I’m here, in the middle of nowhere, a place missing from the maps and unplaceable in memory. Can I get out of a place that is no place? Where would I go? I can’t go north or south, because neither exists, and east and west keep switching places with each other. Instead I’ll sit here, which is also there, and try to find a way to break this cycle of ever changing meridians. The latitudes and longitudes squiggle and loop and make right angles when they are supposed to be clean and straight. Maybe if I spin in place I will grow so dizzy that everything will come into focus.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Mysterious Gift
I got home and noticed a key stuck in my mail slot, meaning I had a package. I was thinking it was likely a DVD, as I've ordered a number of them lately, but as the desk guy Roger handed me the package, I could tell it was a book of some sort, wrapped in a brown paper bag, with no return address. I remembered my mom said she bought me a signed copy of "The Kite Runner" and that she'd send it soon, but it didn't look like her handwriting.
I tore into it and discoverd a hand made journal, with a cloth bound cover of midnight blue with silver stars. Inside was a little card that said "A journal for you...", but no signature.
How cool! I have no idea who you are, but I'm assuming you read this blog, so thank you, whoever you are...
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Blue Beauty
I have found her, in the spirit of these tea leaves. She will keep me company tonight. I will light candles in the den, and brew this secret potion from god knows what tea garden; an oolong, the blue beauty.
She drifts into the room on a tide of music. She shimmers. Is this what candle flames would look like through tears? I don’t know, I haven’t cried in years. With her comes the silver notes of bells, the faint perfume of angels, the ever presence and comfort like a mother’s hand to a child. I cower behind my keyboard, furtive fingers typing words like a pentacle in which to bind her so that she cannot escape. I want to hold here here in my den, to keep me company through these luminescent nights. She brings all of the book titles on the shelves to a warm glow, yearning to be plucked from their perches and their covers plied asunder to expose what is inside. She makes the music play along all of my nerves like deft fingers. I hesitate to drink any more from the blue beauty for fear of reaching the bottom of the cup, but if I stop drinking, she grows cold. And yet with each sip she grows lukewarm, cold, colder still. So cold in here, now that she’s gone.
She drifts into the room on a tide of music. She shimmers. Is this what candle flames would look like through tears? I don’t know, I haven’t cried in years. With her comes the silver notes of bells, the faint perfume of angels, the ever presence and comfort like a mother’s hand to a child. I cower behind my keyboard, furtive fingers typing words like a pentacle in which to bind her so that she cannot escape. I want to hold here here in my den, to keep me company through these luminescent nights. She brings all of the book titles on the shelves to a warm glow, yearning to be plucked from their perches and their covers plied asunder to expose what is inside. She makes the music play along all of my nerves like deft fingers. I hesitate to drink any more from the blue beauty for fear of reaching the bottom of the cup, but if I stop drinking, she grows cold. And yet with each sip she grows lukewarm, cold, colder still. So cold in here, now that she’s gone.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Antique Shop of Wonders
Our town had this magical antique shop on a dead end street, down past two boarded up stores that used to be a bank and a used clothing store. A towering sign perched on the roof of the building read “Quiggly’s Antique Emporium”, spelled out in sequins pinned to the signboard so that they rippled and flashed in a breeze like the surface of water. Out front it had a twirling barbershop sign, an old church pew with so many names and profanities carved into it that it looked like a piece of bark. A sign shaped like an arm with a finger pointing towards the door said “Come Inside”.
A string of bells jingled when you came through the door. Just inside stood a tall wooden Indian, fingers curled as though clutching a fistful of cigars that had been smoked long ago, but when you walked past him you smelled tobacco.
You are always alone in Quiggly’s Antique Emporium. The owner, Quiggly, would only appear if you pounded on the bell at the counter; he was always tinkering away behind a display or buried out back restoring old furniture. He peered blindly through thick scratched glasses, a reek of turpentine and lacquer following him. Even the other customers were gone, no matter how many you had seen enter the store before you. It was as though each had disappeared into their own chosen era.
An old phonograph played scratchy music, voices crooning from decades ago yet lingering in the next room. Mixed in with the music were barely audible sounds of silverware on fine china, highball glasses tinkling with ice cubes, the undistinguishable din of laughter at a dinner party. In other booths you thought you heard the banter of baseball players, “batter batter batter swinga,” and the smack of a baseball into the worn leather pocket of an old glove. The vintage beaded dresses still looked as vibrant as though a flapper had just slipped out of it. Circus clown wigs and juggling pins, farm animal harnesses and bridles, Singer sewing machines and spinning looms, army knives and soldiers helmets.
