alligators in Yamoussoukro

I remember this one summer, way back…. This was in the very beginning, maybe in the late eighties. Every summer we lived in Abidjan we went to the beach for three weeks with the whole mission—the Ames and the Danylaks. We’d drive to a town down the coast, San-Pedro, and stay in the Guest House. In the beginning there wasn’t a coastal highway so we had to drive four hours north-west and then four hours south-west. And right about the half way point we would stop at this creepy resort in the middle of nowhere, desolate and probably haunted. We would buy lunch here—icy cokes and grilled meat and steaming salty fries—and sit out on the patio, a deck three stories up above sprawling grassy lawns surrounded on all sides by dark and close, towering, vine-y jungle. The kind that is nearly as dark in full sunlight as it is at night; the kind that makes you feel like you have to protect your front because somehow and with relentless persistence it tries to grab you by the wrist or around your middle and drag-suck you into its monstrous mouth of oblivion and unknown horror, its heart of darkness, where you’d be all alone forever.

The cracked marble and grimy halls of the hotel between the main lobby and the patio were lined with glass cages. Most of them were vacant of animal life although they carried signs, shadows and echoes and trampled earth floors, of what might have once lived under the planted rocks, on the trees and logs, and around other carefully placed props. In our imaginations these empty glass cells were frequented by the smells and hoots and howls and faces of Africa’s wildest wild—a monkey with one-hand swinging on a vine, the other grabbing an armpit, hooting and staring at us, daring us; a big cat lounging half under the fat log chunk with about a hundred rings I’d have said, yawning and ignoring everything especially us, feeling only the sun streaming in dusty streaks down from the sunroof above onto its pallid yellow once golden mane. There was one cage, however, that still had life in it. As you entered the narrow passage leading to the open restaurant and patio, on the right, a glass wall looked down four feet onto three huge alligators, almost invisible in their apathy, lying under logs near a dirty green scum fake lagoon.

After lunch, after eleven sets of little legs run wild, explore and breathe, and six sets of adult legs lounge, stretch in the open air free of the enclosed child noises that large full cars on long rides magnify to the nearly unbearable, we all pile back into our caravan of three once white old station wagons and off we go, anticipation brimming at its boiling point until post-lunch slumber silently picks us off one by one. Once again, mom and dad in the front seat get to quietly and with secret relish pull out the book they’d been reading together and let their imaginations unfurl on the open road before and around them; the story, passing as the countryside beyond the car windows, enhanced inside by the drone cruise zone warm sleeping bodies and a humming car create together.

I remember I always wanted to ride in the car with mom and dad, no matter who else was there with me. I didn’t care if my friends or sisters rode in another car, I only wanted to be in our 7-seater Peugeot 504. The front two seats were normal, the middle seats were three individual chairs like maybe miniature van chairs with lap belts, and the back seat was a bench where two of us would sit, we could stretch a little more and usually we didn’t wear seat belts if we could get away without my dad noticing. I liked this car the best because mom always packed snacks. Not just a bag of popcorn or something, but a huge bag of popcorn heavily salted to perfection, MnMs if we happened to have any on hand from a package some church or other sent us, apples and oranges, ham and mayo and mustard French bread sandwiches (my favorite), a glass bottle of African-salted peanuts, bags of onion-fried banana chips we got from the Doumbouyas (no one else’s compared), water, kool-aid (yick), and any other treat my mom could fit into her plastic shopping basket she always packed for long road trips. But it wasn’t only the food either. My mom loved to read to us out loud. We were usually halfway through some book we had been reading at home out loud together and so if I opted to ride in another car I’d miss some of the story. And then there was the simple mom and dad part. I liked to be with them on the road more than anyone else. I guess all parents get antsy, anxious, impatient and I didn’t like dealing with the trips and histories and baggage of other families, even if they were like second families. Plus, mom and dad knew me and they were warm and home.

