is probably wondering about my motives. Playing in the grass with somebody's child, fucking lunatic. I told him to keep up the good work, and I started off. Then I remembered something.
"What is your name?"
"Christopher!"
"Christopher, I'm Adam."
"Adam!"
"Bye."
"Bye-bye!"
i was walking home
this little kid was pulling grass from the sidewalk
flinging it onto the street
this tiny grinning child approached me
telling me he didn't like weeds
making them go away
we got to talking, he accepted my offer
we sat on the grass pulling weeds forever
The rain
Smells like gloaming? Fire burning? Smoke churning and water pouring all around. A torrent of the briefest senses pass by you.
Well all the souls are tucked in to bed, swallowed in the night. The quiet streets here smell of smoke and cold crisp decay. They smell of something else too but I can't figure it. Last week in the thickest night Stef and I walked through a heavenly downpour drenched us all the way to the water. It seemed like the whole city was draining down this street. I loved the sounds. A moored boat creaking back and forth, the sudden showers splashing the rocks and the water, all the voices muffled in the rain. I love the smell and feel of the rain.
But it never stops. The rain keeps beating on the window pane, scattering down on the pavement, spitting and tapping the surface of your skin. You can't get it off you. It sticks like glue you know. Well maybe it doesn't. I wish it would stop raining here. The idea is you can only truly escape from the rain when you go underground. And you don't want to live underground, do you?
