(no subject)
“Einstein considered the light quantum to be a feature of reality:a perplexing, pesky, mysterious, and sometimes maddening quirk in the cosmos. He argued that the particulate nature of light was a property of the light itself and not just some description of how the light interacts with matter.”
“Energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light. The speed of light, of course, is huge. Squared it is almost inconceivable bigger. That is why a tiny amount of matter, if converted completely into energy, has an enormous punch.”
-- “Einstein”
We will begin and remain in the summer, not just any summer, but summer in the desert; the Sonoran desert. The air is dry and hot, so much so, that it has a presence akin to water, though not humid, it washes around the body in waves, one can feel their body in the space of air as a shadow must feel on a wall; and this is erotic always having a suspended sensory feeling, being touched so completely by nature at all times. This is how one imagines brazil giving birth to generations of sweating bouncing bronzed girls, doing the samba in the dense atmosphere of an arid country. The samba; a natural body movement one would want to persistently take part in to feel the movement of the sun’s endless amount of warm caressing fingers sliding and penetrating about the skin, even at night, when the earth and air are still thick with the vapors and warmth of the ghost of the ever rotating yellow fire. Here in the American desert, namely in the south of Arizona, in a city called Tucson, the bodies moving in its space cannot help themselves but feel the same smoothness and soft vibrations as the half naked happy dancing bodies in the America to our south; however, there is an exorbitant amount of pride against pleasure and the existence of extremes here across the border, no matter where one ventures in the city, no matter what acquaintance one makes, old, small, fat or rich; complaints seep into the air fitting themselves in-between the particles that the sun so richly permeates and expands as the heat does yeast. Public pools spot an aerial view of the city like pox in an elementary school, like ants flocking to spots of spilled honey, they are seeping to the brim with gleaming cooled buttery little kid skin; all of which are completely denying the repetitive sensory fact that moving through the water is in fact exactly the same sensation as moving through the air in such a place (remember not humid! but thick with pure heat from the sun!). What sort of a mind would it take to be from such a place yet also want to rejoice with an all encompassing never ending samba of love for the sun and its effects on a body so intruded with the pangs of complaints and sharp insults to the loving fire in the sun its whole life, a nonstop stream of words, such as “unbearable” “burning” “sticky” and “hot?” when its warmth is really that of a lovers embrace, the stickiness but a physical manifestation of the burning hot love so many fiend that they find so unbearable.... what experience would generate an acknowledgment of these feelings? Oh, but to leave and then return, that is the experience one would need to force upon oneself, to perceive that the grass is really greener, that you don’t know what you got till its gone, then to return and embrace the thing one was born with, that was brimming with the most quality characteristics imaginable; to have your eyes opened so that they can see.
And this is where we begin, with a return; a return to the desert. And here we are with Nicole, returning from faraway land of busybodies called Los Angeles. Where is she to be found, not posing as a potato in front of the tube counterbalancing all those full months of words, orders and inhaled mental smog, but lying face up in the backyard, languishing in the sun, slightly cracking open her eyes to take peeks at the brightness so white that it blinds. It is almost certain that the suns rays feel like a halo of realization, glowing with such force that is pulsing to burst. What a paradise to be in a real home and away from a city she was not even aware that she was happy to leave, which is the nature of that city Los Angeles (a tepid rotten smelling nature, which has made many disgruntled, leading to a number of rants that we are not prepared for quite yet.), like being in a sensory deprivation box then suddenly released into an acid trip; here she could see the whole sky, smell and feel the lusts of the desert (some aspects of which have been so gingerly described) though here in her backyard she was only sticking her big toe into the said pleasures of this wondrous land.
The summer return is also noted by the reappearance of, if one is lucky enough, the most underrated under-appreciated unrecognized unawarded character of them all, mom herself. Like her experience revisiting the desert sun, Nicole’s eyes were all at once opened to the magnificent proposition of living with her mother. To have meals prepared on time, dishes cleaned up, love oozing out of the pores of another person just for her, now how could this have ever been taken for granted?! The night upon returning home Nicole stood in the kitchen and watched the motion of her mother’s arms and hands chop tomatoes. The kitchen was lit with small stained glass sconces hanging off the ceiling. The colored glass created diffused light about the room that intermingled the soft colors of yellow red blue and green; Oh, Dorothy’s Oz!, And the warmth of the stove the light and the smell of sauteing buttery tomatoes, her mothers precise movements cementing the motherly relationship of security by control and creation in her daughter’s mind. This is enough to send one into a state of silent happy vibrations, well with a mother present, the sort of vibrations akin to what the cat was producing in the corner near its wet globby food, and Nicole came quite close to a long sustained purr.