I think in all the years we drove out to San-Pedro, whether the trip took us eight hours or four after they built the coastal highway, there was only one year we did not have a flat tire and/or break down on the way there. Somehow I have no memory of the way home, but the trip there always seemed endless and the inevitable flat tire eventually over the years made me feel unbalanced feelings of rage, as though I were the brunt of someone’s cruel conspiracy. So, about an hour out of San-Pedro, usually, the car would start to click and hiss and wobble and that was the telltale sign that my dad’d better pull over fast. We’d all pile out of the car and hover along the side of the pot-holed road cutting a gash through the plantations farther out, the red-dirt jungle closer in to San-Pedro. Luckily my dad usually led the caravans and so the Ames and Danylaks would pop into view behind us on the winding remote road, slow to a crawl, then stop a car length or two back. And their cars would all dump their contents onto the pavement also. All the kids would reconnect, tell whatever stories there might be to tell during the two-three hours of separation, or run in circles or punch or pinch each other or whine at the general trees and sky. Once, even, we had a temporary teacher, young and naïve and crazy fun Stephanie, with us and she and the kids all took off on this path through the jungle. It went straight up and in, red dirt packed under a layer of dust, roots and rocks making the climb feel more treacherous, the adventure more serious. The farther we got from the cars, the more afraid I felt. Of jungle demons, I think. And then we heard a buzzing. We all stopped to listen, strewn along the trail with our ears pricked upward. The buzz grew louder and louder till I started to stutter about the killer bees from Africa I’d heard of and maybe we stumbled on one of their domains and god knows what the others thought. Finally, as the buzzing reached a height that made my knees start to knock, through the folliage very close to us and slightly to the right we saw the whitish square box of a semi-truck lumber by. How disappointing…that we weren’t deep in the wild jungle and that the bees were just a truck.

To be continued…

I have a question, please

This is serious. How come, after the fact, I feel so strange...almost a feeling of pity for a customer who came through the gallery with his wife and informed me that this painting, called "Peaceful Moments," was his favorite in the gallery. I think of this painting as a little girl painting, lisa frank-ish. But why would I feel that way about this man after the fact? Who cares what one person likes and another doesn't. Why does it feel confused with pity... I don't even remember what he or his wife look like anymore for pete's sake. I stood in front of the painting and studied it trying to answer my question but I came up with nothing.

Tant pis.

I had a dream

This morning and I won't go into too much detail because most of the dream has already slipped away anyway. But in the span of 2 hours, I gave birth to a baby boy (even felt my overlarge breasts--hurray!--all crispy and sore and sagging with milk), planned and almost got married to Bojan (the dream switched scenes before we could complete the deed but it was the day of and I had been battling cold feet for days), and finally I was mauled to death by rabid white wolves as I dodged a helicopter set to kill me and 7 other south american boys while we were training to become soldiers (three boys jumped into a gazebo which was blown up my missiles dropped from the helicopter, three boys tried to hide in tall grass on a hillside and were killed by the helicopter picking up the already dead seventh boy [chubby redhead] and dropping him on them and then shooting them all; i made it to a small forest and as I dove inside, a large rabid white wolf who was in the process of killing a rhino in a stream with his partner turned on me. I held him off for a while, had him by the jaw, pulling top and bottom apart as hard as I could, but his partner saw and turned on me and that's when I woke up.)

It was quite intense, the whole experience.

welcome 2008

It's 11:33 a.m. right now. I got to work about 30 minutes ago (was supposed to get here 2 hours and 30 minutes ago). Happy New Year. opa. We didn't get home till 5 am. I haven't partied that hard in years. Had a great time. I think. heh. I'm guessing my phone alarm (I use everyday to wake me up) probably went off this morning, I just didn't hear it. Eh, what can you do...

On the whole and considering, I don't feel too bad. I might still be drunk though. I enjoyed dancing. It has been a while since I danced hard. Not since my sister visited me, and before that, I couldn't tell you.

So, I'm no good for nothing now. But welcome 2008. Bless those I know and love (me too).

One last jump and jive in the old year

happy new year kids. tomorrow will hail in my 10 year high school anniversary year. crazy crazy. where will you be ten years from now? i probably thought married with kids doing some service style work somewhere in a third world country. ha. well, I tell you what. I'm going to be drinking a little plum brandy tonight with my luver and some kind-of friends. Ok, fine, friends I'm disappointed in/angry at (they hurt my pride, come on...). Don't know if I'll get drunk or not. Don't care. Am not really expecting nothing.

