River

Day before yesterday we returned to an aforementioned river. This time the trail was significantly less strenuous, traversing hills of rosemary and lavender, an occasional spruce of thyme. It’s green mountains folded clean as origami, and my shoes are brimming with water, squirming as I make my way around crags and gullies. I’m carrying lunch bags. Couscous and orange soft drinks perched on one shoulder, getting a better view of the countryside than I.

An hour and a half of walking: peacock blue bathing suit slick with sweat, hair down, knees up, one, two, I am called a city girl one too many times, lover of the chock-a-block, unappreciative of clay deposits. Oh, how harsh, how very harsh indeed.

But it soon becomes clear that suffering is not in vain. We strike gold, a veritable paradise. To the right of the trodden path, upstream, a little star that strayed from the confines of universe. Pool, blue, waterfall, butterflies, as close to a shiny Bahamas postcard as you’ve ever seen. It’s so great I pull off anything not water-proof, Superhero-style, and cannonball.

It seems impossible to me that engineers have found ways to blast holes through hundreds of feet of rock face. I don’t mean it in a sad environmentalist way, but in a does not compute way. How can you bulldoze through green slices of water, their cascading brethren so tough they throw me out when I try to climb up, the skinny cliffs overlooking houses and trees hundreds of years old? I can’t make it five minutes along these woods without feeling thorns. This mountain is greater than any of us.

Where have the people gone? There is one light on the mountain.

I spent yesterday afternoon eating udon in my mother’s office. Afterwards my brother and I lie on the floor, surrounded by mannequins and furniture catalogs. Though my mother works in the design department, she is not involved in design; she does the innovative business shebang. Still, whatever an innovative business room looks like, it can’t be as nice as working under the observation of articulated statues and books in pastel shades and canvases covered in curly lettering.

When my mother finishes, she goes to the window, pulling open the curtain as though ripping open a candy bar. We’d had overcast weather that morning, and so I see it fit to ask “is it raining?” to which my mother answers “more than that, it’s hailing”. Her tone is so high and so sharp she might as well have been swearing. My mother is terrified of storms.

We go down and find the doorman behind the glass door, keeping an eye on the silvery plaza. My mother says she’s never seen a storm this bad, though I can clearly recall us driving through a much worse one not a full year beforehand. She leaves for a moment, and reappears with a white umbrella. She says she’s been lent it, although there is no one left in the building who could have lent her such a thing.

The sidewalk is empty. Once in a while a couple will emerge, wet arms swinging. At one point we see an entire family, dressed in bright soaked shorts and carrying tote bags made of dark straw. The daughter, walking down the asphalt with the air of a martyr, is barefoot.

Everyone seems to have crowded into the phone store across the road. They’re all the English tourists, riding out the rain. It doesn’t take long, and soon enough I have convinced my mother to brave the trip to the metro stop.

“Afraid of a little thunder and lightning?” I say, or something to that effect. “What the heck?”

But as we wade through the dips and tucks in the street I see a girl on a street corner who is clearly terrified of that little thunder, little lightning. She’s of at least partial Oriental descent, though now, in retrospect, I cannot pluck out her features from the muck of memory. All I can remember is her black hair, and her arms, which were wrapped around a boy, who should be more properly termed a young man, though I think of him only as a boy. He had a buzz cut and broad shoulders, and one of his hands was patting her head while the other held firm to the puzzle piece of the small of her back.

We soon leave them be, and as we are making through the narrow streets so isolated one could be the paradise of monsoon and another a stark churning desert, the water slows and the clouds clear, as we are passing paralyzed stray dogs and marble store fronts, I think, in passing, a thought that is perhaps number 450 of the 700 I think per minute, stuck between one triviality and the next: THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL.

(title is never mine, but only Theodore Roethke’s, a line from his “The Storm”)

That Which We Call A Rose

Someone needs to do for Emma what Nabokov did for Lolita. I am sorry, but I am no Janeite, and I hanker only for old Russian magic, Baba Yaga in a glade of silver birch, Count Leo in chalk blue and boots.

Actually I am not sorry at all. Why is every Emma a Venetian blond, eternally young heiress of industry or at the very least beauty, the authentic Woodhouse?

I want an Emma with uncut nails and a long neck. The curve of her back is warm, a mid-ocean ridge swimming with neon monkfish, and the skin behind her ear is like that of a white nectarine, or dark yellow Mirabelle plum. She can be as dirty as dishwater or as pure as the driven snow, femme fatale or Galatea. Hair gelled, ridden with lice, bronze glasses, bombastic. I want a gutsy Emma, a gutted Emma, salty, sour, housefly, dragonfly Emma.

