Thursday, November 29, 2007
Carstorm
The sky was grey when I let the car slide to a stop near the old railway track. Clouds and wind talked and made me wonder if a storm was blowin in. Key turned in and taken out, the cylinders slowed and chugged to a stop. With the window down, I can hear it, feel it. I was just here to kill some time. The time that slips slower with your heartbeat. Out the window, a scarf walks past, head down. And then it started to snow, and I could hear the flakes being slammed and wooshed, clunking across the winshield. Rain and snow, then no more rain, the temperature began to change. Almost instantly.. it became snow, not heavy, but blowing everywhere. The windshield was covered. I was sitting, in perfect comfort and warmth and utter joy, waching everything take place in peace while this massive storm blows over. I would enjoy it outside, parked still like a car, resisting the wind. But here my body moves and shakes to the wind in the car. The wind lets loose a few howls, but there is a complete harmony of noise. I can only dream of the snow now, it's beginning to wrap me up. I am lost in my thoughts again, but only fifteen minutes have gone by. The car is filling up, all around me. Time passes slowly in a storm, but it is almost over. The remnant winds are brushing everything away, and no one will ever notice. But now the sun is shining somewhere else - to the west, very bright, creating rays across the page and my hand.
Friday, October 19, 2007
It hurts your back.
'Their eyes are dead, but the body don't mind'. Saw some weird things on tv. The history station. An assassin gunning down an entire Indian family of kings and queens and sons and daughters. His eyes were concentrated, and the empty body followed his direction. On to better and brighter things.
The new Radiohead album for one, one good reason giving me reason to type and sit in once place. I think my favourite song is weird fishes but in truth they all have a tremendous power over me. I did not fulfill any summer goals to write about Dakar, except when I was there, because it was always summer, in a way. Most writing I can remember comes from emails. There were very few trees, because it was the dry season. It was hot and dry and sandy, cool at night, and people rose and prayed before the sun. I passed out in the bathroom and woke with a seizure (maybe because I hit my head), but recovered by the next day.. met a crazy Nigerianne and next week got chased half-naked off some cliffs by a cop. It was hard to get many things accomplished in one day. Going to the beach was an adventure. Gambia, so close yet so far, was an adventure. And you talk to the same man who made fish and tea with you, and you see the toubabs that you know. You eat the chocomousse with bread every day and watch old ladies sell their little bags of peanuts. Talibe children chase you banging sticks on rusty tomato pots.
It would be very disorganised to go on. I can't seem to fit my thoughts in a straight line or direction. They veer off wildly. I have added some new posts - Once, fogs, feeling around in the dark, and more recent stuff.
Trying again now, a few days later. A brief history of post-Dakar. A few weeks after the culture shock wore off, I received news that Karmelius Karmelion the 1st, the prophet, would be my son. Alas, supposedly he was killed many weeks ago, but we will never know if one day he will live to defeat me. This is a mysterious, message .. moving on.
I searched for employment and found it, and lost it, and now I am back on the search. Craigslist of all things (really my first time exploring it) revealed some good leads. Freelance music journalists needed, a small company publishing science-fiction children's novels and other erotic stuff, and academic freelance writers. Though I seem to be bad at willing myself to write. Awful in fact. Now going to publish a few things I've left out for a while.
I wonder how these internet jobs work.. you could write all day, double, nay, triple your time working on multiple projects. Then strange visions enter my head, some terrible pyramid scheme, with underwriters writing for contracted writers, passing their stuff to the grand editors and copy writers for the big scheemers.
The new Radiohead album for one, one good reason giving me reason to type and sit in once place. I think my favourite song is weird fishes but in truth they all have a tremendous power over me. I did not fulfill any summer goals to write about Dakar, except when I was there, because it was always summer, in a way. Most writing I can remember comes from emails. There were very few trees, because it was the dry season. It was hot and dry and sandy, cool at night, and people rose and prayed before the sun. I passed out in the bathroom and woke with a seizure (maybe because I hit my head), but recovered by the next day.. met a crazy Nigerianne and next week got chased half-naked off some cliffs by a cop. It was hard to get many things accomplished in one day. Going to the beach was an adventure. Gambia, so close yet so far, was an adventure. And you talk to the same man who made fish and tea with you, and you see the toubabs that you know. You eat the chocomousse with bread every day and watch old ladies sell their little bags of peanuts. Talibe children chase you banging sticks on rusty tomato pots.
It would be very disorganised to go on. I can't seem to fit my thoughts in a straight line or direction. They veer off wildly. I have added some new posts - Once, fogs, feeling around in the dark, and more recent stuff.
Trying again now, a few days later. A brief history of post-Dakar. A few weeks after the culture shock wore off, I received news that Karmelius Karmelion the 1st, the prophet, would be my son. Alas, supposedly he was killed many weeks ago, but we will never know if one day he will live to defeat me. This is a mysterious, message .. moving on.
I searched for employment and found it, and lost it, and now I am back on the search. Craigslist of all things (really my first time exploring it) revealed some good leads. Freelance music journalists needed, a small company publishing science-fiction children's novels and other erotic stuff, and academic freelance writers. Though I seem to be bad at willing myself to write. Awful in fact. Now going to publish a few things I've left out for a while.
I wonder how these internet jobs work.. you could write all day, double, nay, triple your time working on multiple projects. Then strange visions enter my head, some terrible pyramid scheme, with underwriters writing for contracted writers, passing their stuff to the grand editors and copy writers for the big scheemers.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
april - dakar
Nakh yeneen gi ci jam? Is everything in peace?
Some more news from off the beaten trail..
Casamance did not happen because the farmer was taking too long, making preparations, so instead I joined 4 Canadian ladies and decided to conquer Gambia.
Ah the Gambia. Many times I would wonder how and why this place actually exists. A former British colony surrounded by French Africa with a river winding through, now a 'peaceful' dictatorship with no infrastructure but tourism.. the smallest country in Africa seems like a continent when the roads are so bad that you drive beside them or through village paths. Hard to recap the journey in so few words.. and as I've come to experience here, it isn't about the fucked-up things you see but the wild people you meet..
Gambia is kind of like Jamaica, a rasta haven, except much more poor and the people speak Mandinka and some English. I learned some Mandinka and my Wolof improved.. people are far more warm, open, and welcoming when you make genuine attempts to learn their culture. A popular Gambian expression: "it's nice to be nice". They seemed more warm and less sneaky than some of the Dakar city dwellers.
We travelled from Dakar to Barra, took the slowest ferry ever to Banjul, and after 5 police checks (these were constant throughout our journey) we left for Bakau on the coast. It was beautiful in Bakau: clean, lush, the trees smelled delicious, the existence of grass was shocking. I frolicked and rolled in a beautiful patch with some goats under a massive billboard of president Jammeh who looms over every busy intersection. There was also a sign with an infantryman's legs inside a condom. It read "The soldier protects the nation and the condom protects the soldier." - funded by the US Department of Defense. While this was the touristy, coastal part of Gambia, the people here were also laid back.. in short, this seemed to be the opposite of Senegal and the rushed Dakar mentality. But we figured this was only a polished version for the tourists, and we decided to go inland, to see the real Africa, which is also where the insanity began.
We bused to Serekunda, a bustling place with sandy roads, a market that puts Dakar's Medina to shame.. stayed up late as someone took Claire and Leah and I to the town dance hall. Ate street meat, snapped a great picture of a man serving spaghetti in the wee hours. Some graffiti behind him said "knowledge is power". In the morning, sugary tea and greasy eggs in tappalappa (bread) gave us strength. They don't just add sugar, they drown their coffee and tea in sugar and sweetened condensed milk. It was a bit odd. We went to a nature reserve and saw renegade chimps, hyenas, and vultures. Life was still too normal here so we headed for Soma.
Standing in the heat at the terminal in Serekunda the buses all seemed to be taking the north bank road (the lying bastards who write Lonely Planet claimed both roads were equally treacherous but called the north one "dire") so hardly anyone would take us.. I made a friend, Musa, he gave me his picture, and his helpfulness and generosity was so moving it was painful. We waited hours for a ndiaga ndiaye to Soma, [luckily we had these cold sweet things, kind of like mini mr. freezies] finally got one, waited another hour for it to fill. I wonder if one could enjoy life here without patience. I wave to Musa, who I'll never see again. While filling up at a gas station, across the street a luxury car collided with a cyclist. The windshield exploded. The cyclist was thrown and slid on his face until he came to a stop. Moans and gasping prayers rushed to surround his twisted body. He did not die, but this was a bad omen - our driver changed three times before we left. The road was nothing but craters, ground up rock, and sand. We didn't even make it to Soma, got stranded in this village called Kwinella.
We slept at what seemed like an awful adult summer camp with a crocodile pool but no crocs. I wondered around the compound walls plotting my escape and met an old man in the wall named Ura. In the morning we returned to Kwinella (on the main road) to pick up another bus. 5 toubabs with 3 packs is a tight fit when every bus is packed to the brim. With Ura, we waited hours in the blistering sun with hot water and 30 village children with unsatiable attention and demands. Many were fascinated by my leg hair. My four wives played with the children, braided hair, we played football and sucked candies in the desert heat. We finally got a bus (I tried to give Ura my seat but he promised he'd have better luck catching another bus) that had space for us, and though I was kneeling on a gas tank up front in pools of sweat, this was the best moment ever, and I remember thinking "How can this be the best moment ever? What is happening to me!"
We drove 5 minutes, and then while avoiding a pothole for the roadbank the tire exploded and shattered the brake disc. We filed out into the scorching savannah with no shade, and I was feeling nausea, with friendly people urging me to practice my shitty wolof and hitting on my friends/'wives'. With my lips peeling off this was probably the low point of the journey. But the amazing drivers managed to repair the bus in 20 minutes and we got to Soma.
We wandered into Soma with our filth and dirt-caked faces, and I think the locals were scared of us because no one jeered at us too much. I even saw Ura again! Soma is described as a "dusty junction town" but it also has no electricity, no running water, except for 5 hours during the evening. The streets were all sand and dust, and it was as hot as Kwinella, but at least it was sundown. We ate street meat here (few alternatives) and possibly got sick, but the Moses Motel was friendly.. Souleyman (aka Notorious because he was a chubster) took me to see his parents, everyone was friendly and laid back.. but the young lads were sometimes just mooching to get close to my 4 wives. Some were genuine though.. and Khady, who ran the motel bar, what a sweetheart.. she makes a dollar a day but spent hours teaching us language and joking around.
Sipping on my Julbrew under a full moon watching endless spliffs pass by, I remember these rastas are Muslim, and they smiled when I come back from the bar with cold bottles of pop.. what a luxury, a cold drink with friendly strangers.
Anyways, we then left for Georgetown, aka Jang-Jang Bureh, supposedly an interesting and historical colonial town, but that was all lies! It was even hotter than Soma, and there was nothing to do! There was really no where to stay, and everything was absurdity at this point. The taxi that took us into town from the river (JJB sits on an island) had no interior, it was just a metal shell! But the hotter it gets, the friendlier the people become. The place we stayed in had lizards, roaches, and a huge rat in my room which I abandoned. After I took a tepid shower and lay on my bed in humid bliss until the sun went down. I remember sinking into my mat, feeling like the heroin overdose scene in Trainspotting, just waiting, waiting for a breeze, anything to relieve the heat.. I was drifting away..
Luckily there were two friendly Swedes here conquering all of West Africa. In the middle of our heavy discussions I got sick for the first time since I fell. The ladies left for their own dinner and the Swedes fed me their lentil soup and garlic, and I got better (just sick from dehydration) and wandered around Jang-jang-bureh. I remembered my wives were out and about and went looking for them. The village had very few lights, but it never felt unsafe. My friends met some wonderful citizens and we hung out with them down by the river. JJB became beautiful when I remembered the existence of water. We ate from a huge plate of yembe, a tasty peanut/rice dish which we shared with the cicadas and cooks. Back at the hostel, writing by candelight with Leah and the two Swedes, a strong breeze knocked leaves and kola nuts from the trees, and under the moon I started to appreciate how the very smallest things in life are the most beautiful, and I was happy that we had made it this far, even if it was nowhere.
The next day we got up at 7 to take a boat ride. With the people bathing bodies and washing clothes along the cool river, this was another high point. In their tin can raft we drank attaya, saw some beautiful birds (kingfishers, a grey heron, others) monkeys, watersnakes.. no crocs or hippos though. Passed a prison and their vegetable garden. They showed me plants that cure certain maladies, and I was happy to learn. On the way back the entire town comes to the water to bathe and wash and I was reluctant to take pictures here because it's insulting and there's no way to share them, but I will remember this colourful scene forever..
Anyway we left the next afternoon for Farfenni, another dusty junction town just south of the Senegalese border. And we almost cried when we got to the road. It was a fucking highway! We were doing 75km/h instead of 15! We were very happy to cross the border into Senegal and enter civilization again. We had a nice relaxing beach day near Mbour on the petite-cote and stayed at a beautiful place. That night, I got back to Dakar, and stayed up until 430am dancing at a Youssou N'Dour concert. I feel better but I am smaller now.. I only weigh 69kg.
When I come home your food is going to make me laugh.
In love and peace,
Adam
Some more news from off the beaten trail..
Casamance did not happen because the farmer was taking too long, making preparations, so instead I joined 4 Canadian ladies and decided to conquer Gambia.
Ah the Gambia. Many times I would wonder how and why this place actually exists. A former British colony surrounded by French Africa with a river winding through, now a 'peaceful' dictatorship with no infrastructure but tourism.. the smallest country in Africa seems like a continent when the roads are so bad that you drive beside them or through village paths. Hard to recap the journey in so few words.. and as I've come to experience here, it isn't about the fucked-up things you see but the wild people you meet..
Gambia is kind of like Jamaica, a rasta haven, except much more poor and the people speak Mandinka and some English. I learned some Mandinka and my Wolof improved.. people are far more warm, open, and welcoming when you make genuine attempts to learn their culture. A popular Gambian expression: "it's nice to be nice". They seemed more warm and less sneaky than some of the Dakar city dwellers.
We travelled from Dakar to Barra, took the slowest ferry ever to Banjul, and after 5 police checks (these were constant throughout our journey) we left for Bakau on the coast. It was beautiful in Bakau: clean, lush, the trees smelled delicious, the existence of grass was shocking. I frolicked and rolled in a beautiful patch with some goats under a massive billboard of president Jammeh who looms over every busy intersection. There was also a sign with an infantryman's legs inside a condom. It read "The soldier protects the nation and the condom protects the soldier." - funded by the US Department of Defense. While this was the touristy, coastal part of Gambia, the people here were also laid back.. in short, this seemed to be the opposite of Senegal and the rushed Dakar mentality. But we figured this was only a polished version for the tourists, and we decided to go inland, to see the real Africa, which is also where the insanity began.
We bused to Serekunda, a bustling place with sandy roads, a market that puts Dakar's Medina to shame.. stayed up late as someone took Claire and Leah and I to the town dance hall. Ate street meat, snapped a great picture of a man serving spaghetti in the wee hours. Some graffiti behind him said "knowledge is power". In the morning, sugary tea and greasy eggs in tappalappa (bread) gave us strength. They don't just add sugar, they drown their coffee and tea in sugar and sweetened condensed milk. It was a bit odd. We went to a nature reserve and saw renegade chimps, hyenas, and vultures. Life was still too normal here so we headed for Soma.
Standing in the heat at the terminal in Serekunda the buses all seemed to be taking the north bank road (the lying bastards who write Lonely Planet claimed both roads were equally treacherous but called the north one "dire") so hardly anyone would take us.. I made a friend, Musa, he gave me his picture, and his helpfulness and generosity was so moving it was painful. We waited hours for a ndiaga ndiaye to Soma, [luckily we had these cold sweet things, kind of like mini mr. freezies] finally got one, waited another hour for it to fill. I wonder if one could enjoy life here without patience. I wave to Musa, who I'll never see again. While filling up at a gas station, across the street a luxury car collided with a cyclist. The windshield exploded. The cyclist was thrown and slid on his face until he came to a stop. Moans and gasping prayers rushed to surround his twisted body. He did not die, but this was a bad omen - our driver changed three times before we left. The road was nothing but craters, ground up rock, and sand. We didn't even make it to Soma, got stranded in this village called Kwinella.
We slept at what seemed like an awful adult summer camp with a crocodile pool but no crocs. I wondered around the compound walls plotting my escape and met an old man in the wall named Ura. In the morning we returned to Kwinella (on the main road) to pick up another bus. 5 toubabs with 3 packs is a tight fit when every bus is packed to the brim. With Ura, we waited hours in the blistering sun with hot water and 30 village children with unsatiable attention and demands. Many were fascinated by my leg hair. My four wives played with the children, braided hair, we played football and sucked candies in the desert heat. We finally got a bus (I tried to give Ura my seat but he promised he'd have better luck catching another bus) that had space for us, and though I was kneeling on a gas tank up front in pools of sweat, this was the best moment ever, and I remember thinking "How can this be the best moment ever? What is happening to me!"
We drove 5 minutes, and then while avoiding a pothole for the roadbank the tire exploded and shattered the brake disc. We filed out into the scorching savannah with no shade, and I was feeling nausea, with friendly people urging me to practice my shitty wolof and hitting on my friends/'wives'. With my lips peeling off this was probably the low point of the journey. But the amazing drivers managed to repair the bus in 20 minutes and we got to Soma.
