I know/I forget

I know when you smoke out the window. I know where you park your car. I know your phone number and I cannot forget it. I know you are laughing with other people. I know what you are drinking tonight and can suspect where you will go. I know what you look like in the morning, the matted parts of your hair, the red chest and fire skin. I know you are less than a thousand feet from me at most parts of the day. I know where there is hair on your body and where there is none. I know you wet, cold, hot and sweaty. I know you in the car, on the streets that were ours. I know you would love this rug but you are not at my side. I know your smell. I know your hug. I know your kiss.  I know you because I wrote about you. I know you because I am writing about you. I know you because I have loved you for so long. I know you I know you I know you I know you but I am forgetting. I am forgetting it all, quicker by the day. Why have you died? What took you and was it my own device? Forgetting, forgetting, the years are evaporating. Come back before these holes close, come back before the soreness fades. Come back because I will wake up. I will wake up one morning soon. Soon I will wake up one morning and find. And find, I will find, that you. You. I will find that you were never there. Never there. Never here. Here or there. Not anywhere.

Bike Ride

I wheel my bike from the back of the house twenty till nine. It creeks and clicks past sleeping bedrooms. I carry it down off the porch and mount after walking it over the crags in the sidewalk. Always the awkward initiation of feet meeting peddle...after a few cycles of peddling, I have momentum. The sidewalk, back entrance to Walgreen's. Is there a car exiting the in? The boy across the street sits on the stoop outside his house, waiting. I will see him again this afternoon when he knocks to be let in. The sewage cap, bump every morning. Nelson and Carrolton. No straggler on my path but the fire station. It's car washing day. The fire truck is pulled out in its front driveway, blocking my turn so I throw my life into oncoming Carrolton commuters late for work but wheel back onto the sidewalk, dip and rise over red ribbed concrete and blaze to a stop at Carrolton and Claiborne. Tik tik tik tik the traffic lights monitor the rhythm. A computer has already been telling us what to do for years. White light walking man, the red palm disappears. Hills in the street that give me a push, I cross the intersection, dodge around the city bus. Cleaner better transit, gluts and gluts of tourists in khakis with cameras wait to board but the driver, aloof, has not opened her doors. Dog and man woman and stroller. Green ribbons of park. I snap into the bike lane, white parallel lines. Cars whoosh past, my reflection runs backwards on rolled up windows. Construction crew, yelping mutt behind gate. A mannequin, a woman?, frozen still standing on a balcony. Tree cutters trimming the oak branches. Guess there is a new mayor. An acorn strikes my clavicle. Ouch, legs burning. This cruiser won't go any faster. Give me speed or give me, the streetcar tracks at Oak. I lift from the seat and am not thrown. Drinkers of coffee outside Rue, the restaurants are whispering with beginning, outside tables still padlocked. SUV pulling outside of bank, I stare stare stare don't! She stops. Do I need a helmet? Get the hell out of the bike lane you Pontiac. Oh and the second set of tracks I have to cross at the corner where the restaurant is always changing. They bounce me, jiggle the bike, rattling bones. Hold tight sweaty palms. Where is the cold? Muggy, sticky hair, lotion melting. I need to pick up toothpaste. No bike racks for my U lock at Walgreens. Chevron. The cycle shop. Will they make me buy something? I whip my hair back and forth so the sweat dries and cools my head. WillowPlumOak ZzzzzzzimP!le  Freret I turn back to see traffic, need to make a left turn. Too many I stop at Burthe, wait for swoosh. Swoosh swooosh swoosh it's clear and I cross, streetcar driver rings his bell, I slow, it charges to the riverbed that no driver knows how to use. Anything resembling a rotary just doesn't. Smooth smooth one way Burthe. No rattling shaking or holes, craters, tunnels to Inferno. forgot! My sandwich, sitting in the toaster oven. Just an apple! A car rides behind me, come on! There's room, don't be afraid, get going! Quiet Burthe, dads have left already, children are learning colors. Sweat on my back, glands gush. Workers at Broadway. A new frat house? Holes and cars and patchy street work. I dismount. Look both ways. Wait for a cessation, ccccrrraawws. Mount and turn onto Audobon, two way but no cars, I ride in center. Students come from all directions, weave between them, Freret. I sink down on the unlevel street on the right side. Another bus. More students, bikers pass I pass bikers. Crosswalk Freret sidewalk at Tulane.pastel shits, denim denim denim denim. Exits and entrances, do you see me? I see you. I wheel into Loyola 's back entrance, avoid the speed bumps and ride in between them. Feel fast passing slow walkers. Pedal pedal dip at the slope, children in playground screaming from the cage. Drip down into the library bike racks and scan for a spot. There, free! I stop, fumble with the key into the lock, and walk away.