She can be a spongy Swiss mademoiselle, hardboiled American lass, delicate Buddhist princess, mooney extraterrestrial damsel. My Emma is a prostitute, a seller of exotic curios, a British matchmaker as dear Jane Austen intended her to be. She gets to go home happy or up in smoke.

The whole time I was reading “Lolita” I was waiting for Nabokov to allude to the literal meaning of the name Dolores. Dolores, in Spanish, meaning sorrow, pains. He took that name apart and put it back together again, put little Lolita in every kind of metaphor, simile, allusion, elevated her to a special plane of literary beauty. But never does he once mention what the dictionary has to say about Dolores. Not once does he say, “and this is Dolores, and her future is sadness, as her name so indicates.”

Maybe that’s what I really want for my pen and paper Emma.

I’ve Got My Own Brand Of Able Chronicling

We went on one of those river hiking thingamabobs today, five hours of trekking through glorious waters and golden views and continually falling on my face.

O grace, how you elude me!

By the end of it I had stripped to a turquoise bathing suit, sopping shirt slung over one shoulder, warbling the “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” song from Mulan in an effort to rally the family forces. BE A MAN YOU MUST BE SWIFT AS THE COURSING RIVER [cue fall in river – o grace!]

We crawled up the crags to the road, I on my hands and knees, no longer caring about the state of my abused attire. O a change of clothes, o hunks of bread fetched from the trunk, praise be!

At home I go out to the terrace and pirouette with dusty feet as my mother hollers “Emma! Eat your mushrooms!” My mediocre ballet distracts her, leaving me to prance around, legs covered in antibiotic ointment and still stinking of river. On the street in front of our building, someone has written “Felices 18 Amor 31-7-10” which, for those of you without rudimentary knowledge of Romance languages, translates to “Happy 18th Love”. It’s the work of the enamored hooligan, the combined victory for the beloved and against the authorities, the triumphant defacing of public property. I tell my mother and she laughs, suggesting that we go down and wash the birthday wishes off with a hose.

New York

As I am exiting the Museum of Natural History, I pass a woman talking on the phone. She asks, “Is it wonderful?” and I think, “It is.”

I am in New York, buying English books (at the Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue, thoughts of Kelly prompt me to purchase “The Cave” to replace “Death at Intervals”) and eating cheesecake at Junior’s in Grand Central Station. I have rediscovered Milano cookies, Starburst and English muffins, which I eat in the mornings when jet lag forces me awake. English muffins, I have decided, are the pinnacle of good eating.

Okay, Rocky Song Time: Dun. Dun. Dun. Dun. Dun. Dun. Dun. Dun. Dun. DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN.

Today I attempted to look tough. I donned my most no-nonsense outfit (which actual no-nonsense people would say is not very no-nonsense, especially considering it was purchased in a chic shopping mall, but how’s about we let that one go) and stood in a strategically dimmed corridor in front of the most robust mirror in the apartment (the one in the bathroom has gold scalloped edges which is just not the effect I was looking for, though it does go along nicely with the salmon toilet cozies and – OKAY NEVERMIND BACK TO THE TOUGHNESS).

I puckered my lips (made me look like a hotel chain cabaret dancer), furrowed my brow (made me look like a disgruntled and exceptionally tan Oxford scholar), exposed my arm muscles (made me quickly realize that I possess none). I even practiced the most steely, hard-as-nails adolescent gesture I know: the callous digitus impudicus, commonly known in Western culture as “the finger”. Almost immediately I felt terrible for committing such a grave injustice against my innocent reflection, and attempted to patch things up with a benevolent smile, but then that felt obnoxiously self-serving and then I kinda went “GRAAAH” and gave up and went to fetch myself a Popsicle from the freezer (great for comforting the soul, not great for my figure or Operation: Look Decent in Bikini, but then again I’ve decided not to shave my legs this summer so it’s not like I’m going to look good in a swimsuit anyway).

I’ve always been a little on the short side and this, coupled with my elementary school haircut, gives people the impression that I’m younger than I actually am. Hair dressers pin my hair back with the multi-colored barrettes reserved for children, waiters bring me crayons, next door-neighbors pat me fondly on the head. I am used to this treatment, and am usually quite fond of it, despite the General Rule of Teenagerdom #15: Thou shall throw a tantrum when treated as a kid.

