Archive for May, 2008

Geography

On my father’s side, I am of the long flat plains around Bucharest. Plains running endlessly against the horizon and so much sky above them, drowning our little forms.

Plains burnt by summer sun, plains of yellow and white little flowers, as unassuming as some part of my heart is.

And every once in a while poppies like mouths.

“Je n’ai pas peur de la route
Faudrait voir, faut qu’on y goûte
Des méandres au creux des reins
Et tout ira bien là
Le vent nous portera”
- Noir Desir, Le Vent Nous Portera lyrics

We used to ride the car to the country side as children, through hot plains and poor towns, my thighs sticking to the plastic covers of the car seats. Ducking each time we passed by the police because we were too many in the car. Our silly little communist clothes of touching aesthetics.

People of the plains are poorer and darker; they eat lighter things and have tongues dipped in satire, unlike the people of the mountains. I was the child of Germanic Slavic features that ate fruit and played in the dust covering the village in the plains.

And thick happiness like honey, like sun, filling every whole of my being until I was full.

Love Letter From Albertina Teresa Serrat To Gabriel Fermin Dia

(an alteration of Marquez style and Durrell influences to accomodate personal voice)

Ay, my love of dust and tombstones. I’ve brought you flowers. 

How different we are from all these people that think us the same. How us we are. My heart bleeds violets. My hands polish your name.

Seven years, ten months and fifteen days ago, we were walking together the streets of Granada among geometrical gitanos and flute players. A hedonistic waste of flora and history for our pleasure. Remember how midnights founds us in cafes, my mysticism in scrimmage with your atheism? And then those excessive night acts that Spanish air invites…

Americans sat at neighbouring tables speaking loudly, unfolding their pristine enthusiasm and interest in everything. The city of Lorca and Dali! Alhambra! To some Old World hearts, this is tiring, but I always found it brings hope to mine.

So I married one, yes. There are no rooms in his heart sculpted with a needle, like there are in mine or yours and he likes everything I show him. My fingers wear his kisses like an invincible safety net.

You wouldn’t like him at all.

I must go now, my love of clean bone. The child tugs at my skirt, she has seen a dragonfly. I like your house, it’s like a park of crosses and cherry trees. Till next time.

Carnival of Harlequin

A knot. And the world braids and unbraids from it, flutterring like ribbons, like blind Medusa.

“Shhh, Shhh
It’s nice and quiet
Shhh, Shhh
But soon again
Shhh, Shhh
Starts another big riot” –
Bjork, It’s Oh So Quiet lyrics

Last summer, Miro taught me the aesthetics of objects in pure space. Gracias. Free pass to my carnival. Fill the space with rose tints today.

Come Aristotle and Plato eating cotton candy, insane apple tree blossom snowing down your throat, drown fragantly, baby… dumdeedam, Marie Antoinette dancing like Salome to get her head back, served on a tray from history students’ cafeteria, the ferris wheel spinning classicism, baroque, romanticism, realism and Protheus of modernity, how many 8s can your belly do, Scheherazade, rambla pa’ aqui, rambla pa’ lla, esa la Rumba de Barcelona, juggle hearts and porcelain tea cups and don’t drop any, Alice, mirrors in the funhouse for Quasimodo to live in a world where everyone is distorted and in the middle Picasso with a paintbrush and Dora Maar with bleeding fingers from playing too much 5-Finger Fillet, Degas’s ballerinas spilled like a basket of flowers, I wear a blue cardigan and pale skin and everything runs, throbs, flows, yells, transforms, takes shape and melts into everythingness only to be born as something else, somewhere else, at some other time and the music never stops, never stops.  

Come, sweetheart. You are among friends.