The store held items from every family in town, and you weren’t truly considered a citizen until you had a part of your past holed up inside. Even though we were all afraid of Quiggly’s, we were drawn there nonetheless. We were searching for something we’d lost, something we wanted to understand, and each of us found our answers, in our own way. We felt at home among the items of the homes we’d lost.
Everyone finds something different. For some, bitterness and pain. For others, the pleading for forgiveness from their grandmother’s whicker wheelchair. For me it was always a reunion; from the ivory soap dishes came the smell of grandmother’s hands washed with Dove soap, the porcelain salt and pepper shakers shaped like hobos, the little black music box which played “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”. Uncle Bruce’s fishing gear leaned in the corner with my favorite lures that drew the lunkers out of the deep.
You had overstayed your welcome when the air grew chill and the glowing lights faded. It’s time to go, they seemed to say. Unseen hands ushered you towards the door and outside, where you are blinded by the sun, where it seems hardly any time has passed at all.
A string of bells jingled when you came through the door. Just inside stood a tall wooden Indian, fingers curled as though clutching a fistful of cigars that had been smoked long ago, but when you walked past him you smelled tobacco.
You are always alone in Quiggly’s Antique Emporium. The owner, Quiggly, would only appear if you pounded on the bell at the counter; he was always tinkering away behind a display or buried out back restoring old furniture. He peered blindly through thick scratched glasses, a reek of turpentine and lacquer following him. Even the other customers were gone, no matter how many you had seen enter the store before you. It was as though each had disappeared into their own chosen era.
An old phonograph played scratchy music, voices crooning from decades ago yet lingering in the next room. Mixed in with the music were barely audible sounds of silverware on fine china, highball glasses tinkling with ice cubes, the undistinguishable din of laughter at a dinner party. In other booths you thought you heard the banter of baseball players, “batter batter batter swinga,” and the smack of a baseball into the worn leather pocket of an old glove. The vintage beaded dresses still looked as vibrant as though a flapper had just slipped out of it. Circus clown wigs and juggling pins, farm animal harnesses and bridles, Singer sewing machines and spinning looms, army knives and soldiers helmets.
The store held items from every family in town, and you weren’t truly considered a citizen until you had a part of your past holed up inside. Even though we were all afraid of Quiggly’s, we were drawn there nonetheless. We were searching for something we’d lost, something we wanted to understand, and each of us found our answers, in our own way. We felt at home among the items of the homes we’d lost.
Everyone finds something different. For some, bitterness and pain. For others, the pleading for forgiveness from their grandmother’s whicker wheelchair. For me it was always a reunion; from the ivory soap dishes came the smell of grandmother’s hands washed with Dove soap, the porcelain salt and pepper shakers shaped like hobos, the little black music box which played “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”. Uncle Bruce’s fishing gear leaned in the corner with my favorite lures that drew the lunkers out of the deep.
You had overstayed your welcome when the air grew chill and the glowing lights faded. It’s time to go, they seemed to say. Unseen hands ushered you towards the door and outside, where you are blinded by the sun, where it seems hardly any time has passed at all.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Invisible Photographer
I’ve taken the day off because of a cold. Like the groundhog coming out of his hole, I sensed spring was here and emerged from the skyways to walk home outside. Now I have a sore throat. I’m sitting in the window at Dunn Bros Coffee, a 20oz mug of green tea warm in my hands. I brought “Tender is the Night” with me, but the book sits unread. Instead I watch in a daze out the window at the masses of people walking past, gliding by on roller blades and skateboards, or sitting at sidewalk tables. Maybe it’s the cold, but I feel this sense of peace and of seeing things differently, more precisely, less for-granted.
Several bike couriers sit around a sidewalk table, reclined low in their chairs. What a unique fashion style bike couriers have; all tall and thin, wearing baggy dirty jeans rolled up high, exposing little sticks of ankles, dark socks, and shoes with hardly a sole. Their hair is wild, swept off their foreheads, frozen in place from the wind on their bikes. Several wear those tiny bicycle caps with the visor dipped low over their eyes while riding, turned backwards and visor tipped up while they recline.
Two young women take a table just outside my window. You can always tell who are inseperable friends because they begin to look like each other. Same cute, short haircuts with little ribbons tied to locks of hair near the nape of the neck. One of them wears a charcoal gray skirt, a brown top, and these hideous orange suede boots with long pointy toes and floppy tops that gather around her ankles. Everyone stares. But she wears them proudly, a kind of fuck-you to all us clones. Her friend wears these giant bug-like sunglasses like a movie star. I wonder how big sunglasses will get before they begin to shrink again. The two women often look towards my window to inspect their own reflections.