We wandered into Soma with our filth and dirt-caked faces, and I think the locals were scared of us because no one jeered at us too much. I even saw Ura again! Soma is described as a "dusty junction town" but it also has no electricity, no running water, except for 5 hours during the evening. The streets were all sand and dust, and it was as hot as Kwinella, but at least it was sundown. We ate street meat here (few alternatives) and possibly got sick, but the Moses Motel was friendly.. Souleyman (aka Notorious because he was a chubster) took me to see his parents, everyone was friendly and laid back.. but the young lads were sometimes just mooching to get close to my 4 wives. Some were genuine though.. and Khady, who ran the motel bar, what a sweetheart.. she makes a dollar a day but spent hours teaching us language and joking around.
Sipping on my Julbrew under a full moon watching endless spliffs pass by, I remember these rastas are Muslim, and they smiled when I come back from the bar with cold bottles of pop.. what a luxury, a cold drink with friendly strangers.
Anyways, we then left for Georgetown, aka Jang-Jang Bureh, supposedly an interesting and historical colonial town, but that was all lies! It was even hotter than Soma, and there was nothing to do! There was really no where to stay, and everything was absurdity at this point. The taxi that took us into town from the river (JJB sits on an island) had no interior, it was just a metal shell! But the hotter it gets, the friendlier the people become. The place we stayed in had lizards, roaches, and a huge rat in my room which I abandoned. After I took a tepid shower and lay on my bed in humid bliss until the sun went down. I remember sinking into my mat, feeling like the heroin overdose scene in Trainspotting, just waiting, waiting for a breeze, anything to relieve the heat.. I was drifting away..
Luckily there were two friendly Swedes here conquering all of West Africa. In the middle of our heavy discussions I got sick for the first time since I fell. The ladies left for their own dinner and the Swedes fed me their lentil soup and garlic, and I got better (just sick from dehydration) and wandered around Jang-jang-bureh. I remembered my wives were out and about and went looking for them. The village had very few lights, but it never felt unsafe. My friends met some wonderful citizens and we hung out with them down by the river. JJB became beautiful when I remembered the existence of water. We ate from a huge plate of yembe, a tasty peanut/rice dish which we shared with the cicadas and cooks. Back at the hostel, writing by candelight with Leah and the two Swedes, a strong breeze knocked leaves and kola nuts from the trees, and under the moon I started to appreciate how the very smallest things in life are the most beautiful, and I was happy that we had made it this far, even if it was nowhere.
The next day we got up at 7 to take a boat ride. With the people bathing bodies and washing clothes along the cool river, this was another high point. In their tin can raft we drank attaya, saw some beautiful birds (kingfishers, a grey heron, others) monkeys, watersnakes.. no crocs or hippos though. Passed a prison and their vegetable garden. They showed me plants that cure certain maladies, and I was happy to learn. On the way back the entire town comes to the water to bathe and wash and I was reluctant to take pictures here because it's insulting and there's no way to share them, but I will remember this colourful scene forever..
Anyway we left the next afternoon for Farfenni, another dusty junction town just south of the Senegalese border. And we almost cried when we got to the road. It was a fucking highway! We were doing 75km/h instead of 15! We were very happy to cross the border into Senegal and enter civilization again. We had a nice relaxing beach day near Mbour on the petite-cote and stayed at a beautiful place. That night, I got back to Dakar, and stayed up until 430am dancing at a Youssou N'Dour concert. I feel better but I am smaller now.. I only weigh 69kg.
When I come home your food is going to make me laugh.
In love and peace,
Adam
Thursday, March 22, 2007
march- Dakar, St. Louis
Hey everyone.. hope you are safe and happy and enjoying your world. The time just flies.. I can't believe this will be over in a month. I have finally put some pictures up on this program called "facebook". Pictures aren't really my thing.. what I can't describe are the sounds and all the little things.
A few more stories.. After pushing past a thousand drivers and their lackeys in the sprawling Gare Routiere (road terminal), our group split up for the trek north to St. Louis. I like escaping from the city- you breathe fresh air again and hear no noise but the wind ripping past the open windows of the half-dead bush taxi. Moving north I suddenly realise I'm in Africa. We pass giant baobab trees, villages, grandfathers on scooters, desert, baraks (wooden shacks) lined beside the railway that doesn't run anymore, and so on.. when you stop old women race up to your windows with peanuts andbag water and fruit. Dropped off in St. Louis at sunset and wandered around to find our hostel. There were two exciting journeys here.
Jon and I were walking across the "boardwalk" and an old drunk man leaning on his cane pleaded with us to talk with him. After "blessing" us with sand and a bottle cap he demanded a gift. He pushed Jon's coins away, reached into his wallet, took out a 10,000CFA bill (about $20) and ripped it in half, saying money means nothing. Needless to say Jon was enraged, but the man's friends ran away with the money, probably to give to their marabout. (while the talibe children collect coins, and you might think it charitable to help them, as Scott told me, chances are they're just going to give it to their marabout and get beat up). Anyway, to make a long story short, Jon left to find a gendarme and told me to watch over the man to make sure he didn't escape. He tried to flee, and I felt compelled to help him.. he had a bum leg. I looked away while he urinated on a broken truck. He accused me of various things, I accused him of being a drunk old man. He wandered away, and he never left my sight (easy in St. Louis where the streets are in a grid and never far from water and suddenly I hear someone yell my name. I turn around to see Jon sitting up front sandwiched between three officers in a huge paddywagon. They pulled up beside me.
"Where is he?" I looked away. I tell them "..il vaut pas la peine. Mungi dof !" (It's not worth it. he's crazy!) Nevertheless, I directed them to the steps he was resting on, floated in between the small, cheering crowd that had gathered as the officer beat him into the back. The police insisted that I get in the back too because I was a witness. So I climbed in beside him, and he yelled in anger all the way as we drove around St. Louis picking up the rest of his crew, one by one. We were dropped off at the gendarmerie where they were locked behind bars in front of us and Jon gave a deposition. It was fantastic.
The second adventure came when Omar (a random friend we made) insisted we join him on bikes to a wildlife reserve, about 15km away. And us crazy canucks followed him. The mountain bikes could not really change gears, many seized up, two flat tires, and Megan got heatstroke. Once or twice, I saw monkeys beside the road as we rode. The park was abandoned. Indeed, what animals would wander around at noon with the sun beating down and no shade for miles? We were too hot to laugh. We saw some rare gazelles, and giant turtles burrowing in the ground, trying to escape from our stupidity. I asked the guide if there was a river nearby. He told me yes, but when we got there it was a dried up wasteland. I kept walking towards it, but the cracks in the earth got wider, and my feet sank in the mud, so it was probably a mirage. We got high, drank overpriced water and gained strength for the ride back. It was better with the wind behind us, but my lips were cracked and peeling by the time we made it to an ice cream store to recover.
This weekend I went to the Senegal-Tanzanie match at the stadium, and it was my favourite experience so far.. drinking cafe touba and buying biscuits from vendors as the sun set behind us, Senegal triumphed 4 nil and I felt lots of pity for Tanzanie, who managed maybe 3 decent shots on net. It was great to yell football chants and hear advice shouted from all directions in every language, along with dancing and drumming throughout the game. I will try to add my friends' pictures. I got a ride home in a tiny stalling Renault with reggae blasting and no gas. Here is the best part. The driver (Abdul-Karim), a host brother of one of the Canadians, is from Casamance, and his grandmother has a farm about 5km from Kafoutine. I was about to call this off because I'd be going solo, but I have decided to drive with him across the Gambia to their endless tropical forest. [This did not happen, I went to Gambia instead, but it would be cool to go someday] Unfortunately, no one is coming with me, they are scared of Casamance but I know this place will be the best to come. Free mangos and mandarins on the trees, campements, bikes only.. I will spend most of my time in Kafoutine, floating on the ocean, where everything is baba cool, mon. I'm leaving friday and I don't know how long I'll stay. I also want to see Ziguinchor and Bignona, the current and colonial capitals of Casamance. Here's hoping I don't encounter any rebels. Without technology I have a lot more time to read. Finished Wind Sand and Stars,by Antoine St Exupery, it was difficult to put down, the writing was wonderful. I have also finished a few other French books, right now reading Une Si Longue Lettre by Mariama BÄ. A while back finished The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S Thompson, along with other articles of his, very entertaining, an amazing journey. Finished the Old Testament and now I'm reading the Qu'rân. I also bought a flowing green boubou which I may or may not wear to the airport. Don't know where I'll go after this.. maybe Morocco or Spain for a few weeks to ease the transition to real life and work, which I am dreading but not thinking about.. how can I change this pace of life? Hope to hear from you. Love, Adam
Friday, February 02, 2007
february - dakar
Asalaamaleikoum,
Another month has passed..
..and every day I walk through a hazy cloud of diesel, burning goat flesh, canal sewage and flaming trash. The trees have been butchered clean to help them regrow in the rainy season, so there goes my shade.. but there is some relief.. the dry Harmattan wind blows south from the Sahara, the soothing waves of the ocean are never too far.
A few stories.
A while back, our group (the canadian toubabnation) bused to Lac Rose to see the Dakar Rally finish line. We passed ourselves off as residents at the posh lakeside hotel (our beds were over a mile away on the main village road) smoked hash behind huts, floated through a djembe concert and stumbled in moonlit darkness back to our three huts. There was an incredible party that night near the road. Back in our rooms, one was empty (overtaken by spiders) and the other filled with sleepy souls. In the third I drank myself into a monsieur Bronson gin oblivion (40oz for $8) with two strange Brits, the sleeping spider refugees, and even stranger lizards- three people to three tiny beds. That's about the only time I've been noticeably drunk here so far. The hotel manager came knockin' at 0700, yelling,
"Le Rally! Le Rally c'est la! Le Rally vient!" and shaking me out of slumber. Avec une guele de bois and no press pass, I left the unshakeable bodies and wandered into the chaos with village children and an unfazed will to slip past the Senegalese gens d'armes to launch myself into the frenzied hordes of rally-fanatics. None of this went as planned. I chatted with officials, offered them small bribes, eventually got inside, waited only to learn the moto-racers were making their way across the beach a few miles north. Unfazed but thirsty, I returned to the nice hotel and had free peanuts and cheap beer for breakfast, hypnotised by the same drummers from last night. I said goodbye to some kids. My friends did see the Rally, but it finished yesterday. The ride home was 11 people sandwiched into a 4x4 swerving past thousands of waving singing villageois who lined the streets and took us for french rallyers.There was a fat middle-aged Australian beside me who hitched a ride. He took up space, talking incessantly about the evils of the World Bank.
The last day of january- tamxarit, ashûra, the muslim new year. Suma beer fes na, with a belly full of cous-cous I hit the streets and found my liquid love, attaya (strong and minty) tea, flowing at every corner. I will try to bring this black gunpowder back to Canada. Diallo, a friendly toothless mason, was pouring la mousse (there is a complicated ritual) from a broken silver kettle, so I sat beside their safara fire with members of the Tidiane brotherhood. [There are a number of Sufi brotherhoods in Dakar- Mourides and Tidianes are the big two but there are also the Baye Fall). We fumble with words- exchanging sayings, stories, songs.. Diallo bolts up to greet a customer- his cart sells cigarettes, candy, phone cards. What else do you need, really? There are so many marchands ambulants and informal baolbaol work because there is nothing
else.. what can you do when your country literally produces peanuts? The smoke is in my eyes.. waawaw, jeere jef, mangi dem, I must be going. Conversations about religion and existence that I have never ever had with a stranger, and here, it's completely normal.
-Why are you leaving? When will you return? Remember my name..
This reminds me in a mangled sort of way of last time when I said everything I know is across the ocean and I want it to stay that way... yungi suma xarit bu baax nga, you are my very good friends, I love you and miss you, don't misunderstand me.
I will not forget the random kindness of strangers. One night I'm lost in Liberté 5 and my foot gnashes against some raised concrete. I think nothing of it until I feel my toes sliding in blood. I hit the nearest shop (a shoe store) and it's disinfected and bandaged without any hesitation. I proceed to bank on my good luck and wander into Derkle where lots of stimulants are offered to me. The only one I accept is cafe Touba (on the street it costs about 10 cents, a sharp jolt of sugar, salt, and strong coffee) and I talk in broken wolof about how Senegalese have this ability to age better than anyone. Along with every drug I am offered a free scooter ride home, but I decline these treats and find my own way..
Two weekends ago was Toubab Diallo- an old fishing village about 60km south on la petite côte. A perfect beach with a killer undertow.. the sun beats the others into a deep slumber and I make friends with Baye Fall, djembe drummers for the local disco. We share knowledge and smoke and they invite me back to their place on the beach the next day to make ceboudjen. I sleep at 4 on a hotel floor and in the morning they take me to the village and their families. They took me to their unfinished concrete castle and here ended my 40 day break from drugs. The Baye Fall are soldiers of peace who wear dreads, smoke a lot of yamba, and pray to Allah and their prophet, Ibrahim Fall. A skinny young Belgian lady who was married to one of them lent me her bodyboard, and I got raped by 12 foot waves and wobbled back, all stirred up from the current. An image of their camouflaged terrace is locked in my head.. they invited me to make the pilgrimage with millions of other Soufis to Touba in three weeks.. we shall see. It might be too hot for me. I left at sunset, tired and happy. For the canucks who left earlier, it took 4 hours to get home. That gives you an idea of the trafic insanity here.. you don't want to be stuck in les banlieus.
There is a lot of poverty here that you cannot ignore- people with severe leprosy, the talibe children, les sans domicile fixe (homeless), old Sereer women from the countryside plunk down at streetcorners, faces cracked from the years in the sun, they grill peanuts and sell tomatoes and wash clothes. We lose power every few days for hours, everything is under construction, nothing is finished.. but this is not the point.
I am learning lots of things in school, but I learn a lot more from the people. I disagree with my professors quite a bit.. even rented La Haine to spice up our urban sociology class. Gloria is Nigerian but despite her 'broken' english she teaches me a lot.. everything is going well with us but, even though she's coming to Canada in a few years, it's a drag to know it cannot last. Last friday we ate yaboy (bony fish) on the beach, from the water to the grill to my shrinking belly. For some reason I've lost almost ten pounds here. Maybe parasites are the key to staying thin. Xadim has been teaching me Arabic. The old man who calls himself the child of the island of Ngor (Dakar is surrounded three villages called Yoff, Ouakam and Ngor) told me hilarious and depressing stories about Senegalese politics- he was strangely poetic when he recalled days when, if things did not change, people would be forced to eat sand. I play soccer and cache-cache (hide and seek) with the cap-verdian kids in our neighborhood, leap over walls and hide behind cars as old people give me funny looks. There was a marriage that closed off our street and lasted all weekend, and be it funeral or marriage you get to see a thousand people in hundreds of colours come together in unity to make good rhythms that push the evil spirits away. A walk to the essencerie (gas stations are local grocery stores) is an adventure, with drumming and dancing or chanting that suddenly appear out of the neighborhoods full of walls and sandy paths.
Both in the city and at home there is no privacy of space or noise. Parks are unheard of. It makes writing and thinking difficult. Families consider it strange not to sit around the TV from 8 until midnight. Dated Portugese soap operas translated into French are enjoyed here. Dallas and 24 are watched every week. Aissatou and Fatou laugh, Ramatoulaye is quiet. The domestiques take more than their share of abuse. Everyone else in my family is great, but when my grandmother isn't coughing up phlegm or shouting orders at everyone she sometimes lets out a beautiful hoarse cackle that make me smile. But she can be a disrespectful ogre, treating everyone like garbage and her personal slave, but you have to bite your tongue and respect the elders, because they're not all like that. Besides, the griot chants des anciens are so voodoo they can steal your soul.
Campaigning is reaching a crest now as national elections are in five days. Forget the ten independent parties, it's a race between the socialists and incumbent democrats led by 80 year old Abdoulaye Wade-- fueled by the Mouride brotherhood which dominates the informal economy and all transportation. Every night candidates make prepared speeches or elaborately staged rallies with caravans of music, dance, and insanity-- once on my way home a mammoth tractor blew past hauling nothing but a billboard and amps, cranking out mbalax,
trailed by cars towing rollerskaters. Mbalax is a style on its own.. a fusion of latin, reggae, jazz, funk.. but none of those do it justice.. crazy rhythms, drumming, and chants.
I'm sure there is a lot I left out.. but you can't share everything in these scattered rants. I'm heading down to the Dakar port tomorrow to hopefully pick up some vile palm wine and a brick of hash from Casamance. [This failed miserably- another story] Aparently the Diola tribes from there live in an egalitarian society, the man and woman share time for all domestic duties. I would like to visit, but last month the rebel MFDC declared open season on foreigners! I'm hoping to do some election coverage as well but that depends on the violence. Nothing will happen, but today, like most other days, we were barred from going to the university because of student riots.
I am healthy, happy, hoping to hear from you all..
Adama
Another month has passed..
..and every day I walk through a hazy cloud of diesel, burning goat flesh, canal sewage and flaming trash. The trees have been butchered clean to help them regrow in the rainy season, so there goes my shade.. but there is some relief.. the dry Harmattan wind blows south from the Sahara, the soothing waves of the ocean are never too far.
A few stories.