However, next week I will be going on a tenth grade graduation cruise, and on aforementioned cruise I shall attempt to pull off a dastardly maneuver. This maneuver requires of me a certain level of toughness. A HERCULEAN LEVEL OF TOUGHNESS.

Needless to say, my current toughness level is nowhere near A HERCULEAN LEVEL OF TOUGHNESS. It ranks somewhere between A CAREBEAR LEVEL OF TOUGHNESS and A PLANKTON LEVEL OF TOUGHNESS.

My practice sessions in the mirror have not improved that measly toughness level but I fancy myself a little better prepared now. Whether this is foolishness, spurred on by that cocky wink I flashed at my reflective counterpart, or some kind of previously unknown bravery blossoming from deep within my endocrine system I do not know, but I’ll accept anything I can get (as a substitute for the halberd I cannot bring aboard)!

I shall let you know how this maneuver of mine fares. PRAY/RAIN DANCE FOR ME, INTERNET. KYLIE, IF YOU ARE READING THIS, PLEASE DO YOUR CHEROKEE WAR CHIEF DANCE. IT’S TOTALLY FOR A GOOD CAUSE.

I WAS JUST INFORMED THAT JOSÉ SARAMAGO HAS PASSED AWAY.

I’m terrified to no longer be sharing air with José Saramago, like somehow it’s not as pure anymore.

“Blindness” is one the greatest things that’s ever happened  to me. When I finished it I spent a few days fantasizing about sending Saramago a letter, which I never did. It would probably have been a useless endeavor anyway, what with all the enamored readers sending stuff in. I would have been a lot closer to him, though, since we both lived in the same country. I would have saved on postage.

I don’t know. I’m just sad.

ETA 24/6

My father returns from Madrid with a book for me. It’s “Death at Intervals”, a José Saramago I have not read. There is a short biography on the first page, and a small part of it reads: “…which have been translated into forty languages and have established him as Portugal’s most influential living writer.”

LIVING.

Surprisingly, this doesn’t feel like the error of an outdated edition. Immortality doesn’t always remain an element of fiction. Once again I am reminded that being a genius and a writer ((and successful, of course, but that has more to do with luck and connections and public opinion rather than ability, as evidenced by the popularity of Twilight blah blah MAN ARE FOOTNOTES COOL OR WHAT?!))has its perks: you never really die.

I have decided not to be sad about this death anymore.

Thank You

The supermarket is selling paperback romance novels now. As my mother goes about choosing an appropriate watermelon, I flip through one at random: slinky virginal heroines and honeymoons spent feeding lovers choice meats. At four euros, or nearly five dollars, “Passion” would cost me a third of what “Blindness” by José Saramago did.

Maybe I should have paid fifteen hundred dollars for “Blindness”, instead of fifteen.

Yesterday I presented a report on human rights to the class, and had the time of my life. I’d forgotten how much I loved talking to people who would actually listen. Afterwards, a boy made a few (three, to be precise) kind remarks about my work. They were all directed at fellow classmates, but spoken while I was within hearing range. Can I thus assume they were, at least partially, intended for me?

A school cafeteria became extraordinary when I heard him talking about me, even though I was a passing mention in his conversation, a topical jump sitting squarely between our chances for the World Cup (answer: not very high) and what the theme of Saturday’s party is (answer: Hawaiian). I want to ask him: are you magic? It is as if all my inner organs have swollen up to three times their size while at the same time reduced their density by two hundred percent. I am sorry I could not conceal that fist-pump, it’s very unlike me, I know.

Though he was not expecting one, I spent three hours formulating a response. While chewing my food and walking to and from class I went through possibilities and rejected them for being too cutesy, too serious, too formulaic, too insincere, too sincere. How to say thanks to the kind boy for enchanting me so thoroughly? How to find a good scenario for such a conversation? The universe helped with my plight, fixing the seating alignment so that he could sit next to me, ridding me of the need to purposely seek him out (I daresay my courage did not extend that far). Thank you, thank you, lucky stars.

However, even with the blessings of the cosmos, it took me the better part of ten minutes to tap him on the shoulder. When I finally did, the words poured out in a flash (like a torrent of birds, or a bolt of desire, but neither so pathetic as I was and am).