The activities that fill her mothers day are astounding. Everything is taken into consideration; old bread is torn into little pieces to be given to the birds, while waiting for the water to turn warm from the faucet she fills jugs to water plants so not to waste, soups and roasts and sauces simmer all day, various wildlife is noted to have appeared in the yard, exercise, meditation, yoga, reading, walks, chats with girlfriends on the phone, chats with nicole, chats with dad, bills, shopping, reading about unfortunate kids, radio, learning spanish....
It is astounding that anything happened before these full days. After she cooks dinner and has had some cheap merlot, with one of her five brothers over she reveals small holes to peer into. They snowball with their stories of a long ago inappropriate life. A family with five black boys in a small town and the father owning a disco bar is legendary. Mom keeps saying, how did you all learn how to fight, you all could fight so well. Uncle with his respectable white be-speckled hair and matching wire rim glasses says, “I don’t know but I thought I had killed Crazy Angus that one time, but you had gotten into it with DJ Ernest” Now Mom was doing the disco as it was in her fathers bar and the dj yelled something at someone in a threatening tone about lynching and in slow motion, cutting the disco beat, now intolerable to preform a single movement of body to music joyful connection with, she threw herself through the crowd at the mans turntables and him, leaving behind her mind and letting her body erect the rage upon him that this hateful words had inspired in her black afro hello sister, im proud and fuck you, 1970s woman body birthed from generations of disgruntled sister’s wombs. Another younger brother had to pull her off, because no matter where one would go, there would be a brother. Uncle here at dinner had a code with all the other brothers, REDDOG, and they all would come running; and then he found mom being held back by younger brother and turntables everywhere. And then the story did desist, and the wire rimed eyes and the day full of effort mom were embarrassed. Their position within which they had posited themselves was crumbling with every detail of the truth, and smiled inside and stopped with the talking, stopped with the richness. But Nicole knew they could go on, on until the distance between them and her was more similar which made it farther away. But we all enjoy this fluffy area of relaxing padding we position between ourselves, so everyone let it be and Mom packed leftovers for uncle which is more effort than anyone else had put forth all day.
And this returning and revisiting is what is important. Slowly Nicole was coming to terms with what it meant to reacknowlege things from her past. It is innate to appreciate things from our past because it is what we had, those things cannot be changed, it is a better thing to bask in the light of what they were. And Nicole being a self reflective and aware kind of girl would not forget this idea when thinking about her past and in turn herself. Nicole did not want to be happy on accident, she wanted to know truth, to feel as a consequence of the past, and the past is blurry. Until the past would be proven happy it would be deemed unimportant and dangerously sad. To live by a philosophy that can so easily tear one to shreds is dangerous.. yet, with this return, the past was presenting itself as something much kinder. Everything being revisited by Nicole was that made of gold, things she had fallen into as a young girl, that had enamored and kissed her before she had a chance to say no. How is it that fate had worked this way before she had the knowledge to make choices, it had just given her the best, or that she had immediately known to attach herself to the best before she had the wherewithal to know what the best was. To see the reality of this on her return was to feel the reality of her body and her experience as a human that was so full of wisdom and ability and it was as stifling as the desert sun.
The next day the monsoons started, it is absurd for this to happen in such an environment. The sky there is so wide and yawning that one can actually believe that they see the curving of the atmosphere and themselves rotating in an ozone. Clouds roll in, making the huge canvas a negative image of a wine stained white silk dress. And then the white turns to grey and magentas and the desert moves. Everything besides the noble cacti sways with the warm breath air, then the warmness explodes into wet and Nicole swims in the pool now filled with the rain, she swims in the sky. Giant lizards with bumpy heads, families of ants, red breasted birds, they all crawl around the pool, and a bat flies in circles diving down to get the ants and gnats. Generally for Nicole these are unwelcome guests; however when nature makes itself known in such a grandiose manner, it will not be snuffed at nor ignored.
Coming home to this place was like waking up for Nicole. Reencountering physical things still alive from her past while feeling her body in this vast, dense, heated space; it was as if everything was functioning as it should. With this awakening, all senses were inspired to act as they naturally ought to. A desire for health and movement and sounds more subtle, tastes more subtle and an agonizing need to be touched. Nothing natural could be ignored, she wanted to dance like mad amongst writhing bodies and have their tongues and fingers all against her. Swimming in the sky/pool was a close second, but not the truth and in turn not satisfying.