A while back, our group (the canadian toubabnation) bused to Lac Rose to see the Dakar Rally finish line. We passed ourselves off as residents at the posh lakeside hotel (our beds were over a mile away on the main village road) smoked hash behind huts, floated through a djembe concert and stumbled in moonlit darkness back to our three huts. There was an incredible party that night near the road. Back in our rooms, one was empty (overtaken by spiders) and the other filled with sleepy souls. In the third I drank myself into a monsieur Bronson gin oblivion (40oz for $8) with two strange Brits, the sleeping spider refugees, and even stranger lizards- three people to three tiny beds. That's about the only time I've been noticeably drunk here so far. The hotel manager came knockin' at 0700, yelling,
"Le Rally! Le Rally c'est la! Le Rally vient!" and shaking me out of slumber. Avec une guele de bois and no press pass, I left the unshakeable bodies and wandered into the chaos with village children and an unfazed will to slip past the Senegalese gens d'armes to launch myself into the frenzied hordes of rally-fanatics. None of this went as planned. I chatted with officials, offered them small bribes, eventually got inside, waited only to learn the moto-racers were making their way across the beach a few miles north. Unfazed but thirsty, I returned to the nice hotel and had free peanuts and cheap beer for breakfast, hypnotised by the same drummers from last night. I said goodbye to some kids. My friends did see the Rally, but it finished yesterday. The ride home was 11 people sandwiched into a 4x4 swerving past thousands of waving singing villageois who lined the streets and took us for french rallyers.There was a fat middle-aged Australian beside me who hitched a ride. He took up space, talking incessantly about the evils of the World Bank.
The last day of january- tamxarit, ashûra, the muslim new year. Suma beer fes na, with a belly full of cous-cous I hit the streets and found my liquid love, attaya (strong and minty) tea, flowing at every corner. I will try to bring this black gunpowder back to Canada. Diallo, a friendly toothless mason, was pouring la mousse (there is a complicated ritual) from a broken silver kettle, so I sat beside their safara fire with members of the Tidiane brotherhood. [There are a number of Sufi brotherhoods in Dakar- Mourides and Tidianes are the big two but there are also the Baye Fall). We fumble with words- exchanging sayings, stories, songs.. Diallo bolts up to greet a customer- his cart sells cigarettes, candy, phone cards. What else do you need, really? There are so many marchands ambulants and informal baolbaol work because there is nothing
else.. what can you do when your country literally produces peanuts? The smoke is in my eyes.. waawaw, jeere jef, mangi dem, I must be going. Conversations about religion and existence that I have never ever had with a stranger, and here, it's completely normal.
-Why are you leaving? When will you return? Remember my name..
This reminds me in a mangled sort of way of last time when I said everything I know is across the ocean and I want it to stay that way... yungi suma xarit bu baax nga, you are my very good friends, I love you and miss you, don't misunderstand me.
I will not forget the random kindness of strangers. One night I'm lost in Liberté 5 and my foot gnashes against some raised concrete. I think nothing of it until I feel my toes sliding in blood. I hit the nearest shop (a shoe store) and it's disinfected and bandaged without any hesitation. I proceed to bank on my good luck and wander into Derkle where lots of stimulants are offered to me. The only one I accept is cafe Touba (on the street it costs about 10 cents, a sharp jolt of sugar, salt, and strong coffee) and I talk in broken wolof about how Senegalese have this ability to age better than anyone. Along with every drug I am offered a free scooter ride home, but I decline these treats and find my own way..
Two weekends ago was Toubab Diallo- an old fishing village about 60km south on la petite côte. A perfect beach with a killer undertow.. the sun beats the others into a deep slumber and I make friends with Baye Fall, djembe drummers for the local disco. We share knowledge and smoke and they invite me back to their place on the beach the next day to make ceboudjen. I sleep at 4 on a hotel floor and in the morning they take me to the village and their families. They took me to their unfinished concrete castle and here ended my 40 day break from drugs. The Baye Fall are soldiers of peace who wear dreads, smoke a lot of yamba, and pray to Allah and their prophet, Ibrahim Fall. A skinny young Belgian lady who was married to one of them lent me her bodyboard, and I got raped by 12 foot waves and wobbled back, all stirred up from the current. An image of their camouflaged terrace is locked in my head.. they invited me to make the pilgrimage with millions of other Soufis to Touba in three weeks.. we shall see. It might be too hot for me. I left at sunset, tired and happy. For the canucks who left earlier, it took 4 hours to get home. That gives you an idea of the trafic insanity here.. you don't want to be stuck in les banlieus.
There is a lot of poverty here that you cannot ignore- people with severe leprosy, the talibe children, les sans domicile fixe (homeless), old Sereer women from the countryside plunk down at streetcorners, faces cracked from the years in the sun, they grill peanuts and sell tomatoes and wash clothes. We lose power every few days for hours, everything is under construction, nothing is finished.. but this is not the point.
I am learning lots of things in school, but I learn a lot more from the people. I disagree with my professors quite a bit.. even rented La Haine to spice up our urban sociology class. Gloria is Nigerian but despite her 'broken' english she teaches me a lot.. everything is going well with us but, even though she's coming to Canada in a few years, it's a drag to know it cannot last. Last friday we ate yaboy (bony fish) on the beach, from the water to the grill to my shrinking belly. For some reason I've lost almost ten pounds here. Maybe parasites are the key to staying thin. Xadim has been teaching me Arabic. The old man who calls himself the child of the island of Ngor (Dakar is surrounded three villages called Yoff, Ouakam and Ngor) told me hilarious and depressing stories about Senegalese politics- he was strangely poetic when he recalled days when, if things did not change, people would be forced to eat sand. I play soccer and cache-cache (hide and seek) with the cap-verdian kids in our neighborhood, leap over walls and hide behind cars as old people give me funny looks. There was a marriage that closed off our street and lasted all weekend, and be it funeral or marriage you get to see a thousand people in hundreds of colours come together in unity to make good rhythms that push the evil spirits away. A walk to the essencerie (gas stations are local grocery stores) is an adventure, with drumming and dancing or chanting that suddenly appear out of the neighborhoods full of walls and sandy paths.
Both in the city and at home there is no privacy of space or noise. Parks are unheard of. It makes writing and thinking difficult. Families consider it strange not to sit around the TV from 8 until midnight. Dated Portugese soap operas translated into French are enjoyed here. Dallas and 24 are watched every week. Aissatou and Fatou laugh, Ramatoulaye is quiet. The domestiques take more than their share of abuse. Everyone else in my family is great, but when my grandmother isn't coughing up phlegm or shouting orders at everyone she sometimes lets out a beautiful hoarse cackle that make me smile. But she can be a disrespectful ogre, treating everyone like garbage and her personal slave, but you have to bite your tongue and respect the elders, because they're not all like that. Besides, the griot chants des anciens are so voodoo they can steal your soul.
Campaigning is reaching a crest now as national elections are in five days. Forget the ten independent parties, it's a race between the socialists and incumbent democrats led by 80 year old Abdoulaye Wade-- fueled by the Mouride brotherhood which dominates the informal economy and all transportation. Every night candidates make prepared speeches or elaborately staged rallies with caravans of music, dance, and insanity-- once on my way home a mammoth tractor blew past hauling nothing but a billboard and amps, cranking out mbalax,
trailed by cars towing rollerskaters. Mbalax is a style on its own.. a fusion of latin, reggae, jazz, funk.. but none of those do it justice.. crazy rhythms, drumming, and chants.
I'm sure there is a lot I left out.. but you can't share everything in these scattered rants. I'm heading down to the Dakar port tomorrow to hopefully pick up some vile palm wine and a brick of hash from Casamance. [This failed miserably- another story] Aparently the Diola tribes from there live in an egalitarian society, the man and woman share time for all domestic duties. I would like to visit, but last month the rebel MFDC declared open season on foreigners! I'm hoping to do some election coverage as well but that depends on the violence. Nothing will happen, but today, like most other days, we were barred from going to the university because of student riots.
I am healthy, happy, hoping to hear from you all..
Adama
Sunday, January 07, 2007
dakar - janvier, kane
le 6 janvier, 2007
A rendezvous chez Mme. Kane in Mermoz.
Perfect, beautiful day of sula music, food, dance (yes, I shook my bones) and after she read words of précaution and sagesse..
Music was provided by two, a toothless smiling fou and his friend in toque, shades and manteau. Under a lime and lemon tree, ate ceboudjene in the shade. No order, just chants and string, my face stung by the sun. Melting into the rhythm and the wolof cries. Malik (Kane's son) and Yassi? (her daughter) were kind, they insisted I return. The mint tea, attaya, was strong and sweet. I took the canadian children back home because they lost their way. Impossible to recognise what I will become. Last night I dreamt of playing the djembe with bananas. Music floats into my room from Papi's stereo. The birds chirp constantly, you run into animals everywhere..time for a short nap beforedinner. Tonight Just4U and tomorrow the beach..
le 7 janvier
Dakar rises with the sun as the mosques wail the shahâdah and sourates from theQu?ran. The planes roar by every fifteen minutes, but soon you ignore thosehumming turbines and learn to dance around the roaring engines and cargo of theroads. From dawn to dusk the streets are packed with marchands ambulants(street vendors), horse-drawn carriages lugging petrol and bottles andconcrete, talibe (street children) line the streets with sticks and cans andoutstretched hands. If you have far to go, the best way to get around is in thewhite ndjaga ndiaye or the blue and yellow car rapides, both operated by theMouride brotherhood. These worn-down Mercedes buses from the 40s cost tencents, you're guaranteed a seat, frequent stops, a bumpy ride, and thedroning Soufi chants from the radio.Dakar is an oasis on a peninsula. You could spend hours walking through dozensof districts, from the colonial centre-ville through the chaotic merchantparadise of Medina into the sprawling UCAD campus of Fann, and then along thecorniche cliffs that mark the end and beginning of Africa, past the tree andbarbwire lined embassy strip, turn east and walk through Mermoz (a littlestatue commemorates the crash), through quiet stony paths that wind around thegrand mosque, past the sprawl of boutiques and dibouteries (eateries) andshacks living beside the airstrip, into Liberté and Grand Yoff and openmarkets. There are three autonomous villages (Ouakam, Ngor, Yoff) that surroundDakar to the north; they line the ocean and are inhabited by generations of Lebou fishermen.
A rendezvous chez Mme. Kane in Mermoz.
Perfect, beautiful day of sula music, food, dance (yes, I shook my bones) and after she read words of précaution and sagesse..
Music was provided by two, a toothless smiling fou and his friend in toque, shades and manteau. Under a lime and lemon tree, ate ceboudjene in the shade. No order, just chants and string, my face stung by the sun. Melting into the rhythm and the wolof cries. Malik (Kane's son) and Yassi? (her daughter) were kind, they insisted I return. The mint tea, attaya, was strong and sweet. I took the canadian children back home because they lost their way. Impossible to recognise what I will become. Last night I dreamt of playing the djembe with bananas. Music floats into my room from Papi's stereo. The birds chirp constantly, you run into animals everywhere..time for a short nap beforedinner. Tonight Just4U and tomorrow the beach..
le 7 janvier
Dakar rises with the sun as the mosques wail the shahâdah and sourates from theQu?ran. The planes roar by every fifteen minutes, but soon you ignore thosehumming turbines and learn to dance around the roaring engines and cargo of theroads. From dawn to dusk the streets are packed with marchands ambulants(street vendors), horse-drawn carriages lugging petrol and bottles andconcrete, talibe (street children) line the streets with sticks and cans andoutstretched hands. If you have far to go, the best way to get around is in thewhite ndjaga ndiaye or the blue and yellow car rapides, both operated by theMouride brotherhood. These worn-down Mercedes buses from the 40s cost tencents, you're guaranteed a seat, frequent stops, a bumpy ride, and thedroning Soufi chants from the radio.Dakar is an oasis on a peninsula. You could spend hours walking through dozensof districts, from the colonial centre-ville through the chaotic merchantparadise of Medina into the sprawling UCAD campus of Fann, and then along thecorniche cliffs that mark the end and beginning of Africa, past the tree andbarbwire lined embassy strip, turn east and walk through Mermoz (a littlestatue commemorates the crash), through quiet stony paths that wind around thegrand mosque, past the sprawl of boutiques and dibouteries (eateries) andshacks living beside the airstrip, into Liberté and Grand Yoff and openmarkets. There are three autonomous villages (Ouakam, Ngor, Yoff) that surroundDakar to the north; they line the ocean and are inhabited by generations of Lebou fishermen.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
january - dakar
asalaamaleikoum.
first the changes in my dreams-moving from english to french, from white to black,from one family to another..that has been the strangest transformation of all. apart from that, i have settled into this space, ci jam ak jam. in peace and peace.
the planes roar by like the white ndjaga ndiaye trucks on the streets filled with sand and dust and fumes that fill my lungs but stronger and sweeter still is the spicy onion sauce that comes with every meal.. but for breakfast, every meal is bread and jam, or (my favourite)- chocomousse.
the cargo of dusty roads are filled with horse-drawn carriages lugging petrol, silent hums tugging bottles and cans, mbalax beats, gorgeous boubous, (the colourful flowing robes) praying with their gris-gris, talibe (abandoned children) as young as five scatter the streets from dawn until minuit- people make a living any way they can.. sous-verre glass and artwork, street hawking anything and everything, colliers, soulis (sandals and shoes-you go through them fast) maillots, peanuts roasted in the sand, green oranges, nescafe rules..
Dakar is divided into a dozen different districts, you could spend hours walking from the centre-ville through the chaotic merchant paradise of medina into the sprawling ucad campus and then to the corniche cliffs that mark the end and beginning of Africa, further into fann and the tree and barbwire lined embassy strip, turn east and walk through mermoz, quiet stony paths that wind around the grand mosque, past the sprawl of boutiques and dibouteries and people living beside the airstrip..
one day i walked past the airport into the dry hills of mamelles.. thorns and the odd dead dog lined the road. made it to a beautiful beach. i climbed down a thousand steps and collapsed in sweaty glory beside the water. breathed the air. drove my fist into the ground and dragged a million bits of colour across the sand.. let them filter through my open fingers-thought-we are just flecks of dust, flying blind in the wind. on my knees, i found a place i love. i'm squinting, tracing the sun's reflection, and it happens. god is all, all is god. the twin minarets behind me seem to sway, the colourful pirogues (fishing canoes with motors) begin to sparkle, the blackest skin glistens, the waves break and breathe again. instead of dissecting the world, drowning in the past, disturbed by the surround, here you are the rhythm.
everyone i know, everything i know, it's all across the ocean, and i want it to stay that way.
i adore the senegalese. they are warm, open, genuine, witty, and good god how beautiful.. no sense fumbling with adjectives, anecdotes are better-some i will try to remember, others will come back to me when i'm gone.
everyone you meet, instead of giving orders and taking direction, you learn to ask about their day, their health, their family.. thankfully i can do this in wolof, but it will take another couple months before i can be conversational.. i am eating well, sleeping well, dreaming and loving all. some days you live on nothing but the kindness of strangers.
i live with scott, papi, daouda, fatou and astou, and maam. people stay up late watching portugese soap operas dubbed in french, the news, and the latest drama concerning la lutte- wrestling with a senegalese twist. the controversial fight between tyson and bombardier, quelle histoire.. i will explain someday. today my grandmother had friends over (who also made the hajj to mecca) and they put their hands together and with all the noise around them found a perfect silence.
i wake up to sweeping and birds and chanting from the mosque, every day and night in fact, the shahadah-alxhamdilulah, allah akbar. my feet are strong and leathery from walking sand and stone, my teeth are strong and salty from chewing fish bones, my head is strong but it took a beating a few days ago... sunday i went to the zoo, used the swings, threw peanuts at monkeys, listened to an old lion roar-ostriches are bizarre. papi is crazy, poking a caged python
trying to get it to stretch out.. monday night i woke up with a slight wheeze, went to the bathroom, inhaled once, felt nausea and vertigo and waited until it passed, inhaled again and then blackness- i don't remember passing out, but i awoke in the midst of a violent seizure. i won't describe to you the worst feeling in my life. inshallah all i did was cut my head. tuesday i decided to brave school and i am glad i did so- after class my friend gloria from nigeria took me to the falaises at the corniche and we made out until i realised my head was still bleeding. the next day i had some tests done and they say i am not epileptic, but they cannot explain the seizure. but i am here, i am alive, i feel good.
that's all for now, i'm kind of tired, and you shouldn't try to do too much. please, take a minute to breathe in silence during the day. slow down. don't think of me.
ba suba ak jam
until next time, with peace
adam
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Phili/Jersey/Reading/Pittsburgh
We left and caught the sky waking in the deep blue dawn. Thinking about the long miles ahead.
Crossing the border was no problem, Americans should fall for any travel alibi that involved baseball. We had some lovely breakfast foodstuff at McDonald's in Niagra Falls, but we didn't see the falls. Picked up some duty-free bourbon, and bounced through Buffalo, gray under the clouds. The real fun started when we entered Pennsylvania. Hours of huge downpours, broken by valleys and bridges and toll stations. We circled up old coal hills, most of them had their tops sliced off. There was forest all around. The sky turned black, so dark and wet I could barely see. Making our way over the endless twists and valleys, we made it to Philadelphia at 4, and by then the rain had stopped and it suddenly became a scorching humid day. Driving into the valley forge, winding down into the city, there was horrendous traffic at this point and I was quite agitated. There were also madmen on the radio, talking hosts screaming about parasites like hobos, homos, and atheists. We parked the car in a quiet, shady tree-lined district and of course our first desire was the infamous Phili cheese steak and o we indulged in a massive American meal. We didn't do too much that day.. we just kinda lingered around, bloated, walked slow. We passed through empty lots, saw beautiful graffiti, rode the transit, just moved our bones around. Made it to the water (found no waterfront) had a few beers on the patios in the old district and ate ice cream at night. Kieran suggested we sleep in New Jersey because it would save money.