TTTTTHANKYOUFORSAYINGNICETHINGSABOUTMYPRESENTATIONITWASNICEOFYOU

Miraculously, he understood me (how? Once again, I want to ask: are you magic?) Thank you, thank you, universe, for sparing me the embarrassment of his laughing “what did you say?”

I had thought about what he’d answer, and his response was one I had considered: “it’s the truth”. I had something prepared for this eventuality, and out it went, like a muscular reflex: “it was nice anyway”. The exchange ended there. I’d very carefully coordinated it with the beginning of the lesson. This is the kind of thing I am good at, planning conversations so they fit with a schedule, so that I am not forced to reveal the extent of my social awkwardness.

I wrap up situations like these and carry them everywhere with me, stacked up in the stockier portions of my body. I can no longer recall the birthdays before my ninth year, but I can clearly picture the girl from my preschool offering to trade stickers with me. In my stomach sits this boy who was kind to my presentation, on top of Austin from third grade offering me the role of Princess Leia in his reenactment of Star Wars, the brilliant girl in choir who I spoke to once and never again, Miss Gordon asking me if anything was wrong, the emotional melt-down I had once during school hours.

After “are you magic?” I want to ask him “how much does this mean to you?” It cannot possibly mean as much to him as it does to me, just as “Blindness” is not worth as much to him as it is to me. Exactly how much, down to the last decimal point, does this matter, either positively or negatively?

His “it’s the truth” resides neatly in my stomach now, but it’s perilously close to my heart.

Reasons #203 through #207 Life Works.

I should have never have left Paris. The sawed-off vinegar fuck at the Dijon trainstation was right: I have too much little in me. Not enough enough. Wandering someplace happens only once, and once there I should never have left. The gunmetal bomber’s jacket that I stole from a veteran still feels like the thorny net of some Hun invader, and with meatcleaver cleverness was it fashioned into something that I would be willingly snared by. Will of want. Not choice. Were I asked to return it, I may tell a lie and say it was lost or I may tell the truth and say it was ruined. There is a rip in the neck that hemorrhages cotton, after all. I was spidering up a park fence after hours and it snagged and tore open. The fence was iron lattice, and gunmetal.

Marseille was cruel to me but I loved it. Loved it. The autobiography that I vomited onto the sidewalk in front of the burlesque theater was brief but well understood by passersby. They moved so goddamn fast. It was like watching machineguns walk. A boy who was too young for his face was pawing around in the gutter and throwing stones at cars, and when he inevitably groped a cracked bottle he offered his bleeding hand to his mother. She grabbed it, and clucked when he howled. “Eh, vois-tu? Une aide-memoire!” is what she said, which as far as I can tell means “Quit throwing fucking rocks.” Simple lessons are the ones that stick with us the longest, I think. Like bayonets.

In gorgeous Bordeaux I fucked a young black man with greasefire scars sunk into his midsection like quartz leaked in marble, and I was fucked by a Latina woman with no calluses and an Italian-sounding name. There was music, each time. Beethoven said that princes were princes by the accident of birth, and he was Beethoven by the miracle of Beethoven, but the cello spoke more clearly for him. Little else is as divine as the sugary growl of a cello. The greatest of orators and poets and tyrants would fall mute, and upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the miracle of Beethoven had very little to do with Beethoven.

And I loved it all but nothing compared to Paris. Oh Christ, Paris. It rolls my catacomb heart like a die, sets it tantrumming off its ribs like an inmate, has it whining like some mutt shut in a kennel. That sour opium carnival. It was a lover that cradled me like a python, and I was happy prey. Gunpowder was the soup de jour, and I licked my bowl clean. – HOLY BEEJEZUS Kylie

A movie still from “Norweigan Wood” based on the book of the same name by Haruki Murakami.

Found this on K‘s blog:

“The most solid materials perish, as do the mightiest thoughts. And the greatest book ever writen can convey only a tiny fragment of the artist’s real emotion. No, we are only building tombs for posterity to admire with our words. We are trying to record the changing ego, but the Self will not be revealed thus. We are only throwing off sparks.” -Henry Miller, to Anais Nin

Everyone who isn’t already needs to go read K. K is magic.

(I dedicate this male narwhal or unicorn to darling Hertzey and her rickety, adorable love life. Also to Kylie, mentioned at the beginning, who is like Thomas Pynchon if Thomas Pynchon were Huckleberry Finn if Huckleberry Finn were a mythical beast)

My life hasn’t been the greatest thing ever lately, but that is okay with me.