Tuesday, August 28, 2007

The chlorinated atmosphere of the swimming pool was suddenly suffused with the aroma of fresh angel's food cake. Sweet, warm and yellow as the sun. A man who resembled Ben Kingsley and was stretching by the locker room door spoke.

"That smells delicious."

From my labors in the wet I raised my head. He was addressing the lifeguard, a young light-skinned black guy, kind of husky and hunched over a cardboard box at his table. I thought I perceived a golden crumb or two upon his chin but maybe, who knows.

He laughed, and said something. And then his countenance turned neutral once again, like a light turned off, and he bent his head to continue eating cake.

Monday, August 27, 2007

The warmth and faint viscosity of late-summer lakewater.

The dry pine needles and hot, hot gravel underfoot.

A ride in the car, to town, to buy some beer and corn.

The raft, or what do you call it, the float. The cold and probably murky water underneath, forbidding, like the space below the bed, you were a kid.

The profusion of tin foil. Enfolding unappealing charred and gray leftovers off the grill.

The sunset and later, stars.

Thin plywood walls to keep separate the cabin's drowsy inhabitants from the mosquitos and the dew.

The loons with their nearly human cry.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Precipitously it became Friday and I tried to reconstruct the week.

Tuesday night I went downtown.

John and I were going to see Badly Drawn Boy at some tent or something at the South Street Seaport so we got in a cab and disembarked on those cobblestoned and narrow streets, narrowed further by the burrowing ConEd crews and scaffolds; that other city down there.

There's a mall down there you go into, a cheap one. A perfunctory place. Beyond terraced tourist traps along the boardwalk. And empty, like no one ever goes there, or maybe it was just too late, but what's the difference. The true Mall of America.

We walked through, lost. Zoltar the Seer stood frozen in his booth beside a grove of hardy atrium plants.

He looked like my older brother's ceramic Ringo Starr piggy bank from way back then.

Just then an older black man leaned over the balcony on the floor above. The tent is that way, he said.

The show was very good and their lead singer seemed a little crazy.

A strange and sparse crowd, in this peculiar, circular, circus tent, a bar and tables around its perimeter. One guy, straighter than you could believe, a suit and tie, shave and a haircut, two bits. He had a woman with him, tonguing his ear. Or was it a woman? Clutching his neck. Was it a man? She pawed his tailored-pantsed ass. A monster? Replicant? She'd lift her nyloned leg and hug his trunk a little in her knee.

Was she a building? Or a tree?

A motorcycle.

There was in fact some babbly debate about her. What she was. Some had it that she was a whore. And the debate reverberated until it seemed one person, one guy.

John wanted to kick some guy's ass.

He said something to the effect and I nodded and smiled noncommittally and sucked a piece of ice from the bottom of my whiskey.

We left before the second encore.

Monday, August 13, 2007

What's really in the Dibs ice cream bonbons container that the bag-burdened woman sitting beside me on the train was holding and then placed on the seat between us?

Probably a live scarab.

A woman across from me has a big, black leather bag and tall leather boots and she reminds me of PC's friend Sean, an animal rights vegetarian in a void, wearing pleather shoes and quietly forgoing the boiled and fried meats that we'd routinely jam into our drunken maws before the crépuscule. He'd have lots of plain pizza I guess, so lived no more healthily than us.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

I heard the crack of the impact of heavy raindrops on the air conditioning unit outside the window early this morning and as usual I had a hard time believing it was rain. I remember thinking through my half-sleep, That can't be the rain. But then there was a flash of lightning that shone through the blinds and a mighty boom and so I knew it was.

In the morning getting up, as usual. Sara had left already and called to say the trains weren't running. When I went out the world was sunny, hot, and the air was thick, and swarms of people drifted lazily into each others' way like bees drunk on nectar. I walked two blocks east and then back again to take a cab to work.

I noticed a corner of Madison Square Garden is named after Joe Louis and I wondered how I'd never noticed it before. There was his name white on blue.

You could forget about the bus.

A barker was giving away free papers. Two cops walked by smiling. New York cops seem to like it when things are just a bit fucked up.