The apartment that Nicole lived in in Los Angeles, was a good find. The area is dirty, dirty even for this city. She couldn’t quite understand why it was that the neighborhood was so dirty. Her neighbors all seem to be families with working parents, happy to find a good deal like her. All the families speak spanish and have about three kids in each bedroom, her downstairs neighbors were this way anyway. When she was young, Nicole’s parents were pretty poor, her father hung insulation in the sun and in the heat of tucson. He would wear long sleeve white tight fitting shirts to protect himself from the sun’s attentive gaze and the sticky sticky pink fluffy cotton candy insulation. Though it looks like cotton candy, it is something quite meaner, candy’s unhappy impersonator. He would come home and Nicole was not allowed to hug him because of the wretched pink residue that was too itchy and scratchy for the skin of a little girl. He hung the stuff in new buildings, in houses springing up along the desert like zits around a smile full of braces, a disease. Helping to make comfortable the people who would dwell in these spaces he would labor in the tame winter and intensely vivid summer using stilts to reach the tops of walls and ceilings. Oh what a dance this is in the sun; Up and down all day with the tart stickiness of the pink fluff falling in your eyes. When movement in the sun becomes laborious and insulation is oppressive, things become unhappy. Even the work of a man on the stilts of a clown manipulating pink fuzz frowns in the morning under these circumstances. Nicole’s downstairs neighbor in Los angeles came home every night at 2 in the morning. He had a small cart he parked on a major intersection in the city. It was full of mangoes pineapple and other delicious fruits he chopped up, put in a bag with lime and salt and sold for 3 dollars. He kept all of these supplies in the garage next to Nicole’s and it smelled beautiful. It smelled the way the insulation looked and too brought relief from the sun in its own way to its consumer. The family downstairs was very clean and Nicole felt bad when she played loud music late at night, but she did anyway. Nicole’s apartment was usually a wreck. The sounds of car alarms and dank cigarette smell of the neighborhood did not facilitate an environment for a clean apartment she reasoned. The color black would build on everything naturally; the kitchen counters, the window ceil, it seemed be part of living in the neighborhood, there was nothing to be done, so she let it all fall into entropy. The task of cleaning just seemed too great a thing, to battle the neighborhood, to battle the city is only silly. To fill the space she left void in her life, the time when cleaning should be done and body parts should be set to some kind of repetitious movement she filled with the execution of paint by numbers. As if putting a cup in the cupboard where it belongs, ah #1 is blood red and it goes in the spot here under #6 ox black. This substitution for repetitious movement was enough when in the ashy daze of the city.
Back here in the brightness of her rediscovered real life, impositions were not cutting it. She was becoming a fiend for sex scenes in films. It was very specific what she was looking for; particular moments of feelings coupled with specific kinds of touching, when she watched this in a film it was almost as if having the act happen to her present and all too feeling body. A moment of realization of love, a look of relief and then falling into a touch; this was the yearning and the ideal. Back in the city she had tried her hand at satiating herself with random available and obliging people. She could never be relieved for that moment is what she was yearning for, to fall into a touch this way, and it could not be forced. The longer it was taking her to find this the more absurd and cemented the ideal became, the less likely that it would be fulfilled. Always in the backyard now and always floating in the pool, she felt like she was being marinated in honey and so very very ripe. She was in an ideal setting, the world was pink and she could feel her body completely, it was so tender and painful all at once.