So we crossed the river and entered what some would call the suburban wasteland. We didn't even see any homes. It's just a rotting electrified pile of highways and interstates and turnpikes and exits and fast food chains and gas stations and box stores and sleaze motels. Maybe there was more, but it was out of our way. After being turned down at one and turned around and unable to make left turns for miles upon miles everyone just started gathering rage at the absurdity of New Jersey until we finally found a place, where we tried to haggle (we were 4 when they gave prices for 2) and apparently Kman got caught in his own web of lies so he sent me in and I pleaded for mercy and we eventually got a room. For some reason most the motel landlords are Indian. It was a small smoky room but clean, with AC and ice and we drank sweet bourbon, watched Top Gun but it was too drunk to see. Cyrus and Sean got burgers and probably picked some fights around midnight.
The next day was fantastic, we went back into Phili, had an amazing breakfast at a diner with mmmperfect eggs benedict, and walked around the old district. Beautiful streets, some older than Montreal, but no one living there. We watched street music and almost went into the constitutional museum but it looked like a sham, praising freedom and stealing ours. After some more Phili cheese steaks we decided to look for Will Smith in west Philadelphia (born and raised, on the playground maybe). We entered the ghettos, saw bulletproof windows in corner stores, street bbq's, police cars everywhere that closed off entire streets, basically all black (though there weren't many whites downtown either which was a nice change) We were just cruisin' in the minivan but the place gave off some strange vibes.
We probably looked ridiculous as we each bought blue 30oz gatorades in a pharmacy (outside was a drive through pharma-pickup station). All in all we decided Will Smith probably wasn't there and we drove back into Phili to maybe find Brett Thalmann on the U Penn campus. This was a cool green area and obviously a university district. We reverted to our white bread ways, bought a baguette and Sean got a carton of camembert and we picnicked on the campus grass. Some crazy hippie traveller spoke to us but he was about the only American on the trip who shared a sustained conversation. We lounged around, threw the ball, unfortunately I think Cyrus got heat stroke. We drove way down South to the river to catch a ball game, drove through another ghetto, bought a dozen $1 miller pint cans at a corner store and got a buzz in the parking lot along with another thousand drunk Americans. We sat in the bleachers and it was nice to have a break and look North towards the smoggy skyline but it was a blowout so we left
a bit early and Kieran soberly drove towards more accomodation. We stayed outside of Reading, PA. On our way it seemed like the darkest highways and brightest headlights. Stayed in a luxurious Days inn for another negotiated price and this time Cyrus and I slept while Kieran and Sean got smashed on wild turkey bourbon until about 4:30 in the morning. Good God they even tried to get more Phili cheesteaks in some gas stations.
The next morning I was well rested but Kieran was incapable of coherent speech and we quickly left the room, drank as much coffee as possible at the "continental breakfast" with ludicrous Disney cartoons blaring at us and staring at us were fat babies. The drive to Pittsburgh was a breeze, great speeds on winding highways through valleys and tunnels but again, scorching heat, we were sweating profusely. Stopped just outside of Steeltown for some disgustingly filling rest stop burgers along with hundreds of others. Food, gas, energy, grease, bliss.
We drove right to PNC Park to see the second half of the game (it was a 1:30 start) got some scalped tickets and got burned because they weren't together but it didn't matter because after one inning a massive thunderstorm descended on the city. I mean beyond massive, this was one of the greatest. Everyone huddled by the walls, just barely inside, the stadium is mostly open but has some protection under the bleachers. It looks out across the river (Pittsburgh sits on the banks of the Ohio, Allegheny and another one) into the skyline and electric bolts lit up the buildings. You don't need homeruns for fireworks. The wind howled constantly and children screamed as rivers fell from higher up, everyone seemed to be having a blast, they played an old 70s championship game on the screen but no one watched. No baseball, the field was drenched, there were trenches of water (2 feet high) in the stands, it was chaos.
We eventually got back into Pittsburgh but it was completely deserted being a Sunday and of course we returned to McD's for more burgers and coffee. A few rainy day walkers were out, the city had a strange vibe too it, pretty dying buildings. Modern and forgotten. We just wanted to book it and get back home plus it was already 6 or 7 so we wandered some more, saw the fattest man in the entire world barely hanging on to the earth with his ass and drove north, away from the hills and back into familiar lands. Paid a large toll that ate our meat money and we blasted the coffee sweats and both new and old school chili peppers funk. Kieran took the wheel as I took a short snooze. Night descended on us somewhere south of Erie and we stopped at Wendy's to complete the cholesterol parade, Cyrus had his 5th cheeseburger of the day, Kieran ate 4 more and chili to boot and we were really fearing for his life back there but I had to relegate him to the back seat. More gas and grease. A great drive home, the pace quickened by Fela Cuti past only a couple of midnight crazies. We discovered that Buffalo is a scary place at night, and finally back on the QEW, past the buried treasure. On the bumpy ride home I watched the lines and my passengers fade in and out of sleep.
Crossing the border was no problem, Americans should fall for any travel alibi that involved baseball. We had some lovely breakfast foodstuff at McDonald's in Niagra Falls, but we didn't see the falls. Picked up some duty-free bourbon, and bounced through Buffalo, gray under the clouds. The real fun started when we entered Pennsylvania. Hours of huge downpours, broken by valleys and bridges and toll stations. We circled up old coal hills, most of them had their tops sliced off. There was forest all around. The sky turned black, so dark and wet I could barely see. Making our way over the endless twists and valleys, we made it to Philadelphia at 4, and by then the rain had stopped and it suddenly became a scorching humid day. Driving into the valley forge, winding down into the city, there was horrendous traffic at this point and I was quite agitated. There were also madmen on the radio, talking hosts screaming about parasites like hobos, homos, and atheists. We parked the car in a quiet, shady tree-lined district and of course our first desire was the infamous Phili cheese steak and o we indulged in a massive American meal. We didn't do too much that day.. we just kinda lingered around, bloated, walked slow. We passed through empty lots, saw beautiful graffiti, rode the transit, just moved our bones around. Made it to the water (found no waterfront) had a few beers on the patios in the old district and ate ice cream at night. Kieran suggested we sleep in New Jersey because it would save money.
So we crossed the river and entered what some would call the suburban wasteland. We didn't even see any homes. It's just a rotting electrified pile of highways and interstates and turnpikes and exits and fast food chains and gas stations and box stores and sleaze motels. Maybe there was more, but it was out of our way. After being turned down at one and turned around and unable to make left turns for miles upon miles everyone just started gathering rage at the absurdity of New Jersey until we finally found a place, where we tried to haggle (we were 4 when they gave prices for 2) and apparently Kman got caught in his own web of lies so he sent me in and I pleaded for mercy and we eventually got a room. For some reason most the motel landlords are Indian. It was a small smoky room but clean, with AC and ice and we drank sweet bourbon, watched Top Gun but it was too drunk to see. Cyrus and Sean got burgers and probably picked some fights around midnight.
The next day was fantastic, we went back into Phili, had an amazing breakfast at a diner with mmmperfect eggs benedict, and walked around the old district. Beautiful streets, some older than Montreal, but no one living there. We watched street music and almost went into the constitutional museum but it looked like a sham, praising freedom and stealing ours. After some more Phili cheese steaks we decided to look for Will Smith in west Philadelphia (born and raised, on the playground maybe). We entered the ghettos, saw bulletproof windows in corner stores, street bbq's, police cars everywhere that closed off entire streets, basically all black (though there weren't many whites downtown either which was a nice change) We were just cruisin' in the minivan but the place gave off some strange vibes.
We probably looked ridiculous as we each bought blue 30oz gatorades in a pharmacy (outside was a drive through pharma-pickup station). All in all we decided Will Smith probably wasn't there and we drove back into Phili to maybe find Brett Thalmann on the U Penn campus. This was a cool green area and obviously a university district. We reverted to our white bread ways, bought a baguette and Sean got a carton of camembert and we picnicked on the campus grass. Some crazy hippie traveller spoke to us but he was about the only American on the trip who shared a sustained conversation. We lounged around, threw the ball, unfortunately I think Cyrus got heat stroke. We drove way down South to the river to catch a ball game, drove through another ghetto, bought a dozen $1 miller pint cans at a corner store and got a buzz in the parking lot along with another thousand drunk Americans. We sat in the bleachers and it was nice to have a break and look North towards the smoggy skyline but it was a blowout so we left
a bit early and Kieran soberly drove towards more accomodation. We stayed outside of Reading, PA. On our way it seemed like the darkest highways and brightest headlights. Stayed in a luxurious Days inn for another negotiated price and this time Cyrus and I slept while Kieran and Sean got smashed on wild turkey bourbon until about 4:30 in the morning. Good God they even tried to get more Phili cheesteaks in some gas stations.
The next morning I was well rested but Kieran was incapable of coherent speech and we quickly left the room, drank as much coffee as possible at the "continental breakfast" with ludicrous Disney cartoons blaring at us and staring at us were fat babies. The drive to Pittsburgh was a breeze, great speeds on winding highways through valleys and tunnels but again, scorching heat, we were sweating profusely. Stopped just outside of Steeltown for some disgustingly filling rest stop burgers along with hundreds of others. Food, gas, energy, grease, bliss.
We drove right to PNC Park to see the second half of the game (it was a 1:30 start) got some scalped tickets and got burned because they weren't together but it didn't matter because after one inning a massive thunderstorm descended on the city. I mean beyond massive, this was one of the greatest. Everyone huddled by the walls, just barely inside, the stadium is mostly open but has some protection under the bleachers. It looks out across the river (Pittsburgh sits on the banks of the Ohio, Allegheny and another one) into the skyline and electric bolts lit up the buildings. You don't need homeruns for fireworks. The wind howled constantly and children screamed as rivers fell from higher up, everyone seemed to be having a blast, they played an old 70s championship game on the screen but no one watched. No baseball, the field was drenched, there were trenches of water (2 feet high) in the stands, it was chaos.
We eventually got back into Pittsburgh but it was completely deserted being a Sunday and of course we returned to McD's for more burgers and coffee. A few rainy day walkers were out, the city had a strange vibe too it, pretty dying buildings. Modern and forgotten. We just wanted to book it and get back home plus it was already 6 or 7 so we wandered some more, saw the fattest man in the entire world barely hanging on to the earth with his ass and drove north, away from the hills and back into familiar lands. Paid a large toll that ate our meat money and we blasted the coffee sweats and both new and old school chili peppers funk. Kieran took the wheel as I took a short snooze. Night descended on us somewhere south of Erie and we stopped at Wendy's to complete the cholesterol parade, Cyrus had his 5th cheeseburger of the day, Kieran ate 4 more and chili to boot and we were really fearing for his life back there but I had to relegate him to the back seat. More gas and grease. A great drive home, the pace quickened by Fela Cuti past only a couple of midnight crazies. We discovered that Buffalo is a scary place at night, and finally back on the QEW, past the buried treasure. On the bumpy ride home I watched the lines and my passengers fade in and out of sleep.
Monday, May 01, 2006
ARAZ
Ali Raouf Abdel Zaki,
Salaam Alaikum. I wonder if we will ever meet again.
You cannot read my words. My eyes pass over the last record of you that I have kept, all these years. It contains a few addresses, some names, hurried notes from strangers, little maps directing you where to go. The fading blue scrawls on this sheet of paper give me no comfort, nor do your notes hiding in the margin, written in frantic Arabic. I had them translated, only to learn the words have no meaning. Were you a deceiver, Abdel Zaki? Forgive my caution. I often look back on the day we met. I remember the despair of those who could not help you, and I regret the ignorance of those who could not speak to you. I regret this, and I resent the feelings of hopelessness that rise up in my stomach and stifle my lungs, when my mind drifts back to that day. There can be no other explanation but to… no, was it not possible... no, no! A thousand times, no. I will not condemn you and submit to shame, submit myself to this blindness of convenience.
I only ask, do you remember?
I found you at the desk of the security agency, wiping your brow, glad to have the sun off your back, shaded from the sweating streets. There was patience here, before the flurry of words unleashed in the heat. You were first in line, and I was behind, beneath you, invisible perhaps. It did not occur to me what could have happened before this instant, but I knew the tension in the room had been slowly mounting. You wanted answers. You asked for a lawyer, a computer, directions, your hepatitis blood results, the location of your son. Not in that order, but in a jerky careless chaos. One must work up to such demands, in the presence of the state. “Min Fadilak, Min Fadilak!” you pleaded again and again but their words were foreign, and the authority behind the table could not trust your face or your gruff, pained accent.
“Whut is yur bizness, sir?” said the woman, slitting her eyes, curling her lips. Her hair was pulled back taut, it stretched her face and drew my eyes to her jaw, a pointed unmoving V.
“I need to know, please, this information, please.”
Would it have mattered, would you have believed it? What lies behind the table, what shameless fabrications of the truth, we spin. I could not imagine a greater torture.
No one could understand where you wanted to be. You dressed well. Your identity was overflowing from a bunchy dark purple denim jacket, retro, threaded in Singapore. Your sweat smelled of vegetables and tobacco. Your shoes were scuffed and dusty, like your face. I did not know why, but I wanted very much to touch your nose.
Things turned out for the worst on that day, Ali. Despite all that you would have me believe, I could not be your son. In that moment of inspection, you took my hand, you wanted me to be your freedom. Your eyes reached out, but we had little knowledge of your language. You became a mad howl, shouting for help, cursing perhaps, and we were all helpless there in that stuffy entrance. It was as if you had arrived from another planet to do urgent business, and you were unimpressed with our technology. What was it that you wanted?
“Wee can’t help yew, sir!” cried the receptionista at the table, for the seventh time.
I was there to see Joe. Joe Yoblonski. A man with a gun gave me his card once: “Corporate Recruiting Manager” it whispered, in fine italic font. Joe managed a security agency for State buildings and offices. I could have taken you to the Sheriff. Not the one with the ten gallon hat, the Sheriff of Lands. You must have been searching for the Registrar of Identities.
Just think! We could have abandoned them, made a fast break and a stiff drink for the road ahead. But no, we were barking up impossible dreams. You were focused on the moment. But the only place I knew was the Sheriff’s office, the only thing I understood was land title registration. It is not where I would have taken you. The results would have been exactly the same.
You were used to believe these places in your dreams existed, but you could not chase lonely paths through the network, not without an identity. They would only steal you from your children, Ab. They did not tell you where you could find them.
No, Ab, the strangers around us were not honest like you. There is no life for the faithful in a world that shows no hospitality. We are but tramps in a world that refuses to excuse our existence. You did not ask for money, or food, or shelter. You simply wanted information; access to the treasury of words and numbers that remain locked away in a blinking box. The voice of the authority behind the table was never meant to be revealed. She was mystified, trying to empty your identity into little digits on her screen, but no, she was not successful. Ab, you did not realise the irony of the moment. As they were cutting up your dignity, they feared you, because everything about you could not be represented. You could not see what I saw. The shaking beads of sweat on their faces, the empty blinking eyes of data fields… these things you could not have seen.
In the stuttering uncertainty, you reached for something deep within your jacket, and eyes seized your every move. They trust no one, accept nothing. You waited for their muscles to untense. With no destiny to mold, no papers bearing gold, they would betray you with suspicion. Without a word, you deposited your entire briefcase of papers on their desk. I bent down and began to pick up the ones that had fallen to the floor. I could not have seen your eyes, but the rage was bursting on your face, and without speaking, without a word, you asked them: what am I worth?
You were given the shove, the boot laced with gracious words, politely pleading exile from the property of the state.
“Yew hafta speak aienglesh!” she howled in distress for the seventeenth time, as you hobbled out the door, getting smaller through the doorway. You were the vanishing point in my perspective. You looked left, you turned right, and I never saw you again.
I would never judge you Ali Raouf Abdel Zaki, and forgive me if I have done so.
Salaam Alaikum. I wonder if we will ever meet again.
You cannot read my words. My eyes pass over the last record of you that I have kept, all these years. It contains a few addresses, some names, hurried notes from strangers, little maps directing you where to go. The fading blue scrawls on this sheet of paper give me no comfort, nor do your notes hiding in the margin, written in frantic Arabic. I had them translated, only to learn the words have no meaning. Were you a deceiver, Abdel Zaki? Forgive my caution. I often look back on the day we met. I remember the despair of those who could not help you, and I regret the ignorance of those who could not speak to you. I regret this, and I resent the feelings of hopelessness that rise up in my stomach and stifle my lungs, when my mind drifts back to that day. There can be no other explanation but to… no, was it not possible... no, no! A thousand times, no. I will not condemn you and submit to shame, submit myself to this blindness of convenience.
I only ask, do you remember?
I found you at the desk of the security agency, wiping your brow, glad to have the sun off your back, shaded from the sweating streets. There was patience here, before the flurry of words unleashed in the heat. You were first in line, and I was behind, beneath you, invisible perhaps. It did not occur to me what could have happened before this instant, but I knew the tension in the room had been slowly mounting. You wanted answers. You asked for a lawyer, a computer, directions, your hepatitis blood results, the location of your son. Not in that order, but in a jerky careless chaos. One must work up to such demands, in the presence of the state. “Min Fadilak, Min Fadilak!” you pleaded again and again but their words were foreign, and the authority behind the table could not trust your face or your gruff, pained accent.