There’s the older man with his wife, probably in his fifties; tall, in good shape. His face looks like an old baseball, his dominant feature a giant cleft chin, the crease in the middle so pronounced that it looks like butt cheeks, but it gives him a noble air.
The guy sitting next to me, tapping away on his laptop, pauses and watches me out of the corner of his eye. He notices I just stare out the window. I don’t care. I consider pointing out to him the bicycle couriers, the man with the cleft shin. They both look so regale out there, they would make excellent photographs. If I had the guts I would tell him, “I wish I could take their pictures without them knowing it, an invisible photographer, because as soon as they know their picture is being taken, they become self-conscious and the image is ruined.”
“But the camera isn’t your artitistic tool,” he would respond. “You’re a writer. You capture them with words, and in that sense, you are an invisible photographer.”
I think he’s right, but I I don’t have my journal with me. I see a Garfield pencil someone left on the counter after doing the crossword puzzle. On the back flap of “Tender is the Night”, I write:
-- Cleft Chin
-- Big Sunglasses
-- Invisible Photographer
-- Two Friends
Several bike couriers sit around a sidewalk table, reclined low in their chairs. What a unique fashion style bike couriers have; all tall and thin, wearing baggy dirty jeans rolled up high, exposing little sticks of ankles, dark socks, and shoes with hardly a sole. Their hair is wild, swept off their foreheads, frozen in place from the wind on their bikes. Several wear those tiny bicycle caps with the visor dipped low over their eyes while riding, turned backwards and visor tipped up while they recline.
Two young women take a table just outside my window. You can always tell who are inseperable friends because they begin to look like each other. Same cute, short haircuts with little ribbons tied to locks of hair near the nape of the neck. One of them wears a charcoal gray skirt, a brown top, and these hideous orange suede boots with long pointy toes and floppy tops that gather around her ankles. Everyone stares. But she wears them proudly, a kind of fuck-you to all us clones. Her friend wears these giant bug-like sunglasses like a movie star. I wonder how big sunglasses will get before they begin to shrink again. The two women often look towards my window to inspect their own reflections.
There’s the older man with his wife, probably in his fifties; tall, in good shape. His face looks like an old baseball, his dominant feature a giant cleft chin, the crease in the middle so pronounced that it looks like butt cheeks, but it gives him a noble air.
The guy sitting next to me, tapping away on his laptop, pauses and watches me out of the corner of his eye. He notices I just stare out the window. I don’t care. I consider pointing out to him the bicycle couriers, the man with the cleft shin. They both look so regale out there, they would make excellent photographs. If I had the guts I would tell him, “I wish I could take their pictures without them knowing it, an invisible photographer, because as soon as they know their picture is being taken, they become self-conscious and the image is ruined.”
“But the camera isn’t your artitistic tool,” he would respond. “You’re a writer. You capture them with words, and in that sense, you are an invisible photographer.”
I think he’s right, but I I don’t have my journal with me. I see a Garfield pencil someone left on the counter after doing the crossword puzzle. On the back flap of “Tender is the Night”, I write:
-- Cleft Chin
-- Big Sunglasses
-- Invisible Photographer
-- Two Friends
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Mexican Girl of the Sea
A young girl splashes out of the sea, shiny brown and tiny. Up onto the stones she strides with her sandals held in one hand, dress in the other. She smiles little white pearls at me. From the rocks her father throws a fishing line out into the receding water, yells something back to her. She obediently hurries down the beach.
The father catches a fish, a large Dorado that breaks free before he lands it. I jump into the water to help him drag it to shore. He can’t speak English and I can’t speak Spanish but we manage to communicate that he is inviting me to his home, where he guts and then cooks the fish on an open fire in his courtyard of dust and rusted appliances. The little girl smiles at me, brings each of her toys to me one by one. The whole family sits around me, his wife, a grandmother, a cousin, and a son. We speak in gestures; only the fourteen year old boy knows English but he rarely offers a translation. The fish flakes white on the fork, cooked with butter, lime, Cayenne pepper, with some salsa on the side; chopped tomatoes and onions and papaya and avocado. After dinner I follow the son to a corner liquor store, where I bring back Dos Equis and we drink around the coals of the fire that cooked the Dorado. Before sunset I say my thank you’s and catch a cab back to the hotel.
