grey days and veins
These days in the morning I'm out of bed before 6am which is when the construction site first begins to cough, rattling its nuts and bolts, and wake. I can hear it across the street as I make my way down the corridor toward the kitchen, knocking against itself, two buildings like two wintered knees against the blanched sky. I'll make coffee and then, in slippers and pj's, climb the tightly wound and rheumatic staircase to the roof. I can wait for the sun to rise and at fifteen floors, the wind on some mornings almost knocks the coffee from out of my hands. I like it when it's grey and the sky is unclear and the giant neck of the crane dominates the view and on the wide concrete roads, traffic lights are flickering out and buses and cars are trundling. It brings back memories of sitting by the window of my grandmother's cramped flat in Shanghai, dipping my fingers into a cup of tea because they were bitten by the cold. Those images swim around in my veins.
There's nowhere I can escape to. I move from the computer to the empty living room and curl up against the wooden floorboards, reading poetry, waiting for late delivery men and carpenters to slowly piece this place together. More than ever, I keep escaping to the roof. Some days I wish I was a girl named Lola. She'd climb onto the roof in the evenings, drinking whisky and kicking off the moss and piecing together an autobiographical sculpture from soft drink cans and ten dollar bills. She'd probably read Foucault and Proust and one day, she just might jump over the edge. Of course, she'd always land safely, somehow, with her electric pink hair. My fifteen year old alter ego from the alternate universe of Le Cirque in which we lived, also had bright pink hair.
Isn't there a song that goes:
I met her in a club down in old Soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry-cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said Lola.