During dusk one day Nicole and her father found themselves sitting together near the pool watching a storm roll in and shouting at it as if it were a very close and heated sporting event. The small storm was charging in straight toward them, dark clouds and bright lightning so vivid, and her dad was yelling out how the long hot day air got sucked up in the sky and blown back down by bumping into clouds and rolling back down to us. The light was still shining on the other side of town illuminating everything against the dark thick background of the stampeding storm. A very tall palm tree to their right was most brightly shining and nicole noted to her father how she appreciated its stance in the landscape so... and her father said, yes, this is like Monet’s haystacks for me, I watch it all day, it helps the light tell me the time of day. Nicole was so unhappy that he had kept this a secret for so long and she was only just noticing, but she was trying to do her best at making him feel free to say anything and to be comfortable. Recently she had been thrown into a situation with a girl she would normally not be friends with, the girl wore a lot of makeup and talked a lot about cheating boyfriends and rap music. After a long evening of being herded about in a group of drunken shiny people, they found themselves alone together on a dance-floor amid some very loud and thumping beats. Nicole was unimpressed by the girl and because of this was uninhibited and without any shame. She danced so freely and without restraint that the girl joined her in a wild romp. Nicole felt that it was because of her movement and actions that this girl felt so easy to let her body be free also. This is the kind of person Nicole had always fantasized of being, the kind of person that others felt like being free around. She wanted to inspire a wild mess of moving bodies. Nicole felt an immediate attachment to the strange girl who went all at once from uninspiring to full of pure energetic potential. This activity of watching the storm was similar and rare and fragile with her father, so she was quiet while he yelled and yelled at the torrid sky.
Nicole’s mother had so many siblings that every memory and possession having to do with her individuality was so very special and kept. Her christening dress as a babe is framed and on the wall to stand in mere disbelief of her parents time set aside to pay attention solely to her. Nicole’s uncle who eats dinner that her mom serves tells of how his last time being drunk was when he was broke at his sisters house and threw up in Nicole’s bed into her pillowcase, and i suppose is subsequence of her innocence and she was so astonished at this attention drizzling down to her person and kept the memory like a published book in circulation many times over. She was so touched suddenly, she would see anything human and it would make her cry. She would hold it back with all the strength she could muster at films with her mother, and then her mother would tell her how she loves the film and it created a breakdown all over again and with more fervor, for her appreciation of the feat of the human effort and production of a film is so present and more tangible than the story in a film itself and Nicole would well with the feeling of triumph and importance and cry. She had such a drive to speak and be heard; to find someone who would listen to her rants and raves was like finding a new lover. Nicole called her red headed friend and told her of running through the neighborhood... and the air is full of moisture, it swept me up and i am in space, i can see the whole sky and i am in it, in space! and bats come down and circle my head like a halo, i yearn and yearn to be in control of light, i think that is really the power of god and she says yes i am a poet and all that i write about is light, it is all that is important, they know that, and it makes them both swell with feelings and nicole runs back outside her heart beats too fast to persist and she just stops and does the samba right there in the road and her mother comes out and howls at her while her friends writes a poem across town all in the same setting sun in the heat on earth together.
“Energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light. The speed of light, of course, is huge. Squared it is almost inconceivable bigger. That is why a tiny amount of matter, if converted completely into energy, has an enormous punch.”
-- “Einstein”
We will begin and remain in the summer, not just any summer, but summer in the desert; the Sonoran desert. The air is dry and hot, so much so, that it has a presence akin to water, though not humid, it washes around the body in waves, one can feel their body in the space of air as a shadow must feel on a wall; and this is erotic always having a suspended sensory feeling, being touched so completely by nature at all times. This is how one imagines brazil giving birth to generations of sweating bouncing bronzed girls, doing the samba in the dense atmosphere of an arid country. The samba; a natural body movement one would want to persistently take part in to feel the movement of the sun’s endless amount of warm caressing fingers sliding and penetrating about the skin, even at night, when the earth and air are still thick with the vapors and warmth of the ghost of the ever rotating yellow fire. Here in the American desert, namely in the south of Arizona, in a city called Tucson, the bodies moving in its space cannot help themselves but feel the same smoothness and soft vibrations as the half naked happy dancing bodies in the America to our south; however, there is an exorbitant amount of pride against pleasure and the existence of extremes here across the border, no matter where one ventures in the city, no matter what acquaintance one makes, old, small, fat or rich; complaints seep into the air fitting themselves in-between the particles that the sun so richly permeates and expands as the heat does yeast. Public pools spot an aerial view of the city like pox in an elementary school, like ants flocking to spots of spilled honey, they are seeping to the brim with gleaming cooled buttery little kid skin; all of which are completely denying the repetitive sensory fact that moving through the water is in fact exactly the same sensation as moving through the air in such a place (remember not humid! but thick with pure heat from the sun!). What sort of a mind would it take to be from such a place yet also want to rejoice with an all encompassing never ending samba of love for the sun and its effects on a body so intruded with the pangs of complaints and sharp insults to the loving fire in the sun its whole life, a nonstop stream of words, such as “unbearable” “burning” “sticky” and “hot?” when its warmth is really that of a lovers embrace, the stickiness but a physical manifestation of the burning hot love so many fiend that they find so unbearable.... what experience would generate an acknowledgment of these feelings? Oh, but to leave and then return, that is the experience one would need to force upon oneself, to perceive that the grass is really greener, that you don’t know what you got till its gone, then to return and embrace the thing one was born with, that was brimming with the most quality characteristics imaginable; to have your eyes opened so that they can see.