Review of 2007: January started off with an attack of disgusting facial skin disease...at home in bed with my Boj to welcome in the year. February my face skin only got worse and I put myself through a difficult physical regimen (which included intense strict diet, enemas, salt baths and sauna, veggy juice and water fasts, daily exertion, and liver and colon flushes) to try to rid my body of this mthfckg disease. March I gave up on the diet after my first liver flush nearly pushed me off the deepend and my face started to calm down. April my Boj and I moved into our own apartment (we'd been sharing with another married couple for almost 2 years) and I began looking more seriously for employment as my face was no longer so shameful (even started receiving comments from my grocer and tobacco seller that my face had improved and random strangers stopped suggesting that I try pro-active). May started editing. Weee. Thought I might go freelance. And I think that's when I started blogging with my blog friends too... June took a job, a real job after 7 months unemployed and forgot sometimes that I had a face problem and also vowed to quit smoking on my birthday. July, Boj's mother and my brother visited. August, quit smoking. September my sister visited and Bojan and I attended our first horse races in San Diego (Del Mar). October nothing happened. November Boj's friends visited and we went home to ATL for thanksgiving. I also stopped in Chicago and saw wyd for a few beautiful days. December is now; spent most of the month alone and it was good and now I'm back with my Boj (and I don't feel so much fear about cockroaches in my house anymore) and that's it.

Hm.

So anyway. Happy tonight and tomorrow. Enjoy.

Waikiki Wanderings, Christmas Season 2007

12/22/07 Saturday

Back to work tomorrow. At my fave Starbucks these days. The one I try not to frequent too frequently so I don’t outstay my welcome, which, seems to me, has happened at nearly every other coffee shop I’ve frequented.
* * *
That’s the second time now, I’ve been sitting at this window and a petite little old white-haired lady walked by with her fluffer nugget feathery white pup on a leash. Each time she passes, she studies the flower beds along the base of the window like a mad scientist studies his bubbling beakers. The first time by, a few days ago, she took a dead leaf from below one of the flowers. This time she just glared at the beds with the glare of pride of ownership.
* * *
There’s a crazy woman sitting at the table next to mine. I’ve got St. Germain pounding in my ears so I can’t hear what it is she comments on but periodically she lifts her head and shouts things to the baristas. The girl sitting on the other side of her never flinches; can it be that she doesn't notice? The crazy woman is taking pills out of her bag now. She’s got one of those mini sample cups in front of her with stains of neon pink lipstick on its rim which also happens to be smeared at the edges of her lipless mouth where only two very large teeth protrude and retract with a will of their own on the left side of her lower jaw like puppets. She’s got short blond, greasy hair, boy cut, obviously combed frequently. Grey-blond. She hasn’t stopped shuffling through her three bags since I’ve been watching her. She has no clue that I’m staring at her even though we're facing each other. Her raisin-like skin hangs off the corners of her body in mini folds even though she’s tiny. Her face is creased and crossed by hundreds of thin deep wrinkles. She was beautiful once, I think, or at least cute. She just pulled a small neon green noise-maker out of her bag. She’s now focused on it, shaking it intently back and forth. Clap clap clap clap…

She just took out her comb—Ah hah!—and combed one strand of hair on the back of her head and then put it away again. I wonder if she has a shadow self, like Jennifer Egan talks about in Look at Me. If she did, would her shadow be sane? I can hear her now through my music. Beatles' Yellow Submarine is playing over Starbucks’ radio, she’s singing along loudly only she’s singing a completely different Beatles' song.

She doesn’t have any nasty facial expressions. Her face is in constant motion as she talks silently to herself, I imagine, but the only expressions that surface are confusion, oblivion, worry—narcissism, that’s it! Oblivious and un-malicious and aware of the existence of absolutely no one else.
* * *
You know, if I didn’t have the buffer a boyfriend provides—you know on the general public scene—I’d probably be classified as weird: shy always—almost, sitting up very very straight at all times, alone often, always walking fast usually with my eyes cast downward and often conscious of my shaking cheeks (something I've always been embarrassed about) which then causes me to try to suck in my cheeks, dressed up more than the occasion usually, and that, these days, matching.

I don’t feel like I need people for the most part—apart from the ones I already “have”. But then also I feel I have a long way to go before I understand myself well enough to make a sweeping comment like that one which carries so much consequence.
* * *
The longer I keep my gaze fixed behind me, over my left shoulder, the more I understand about my post-high school post-Abidjan decisions. At some point during the first year or two of college, I took a knife and sliced right through the vein that attached all conscious memories before college to my brain. I then promptly forgot that I’d done this. So as the wound scabbed over and then developed a bulbous scar, I cried for my loss and wondered who I might blame for my lost childhood and why they would do such a horrible thing to me.