Morton lecture

The weather is the quintessential neutral subject, a topic for strangers and filler for awkward silences in conversation. But as climate change becomes more and more apparent to the masses, can the notion of “funny weather we had last week” in the pedestrian sphere endure while the reality of global warming refutes accident? Perhaps, the now not so unbiased hyperobject of weather can prompt colloquial discussion of climate change through musings on weather. But there is a point at which, and it might not yet have been reached, when scientific evidence overwhelms human want for order, making it impossible to ignore the larger physical realities.

Other than this point, the lecture by Morton was complex because of its discussion of object-oriented ontology. I had trouble focusing because of the switching between abstract and physical and not really understanding the connections between the two realms. Students left the lecture throughout, one by one befuddled and irritated.

Walking to Frenchmen

The IHOP manager on Canal accosts Kyle and Amy, one of his visiting friends from Kentucky after they use the bathroom. They aren’t paying customers. I watch the altercation through the window, and after buying a water, I return outside and the two other Kentucky girls have found conversation with two obese middle-aged guys from out of town. I stand a few feet down, embarrassed by the whole group. The two walk out of IHOP with giant plastic to-go cups of Coke. Amy is wearing a red, short-sleeved sweater with a pocket. Kyle shoves his Coke in this pocket and Amy is already holding her own as well as a liter of soda from the dorm that someone forgot to mix with whisky. The travelers brought Old Crow and Southern Comfort and everyone learned in the common room that the later is from New Orleans. I call the group together and lead us down Bourbon. Who invited all of these people and why are they wearing Mardi Gras beads? Bright lights do attract the inebriated. I weave between people, get bumped, and turn back to see the revelers who echo the choruses of classic rock songs blaring from some daiquiri shop. After St. Ann where some consider the gay clubs, I charge on and the party fades behind us. We encounter a street band, and we pet their dogs. They don’t look too unhealthy and I wonder if the kids have a Daddy’s credit  card in case the charade gets old. But their song is sweet. He sits on a stoop, leans back on a blue shutter and plucks his banjo. We all join in, stomp the concrete, clap, riff on the vocals as background singers. The musician offers his hot and I drop a wrinkled dollar. Kyle gives him a few pinches of tobacco. They tell us their name and where they will soon play, but no one remembers. We are almost to Frenchmen Street, and the wind of the sudden cold front pushes us down the sidewalk.

Adaptation

a continuation/elaboration of sorts from the previous post...

Every time I take the stairs down into the Hauptbahnhof, the smell of waffles and crepes overwhelms the air. Now, it is a scent that I know, one unique in my experience to this specific place of my train station. When the H-Bahn (the "hanging railway") is closed on the weekends, my 20-minute walk from my dorm to the main campus is more readily visualized than any daily walk I used to take back home. And though it is not customary for cashiers at the discount grocery store in my neighborhood to bag one’s items and will yell at me if I taketoo long to bag, the store is nonetheless my grocery store now. I know where things are,and I recognize the face of the efficient but always greeting cashier. Already, I have breakfasted with a few German friends in an apartment kitchen on Lippestrasse. German breakfast is steaming broetchen warmed in the oven and the octopus of hands reaching, grabbing, sharing and lending jelly, butter, Nutella, cheese and sliced tomato. I listen to Lisa and Sarah’s German, and one will translate when the tenses overwhelm any familiar nouns. I struggle to describe yesterday so I keep to the present tense or eat more bread. After a month and a half studying abroad in Germany, I am struck by how a sense of home is capable of great elasticity, how something so different like a new country can become familiar. Adaptation is a magical thing because it just kind of happens like homeostasis.

Arrival

After an eight hour flight to Germany, sitting next to a man on whom I had accidentally sneezed; after taking a train I wasn't even sure was correct from the Düsseldorf airport to the Hauptbahnhof (main station) of the city in which I would be studying, I stood at track seven with my 50 pound suitcase and cumbersome backpack.

It was 35 degrees Fahrenheit and cloudy. Though it was noon in Dortmund, I had been displaced from my regular time zone so it might as well have been 6 a.m. since my traveling began the evening before in the U.S. As soon as my train arrived, I scrambled down through the crowds into the station to phone my university contact, using the change I got from breaking a 20 Euro bill with the purchase of Tic Tacs.

The track sign read that the S1 had been canceled, though at the time, I couldn't understand it or the man on the loudspeaker explaining. But then I met the angel of sorts that my mother promised I'd meet on the way, who informed me of the delay through his broken English. Someone threw themselves in front of the train, he told me.

My helper was also a student at the same school, so, once a back-up plan was announced for the S1, he led me through a route of buses and trains that I would never have been able to maneuver alone. After he showed me another pay phone at the university, he walked away and said, "Welcome to Germany."