And this is where we begin, with a return; a return to the desert. And here we are with Nicole, returning from faraway land of busybodies called Los Angeles. Where is she to be found, not posing as a potato in front of the tube counterbalancing all those full months of words, orders and inhaled mental smog, but lying face up in the backyard, languishing in the sun, slightly cracking open her eyes to take peeks at the brightness so white that it blinds. It is almost certain that the suns rays feel like a halo of realization, glowing with such force that is pulsing to burst. What a paradise to be in a real home and away from a city she was not even aware that she was happy to leave, which is the nature of that city Los Angeles (a tepid rotten smelling nature, which has made many disgruntled, leading to a number of rants that we are not prepared for quite yet.), like being in a sensory deprivation box then suddenly released into an acid trip; here she could see the whole sky, smell and feel the lusts of the desert (some aspects of which have been so gingerly described) though here in her backyard she was only sticking her big toe into the said pleasures of this wondrous land.
The summer return is also noted by the reappearance of, if one is lucky enough, the most underrated under-appreciated unrecognized unawarded character of them all, mom herself. Like her experience revisiting the desert sun, Nicole’s eyes were all at once opened to the magnificent proposition of living with her mother. To have meals prepared on time, dishes cleaned up, love oozing out of the pores of another person just for her, now how could this have ever been taken for granted?! The night upon returning home Nicole stood in the kitchen and watched the motion of her mother’s arms and hands chop tomatoes. The kitchen was lit with small stained glass sconces hanging off the ceiling. The colored glass created diffused light about the room that intermingled the soft colors of yellow red blue and green; Oh, Dorothy’s Oz!, And the warmth of the stove the light and the smell of sauteing buttery tomatoes, her mothers precise movements cementing the motherly relationship of security by control and creation in her daughter’s mind. This is enough to send one into a state of silent happy vibrations, well with a mother present, the sort of vibrations akin to what the cat was producing in the corner near its wet globby food, and Nicole came quite close to a long sustained purr.
The activities that fill her mothers day are astounding. Everything is taken into consideration; old bread is torn into little pieces to be given to the birds, while waiting for the water to turn warm from the faucet she fills jugs to water plants so not to waste, soups and roasts and sauces simmer all day, various wildlife is noted to have appeared in the yard, exercise, meditation, yoga, reading, walks, chats with girlfriends on the phone, chats with nicole, chats with dad, bills, shopping, reading about unfortunate kids, radio, learning spanish....
It is astounding that anything happened before these full days. After she cooks dinner and has had some cheap merlot, with one of her five brothers over she reveals small holes to peer into. They snowball with their stories of a long ago inappropriate life. A family with five black boys in a small town and the father owning a disco bar is legendary. Mom keeps saying, how did you all learn how to fight, you all could fight so well. Uncle with his respectable white be-speckled hair and matching wire rim glasses says, “I don’t know but I thought I had killed Crazy Angus that one time, but you had gotten into it with DJ Ernest” Now Mom was doing the disco as it was in her fathers bar and the dj yelled something at someone in a threatening tone about lynching and in slow motion, cutting the disco beat, now intolerable to preform a single movement of body to music joyful connection with, she threw herself through the crowd at the mans turntables and him, leaving behind her mind and letting her body erect the rage upon him that this hateful words had inspired in her black afro hello sister, im proud and fuck you, 1970s woman body birthed from generations of disgruntled sister’s wombs. Another younger brother had to pull her off, because no matter where one would go, there would be a brother. Uncle here at dinner had a code with all the other brothers, REDDOG, and they all would come running; and then he found mom being held back by younger brother and turntables everywhere. And then the story did desist, and the wire rimed eyes and the day full of effort mom were embarrassed. Their position within which they had posited themselves was crumbling with every detail of the truth, and smiled inside and stopped with the talking, stopped with the richness. But Nicole knew they could go on, on until the distance between them and her was more similar which made it farther away. But we all enjoy this fluffy area of relaxing padding we position between ourselves, so everyone let it be and Mom packed leftovers for uncle which is more effort than anyone else had put forth all day.