“Whut is yur bizness, sir?” said the woman, slitting her eyes, curling her lips. Her hair was pulled back taut, it stretched her face and drew my eyes to her jaw, a pointed unmoving V.
“I need to know, please, this information, please.”
Would it have mattered, would you have believed it? What lies behind the table, what shameless fabrications of the truth, we spin. I could not imagine a greater torture.
No one could understand where you wanted to be. You dressed well. Your identity was overflowing from a bunchy dark purple denim jacket, retro, threaded in Singapore. Your sweat smelled of vegetables and tobacco. Your shoes were scuffed and dusty, like your face. I did not know why, but I wanted very much to touch your nose.
Things turned out for the worst on that day, Ali. Despite all that you would have me believe, I could not be your son. In that moment of inspection, you took my hand, you wanted me to be your freedom. Your eyes reached out, but we had little knowledge of your language. You became a mad howl, shouting for help, cursing perhaps, and we were all helpless there in that stuffy entrance. It was as if you had arrived from another planet to do urgent business, and you were unimpressed with our technology. What was it that you wanted?
“Wee can’t help yew, sir!” cried the receptionista at the table, for the seventh time.
I was there to see Joe. Joe Yoblonski. A man with a gun gave me his card once: “Corporate Recruiting Manager” it whispered, in fine italic font. Joe managed a security agency for State buildings and offices. I could have taken you to the Sheriff. Not the one with the ten gallon hat, the Sheriff of Lands. You must have been searching for the Registrar of Identities.
Just think! We could have abandoned them, made a fast break and a stiff drink for the road ahead. But no, we were barking up impossible dreams. You were focused on the moment. But the only place I knew was the Sheriff’s office, the only thing I understood was land title registration. It is not where I would have taken you. The results would have been exactly the same.
You were used to believe these places in your dreams existed, but you could not chase lonely paths through the network, not without an identity. They would only steal you from your children, Ab. They did not tell you where you could find them.
No, Ab, the strangers around us were not honest like you. There is no life for the faithful in a world that shows no hospitality. We are but tramps in a world that refuses to excuse our existence. You did not ask for money, or food, or shelter. You simply wanted information; access to the treasury of words and numbers that remain locked away in a blinking box. The voice of the authority behind the table was never meant to be revealed. She was mystified, trying to empty your identity into little digits on her screen, but no, she was not successful. Ab, you did not realise the irony of the moment. As they were cutting up your dignity, they feared you, because everything about you could not be represented. You could not see what I saw. The shaking beads of sweat on their faces, the empty blinking eyes of data fields… these things you could not have seen.
In the stuttering uncertainty, you reached for something deep within your jacket, and eyes seized your every move. They trust no one, accept nothing. You waited for their muscles to untense. With no destiny to mold, no papers bearing gold, they would betray you with suspicion. Without a word, you deposited your entire briefcase of papers on their desk. I bent down and began to pick up the ones that had fallen to the floor. I could not have seen your eyes, but the rage was bursting on your face, and without speaking, without a word, you asked them: what am I worth?
You were given the shove, the boot laced with gracious words, politely pleading exile from the property of the state.
“Yew hafta speak aienglesh!” she howled in distress for the seventeenth time, as you hobbled out the door, getting smaller through the doorway. You were the vanishing point in my perspective. You looked left, you turned right, and I never saw you again.
I would never judge you Ali Raouf Abdel Zaki, and forgive me if I have done so.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
girl on a motorbike
Dans une maison sur une colline, il y avait deux amants. Une était le maître, et l’autre son esclave. Toujours ensemble, ils ne sentaient jamais les solitudes des heures incomplètes. C’était seulement en se perdre, tombant dans leurs pensées, qu’ils étaient libres. Dans le marché-super, dans la monastère, et dans leur petit lit.
-une dialogue-
[Esclave] – Si je mourrai demain, est-ce que vous me manquera?
[Maître] – Bien entendu, mais non. J’aurais les souvenirs. Approche, tu es bête.
-silence-
[Quelqu’un] – Je ferme la lumière. Toucher dormir vieillir.
-un jour-
[Esclave] – Si j’étais dans un accident de voiture, ma figure manglée et déchirée, des cicatrices vilaines, ma peau pleine de trous, ma cheveux toute brûlée… Tu me voudras toujours?
[Maître] – Quelle enfant misérable! Arrêter ces histoires. J’aurais tes ris, tes cris. La musique de tes mots, tournoyant des fils dans ma tête.
[Esclave] – Tu dois apprendre de craindre la peur.
[Maître] – Tu dois apprendre comment l’embrasser.
Et les jours tournaient, le cheveu devenait long, les lignes sur les visages s’étendaient. Un jour dans le train, l’esclave touchait la fenêtre avec son nez, en regardant les fils électroniques qui montaient et tombaient comme des vagues, comme la portée de la clef. L’esclave ne parler plus.
-un jour-
[Esclave] – Tu ne souffres pour personne, mais je souffre pour tout le monde.
[Maître] – Quelles beaux mots insensés, incompréhensibles.
[Esclave] – Je suis un objet de destruction, et mes pensées son les miennes.
[Maître] – Impossible. Je dois détruire tout ce que je ne peux pas posséder.
[Esclave] – Tu n’aurais jamais ma voix.
[Maître] – (En coupant la gorge de l’esclave) - Ma pauvre petite cigale. Laisse sortir toutes pensées de ta tête, bête.
Tout les sensations se vider; elle voulez lui toucher a ce instant. Ils et elles, toujours ensemble, fesaient des petits cris. Quand le stupeur et tremblements arrêtait, le maître tiré sur le duvet pour se dormir. Le duvet a crié des profanités terribles, dans angoisse profonde :
[Le Duvet] – Laisse-moi!
Le temps passe et passait. La neige et les feuilles et les moustiques tombés des arbres, du ciel. Ils et elles ont décidés de ne parler jamais de cette nuit, de l’oublier complètement.
-un jour-
[Maître] (Étoffant sur ses sanglots) – C’est… m-m-ma faute… Je suis fini, tout est perdu.
La voix de l’esclave lui hanter toujours, et le maître se noyé dans les sons.
Dans un moment sans les sons, tu tombes dans un rêve. Tu oublies les rencontres oubliables, et tu glisses dans la mer. Tu restes seul avec ton corps, quelques pouces sous les vagues, et tu dormes.
-une dialogue-
[Esclave] – Si je mourrai demain, est-ce que vous me manquera?
[Maître] – Bien entendu, mais non. J’aurais les souvenirs. Approche, tu es bête.
-silence-
[Quelqu’un] – Je ferme la lumière. Toucher dormir vieillir.
-un jour-
[Esclave] – Si j’étais dans un accident de voiture, ma figure manglée et déchirée, des cicatrices vilaines, ma peau pleine de trous, ma cheveux toute brûlée… Tu me voudras toujours?
[Maître] – Quelle enfant misérable! Arrêter ces histoires. J’aurais tes ris, tes cris. La musique de tes mots, tournoyant des fils dans ma tête.
[Esclave] – Tu dois apprendre de craindre la peur.
[Maître] – Tu dois apprendre comment l’embrasser.
Et les jours tournaient, le cheveu devenait long, les lignes sur les visages s’étendaient. Un jour dans le train, l’esclave touchait la fenêtre avec son nez, en regardant les fils électroniques qui montaient et tombaient comme des vagues, comme la portée de la clef. L’esclave ne parler plus.
-un jour-
[Esclave] – Tu ne souffres pour personne, mais je souffre pour tout le monde.
[Maître] – Quelles beaux mots insensés, incompréhensibles.
[Esclave] – Je suis un objet de destruction, et mes pensées son les miennes.
[Maître] – Impossible. Je dois détruire tout ce que je ne peux pas posséder.
[Esclave] – Tu n’aurais jamais ma voix.
[Maître] – (En coupant la gorge de l’esclave) - Ma pauvre petite cigale. Laisse sortir toutes pensées de ta tête, bête.
Tout les sensations se vider; elle voulez lui toucher a ce instant. Ils et elles, toujours ensemble, fesaient des petits cris. Quand le stupeur et tremblements arrêtait, le maître tiré sur le duvet pour se dormir. Le duvet a crié des profanités terribles, dans angoisse profonde :
[Le Duvet] – Laisse-moi!
Le temps passe et passait. La neige et les feuilles et les moustiques tombés des arbres, du ciel. Ils et elles ont décidés de ne parler jamais de cette nuit, de l’oublier complètement.
-un jour-
[Maître] (Étoffant sur ses sanglots) – C’est… m-m-ma faute… Je suis fini, tout est perdu.
La voix de l’esclave lui hanter toujours, et le maître se noyé dans les sons.
Dans un moment sans les sons, tu tombes dans un rêve. Tu oublies les rencontres oubliables, et tu glisses dans la mer. Tu restes seul avec ton corps, quelques pouces sous les vagues, et tu dormes.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Fogs
[Halifax at night]
Pang pang pang pang Pang goes some metal tapping in the distance, a streetlamp swinging its metal bulb back and forth, but there is no-one dancing beneath the light here. Just the moon and me and the bones, white clouds slipping down into the deep sea of the blue sky. A quiet storm is brewing, because I hear the wind change the language. I feel that nothing is lying under my feet, and I float through the mist without thinking, just gliding, like a spirit.
I was gliding up Henry street when I decided to stop beside a garage, the loading dock near the Arts building. The man with a flashlight came out of nowhere. He came out of a building, but noiseless, like a ghost. There was something else. I never turned around, never saw his face. His eyes bore through my back as he quietly recited his line: "Please move, I'm closing this now." These were our final stage directions, we walked off in opposite directions, in silence.
Then I started thinking about time. Your breathing conscious life and your memories are on two tracks, like a double helix, rolling off at the edges. The only future is the instant when you realise past life and present meet, because there lies the pattern.
I continued walking beside the side-walk and a bear-horse-dog looked at me with onimous eyes. Laer on I saw a dog that looked like my dead stuffed animal. It was a strange evening.
Pang pang pang pang Pang goes some metal tapping in the distance, a streetlamp swinging its metal bulb back and forth, but there is no-one dancing beneath the light here. Just the moon and me and the bones, white clouds slipping down into the deep sea of the blue sky. A quiet storm is brewing, because I hear the wind change the language. I feel that nothing is lying under my feet, and I float through the mist without thinking, just gliding, like a spirit.
I was gliding up Henry street when I decided to stop beside a garage, the loading dock near the Arts building. The man with a flashlight came out of nowhere. He came out of a building, but noiseless, like a ghost. There was something else. I never turned around, never saw his face. His eyes bore through my back as he quietly recited his line: "Please move, I'm closing this now." These were our final stage directions, we walked off in opposite directions, in silence.
Then I started thinking about time. Your breathing conscious life and your memories are on two tracks, like a double helix, rolling off at the edges. The only future is the instant when you realise past life and present meet, because there lies the pattern.
I continued walking beside the side-walk and a bear-horse-dog looked at me with onimous eyes. Laer on I saw a dog that looked like my dead stuffed animal. It was a strange evening.
Friday, December 30, 2005
feeling around in the dark
It happened after a night of bowling and heavy drinking. A new year's celebration but it wasn't new year's. Couch, cold, morning sun, had to go home to recover. Standing in the hall, the conversation between Sean's mum and my mum was knifing through my head. I was resting on a bench, wanting water and silence, but before I could leave I had to tie my laces. Bent over to find my shoes and fell over into blackness. Apparently, just before I left, I went "la-la-la-la" .. Maybe I was thinking blah-blah-blah, this conversation is blocking my escape. I hit my head when I fell over, and left this place for twenty seconds.
Une episode de evanouir. It felt like nothing felt. The nausea hit fast, maybe a second or two of intense ordered thoughts like “must vomit! must exit to vomit.” and then a levitating light-headedness.. like when you get punched in the stomach, but in the head instead. After a brief second of that I remember falling, and that perfect surround of blackness before I came to, coughing and sucking in the air for the first time in so long. Nothing felt so real as my lungs and heart pumping again, the circuits in my head turning on and my soul tuning in, out. I even remember waking up and my mother was cradling my head, a good image.
So my head was fluttering in and out, and though it was violent, the breathing was wonderful.
They said my eyes went back into sockets.
Une episode de evanouir. It felt like nothing felt. The nausea hit fast, maybe a second or two of intense ordered thoughts like “must vomit! must exit to vomit.” and then a levitating light-headedness.. like when you get punched in the stomach, but in the head instead. After a brief second of that I remember falling, and that perfect surround of blackness before I came to, coughing and sucking in the air for the first time in so long. Nothing felt so real as my lungs and heart pumping again, the circuits in my head turning on and my soul tuning in, out. I even remember waking up and my mother was cradling my head, a good image.
So my head was fluttering in and out, and though it was violent, the breathing was wonderful.
They said my eyes went back into sockets.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Once
A story from long ago.. winter 2003-2004.
After five or six beers and calling the bartender Lou, I drank a few more whiskeys on the rocks with no ice, and we left for toboganning. Some of us made it up to the top of the citadel. The point was to slide down. I tried to put the garbage bag on over my head so as to poke my arms and legs through it but instead it just made me blind and I rolled down the hill. Eventually recovered and looked around and it was just Beth and myself.
We heard people in the distance calling our names but at the time we pretended to be spies and hid behind trees. I think it was a snow storm. We walked about and eventually found a snowy outdoor stable. We entered and declared it the James Bond-rolling training ground. We practiced barrel rolls and also spy techniques. I found a chain for horses and draped it over my neck, she put a pylon on top of her head. These were our 'burdens'. Don't remember why. We then noticed that the little Bobcat snow-clearing machines - the little ones that clear sidewalks, were everywhere. I ran beside one for a while and knocked on his window. He stopped and I asked if he by chance had room for us to get a ride home. He said there was very little room and apologised. Beth asked if we could sit on the shovelling thing on front. He said this was not safe, and apologised, and left. We then tried to climb into a compound to steal horses or something but the police paddywagon came by. They shouted and asked what we were doing, climbing the fence. We just apologised and they let us off. By this point we were by Quinpool and we decided to visit the hospital for some heat and maybe the cafeteria. Unfortunately, and strangely.. it was locked! Must have been a wrong entrance.. but we just kept repeating in wonder, how can you lock a hospital?
Eventually found our way back to Spring Garden road and Beth said we should stop at the Dandelion Cafe. I knew the guy there was sketchy, you know, he's always peering out at people from his window. Anyway, we went because she claimed to be friends with him. He wouldn't let us in because he was starting to paint some canvas, but he said if we stayed inside naked he would let us in. Well.. yep, you guessed it! No, we politely declined and walked home. We made hot chocolate in the common room. I had never done anything like that adventure with anyone. This was before we started going out. I knew she was special. I woke up with no hangover but so many bruises. Later she told me that she wanted to kiss me that night, when we were warming our broken bodies in the basement.
After five or six beers and calling the bartender Lou, I drank a few more whiskeys on the rocks with no ice, and we left for toboganning. Some of us made it up to the top of the citadel. The point was to slide down. I tried to put the garbage bag on over my head so as to poke my arms and legs through it but instead it just made me blind and I rolled down the hill. Eventually recovered and looked around and it was just Beth and myself.
We heard people in the distance calling our names but at the time we pretended to be spies and hid behind trees. I think it was a snow storm. We walked about and eventually found a snowy outdoor stable. We entered and declared it the James Bond-rolling training ground. We practiced barrel rolls and also spy techniques. I found a chain for horses and draped it over my neck, she put a pylon on top of her head. These were our 'burdens'. Don't remember why. We then noticed that the little Bobcat snow-clearing machines - the little ones that clear sidewalks, were everywhere. I ran beside one for a while and knocked on his window. He stopped and I asked if he by chance had room for us to get a ride home. He said there was very little room and apologised. Beth asked if we could sit on the shovelling thing on front. He said this was not safe, and apologised, and left. We then tried to climb into a compound to steal horses or something but the police paddywagon came by. They shouted and asked what we were doing, climbing the fence. We just apologised and they let us off. By this point we were by Quinpool and we decided to visit the hospital for some heat and maybe the cafeteria. Unfortunately, and strangely.. it was locked! Must have been a wrong entrance.. but we just kept repeating in wonder, how can you lock a hospital?
Eventually found our way back to Spring Garden road and Beth said we should stop at the Dandelion Cafe. I knew the guy there was sketchy, you know, he's always peering out at people from his window. Anyway, we went because she claimed to be friends with him. He wouldn't let us in because he was starting to paint some canvas, but he said if we stayed inside naked he would let us in. Well.. yep, you guessed it! No, we politely declined and walked home. We made hot chocolate in the common room. I had never done anything like that adventure with anyone. This was before we started going out. I knew she was special. I woke up with no hangover but so many bruises. Later she told me that she wanted to kiss me that night, when we were warming our broken bodies in the basement.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
pulling weeds with my friend chris
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?
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?
Monday, September 19, 2005
Swallowed by the Sea
With white sand and smooth stones underfoot the grey sky clouded my vision. We had Crystal Crescent beach stretched out before us and boxes of fish and chips for the journey. A good feeling. We crossed a wooden bridge, a razor that split the world in four. Water below, clouds above. Ocean and bush on either side. My friends and I were looking for a place sheltered from the wind and the people to eat les champignons magiques and digest the world for what it is. I opened up the toxic fungi with my teeth and gazed in wonder: it was bright blue inside.
