Tsunami Paradise The cover of the International Herald Tribune showed an idyllic beach in Thailand with the title “114,000 dead” and I thought “how insensitive to show heavenly beach when somany people have just died.” In fact, looking closely, it’s a shot of people running, completely panicked, away from the 10-meter waves that are crashing… Continue reading Pedro Almodovar Israeli Slideshow
Channel 92 Eminem reading out his lyrics in an oversized red shirt. Channel 30 Humphrey Bogart over whisky, in the dark upstairs of Ric’s Cafe in “Casablanca” talking to Sam who is standing behind him and he says “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”… Continue reading Zapping
Leaving is very much last death, an announced death at least, in the sense that you are conscious that you are doing each thing “for the last time” and that you are going, in some sense, somewhere no one else will follow you, since you are usually going there without everyone. This may not make… Continue reading .the death of leaving.
I sit here, ignoring my gutted room. Everything is lying spilled over the tops of crates, suitcases, pirate trunks, regurgitating clothes, baskets, headphones. The only Zen thing about packing at this very moment for me is how relieved I am when I stop thinking about it. My body is so strained from it that my… Continue reading Zen and the art of packing
-Who are you? -I am Laurie. -In my culture, when we ask ‘Who are you?’ we do not want a name. We want to know a story. You must tell a story. -I’ve never done this. -Ask me. -Who are you? -I am the child of a weaver of dreams. I was born in a… Continue reading the well-read book with no name
Intrepid super-hero friend of mine sent me an email containing only a quote by one of her favorite authors a few months ago: “There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the… Continue reading Words that hit
I pray my ancestors were great people. Horsemen (probably of short stature but with green eyes that looked to the horizon of the Palestine hills) and noble men, Polish servants, Jews, and French peasants, German horticulturists, Persian rug-dyers, Mothers, Fathers, probably a few artists, priests, highway brigands I’m imagining. Please…a Corsican at some point? or… Continue reading What’s in a family?
Ah…so this is what it feels like to be totally free from my body! I never thought I’d feel this! How liberating! When the Swing Kid popped the vinyl and I heard Benny Goodman…my whole body wanted to defy gravity. And now…where is up? The hall is full of people. Men? Women? Who knows anymore?… Continue reading Jitterbug
Present Moment “-I’m sick. I want to be anywhere but in this bed! -(SWOOSHING GENIE): your wish is granted! You may travel for the next 23 minutes! But you must send me postcards.” Venice “You can’t hear any traffic noise. Flutter of pigeon wings. People walk everywhere. There’s a city ordinance that asks people not… Continue reading POSTCARDS
I’ve given up on TV. Been at home for three days now and illness has progressed. Awful sore throat, headache days 1/2 and 1. Then horrible earache and less of a sore throat for day 2. Day 3 horrible cough kept me awake the night before and the night after. Day 4 horrible congestion where… Continue reading Evolutions of illness
Is this just a latent profound disorganization within me? I just don’t think that lists help in any great justifiable-for-their-hype way. Leaving the place I’ve lived almost three years (exaggeration: two and a half) I now have three lists, one of which I generated myself and which probably duplicates a bunch of the stuff in… Continue reading Lists don’t help
Three little glazed pots in the window. Sitting like ducks. Three sea-green pots, glazed, smoothed by the hands of a disappearing potter. Fifty years old and he is going. She said “what a shame, so young. He’s dying. And all potters in Israel know him. He is famous in the potters in Israel!” Objects in… Continue reading All things
I’ve been writing dialogue lately because some things are too good left unsaid, even if no one is reading my dialogue. Is there some sort of progression in this exercise? Will my characters eventually talk about something more interesting than the movie they saw or the color of tea, or some other inane subject that… Continue reading Dialogue
The Three-Legged Duck 