And this returning and revisiting is what is important. Slowly Nicole was coming to terms with what it meant to reacknowlege things from her past. It is innate to appreciate things from our past because it is what we had, those things cannot be changed, it is a better thing to bask in the light of what they were. And Nicole being a self reflective and aware kind of girl would not forget this idea when thinking about her past and in turn herself. Nicole did not want to be happy on accident, she wanted to know truth, to feel as a consequence of the past, and the past is blurry. Until the past would be proven happy it would be deemed unimportant and dangerously sad. To live by a philosophy that can so easily tear one to shreds is dangerous.. yet, with this return, the past was presenting itself as something much kinder. Everything being revisited by Nicole was that made of gold, things she had fallen into as a young girl, that had enamored and kissed her before she had a chance to say no. How is it that fate had worked this way before she had the knowledge to make choices, it had just given her the best, or that she had immediately known to attach herself to the best before she had the wherewithal to know what the best was. To see the reality of this on her return was to feel the reality of her body and her experience as a human that was so full of wisdom and ability and it was as stifling as the desert sun.
The next day the monsoons started, it is absurd for this to happen in such an environment. The sky there is so wide and yawning that one can actually believe that they see the curving of the atmosphere and themselves rotating in an ozone. Clouds roll in, making the huge canvas a negative image of a wine stained white silk dress. And then the white turns to grey and magentas and the desert moves. Everything besides the noble cacti sways with the warm breath air, then the warmness explodes into wet and Nicole swims in the pool now filled with the rain, she swims in the sky. Giant lizards with bumpy heads, families of ants, red breasted birds, they all crawl around the pool, and a bat flies in circles diving down to get the ants and gnats. Generally for Nicole these are unwelcome guests; however when nature makes itself known in such a grandiose manner, it will not be snuffed at nor ignored.
Coming home to this place was like waking up for Nicole. Reencountering physical things still alive from her past while feeling her body in this vast, dense, heated space; it was as if everything was functioning as it should. With this awakening, all senses were inspired to act as they naturally ought to. A desire for health and movement and sounds more subtle, tastes more subtle and an agonizing need to be touched. Nothing natural could be ignored, she wanted to dance like mad amongst writhing bodies and have their tongues and fingers all against her. Swimming in the sky/pool was a close second, but not the truth and in turn not satisfying.
The apartment that Nicole lived in in Los Angeles, was a good find. The area is dirty, dirty even for this city. She couldn’t quite understand why it was that the neighborhood was so dirty. Her neighbors all seem to be families with working parents, happy to find a good deal like her. All the families speak spanish and have about three kids in each bedroom, her downstairs neighbors were this way anyway. When she was young, Nicole’s parents were pretty poor, her father hung insulation in the sun and in the heat of tucson. He would wear long sleeve white tight fitting shirts to protect himself from the sun’s attentive gaze and the sticky sticky pink fluffy cotton candy insulation. Though it looks like cotton candy, it is something quite meaner, candy’s unhappy impersonator. He would come home and Nicole was not allowed to hug him because of the wretched pink residue that was too itchy and scratchy for the skin of a little girl. He hung the stuff in new buildings, in houses springing up along the desert like zits around a smile full of braces, a disease. Helping to make comfortable the people who would dwell in these spaces he would labor in the tame winter and intensely vivid summer using stilts to reach the tops of walls and ceilings. Oh what a dance this is in the sun; Up and down all day with the tart stickiness of the pink fluff falling in your eyes. When movement in the sun becomes laborious and insulation is oppressive, things become unhappy. Even the work of a man on the stilts of a clown manipulating pink fuzz frowns in the morning under these circumstances. Nicole’s downstairs neighbor in Los angeles came home every night at 2 in the morning. He had a small cart he parked on a major intersection in the city. It was full of mangoes pineapple and other delicious fruits he chopped up, put in a bag with lime and salt and sold for 3 dollars. He kept all of these supplies in the garage next to Nicole’s and it smelled beautiful. It smelled the way the insulation looked and too brought relief from the sun in its own way to its consumer. The family downstairs was very clean and Nicole felt bad when she played loud music late at night, but she did anyway. Nicole’s apartment was usually a wreck. The sounds of car alarms and dank cigarette smell of the neighborhood did not facilitate an environment for a clean apartment she reasoned. The color black would build on everything naturally; the kitchen counters, the window ceil, it seemed be part of living in the neighborhood, there was nothing to be done, so she let it all fall into entropy. The task of cleaning just seemed too great a thing, to battle the neighborhood, to battle the city is only silly. To fill the space she left void in her life, the time when cleaning should be done and body parts should be set to some kind of repetitious movement she filled with the execution of paint by numbers. As if putting a cup in the cupboard where it belongs, ah #1 is blood red and it goes in the spot here under #6 ox black. This substitution for repetitious movement was enough when in the ashy daze of the city.