To fit in in a new country and new subcultures, to move on, to grow up, to find myself (the irony); I disjoined my past from my present and my future. Traded in my memories for a new outfit and a little make-up…a mail order brand-shiny-new Anna. I was ashamed, I think, at so many levels of who I was, what I’d done, and what I had represented that it was easier to throw it all out than to face it and own it


12/23/2007 Sunday

Bojan is in Atlanta now. It feels good. To have him closer. Two more days.

Full moon: 99% full. First of two nights of full moon. Just took a 3-mile walk, along Ala Wai Canal out to Ala Moana Boulevard, along the ocean to Kalakaua and all the way down it to Kapahulu, through hoards of people, then up toward the canal again and back down Kuhio Avenue till I reached my Towers Starbucks where I got a small double-shot latte. There’s been a moonbow around the moon for the last two hours.

“Peel all your layers off I want to each your artichoke heart. No more leaky holes in your brain and no more false starts.”

I have a belly ache from popcorn. If I sit up really straight, the gas in my belly depressurizes.

HEY! There’s that crazy lady from the other Starbucks. Across the street. There’s a bar, Tsunamis’, where they’re having some Sexy Santa’s Elves party with half a dozen half-naked girls and lotsa guys. There’s a crowd milling out front, smoking, staring, yelling, and there she is standing right in the middle of them, galloping in circles to the Bouncy Banjo music wafting out from inside. I mean all out as though she were fifteen and full of energy—wow—ope and there she’s off again. I guess that was that.
* * *
Japanese women, it seems, are skinnier after their second baby than most pre-pubescent white American girls. Sometimes I’ll pass a couple who, from far away, seem totally average (albeit Asian which should be a sign) and then, when I get up close, neither of them—the tops of their heads—reach over my shoulders. It isn’t rare, either, for some of the women to be shorter than my breastes (which don’t hang much because of their size). In Honolulu I have been a giant.
* * *
There’s a girl standing two doors down from Tsunami’s in front of XXXDVD store. She’s got lovely, long, luscious, and bared legs. She’s wearing 6-inch plastic clear heels, a black bra that can barely contain her enormous jugs (bulging out on all sides) and barely visible pink panties hiked up her A-hole. Oh, and a bodyguard in jeans in a black button-up long-sleeved shirt, buttoned all the way up. I wonder if she and he are porn stars. I think yes.

At my other video store, Diamond Head Video that is a 24-hour half normal (with an excellent selection of indy and foreign films), half-porn/sex-toys shop, they had a “Meet the Porn Star, Jennifer Juicy Lips, Night.”

She does have a good body, but she keeps shifty from foot to foot; makes her look, from here, like a toddler who has to pee. I think she’s just nervous.
Oh. That bodyguard man is wearing white slip-on loafers. He must be a porn star. Nailed him. Ha.
***
That's all. Merry Christmas everyone and a happy new year.

Mickey Mouse

How can you stay down for long in weather like this--a battle between the sun, brisk winds, highly flying rain clouds that spit on you a chill mist every other block, and everywhere else, poking his infinite nose into the pedestrian-filled sidewalks, the infinite blue expanse of sky. And on my table as I write, sun dancing shadows of leaves high above thrown across my notebook, scooting and jiving to St Germain pounding nervously in my ears. Everyone outside my window, windblown and sun-dappled.

A man just walked by me. I was looking past the world at nothing, enjoying the sensations and stimuli, thoughtless when slowly, in the way your mind processes almost slow-motino when you're not exactly in control, his image impressed itself onto me. He was an older Asian man, probably Japanese, maybe in his sixties with paranoid eyes and a down-cast upper body, like he was sneaking, trying to be inconspicuous. He had on eighties-style white-washed jeans. That's what caught my eye first, because right above the knee on each thigh were loud black and red Mickey Mouse heads, two on each leg. Sleepy-eyed and still not that interested, I half-watched him cross the street towards me. When he was about halfway across I realized that he had a t-shirt on with a HUGE Mickey face on it. I began to feel an interest popping...what else, man? Just as he was about to pass out of my sight, I saw that his overshirt, a button-up, was a black and white camouflage of Mickey faces. My last look of him as he passed my window and out of sight: he looked so serious, so intent on getting to where he was going without a misstep.