The father catches a fish, a large Dorado that breaks free before he lands it. I jump into the water to help him drag it to shore. He can’t speak English and I can’t speak Spanish but we manage to communicate that he is inviting me to his home, where he guts and then cooks the fish on an open fire in his courtyard of dust and rusted appliances. The little girl smiles at me, brings each of her toys to me one by one. The whole family sits around me, his wife, a grandmother, a cousin, and a son. We speak in gestures; only the fourteen year old boy knows English but he rarely offers a translation. The fish flakes white on the fork, cooked with butter, lime, Cayenne pepper, with some salsa on the side; chopped tomatoes and onions and papaya and avocado. After dinner I follow the son to a corner liquor store, where I bring back Dos Equis and we drink around the coals of the fire that cooked the Dorado. Before sunset I say my thank you’s and catch a cab back to the hotel.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Lie #3: The Last Lie
On my last day in Puerto Vallarta, I made up my last tall-tale as to why I was in Mexico. It was to an older couple traveling in their retirement years. I was eating breakfast at the table next to them. “I sell prosthetic limbs for pets. We figured Peurto Vallarta might be a good region due to the wealthy tourists. Mostly just legs for cats and dogs that have lost a limb from surgery or getting hit by a car. Once we created a tail for a cat that had lost hers in a car door. Yeah, it’s amazing what people will spend on their pets, but they’ve become like a member of the family. Have we ever sold one to anything other than a cat or dog? Let me think…oh yeah, in Boston there was a parrot owner that had a seafood restaurant. Kept the parrott right there in the restaurant. It lost a leg when it had been attacked by a cat, and he wanted us to attach a wooden peg leg, like a pirate. We refused, though. Too unethical. We’re not here to create carnival attractions. We’re just trying to make pets feel whole again.”
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Lie #2: Identity Chip
Lie #2, invented as an answer for other vacationers in Puerto Vallarta curious about why I’m traveling alone: “Actually, I’m working for Lu___t Technology in a think tank about twenty miles between here and Guadalajara. I’m in the R&D department, and we’re working on a cutting edge new technology, but it’s highly classified, I shouldn’t be talking about it.”
They buy me my first drink.
“Well actually the classified part is more on how the technology works and the materials we use, rather than the concept. We’re working on an Identity Chip, which is a tiny chip placed under the skin on your wrist. This is prototype 4A…” I show them a tiny gray rectangle viewable just beneath the skin on my wrist, actually the lead tip from a #2 pencil stuck in me since the 5th grade. “It can store your driver’s license, your credit cards. So when you’re in a store, you just scan your wrist and your items are paid for. No signatures, no losing your card…Yeah, you’re absolutely right. The fear of having your personal information stolen or forged is our biggest hurdle with this product. That’s really where the majority of research is being done right now: how to secure your information, and control who gets what information. But that’s also the details I can’t talk about.”
They buy me my second drink.
“The chip interacts with your body’s unique chemical make-up, so if it detects a foreign chemical makeup, the chip is disabled. And it’s that biological link that interests me. We’re working on having it tell you when you have a fever, when your body is fighting a virus, possibly even test your cholesterol. It will store your complete medical and dental record. Another concept that’s generating a lot of interest is similar to Bluetooth. You can set up your own profile in your identity chip, with your interests, where you’re from, if you’re single and looking, even your picture, so when you walk into a bar with a receiver, it will tell you who else is in the bar, ‘Oh look, someone else here is from Minnesota, or there’s a Packer fan, let’s buy him some Cheese curds, or there’s a single woman who’s favorite movie is “The Cable Guy” just like me. When do we think this product is going to hit the market? I can’t talk about that.’
They buy me my third and last drink.
“We’re in a race with our sister think tanks in Paris and Sunnyvale California, all working on different aspects of the Identity Chip. The codename for our think tank is ‘Tortilla Chips’. The one in Paris is ‘French Fry’ (they don’t have chips there), and the one in California is ‘Highway Patrol’. I know, it kind of evolved into that. It started out as CHiPs, like the TV show with the motorcycles. Then we just called them ‘Motorcycle Boys’ because all the guys rode motorcycles to work to be like Pancho. Then a woman joined their team, so it was ‘Motorcycle Boys and a Girl’. Then another woman joined and it just became ‘Highway Patrol’.
“Well I better head on out. It’s been fun. Please don’t share this information with anyone.” They take one more look at the piece of lead in my wrist. “Yeah, technology just keeps getting smaller and smaller. Thanks for the drinks. Please please keep this information to yourselves, and Buenos Noches.”
They buy me my first drink.