Scene from Trinidad & Tobago, June 2009

A body of ash smolders and a few flames jerk as a big-bellied man with shaggy gray hair shovels the pile: a body was burned earlier today. Three pyres face the water at sunset, and the park will be closing soon. The man with a wizardry beard in worker’s pants shovels the ash around, tosses the funeral bouquets out into the river. Stray, emaciated dogs lay on the concrete framing where bodies are sent into the sky. Some tug at hardened stickiness that might be food or curl up as if they’ve found a hearth, but they all lope lazily after the tenderer when he leaves his work, his long shovel-rake like a staff. Nearby, a Hindu temple floats, an island in the water accessible by a pier. The structure with its two garlic clove towers failed many times, but the priest persisted. Flags of red, yellow or black triangles lilt around the temple’s perimeter and are fixed into the soggy earth at the shoreline. Behind the pyres lay a few white graves, black crosses perching like Ospreys, and through the trees, across the street, a mosque dome peeks. I would like to walk the stone pier, lined with bushes and shrubs, sit in the chapel while the evening sun gilds even the ash, but the blue gate is locked, and I notice the old worker looking over. 

A Hike

We are a hiking parade of three generations: Louise, my 26 year old sister and mother of two, lugs her two and a half year old son, Ben, in a strap-on backpack, and behind me, my 55 year old father carries the second grandchild, one and a half year old Caedmon, in a Velcro and buckle sling pouch. Dad and Louise wear stone-crushing hiking boots, and with thin canvas sneakers as my footwear, I am not so formidably equipped. Once again, I am the unsuspecting, unprepared victim of an outside adventure with my family, all experienced navigators of rough terrain. Visiting my sister and her family here in rural Arkansas, the Natural State's environment, the topography itself offers instant, intimate experiences with nature if only you drive to the base of any number of its mountains. After a two hour drive to Little Rock, and tending to Ben's scraped knee and Caed's dirty diaper from falling in mud, the five of us embark on the steepest hiking trail in Arkansas. I should have known what I was in for by the name: Pinnacle Mountain Summit Loop, a 2.6. mile trail with a rating of difficult. At the outset, the hike feels like a neighborhood stroll, but then our pace slows and thighs start to burn. The path begins smooth as moist soil but as we advance on the mountain's spine it hardens, offering no relief for the soles of our feet. My shoes have little traction so I grope whatever nearby branch or boulder to safely propel me forward. But carrying only water and hearty cereal bars in a backpack, I move lightly and move to lead the pack, leaving the baby-bearers to their more carefully required steps.

dad, girlfriend, mother

     Ever since a Hindu yoga class held in a park's gazebo awakened him to maintain good posture, he sits up straight in his chair, hands resting in his lap to hold the little glass. As I prop my feet up on the banister, he prompts me to do the same. We attend the class every Wednesday evening in our linen tunic and pants. There, he's a charming, quick-witted Southern man surrounded by middle-aged, Indian-Tiny ladies who giggle at this piece of work. His short spiked hair is almost entirely gray. Only his hazel glazed eyes signal the whiskey and the toll. His Hindu girlfriend, Cindy, aged halfway between my father and me, is sleeping inside. On Sunday afternoons, she manicures her nails, prepares my father's nasal wash or massages his feet. Cindy wakes up early on weekdays for work in Port of Spain an hour away; rarely does she make weeknight meals. "Boy, was your mother a good cook. All those meals…18 something years. Every day," my father muses. "She just said to heck with it at the end." For all the years that my mother and father were a monolithic force, it is strange to hear one talk about the other in retrospect. "Your mother," he says or "Your father," she says are titles of dissociation. Together they used to pray for me and my siblings in the mornings with their cups of 8 o’clock coffee. Now one calls me to ask if the other will be in town for Christmas. When you are raised by two, loved by two, who grow to be a union of one to the child, despite the rifts between them, how do you divide the cell of your parents to yield separate, equal halves without losing completely the architecture of home?

This Morning

Heidi Slimane

     This morning on Constance Street, in your camelback apartment, in your beige-carpeted room, on the air mattress whose holes you have finally patched, under the grandmother quilt, you lay on my stomach, rest upon me, and I don’t know if you are suffocating me or if I am supporting your weight. 

     Hidden from sight, I can barely hear your breathing. You warm me better than the sheets because your temperature hasn’t yet risen from sleep. I spit out phlegm in the half-empty beer can, and I meekly embrace you. Sliding your feet each on the other, as is your way at night and when you wake up, I can still see the boy in the revolutionist.  