I fell down to look at the sand and found a single ant on its own journey. The analogy- Ponder the Ant. No direction, no path but the one your feet create. The need to go further, to never stop, to claw and climb your way through the land until you come to the water's edge. You will end your journey in the sea. Your life will end, in the swirling crash when the waves come together and the moments stop. I stared at this ant, talking to it, watching its path for a sudden lifetime. I should have read a Japanese death poem: "My wake leaves little; but as ripples reach the sea, they become great waves." As it crossed the desert of sand I wondered if it had a destination, a purpose. It seemed to be wobbling towards the water. We dragged our feet to make walls of sand to see if this would change its decision. Not at all. It kept going, dragging something the whole way. My friends were moving on. To bigger and better things no doubt. It was both awful and wonderful to watch this creature was flirting with a certain death. The waves looked big to me, but to Ponder it must have been the noise of life flooding in and out. I realised I had to leave, and start my own journey. I hoped that Ponder would drown a painless death and float into a fishy's lips who would be devoured by a shark that would swim to the Bahamas and Ponder would finally come to rest washed out on a warm beach, stung by the sun in a rotting carcass of bones and sand.
We were covering less distance than the ant. Maybe thirty steps in thirty minutes. We were stopped by a red stream- the kool-aid river. Someone had the wise idea to ditch their shoes, and then they all came off. I hurled a couple pairs back towards our camp and the colour flew my eyes through the sky. I could throw shoes all day long. But this little river was a sight to behold. It painted your feet copper when you stepped inside. I admired its shape as it wrapped around the stones and wandered through the grass, with squishy mud on the ends where it swerved and split in two on the ridge. It formed a little pool there and we skipped over the ledge. Beneath this ledge the kool-aid emptied into the sea. There was enough colour and substance and beauty in there to paint the world over again and again. Were they the streaks of pollution or chance? I did not care. It was a stream of foamy goodness and I was sad to leave it.
Stef and I returned to the camp to get juice packs and shoes. There was a path that cut through the bush to lead us home to the camp, and back to the others. But this wasn't just bush. This was a huge sprawling field of thorns and flowers and wild vines, all of them fighting for space. We made it back safe. But the effects of the toxins were coming on strong. I stopped and stared at the sea. I was so happy to look at the world. I remember thinking we should all spend more time observing. Seeing all that can be seen, the patterns and mysteries. I had to go back to the boulders and tell the others that people are ridiculous for not seeing the world as it is, as it should be, waking and breathing and dying all at once. Stef and I ventured off the path to make up time, and we paid dearly. The thorny jungle invited us in, clawed at our skin, and nearly took us down into the ground where the sun don't shine.
The boulders.
Scampering along the stones. Hopping and skipping off them, not waiting for a place to stop, only to go faster and further and on and on. Your feet will find the right places. You wobble and bobble and stumble forward. You stop when you forget to catch your breath. You stop and think of the past. The red river cutting through the rocks was another lifetime. You will never be here again, but it will always be in you. Memories like barnacles, some stick more than others.
I know I have to make it to the hump of stone in the distance, jutting out like the belly of a giant. Is it really there? You don't know until you arrive. You close your eyes at night and see the waves explode in your sockets, you hear the crashing surf. You close your eyes, hands pressed up against your face, and the waves explode into patterns and fireworks without noise.
You remember you were a child, lying on the sand and running your fingers through the million grains and laughing and laughing because there's so much, it's too much. It starts to hurt in your belly. Not pain, but a twisted empty feeling. A hunger you can't satisfy.
I climbed the giant's belly. It was a massive ridge jutting out into the ocean. I peered inside one of the crevices on the way up. A thousand little bugs trembled in the air when my shadow covered their home. I climbed higher, to the very edge, and I sat down. I watched the infinite waves rising cresting splitting.. and then battering up against the wall of stone. They seemed to grow larger and larger. I thought it strange that the water was so shook up and upset. I felt something tug me towards the ocean. I leaned closer. There was a language in the crash of waves. There were voices and whispers and screams. The waves were like people, throwing themselves against one another and shaking with terror. The water would never feel time or decay. I was jealous and scared. I felt like shrivelling up into my insignificant bundle of flesh. Just blood and bones. Those waves would communicate and exist with more certainty than I ever will. But somehow, all the water, all the ocean, everything slowed to an instant here and now at the edge of the world. The savage sea swallowed into the giant's belly of rocks and crevices and shadows. Something happened. I waited until I could feel my soul leaving my body behind, and I tumbled down into the thundering percussion. I felt the silence of death wrapped up against me. I almost died in the waves, but it was beautiful.
The cold grey curtain is tucking in the sky to sleep. You see the monuments to human existence in the tangled blurry distance. Skinny communication towers with red pulsing tips. We drive our nails into the earth to make the necessary connections. They all glowed red together, breathing in and out. Ugly metal totem poles in the sky shared their own harmony.
The tide had come up past the old familiar stones. We had to get back to camp! Stef took off like a guerilla into the distance, flying through a messy path. He rescued the keys to the jeep and the campsite. I dashed faster and faster, skipping ahead of my own feet, and I was flying off the stones. I was a grasshopper, a stonehopper! I soared over crevices and gulleys. I danced. But there was too much freedom. I gambled on a triple one-step and got my foot lodged in a crack hidden by some shrubs. It was less than a second, but enough to twist it, and I felt the reassuring surge of pain shoot through me like electricity. Keep going. Further, further, the darkness is swimming closer.
I lost my other companions, Sean and Jocelyn. They were shoeless joes swallowed by the darkness, and I never wanted to look back. I would return for them after finding Stef, who had vanished. I found his bridge mixture candy scattered, the half-eaten remants resting on some bush. A sign? This way, he must have said. As I crossed the familiar markers, the terrain became less rocky, more forgiving. I waited for a second in the thick murky air. I watched the lighthouse make its pass, lighting a path in the shroud of clouds, alone and deserted. We looked back and forth at each other. I tried to meet the light with my eyes when it came back around. Looking back, my two children had all but disappeared into the night. I could no longer make out their outlines. They became shining ghosts, swinging their bodies over the stones. Up and over, up and over. I slowed down, but knew I wasn't home until we passed the kool-aid river. In a small field of shining stones, I stopped. I could see something moving up ahead. I yelled his name. He shouted back a nonsense. Crashing the silence, two dark furry little animals scurried off into the bush. I turned and shouted something to the ghosts- something in their language, I hoped. They shouted back.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Chocolate Lake
The arm of the ocean stretched its soggy hand beside us, all the way to the rotary. Walking over a bridge, scales of grey and murky shades of blue crept towards me. A muddy mess of dark swirling colours, slowly blending together like oil into something solid and crusty, seeping to a stop at the edge of the arm. We walked past them, up the hill towards Purcell's Cove. We crossed the bobsled flow of traffic and made a beeline towards Chocolate Lake. Along the path, the roots were surging everywhere out of the ground like the rocky veins of an ancient hand. The path to the lake ran along the water's edge, all along the skinny strip of land. I watched the rippling blue shaded and shrouded by trees that arched over our heads. Walking towards the sun. I love walking and squinting through the sun. Yellow rays were casting beams of light down to the earth, slicing through the leaves wherever there was open space. The ground felt less calloused and tangled now, more yeilding and soft. I could hear the cries and shrieks of families. One of the guys there was from a pizza store, and he was having a friendly conversation with a middle-aged pale character. The path opened up in the near distance. Ahead, the grass changed slowly to a pool of sand, stretching out in front of my waiting feet and a blue blue lake that hurt my eyes was waiting on the other side. A few families scattered around. Last call. Last swims before the sun comes down. I waited patient and anxious at the entrance, unwilling to break the spell. It felt like an enchanted hideaway. I waited on the edge. Inching forward, bit by bit like a caterpillar. Watching the water come slowly into view.
We plunked our bums down on a blanket of sand. I zigzagged down towards the water, relishing the feeling of dryness right before the big drenchcoat of liquid flowed through my bones. The water was clear because of the low pH. There was probably no life in this lake, only on top. But it was so lovely. It was like Otter Lake. I miss melting on the water. I floated on the surface on my back. Water floated and shimmied up beside my ears. Into my ears. The earth wobbled in my eyes skaking up at the dark skies.
We plunked our bums down on a blanket of sand. I zigzagged down towards the water, relishing the feeling of dryness right before the big drenchcoat of liquid flowed through my bones. The water was clear because of the low pH. There was probably no life in this lake, only on top. But it was so lovely. It was like Otter Lake. I miss melting on the water. I floated on the surface on my back. Water floated and shimmied up beside my ears. Into my ears. The earth wobbled in my eyes skaking up at the dark skies.
Elements
"You two gentlemen look like you can read."
A scruffy middle-aged man in a faded purple shirt reached in and left a flyer on our table. Barely had the time to turn and catch his face as he plodded away. I looked down. An iron fist clutching a cannabis leaf: "Free Marc Emery - Marijuana Solidarity Day" The sun was shining. Stunning headless bodies filed past the patio, faces swallowed up by sunglasses. I tried to squint enough to see only the vague outlines, the bright colours, the wonderful bundles of flesh. The people were young and strung out. I thought of a clothesline being reeled past. Scraps of sidewalk conversation floated up into the sky and the metallic fabric of the streets rumbled past. The glint of the sun sparkled white, reflecting off the noisy cars. I moved side to side, positioning myself behind a telephone pole so the rays would quit heating my cheek. There were two empty pitchers in our bladders and grease in our bellies. We had the time and place to be here or there. Usually if I'm happy I stay where I am, but the chattering street and glowing sun was distracting my fuzzy buzz. Sean decided to go home but Jocelyn was more enthused, and so we began the expedition.
We came to the grand parade square where the potheads gathered in twos and threes. The park was below us, saddled by a little valley of green wrapped by thick trees. A war memorial statue was stone in the centre of it all, and a modest little podium and van made noise in the distance. There were only a few officers standing along the ridge of trees, fenced off from our little gathering. Speaker after speaker. Marijuana use does not pose a threat to society. Marijuana use is good for some of the sick, and bad for some of the healthy. Our government should enforce marijuana laws rather than be coerced into action by the US. There were no more than 100 people there. No one (on the stage) was toking, but the words evaporated into harmless puffs of smoke. I looked down at the orange leaves sprinkled beside me. I ran my hands through the leaves and rolled my body over them, crunching and crackling. Spent some time laughing in my head about younger days, memories of falling backwards into a huge pile of autumn. Before you can say Jerry Garcia, it's 4:20. There was a raffle to win a handsome bong, but we lost. I saw the energy of bodies glowing and the sweet pungent smell of summer wafting from the statue steps. Jolly good music came from the speakers, and we ventured down onto the statue to fetch that special leaf.
Walls were nowhere I could see. Everything was happening in synch. The young bongo drummers drove the tempo hard and slow, then faster, and faster still! I stared at the one who looked like Anton Newcombe's little brother, pulsing and vibrating the air with primal noises from the skin of the drum. The ones who fed us, they were just children.
Free Mark Emery!
Under some swinging trees, autumn was splashing the ground with brown leaves. Funny. It is supposed to be a gradual process, but one day, you open your eyes and find yourself in another season. On all sides we were surrounded by buildings and streets, but it was the orange trees that fenced us in.
Enter our friend the rastaman, Cumin. He spun some wonderful stories, dramatised but believable little movies from the everyday. A natural-storyteller he was, with light brown smooth skin. A happy face, a strange smiling accent.
Suddenly, skateboarders invaded the land, rushing past like jet engine turbines taking off. They whirled past us and around us, grinding on the statue like sharks circling the living dead.
I sensed the stream of effortless thinking. I sensed a breeze that cuts you and reminds you what it's like to be cold, cold with the blood circulating through the circuits of your flesh. On the walk home, the world turned all the sun rain wind and warmth into one moment. There was a moment where everything came together. The yellow sun setting on our faces and the wind ripping sky tears through our hair. The dark smoky cloud hovered over us sending misty drips. What a cruel cloud, that bubble of grey trapped in the wide blue sky. Everything was still sharp and clear and my feet stumbled ahead. I caught the world in a sweet embrace.
A scruffy middle-aged man in a faded purple shirt reached in and left a flyer on our table. Barely had the time to turn and catch his face as he plodded away. I looked down. An iron fist clutching a cannabis leaf: "Free Marc Emery - Marijuana Solidarity Day" The sun was shining. Stunning headless bodies filed past the patio, faces swallowed up by sunglasses. I tried to squint enough to see only the vague outlines, the bright colours, the wonderful bundles of flesh. The people were young and strung out. I thought of a clothesline being reeled past. Scraps of sidewalk conversation floated up into the sky and the metallic fabric of the streets rumbled past. The glint of the sun sparkled white, reflecting off the noisy cars. I moved side to side, positioning myself behind a telephone pole so the rays would quit heating my cheek. There were two empty pitchers in our bladders and grease in our bellies. We had the time and place to be here or there. Usually if I'm happy I stay where I am, but the chattering street and glowing sun was distracting my fuzzy buzz. Sean decided to go home but Jocelyn was more enthused, and so we began the expedition.
We came to the grand parade square where the potheads gathered in twos and threes. The park was below us, saddled by a little valley of green wrapped by thick trees. A war memorial statue was stone in the centre of it all, and a modest little podium and van made noise in the distance. There were only a few officers standing along the ridge of trees, fenced off from our little gathering. Speaker after speaker. Marijuana use does not pose a threat to society. Marijuana use is good for some of the sick, and bad for some of the healthy. Our government should enforce marijuana laws rather than be coerced into action by the US. There were no more than 100 people there. No one (on the stage) was toking, but the words evaporated into harmless puffs of smoke. I looked down at the orange leaves sprinkled beside me. I ran my hands through the leaves and rolled my body over them, crunching and crackling. Spent some time laughing in my head about younger days, memories of falling backwards into a huge pile of autumn. Before you can say Jerry Garcia, it's 4:20. There was a raffle to win a handsome bong, but we lost. I saw the energy of bodies glowing and the sweet pungent smell of summer wafting from the statue steps. Jolly good music came from the speakers, and we ventured down onto the statue to fetch that special leaf.
Walls were nowhere I could see. Everything was happening in synch. The young bongo drummers drove the tempo hard and slow, then faster, and faster still! I stared at the one who looked like Anton Newcombe's little brother, pulsing and vibrating the air with primal noises from the skin of the drum. The ones who fed us, they were just children.
Free Mark Emery!
Under some swinging trees, autumn was splashing the ground with brown leaves. Funny. It is supposed to be a gradual process, but one day, you open your eyes and find yourself in another season. On all sides we were surrounded by buildings and streets, but it was the orange trees that fenced us in.
Enter our friend the rastaman, Cumin. He spun some wonderful stories, dramatised but believable little movies from the everyday. A natural-storyteller he was, with light brown smooth skin. A happy face, a strange smiling accent.
Suddenly, skateboarders invaded the land, rushing past like jet engine turbines taking off. They whirled past us and around us, grinding on the statue like sharks circling the living dead.
I sensed the stream of effortless thinking. I sensed a breeze that cuts you and reminds you what it's like to be cold, cold with the blood circulating through the circuits of your flesh. On the walk home, the world turned all the sun rain wind and warmth into one moment. There was a moment where everything came together. The yellow sun setting on our faces and the wind ripping sky tears through our hair. The dark smoky cloud hovered over us sending misty drips. What a cruel cloud, that bubble of grey trapped in the wide blue sky. Everything was still sharp and clear and my feet stumbled ahead. I caught the world in a sweet embrace.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
One night in Prague
May 27-30
I knew I would be lingering in the old city around the drunken revelry with masses of foreign tongues stampeding in the centre. Spent days watching the effervescent tourists swarm Wenceslas square, Charles bridge, and the citadel across the river. I was torn between an intense love and hatred of this place. The drunken hordes of swerving shirtless Brits mingling with shockingly attractive women. The tourists sticking to the pavement like jelly, stopping every second to take another snapshot of the ancient panorama surrounding them. They are everywhere. Roaming in packs, marking off sights like homework, postcarding themselves in this fossil of a city. Touching as much as possible as if it were on display, feeling nothing. I heard more English than Czech in the downtown streets. But for all its weekend visitors and stunning tourist traps, the city was impeccably quiet and clean. Instead of cars, pedestrians rule the streets, as cruel stoplights rule the pedestrians. I loved the ornate, decadent, colourful architecture; every building completely different than the last. I loved walking beside the dark river and beautiful graveyards. I loved the massive park on a hill in the west that looks over the city. It was good to go there and sleep. We were once three travellers who climbed to an empty patch and sprawled out, soaking up rays and basking in the earth. We slept and dreamed of solid ground. I awoke as a laughing family shuffled into single file, taking turns running through the fountain to cool down.
I found my hostel after much chagrin and many tired exchanges with the locals. I know that all you need is a bed, shower, and toilet, but this place was crummy. I chose it solely for its location, free breakfast, and cheap rates. There were shared unisex showers operated by a push-button which gave me a light tepid stream. That sprinkle lasted for ten seconds, and then you had to push again, or you got no more water. Breakfast was as hard and chewy as crusty dirt, but there was free coffee. Entering my room at night, I noticed that many bunk beds were packed in far too tight for the size of the room, and the only window was screaming red advertised light. This came from the street lamp but also the football-field Star Wars billboard across the street. The room was always scarred with red light, and everything creaked.