Back here in the brightness of her rediscovered real life, impositions were not cutting it. She was becoming a fiend for sex scenes in films. It was very specific what she was looking for; particular moments of feelings coupled with specific kinds of touching, when she watched this in a film it was almost as if having the act happen to her present and all too feeling body. A moment of realization of love, a look of relief and then falling into a touch; this was the yearning and the ideal. Back in the city she had tried her hand at satiating herself with random available and obliging people. She could never be relieved for that moment is what she was yearning for, to fall into a touch this way, and it could not be forced. The longer it was taking her to find this the more absurd and cemented the ideal became, the less likely that it would be fulfilled. Always in the backyard now and always floating in the pool, she felt like she was being marinated in honey and so very very ripe. She was in an ideal setting, the world was pink and she could feel her body completely, it was so tender and painful all at once.
During dusk one day Nicole and her father found themselves sitting together near the pool watching a storm roll in and shouting at it as if it were a very close and heated sporting event. The small storm was charging in straight toward them, dark clouds and bright lightning so vivid, and her dad was yelling out how the long hot day air got sucked up in the sky and blown back down by bumping into clouds and rolling back down to us. The light was still shining on the other side of town illuminating everything against the dark thick background of the stampeding storm. A very tall palm tree to their right was most brightly shining and nicole noted to her father how she appreciated its stance in the landscape so... and her father said, yes, this is like Monet’s haystacks for me, I watch it all day, it helps the light tell me the time of day. Nicole was so unhappy that he had kept this a secret for so long and she was only just noticing, but she was trying to do her best at making him feel free to say anything and to be comfortable. Recently she had been thrown into a situation with a girl she would normally not be friends with, the girl wore a lot of makeup and talked a lot about cheating boyfriends and rap music. After a long evening of being herded about in a group of drunken shiny people, they found themselves alone together on a dance-floor amid some very loud and thumping beats. Nicole was unimpressed by the girl and because of this was uninhibited and without any shame. She danced so freely and without restraint that the girl joined her in a wild romp. Nicole felt that it was because of her movement and actions that this girl felt so easy to let her body be free also. This is the kind of person Nicole had always fantasized of being, the kind of person that others felt like being free around. She wanted to inspire a wild mess of moving bodies. Nicole felt an immediate attachment to the strange girl who went all at once from uninspiring to full of pure energetic potential. This activity of watching the storm was similar and rare and fragile with her father, so she was quiet while he yelled and yelled at the torrid sky.
Nicole’s mother had so many siblings that every memory and possession having to do with her individuality was so very special and kept. Her christening dress as a babe is framed and on the wall to stand in mere disbelief of her parents time set aside to pay attention solely to her. Nicole’s uncle who eats dinner that her mom serves tells of how his last time being drunk was when he was broke at his sisters house and threw up in Nicole’s bed into her pillowcase, and i suppose is subsequence of her innocence and she was so astonished at this attention drizzling down to her person and kept the memory like a published book in circulation many times over. She was so touched suddenly, she would see anything human and it would make her cry. She would hold it back with all the strength she could muster at films with her mother, and then her mother would tell her how she loves the film and it created a breakdown all over again and with more fervor, for her appreciation of the feat of the human effort and production of a film is so present and more tangible than the story in a film itself and Nicole would well with the feeling of triumph and importance and cry. She had such a drive to speak and be heard; to find someone who would listen to her rants and raves was like finding a new lover. Nicole called her red headed friend and told her of running through the neighborhood... and the air is full of moisture, it swept me up and i am in space, i can see the whole sky and i am in it, in space! and bats come down and circle my head like a halo, i yearn and yearn to be in control of light, i think that is really the power of god and she says yes i am a poet and all that i write about is light, it is all that is important, they know that, and it makes them both swell with feelings and nicole runs back outside her heart beats too fast to persist and she just stops and does the samba right there in the road and her mother comes out and howls at her while her friends writes a poem across town all in the same setting sun in the heat on earth together.