     To know you, to love you is to look for you in everyone else. You outstrip the rules of no-you-can’t. Male and female he created them, but you have created something in between, but every morning you still must choose a face to show. You challenge what’s powerful, and you challenge me. Your hair is as long as a river. The discotheque and the library both house you. We have gamboled in the quarter on whiskey and trampled through history because you know what happened at the beginning. 

     This morning, I think you still might love me mightily, but there is always your future to love more. So many years of in-between, man-and-wife, and beer bachelors—whatever we are and are not—you are the companion of my life. I shake you to rouse you up and out into the city, to take us to the bakery. You groan; I pull and crack your bones, a hatchling blinking. It’s hard to kiss you in the sun.

Displaced

     If I was ever late for my curfew, my witch of an aunt (I was staying with her for the fall semester) could transfigure me into the hallow apple or pear in the kitchen’s fake fruit basket. It was my uncle who, after being asked by my aunt, assigned midnight as my curfew because that’s what it was for his friends’ children down the street. Back home my parents didn’t care much, as long as I popped my head in their bedroom when I arrived and whispered, “I’m home.” I was proud to be the one to give my uncle and aunt a foreshadowing of what their only child, twelve-year-old Griffin, would soon become: a teenager who would not always be slumbering when the hours grew small. But more likely I guessed, if I didn’t respect the curfew, Aunt Barbara would reprimand me in her subtle, icicle way, making me feel like the toy blue marble in the downstairs den, lodged in the corner between the floorboard and carpet. “Didn’t you go out last night, and two days before that?” she said once, her cardigan arms folded. In her sterile house on a hill, the rooms were usually pungent with all-purpose cleaner. After smelling the fumes of the maid’s Friday labor for many weeks, I finally caught sight of the maid, Dee, in the last days I was in Birmingham. She was pale and gap-toothed. Not even she descended the seventeen stairs to the bowels of the house to clean my square, white room in the basement where it was always cold.

Streetcar Ride

     In less than ten minutes, the streetcar driver knows my city of birth, my destination and my future.

     He has thick dreadlocks, many and dramatic like Medusa. I recognize him from rides before, memorable because he is the most swift driver. His driving is not lethargic and historical like those of his coworkers, but monster-truck like in how he asserts his vehicle between the cars, foolish enough to jet across the Carrollton or St. Charles medians. I wish I could sit closer to him, maybe stand at his right hand and comment on the night.
Before he started the route where it begins and where I got on, Carrollton and Claiborne, he sat across from me on the first row of wooden benches. He blabbed in his phone to a friend about something I could not follow. He had a few minutes to spare before he spoiled the timetable, the integrity of which no one in New Orleans expects of these huffing relics who chug and lug down the city's main avenues. Other passengers get on, pay because they know how and sit and are not impatient.
"So where you from," he asks while still on the phone, and his tone is as natural as the August humidity. Hurt that he cannot read what I hope my blood can tell, I don't blame his question because I had tried to pay at the wrong side of the streetcar, which was the front but is now the back given the streetcar changes tracks at the end of Carrollton and Claiborne. I had also asked how often the streetcar stops here, not because of ignorance, but perhaps I could gain the code to understand the whimsy and the rhythm that is this public transportation. "Every eight minutes, till evening." I tell him my convoluted path to finally landing in New Orleans in brief. "How much longer at Loyola?"
"Graduating this year."
'Think you're graduating or you just hope to?"
I wonder if he has been to college or had once thought he would graduate. He seems to be a peer, but maybe later in his twenties.
Then he gets up and readies the streetcar. He tells to a guy sitting on the banquette bench before the first row about the fight between his cat and chiwawa. They seem to know each other, but not beyond passenger and driver. "She is fat. I gotta put that cat on a diet." The guy asks how many animals the driver has. "Oh lord, my house is zoo!" I imagine his house or apartment. He probably left the TV on.
The streetcar picks up speed, and I can only hear phrases of their conversation as the wind billows through the front windowless windshield. "My aunt is a bus driver, took off the whole month of July. If I did that I ain't coming back."
The guy to whom he is talking, whom I am now envious of for his intimate proximity, says "She cut my hours in half." He looks dejected, and an hourly wage job surely can't help that. A chubby man boards at the riverbend in tight gym clothes. Motivation? A dog barks at the streetcar, and we are a rival dog, more imposing and louder than the mutt whose owner eggs on his protest. The driver laughs.
Just before Napoleon I pull the buzzing cord. I walk the few steps to the front, feel like I’m gliding as the streetcar swings on. I stand next to him, ready to exit, and bask in the wind with him as he slows at my stop. I make a comment about my hair and the wind as a fan as for a model in a studio. He laughs again, and we wish each other goodnight. He slams the door on me, and grinds away, leaving me in the night under a streetlamp with only the flickering light of the streetcar as a guide for its movement.