I wanted so fiercely to write about one night in the square, with the noise hovering, the chatter and banter of drunks and the shoes scratching on stone, the thick urine-soaked air, all around me broken glass. I remember treading down street after street, noticing how each one formed a different pattern of cobbled stones. I remember the fairytale castles looming side by side, distant and solemn, commanding concrete respect. The bright orange streetlamps lined my field of vision. I remember watching people staggering towards them, friends huddling beside them, and couples flirting between them. Dancing clowns, all of them. Happy as children, spinning out of control, feeling safe because everyone else was doing it too. Someone launched a frisbee through the air. A brief instant of a thousand eyes catching its path, waiting and watching its gentle descent. It skidded and landed beside one of many paddy wagons. The glazed eyes returned to the wobbly world of streaking orange madness. There was me in the middle, floating through the craze. I wait patiently for something to happen as everything flashes past. I sit on the curb and touch the ground with a stick, trying to trace my path through the world; I move the stick from stone to stone, listening to the circus of noise rise up the ancient walls. I try to remember these feelings but they vanish and fade into the next moment.
I remember waiting in the hostel for this Brazilian girl to return to pick up her bags. Renata was a fine creature who happened to be in my room. She had dark hair, long and straight down past her shoulders. She was small, with a muscular but feminine body. She wore a plain shirt with green shorts, tight and accentuating, with wonderful curves around her hips, breasts, and mesmerizing ass. She had a shy face, tanned mahogany brown by the sun. I struggled to distract my gaze from her dark eyes and coffee coloured skin. I could tell she was intelligent, from the way she described her travels so far, her life back home, and her knowledge of five languages. We talked about favellas – slums and ghettos outside of Rio/Buenos Aires, the ups and downs of travelling alone, and other stuff. We could have been talking about the finer aspects of potato peeling for all I cared; the moment I made her laugh and a smile snuck across her face, there was nothing else happening around me. It was gorgeous. She was gorgeous. I could not look away, and she may or may not have sensed it. I quickly decided to cover my tracks and informed her I was here with friends, and we were going to stay out until dawn, and that she should join us. This was all very difficult because the other girl in my room stood in direct opposition to everything Renata embodied. This other one was a stringy blonde, buck-toothed, with a cockney accent and a sour look that made me cringe. I managed to keep her away from the conversation, but Renata was unsure, and eventually declined our company. Maybe she thought my travelling partner was not simply my travelling partner, maybe she wanted to be alone. After a long night, returning to the hostel, I ran into her at dawn. I decided to sleep for a couple hours but urged her to wake me up when she returned. I vaguely remember someone dark standing over me, repeating my name, and me repeatedly groaning. I never saw her again. But I was so taken with her. And now here I wait, some dumb fool. Everyone in this hostel seems to be three or four years my junior. It feels very strange, because everyone else I have met in hostels have been older. This is crazy. I am in Praha, my last night, and what am I waiting for? A last fleeting glimpse of a face I will never remember, but always recognise. I have some charming abilities, and I have been called a sweet young thing. But let’s face it; the chances of me altering her path are slim to none. I might be able to spend a half hour, a few hours with her at most, depending on my luck.
This luck never came. I stepped out for a quick supper and when I came back she had taken her bag and left, leaving me only a note and a slight stinging sensation in my temples. There was no throbbing sensation in my trousers or painful heart palpitations, as I had hoped for. I was just slightly bitter, and tired. Foul animal that I am, I detached and displaced my lust instantly. The young woman at reception was a true Czech beauty. She had long dark hair as well, but she was tall and thin, with long long legs. She was in her late twenties, around six feet tall. Her face was equally long, and she wore perfect skin with a sexual grin. As if she was amused with my weakness. She sympathised with my torturous waiting for the unknown goddess to step back into my life. I notice her watching a video on her computer with a familiar casual dialogue: Seinfeld. I ask her if she has seen this episode and she says she has seen all of them. We get along well after that. She promises to leave a message from me to the girl in case she returns. Jaded, I made it as vague and brief as my directions to the new hostel: “Get out at Vysherad station. Take stairs down into valley.” On my dejected way to the second hostel, I witnessed two wonderful events. Stepping out of the Vysherad subway station and walking down through a forest in the middle of the city as the sun set above me. The sky was slashed with red and it warmed my soul as I descended into a thousand trees, a quiet valley of green. The sun dipped off the edge of the earth but I could not see it happen. When I emerged from the valley the world was cold glowing blue. Upon arrival I climbed out onto the small patio. On one side, a train thundered past the subway bridge which hung over the forest high in the sky, and on the other, there were fireworks off in the distance. I was too far to hear, but close enough to see. I realised I left a huge plastic jug of juice at the first hostel, and decided to retrieve it. There was no way I would make it through the night without that flavoured sugar, pumping me sober energy.
I made it back downtown and walked towards a sign prohibiting the presence of pigeons. Though I did not know exactly how this law would be enforced. A pigeon inside a black circle with a red line crossing it out would surely alert the other pigeons to their wretched fate. There were a dozen benches under trees, evenly separated in two lines, with an unobstructed view of the square. There were all sorts of characters. A group of teenage misfits, drinking and tossing their finished beer cans, impatient for their friend to finish rolling his joint. Meticulously waiting for perfection. A half-dozen crooked men were sprawled out on the wooden benches supporting their dead weight. A few restless souls drifted in between benches, floating comatose zombies. I felt their lifeless eyes and saw their hands and knees, quivering for a moment of chemical release. Everyone was starting to look the same. I put streets and distance between us. I looked for people that were more alive. I wanted to dance, to feel life, to shake out the dust.
In a narrow passage between two streets, there were dark figures playing music in the shadows. Closer to the sound, I recognised riffs and chords of classic rock. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. I slowed my pace and fell out of place in the stream of crossing people. There were two young men with long scraggly black hair beating on old beat-up acoustic guitars. Busking for food or money or dope or whatever. Such pale gaunt faces, all pock-marked and hollow. The one with a bandana said something in Czech and pointed to the giant plastic juice box I’d been slugging from all night. I walked over and handed him the tasty fruit drink. I motioned for them to finish it, sat down cross-legged on the curb beside them, waiting and hoping for the warm familiar rhythms to begin again. There was a third one who stood in the middle of the alley, a dark-haired woman, rushing from one person to the next, pleading for handouts, arms outstretched and face upturned, moving relentless and desperate under the stars. She looked straight ahead as the rushing flow of bodies moved through her like a turnstile. I tried to talk with the guitarists. I asked them how long had they been together, played together, been on the streets, been fighting for meals, where was home? They were from Hungary or Slovakia, and spoke next to no English, but we made motions and signals and sign language and communicated. I rolled a hash cigarette and asked if they would play me something, nothing I would recognise. Bandana laughed and told me they only played for money. But they started strumming old folk songs, rasping and painful and playful and beautiful. I wondered if you could get through life without sharing language, without sharing moments. The woman stood still out there, glaring at the world that would not look at her, glaring at me, tired and resentful and just dog-tired. We passed the juice jug around until it was empty. I was there for twenty, maybe thirty minutes, turning to peaceful jelly as the hash hit me and my mind felt pleasantly wordless, cupped by my weightless body. So much life was cradled in those instruments. They looked transparent in the night. Completely alone and barely alive. The woman looked at me, distrustful. I dropped some krown into a small tin can and decided to leave. The three haggard gypsies wore all black, pierced with metal and earrings and bracelets they jingled out of the night, ringing out of my life.
My sense of direction was fading. As the a.m. people drifted off to fumble with locked doors and sleep to life, I was losing myself towards the next empty space. Tired steps traced a clopping path hopefully towards the silent river. What did I want to see here? Everything dead and obsolete was fenced off. I wandered past ancient relics, buildings and statues, and felt quiet admiration until next to nothing but mild surprise. Culture and civilisation was not here first. The river was here first. The river and fish and trees and birds and land and animals we drain and drill and crush and kill. Ignore and forget, and you feel no shame or guilt. No one has to think about wilderness in cities. But there is peace there, when you find it. There is also peace in the streets. In the foggy haze of bodies whirling past you. On subways and sidewalks where we move the living; in museums and cemeteries where we preserve the dead; at concerts and festivals where we make our noise. The hushed starry night is wrapped up tight, holding its breath until the next circus troupe noises past. They say everyone is heading for Charles bridge. I suddenly felt so completely removed from life, a spectator of the spectacle. I curled into a ball, looked at my hands and knees, and started to wonder why everyone felt so free back there in the square. We are all just trapped in the current, clinging to debris in a cloudy river, holding on to moments tightly like a child clutches candy. Do you relish the safety of that familiar feeling, when you think time stops for you and you alone? Touching on those beautiful lapses in time when you become unstuck. I walked along the river, running my hand along the railing, the walls, wondering if you could touch something and a jolt of electrical sense data would hit you in the head with a mirror into the past. Who else walked liked me? Was I really so alone? Everyone has these thoughts. Man small world big. Man thinks man made world. Man takes all the space from world and pushes himself off the edge. I walked towards Charles bridge, in order to look off the edge.
I had been there during dawn with the travellers, as a million wispy balls of pollen, a million flying bugs swarmed the view. The chunks of pollen floated up and down like fat snowflakes in a storm. I thought of the bubbles we used to blow out of a little bottle, watching a child put the key to their lips and let out spheres of fizz. The bugs moved like we did, roaming in packs and attacking someone unsuspecting as they circled and tossed in the wind as the giant victim flailed their arms. Now it was night, and the people were clustering near the sound of guitars. I walked towards them and watched and listened. The one with the biggest audience was playing tunes of love and peace, man. Imagine, Let It Be, and others I forget. He had them all wrapped around his fingers, strumming the chords with too much drama, drooping his head forward and snapping it back with the motions. There was a smaller number of people, myself included, hanging around the fringe of the love circle. One gloomy girl lit a cigarette, cast an indifferent look back at the fools, and snickered to herself. She was lonely, waiting for someone who would not show. There were other sitters and squatters and standers hanging back, watching and hearing the music float into the sky. The guitar player asked everyone to clap their hands, come on now, sing together. The voices formed a gospel chorus while the faces glowing in the heat and the smiling teeth lit up the night. Everyone was being slowly propelled forward, closer, tighter. Swaying with the song as the wind whipped up off the simmering water, everything felt scripted. A commercial of happiness, a postcard from life. I think, in a minute they are going to join hands. All the sounds rolling into each other, echoing in and out. The stars and moon reflected off the water, bodies simmering, everything moving, raving blue. I walked back to the square.
Alone for only this one night, my friends having left for Germany earlier that day, I decided I wanted to have sex with a prostitute. It did not start out this way, and it certainly did not end as planned. I am not a perverted individual; I only have certain needs which must occasionally be satisfied. Besides, I have nothing but respect for professional lovers. Prostitution is the oldest profession, and it will outlast everything else. I headed for Václavské Námestí aka Wencenclas Square; the local hotbed of prostitution. Wandering towards the unmarked exit to leave the old town square, I was carried through the dark narrow alleys by lively bodies. I felt lost in the current. Wavering in the night, they swerved back and forth like a nebulous mass towards their next drink. I sat down on the street curb and exchanged glances with the masses. One Irish bloke sat down next to me, told me his name, his troubles, and his desire to sin. I absorbed everything and spit out callous indifference. “Do you know where you’re going?” I asked. “Nae, ahve lost me friends,” he answered. In all this mess, we cannot even lose ourselves. The people danced in and out of the square for hours, forever, and I tried to leave.
On my way home that night, I was accosted by ugly prostitutes. A tiny brown woman with black scraggly hair, eastern or Hispanic, old enough to be my mother, approached me and asked for a light. I handed her the fire and then she grabbed my hips and thrust her crotch against mine. “Vat are you, German?” I then saw her drugged out sickly old face, and decided, despite her forwardness, I knew she wasn’t the one. I told her I was English and not interested in French. She whispered “I suck your coke, I do anal, vat you vant?” Her starved little body wrapped around my legs tighter. I told her NO, get off me now. “How much you got, I do special price for you.” I eventually peeled her off me as she ironically told me to fuck off as she took jogged towards her next victim. Other women with the same gaunt faces on different bodies snuck across my path. Something dark in the shadows suggestively whispered “blowjob?” and others tried to grab me. My foggy unfinished thoughts were interrupted as I dragged myself back down into the valley I felt trapped in my body, wondering if I could ever leave my head behind. I watched myself stumbling through the night, like in those dreams where you see yourself and have no control. Slowly spiralling down the cement trail, waiting for crazies lurking in the shadows. I found my way to the foam mattress, sank into the pillow and fabric clutching a glass of water and heard the birds rising with the sun. I fell into a dream and hoped someone would wake me up, so I would not miss the train.
I knew I would be lingering in the old city around the drunken revelry with masses of foreign tongues stampeding in the centre. Spent days watching the effervescent tourists swarm Wenceslas square, Charles bridge, and the citadel across the river. I was torn between an intense love and hatred of this place. The drunken hordes of swerving shirtless Brits mingling with shockingly attractive women. The tourists sticking to the pavement like jelly, stopping every second to take another snapshot of the ancient panorama surrounding them. They are everywhere. Roaming in packs, marking off sights like homework, postcarding themselves in this fossil of a city. Touching as much as possible as if it were on display, feeling nothing. I heard more English than Czech in the downtown streets. But for all its weekend visitors and stunning tourist traps, the city was impeccably quiet and clean. Instead of cars, pedestrians rule the streets, as cruel stoplights rule the pedestrians. I loved the ornate, decadent, colourful architecture; every building completely different than the last. I loved walking beside the dark river and beautiful graveyards. I loved the massive park on a hill in the west that looks over the city. It was good to go there and sleep. We were once three travellers who climbed to an empty patch and sprawled out, soaking up rays and basking in the earth. We slept and dreamed of solid ground. I awoke as a laughing family shuffled into single file, taking turns running through the fountain to cool down.
I found my hostel after much chagrin and many tired exchanges with the locals. I know that all you need is a bed, shower, and toilet, but this place was crummy. I chose it solely for its location, free breakfast, and cheap rates. There were shared unisex showers operated by a push-button which gave me a light tepid stream. That sprinkle lasted for ten seconds, and then you had to push again, or you got no more water. Breakfast was as hard and chewy as crusty dirt, but there was free coffee. Entering my room at night, I noticed that many bunk beds were packed in far too tight for the size of the room, and the only window was screaming red advertised light. This came from the street lamp but also the football-field Star Wars billboard across the street. The room was always scarred with red light, and everything creaked.
I wanted so fiercely to write about one night in the square, with the noise hovering, the chatter and banter of drunks and the shoes scratching on stone, the thick urine-soaked air, all around me broken glass. I remember treading down street after street, noticing how each one formed a different pattern of cobbled stones. I remember the fairytale castles looming side by side, distant and solemn, commanding concrete respect. The bright orange streetlamps lined my field of vision. I remember watching people staggering towards them, friends huddling beside them, and couples flirting between them. Dancing clowns, all of them. Happy as children, spinning out of control, feeling safe because everyone else was doing it too. Someone launched a frisbee through the air. A brief instant of a thousand eyes catching its path, waiting and watching its gentle descent. It skidded and landed beside one of many paddy wagons. The glazed eyes returned to the wobbly world of streaking orange madness. There was me in the middle, floating through the craze. I wait patiently for something to happen as everything flashes past. I sit on the curb and touch the ground with a stick, trying to trace my path through the world; I move the stick from stone to stone, listening to the circus of noise rise up the ancient walls. I try to remember these feelings but they vanish and fade into the next moment.
I remember waiting in the hostel for this Brazilian girl to return to pick up her bags. Renata was a fine creature who happened to be in my room. She had dark hair, long and straight down past her shoulders. She was small, with a muscular but feminine body. She wore a plain shirt with green shorts, tight and accentuating, with wonderful curves around her hips, breasts, and mesmerizing ass. She had a shy face, tanned mahogany brown by the sun. I struggled to distract my gaze from her dark eyes and coffee coloured skin. I could tell she was intelligent, from the way she described her travels so far, her life back home, and her knowledge of five languages. We talked about favellas – slums and ghettos outside of Rio/Buenos Aires, the ups and downs of travelling alone, and other stuff. We could have been talking about the finer aspects of potato peeling for all I cared; the moment I made her laugh and a smile snuck across her face, there was nothing else happening around me. It was gorgeous. She was gorgeous. I could not look away, and she may or may not have sensed it. I quickly decided to cover my tracks and informed her I was here with friends, and we were going to stay out until dawn, and that she should join us. This was all very difficult because the other girl in my room stood in direct opposition to everything Renata embodied. This other one was a stringy blonde, buck-toothed, with a cockney accent and a sour look that made me cringe. I managed to keep her away from the conversation, but Renata was unsure, and eventually declined our company. Maybe she thought my travelling partner was not simply my travelling partner, maybe she wanted to be alone. After a long night, returning to the hostel, I ran into her at dawn. I decided to sleep for a couple hours but urged her to wake me up when she returned. I vaguely remember someone dark standing over me, repeating my name, and me repeatedly groaning. I never saw her again. But I was so taken with her. And now here I wait, some dumb fool. Everyone in this hostel seems to be three or four years my junior. It feels very strange, because everyone else I have met in hostels have been older. This is crazy. I am in Praha, my last night, and what am I waiting for? A last fleeting glimpse of a face I will never remember, but always recognise. I have some charming abilities, and I have been called a sweet young thing. But let’s face it; the chances of me altering her path are slim to none. I might be able to spend a half hour, a few hours with her at most, depending on my luck.