“Well actually the classified part is more on how the technology works and the materials we use, rather than the concept. We’re working on an Identity Chip, which is a tiny chip placed under the skin on your wrist. This is prototype 4A…” I show them a tiny gray rectangle viewable just beneath the skin on my wrist, actually the lead tip from a #2 pencil stuck in me since the 5th grade. “It can store your driver’s license, your credit cards. So when you’re in a store, you just scan your wrist and your items are paid for. No signatures, no losing your card…Yeah, you’re absolutely right. The fear of having your personal information stolen or forged is our biggest hurdle with this product. That’s really where the majority of research is being done right now: how to secure your information, and control who gets what information. But that’s also the details I can’t talk about.”
They buy me my second drink.
“The chip interacts with your body’s unique chemical make-up, so if it detects a foreign chemical makeup, the chip is disabled. And it’s that biological link that interests me. We’re working on having it tell you when you have a fever, when your body is fighting a virus, possibly even test your cholesterol. It will store your complete medical and dental record. Another concept that’s generating a lot of interest is similar to Bluetooth. You can set up your own profile in your identity chip, with your interests, where you’re from, if you’re single and looking, even your picture, so when you walk into a bar with a receiver, it will tell you who else is in the bar, ‘Oh look, someone else here is from Minnesota, or there’s a Packer fan, let’s buy him some Cheese curds, or there’s a single woman who’s favorite movie is “The Cable Guy” just like me. When do we think this product is going to hit the market? I can’t talk about that.’
They buy me my third and last drink.
“We’re in a race with our sister think tanks in Paris and Sunnyvale California, all working on different aspects of the Identity Chip. The codename for our think tank is ‘Tortilla Chips’. The one in Paris is ‘French Fry’ (they don’t have chips there), and the one in California is ‘Highway Patrol’. I know, it kind of evolved into that. It started out as CHiPs, like the TV show with the motorcycles. Then we just called them ‘Motorcycle Boys’ because all the guys rode motorcycles to work to be like Pancho. Then a woman joined their team, so it was ‘Motorcycle Boys and a Girl’. Then another woman joined and it just became ‘Highway Patrol’.
“Well I better head on out. It’s been fun. Please don’t share this information with anyone.” They take one more look at the piece of lead in my wrist. “Yeah, technology just keeps getting smaller and smaller. Thanks for the drinks. Please please keep this information to yourselves, and Buenos Noches.”
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Lie #1: Wife Kidnaps Iguana
First night in the hotel restaurant in Puerto Vallarta, I take a table by myself. As eyes stray over to my table, I begin to invent my persona. Or maybe, at this point it is more of an erasure of who I have been and who I invent myself to be. I’m now prepared for the next time someone asks me, “So what brings you down to Mexico all by yourself?” Sure enough, within minutes I have my first bite.
“I’m here looking for my wife. She emptied out our bank accounts and ran off with her yoga instructure. He’s originally from Puerto Vallarta. A credit card transaction showed they’d been down here.”
“That’s terrible,” the woman from Arizona says, her face a mask of concern and sympathy. “How are you ever going to find her?”
“I’m not sure, I’ve left flyers at several clubs and yoga studios. My biggest concern is for Lui.”
A sharp intake of breath from the woman, “Your son?”
“No, my pet iguana. I’ve had him for fifteen years.” Choking up, “I mean, she can have the money, that doesn’t matter…but what can she want with my iguana?”
Her husband offers tentatively, “Well, Puerto Vallarta is a natural habitat for iguanas.” I heard a bump under the table and he pursed his lips.
The woman behind the lobby counter was waving towards me. I rose from my chair and lay the napkin on my seat. “Exuse me, just a moment.”
I crossed to the lobby desk where the hotel employee greeted me. “Ola, Senior Wood. Your housekeeper has changed your bed linen. I am so sorry it smelled of smoke. It is a nonsmoking room.”
“Thank you so much.” Feeling the Arizona couple watching me, I reach across the counter and shook her hand vigorously. “Thank you! Gracias! Gracias! Please have a crème brule sent to my room.”
I strode back to my table, the Arizona couple’s expectant faces turned to me. While scrawling my room number on my bill, I said, “They’ve spotted her. They spotted her down at the Happy Frog! I’ve got to go…” As I marched off I heard from behind me the plaintive voice of the woman from Arizona, “Good Luck!”
I walked quickly through the lobby, down the steps to the taxi turnaround, said “Buenos Noches” to the doormen, then slowed my pace as I rounded to the side stairwell, climbed to my fourth floor room, and watched a Mexican soccer match on the television while I used a spoon to tap through the melted sugar crust of my crème brule.
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