This luck never came. I stepped out for a quick supper and when I came back she had taken her bag and left, leaving me only a note and a slight stinging sensation in my temples. There was no throbbing sensation in my trousers or painful heart palpitations, as I had hoped for. I was just slightly bitter, and tired. Foul animal that I am, I detached and displaced my lust instantly. The young woman at reception was a true Czech beauty. She had long dark hair as well, but she was tall and thin, with long long legs. She was in her late twenties, around six feet tall. Her face was equally long, and she wore perfect skin with a sexual grin. As if she was amused with my weakness. She sympathised with my torturous waiting for the unknown goddess to step back into my life. I notice her watching a video on her computer with a familiar casual dialogue: Seinfeld. I ask her if she has seen this episode and she says she has seen all of them. We get along well after that. She promises to leave a message from me to the girl in case she returns. Jaded, I made it as vague and brief as my directions to the new hostel: “Get out at Vysherad station. Take stairs down into valley.” On my dejected way to the second hostel, I witnessed two wonderful events. Stepping out of the Vysherad subway station and walking down through a forest in the middle of the city as the sun set above me. The sky was slashed with red and it warmed my soul as I descended into a thousand trees, a quiet valley of green. The sun dipped off the edge of the earth but I could not see it happen. When I emerged from the valley the world was cold glowing blue. Upon arrival I climbed out onto the small patio. On one side, a train thundered past the subway bridge which hung over the forest high in the sky, and on the other, there were fireworks off in the distance. I was too far to hear, but close enough to see. I realised I left a huge plastic jug of juice at the first hostel, and decided to retrieve it. There was no way I would make it through the night without that flavoured sugar, pumping me sober energy.
I made it back downtown and walked towards a sign prohibiting the presence of pigeons. Though I did not know exactly how this law would be enforced. A pigeon inside a black circle with a red line crossing it out would surely alert the other pigeons to their wretched fate. There were a dozen benches under trees, evenly separated in two lines, with an unobstructed view of the square. There were all sorts of characters. A group of teenage misfits, drinking and tossing their finished beer cans, impatient for their friend to finish rolling his joint. Meticulously waiting for perfection. A half-dozen crooked men were sprawled out on the wooden benches supporting their dead weight. A few restless souls drifted in between benches, floating comatose zombies. I felt their lifeless eyes and saw their hands and knees, quivering for a moment of chemical release. Everyone was starting to look the same. I put streets and distance between us. I looked for people that were more alive. I wanted to dance, to feel life, to shake out the dust.
In a narrow passage between two streets, there were dark figures playing music in the shadows. Closer to the sound, I recognised riffs and chords of classic rock. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. I slowed my pace and fell out of place in the stream of crossing people. There were two young men with long scraggly black hair beating on old beat-up acoustic guitars. Busking for food or money or dope or whatever. Such pale gaunt faces, all pock-marked and hollow. The one with a bandana said something in Czech and pointed to the giant plastic juice box I’d been slugging from all night. I walked over and handed him the tasty fruit drink. I motioned for them to finish it, sat down cross-legged on the curb beside them, waiting and hoping for the warm familiar rhythms to begin again. There was a third one who stood in the middle of the alley, a dark-haired woman, rushing from one person to the next, pleading for handouts, arms outstretched and face upturned, moving relentless and desperate under the stars. She looked straight ahead as the rushing flow of bodies moved through her like a turnstile. I tried to talk with the guitarists. I asked them how long had they been together, played together, been on the streets, been fighting for meals, where was home? They were from Hungary or Slovakia, and spoke next to no English, but we made motions and signals and sign language and communicated. I rolled a hash cigarette and asked if they would play me something, nothing I would recognise. Bandana laughed and told me they only played for money. But they started strumming old folk songs, rasping and painful and playful and beautiful. I wondered if you could get through life without sharing language, without sharing moments. The woman stood still out there, glaring at the world that would not look at her, glaring at me, tired and resentful and just dog-tired. We passed the juice jug around until it was empty. I was there for twenty, maybe thirty minutes, turning to peaceful jelly as the hash hit me and my mind felt pleasantly wordless, cupped by my weightless body. So much life was cradled in those instruments. They looked transparent in the night. Completely alone and barely alive. The woman looked at me, distrustful. I dropped some krown into a small tin can and decided to leave. The three haggard gypsies wore all black, pierced with metal and earrings and bracelets they jingled out of the night, ringing out of my life.
My sense of direction was fading. As the a.m. people drifted off to fumble with locked doors and sleep to life, I was losing myself towards the next empty space. Tired steps traced a clopping path hopefully towards the silent river. What did I want to see here? Everything dead and obsolete was fenced off. I wandered past ancient relics, buildings and statues, and felt quiet admiration until next to nothing but mild surprise. Culture and civilisation was not here first. The river was here first. The river and fish and trees and birds and land and animals we drain and drill and crush and kill. Ignore and forget, and you feel no shame or guilt. No one has to think about wilderness in cities. But there is peace there, when you find it. There is also peace in the streets. In the foggy haze of bodies whirling past you. On subways and sidewalks where we move the living; in museums and cemeteries where we preserve the dead; at concerts and festivals where we make our noise. The hushed starry night is wrapped up tight, holding its breath until the next circus troupe noises past. They say everyone is heading for Charles bridge. I suddenly felt so completely removed from life, a spectator of the spectacle. I curled into a ball, looked at my hands and knees, and started to wonder why everyone felt so free back there in the square. We are all just trapped in the current, clinging to debris in a cloudy river, holding on to moments tightly like a child clutches candy. Do you relish the safety of that familiar feeling, when you think time stops for you and you alone? Touching on those beautiful lapses in time when you become unstuck. I walked along the river, running my hand along the railing, the walls, wondering if you could touch something and a jolt of electrical sense data would hit you in the head with a mirror into the past. Who else walked liked me? Was I really so alone? Everyone has these thoughts. Man small world big. Man thinks man made world. Man takes all the space from world and pushes himself off the edge. I walked towards Charles bridge, in order to look off the edge.
I had been there during dawn with the travellers, as a million wispy balls of pollen, a million flying bugs swarmed the view. The chunks of pollen floated up and down like fat snowflakes in a storm. I thought of the bubbles we used to blow out of a little bottle, watching a child put the key to their lips and let out spheres of fizz. The bugs moved like we did, roaming in packs and attacking someone unsuspecting as they circled and tossed in the wind as the giant victim flailed their arms. Now it was night, and the people were clustering near the sound of guitars. I walked towards them and watched and listened. The one with the biggest audience was playing tunes of love and peace, man. Imagine, Let It Be, and others I forget. He had them all wrapped around his fingers, strumming the chords with too much drama, drooping his head forward and snapping it back with the motions. There was a smaller number of people, myself included, hanging around the fringe of the love circle. One gloomy girl lit a cigarette, cast an indifferent look back at the fools, and snickered to herself. She was lonely, waiting for someone who would not show. There were other sitters and squatters and standers hanging back, watching and hearing the music float into the sky. The guitar player asked everyone to clap their hands, come on now, sing together. The voices formed a gospel chorus while the faces glowing in the heat and the smiling teeth lit up the night. Everyone was being slowly propelled forward, closer, tighter. Swaying with the song as the wind whipped up off the simmering water, everything felt scripted. A commercial of happiness, a postcard from life. I think, in a minute they are going to join hands. All the sounds rolling into each other, echoing in and out. The stars and moon reflected off the water, bodies simmering, everything moving, raving blue. I walked back to the square.
Alone for only this one night, my friends having left for Germany earlier that day, I decided I wanted to have sex with a prostitute. It did not start out this way, and it certainly did not end as planned. I am not a perverted individual; I only have certain needs which must occasionally be satisfied. Besides, I have nothing but respect for professional lovers. Prostitution is the oldest profession, and it will outlast everything else. I headed for Václavské Námestí aka Wencenclas Square; the local hotbed of prostitution. Wandering towards the unmarked exit to leave the old town square, I was carried through the dark narrow alleys by lively bodies. I felt lost in the current. Wavering in the night, they swerved back and forth like a nebulous mass towards their next drink. I sat down on the street curb and exchanged glances with the masses. One Irish bloke sat down next to me, told me his name, his troubles, and his desire to sin. I absorbed everything and spit out callous indifference. “Do you know where you’re going?” I asked. “Nae, ahve lost me friends,” he answered. In all this mess, we cannot even lose ourselves. The people danced in and out of the square for hours, forever, and I tried to leave.
On my way home that night, I was accosted by ugly prostitutes. A tiny brown woman with black scraggly hair, eastern or Hispanic, old enough to be my mother, approached me and asked for a light. I handed her the fire and then she grabbed my hips and thrust her crotch against mine. “Vat are you, German?” I then saw her drugged out sickly old face, and decided, despite her forwardness, I knew she wasn’t the one. I told her I was English and not interested in French. She whispered “I suck your coke, I do anal, vat you vant?” Her starved little body wrapped around my legs tighter. I told her NO, get off me now. “How much you got, I do special price for you.” I eventually peeled her off me as she ironically told me to fuck off as she took jogged towards her next victim. Other women with the same gaunt faces on different bodies snuck across my path. Something dark in the shadows suggestively whispered “blowjob?” and others tried to grab me. My foggy unfinished thoughts were interrupted as I dragged myself back down into the valley I felt trapped in my body, wondering if I could ever leave my head behind. I watched myself stumbling through the night, like in those dreams where you see yourself and have no control. Slowly spiralling down the cement trail, waiting for crazies lurking in the shadows. I found my way to the foam mattress, sank into the pillow and fabric clutching a glass of water and heard the birds rising with the sun. I fell into a dream and hoped someone would wake me up, so I would not miss the train.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
my pink eye
found this when cleaning my room. not sure when.. sometime in high school. there are some funny pencil illustrations on the side. i have the copy unedited from its original state.
my pink eye by Adam Ilustrations by Seiji
my pink eye
it makes me cry
fluid flows from it, clear like water
it makes my eye grow hotter, Father.
drench my eye
before I die
with copious amounts of H2O
or gouge it out with an angry crow
trying not to touch it or
think about it,
but it itches little by little
my pupil looks like a red skittle
robot said I have pink eye
if this is so, I might just cry
it may be true that I just rhyme
for a lame excuse to whine and whine
seiji think that I'm a baby
well I don't care, he's just crazy.
I want so much for my eye to shatter
nothing else in lifes seems to matter.
who is to blame for my misfortune?
my parents should have had an abortion
now all that's left is me and eye
try as he might, I will not cry.
my pink eye by Adam Ilustrations by Seiji
my pink eye
it makes me cry
fluid flows from it, clear like water
it makes my eye grow hotter, Father.
drench my eye
before I die
with copious amounts of H2O
or gouge it out with an angry crow
trying not to touch it or
think about it,
but it itches little by little
my pupil looks like a red skittle
robot said I have pink eye
if this is so, I might just cry
it may be true that I just rhyme
for a lame excuse to whine and whine
seiji think that I'm a baby
well I don't care, he's just crazy.
I want so much for my eye to shatter
nothing else in lifes seems to matter.
who is to blame for my misfortune?
my parents should have had an abortion
now all that's left is me and eye
try as he might, I will not cry.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Home for the Aged
Behind the windshield my eyes swim in a sea of blue as my father spins through suburbia. We are going to visit his mother. I watch the white and yellow streaks on the pavement fade in and out – a feeling of lost time creeps up out of nowhere. Where did that come from? There must be something sacred about travelling without moving, moving without a sound. My father and I do not use many words on these journeys. I pretend there is some form of unspoken communication, but it’s not that. We’re thinking of different things. A heavy lulling sensation hangs like fog in the car. I reach out, wave and flap my hands around fanatically, desperately slicing through the cloud of quiet. After I stop, he looks at me, silently amused and confused. In the dream again, I am sinking into the gentle motion of the wheels.
In my half-conscious state we dip into a parking lot. Abandon all hope ye who enter here, for this is the Cummer Lodge Home For The Aged. I see a large wooden cabin, looming over the empty spaces. This log cottage holds together the ancients, waiting for disposal, unwritten depositions, forgetting they are already forgotten ashes. We pass through its majestic arches and electronic entrance (keeps ‘em from runnin’) arriving at a wide red door fitted with a security code. A cavernous room, actually a hallway with bad lighting, extends out into other passages, small and narrow, with individual rooms which contain individual artefacts. We don’t have to go that way. Here there are plush green couches, loveseats, clutched by old bones and leathered skin. Famous prints of paintings on the walls. Pastoral, scenic, soothing. Why don't they let them paint their own walls? Mental graffiti sprawling everywhere, instead of this pacified art. They don’t have a say because they mumble too much.
A few limp about here and there, scattered around like a party slowly sobering near dawn. The TV hangs suspended in the absolute centre; loud, deliberately turned up maybe, blasting crude Fox entertainment that flickers through squinting eyes. As these explicit images are opened and closed, they go tumbling out of glassy eyes and get discarded through open mouths. Removed from the trance, a woman approaches me and touched my shoulder. She looks at me and gave me a wordless singsong hex, chuckling with hanging spittle, merciless. The moments here are epic spiritual confrontations.
It suddenly occurs to me they know no more then we do.
I am happy to see Darryl, a tall gangly black man with a toothless wild smile, someone with enough life to overpower the zonked. He sees my dad making contact with grandma, and he yells, ecstatic, breathless: “Is that yo mama! Hee hee! Oh that is a good one!” He cackles some more and slaps his knee. Full of soul and the holy spirit. He clutches his ribs to muffle his laughter and has to sit down. Someone in white informs us that if he becomes bothersome, he can be restrained.
We see her before she sees us. My grandmother faces our harmless questions, but, refusing or unable to concentrate, instead listens attentively to the gruff man beside her, who speaks an endless stream of his foreign tongue (something Slavic, maybe Ukrainian?). She answers his nonsense in equally nonsensical English and then, searching for a word only to find it in Yiddish, shrugs and offers up a look of “Why not?” and soldiers on, plodding through their exchange in broken Yiddish.
Trying to reach out to his mother, my father reveals something else every time, and this is partly why I join him. I’m sure guilt and fear and love are in there somewhere. He might get upset, turn away, as his hands fall limp to his side. He might dance, hit himself, who knows. There are no expectations. He just wants a reaction, some justification, some reason to take part in this silent reunion. It is sad and beautiful, as I wonder how I will cope with the slow decay of my parents, as I wonder whether my friends will come see me drift away from life and reason and still find ways to make me laugh. Maybe it will be easier, I think to myself, as I watch.
Her eyes are bright and blue.
In my half-conscious state we dip into a parking lot. Abandon all hope ye who enter here, for this is the Cummer Lodge Home For The Aged. I see a large wooden cabin, looming over the empty spaces. This log cottage holds together the ancients, waiting for disposal, unwritten depositions, forgetting they are already forgotten ashes. We pass through its majestic arches and electronic entrance (keeps ‘em from runnin’) arriving at a wide red door fitted with a security code. A cavernous room, actually a hallway with bad lighting, extends out into other passages, small and narrow, with individual rooms which contain individual artefacts. We don’t have to go that way. Here there are plush green couches, loveseats, clutched by old bones and leathered skin. Famous prints of paintings on the walls. Pastoral, scenic, soothing. Why don't they let them paint their own walls? Mental graffiti sprawling everywhere, instead of this pacified art. They don’t have a say because they mumble too much.
A few limp about here and there, scattered around like a party slowly sobering near dawn. The TV hangs suspended in the absolute centre; loud, deliberately turned up maybe, blasting crude Fox entertainment that flickers through squinting eyes. As these explicit images are opened and closed, they go tumbling out of glassy eyes and get discarded through open mouths. Removed from the trance, a woman approaches me and touched my shoulder. She looks at me and gave me a wordless singsong hex, chuckling with hanging spittle, merciless. The moments here are epic spiritual confrontations.
It suddenly occurs to me they know no more then we do.
I am happy to see Darryl, a tall gangly black man with a toothless wild smile, someone with enough life to overpower the zonked. He sees my dad making contact with grandma, and he yells, ecstatic, breathless: “Is that yo mama! Hee hee! Oh that is a good one!” He cackles some more and slaps his knee. Full of soul and the holy spirit. He clutches his ribs to muffle his laughter and has to sit down. Someone in white informs us that if he becomes bothersome, he can be restrained.
We see her before she sees us. My grandmother faces our harmless questions, but, refusing or unable to concentrate, instead listens attentively to the gruff man beside her, who speaks an endless stream of his foreign tongue (something Slavic, maybe Ukrainian?). She answers his nonsense in equally nonsensical English and then, searching for a word only to find it in Yiddish, shrugs and offers up a look of “Why not?” and soldiers on, plodding through their exchange in broken Yiddish.
Trying to reach out to his mother, my father reveals something else every time, and this is partly why I join him. I’m sure guilt and fear and love are in there somewhere. He might get upset, turn away, as his hands fall limp to his side. He might dance, hit himself, who knows. There are no expectations. He just wants a reaction, some justification, some reason to take part in this silent reunion. It is sad and beautiful, as I wonder how I will cope with the slow decay of my parents, as I wonder whether my friends will come see me drift away from life and reason and still find ways to make me laugh. Maybe it will be easier, I think to myself, as I watch.
Her eyes are bright and blue.
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