merry christmas
Every year and a half or so I get punched in the gut by some form of metaphysical Japanese crack. I should just learn the language and live in a little hut in the mountains, surrounded by piles of comics depicting sweaty basketball players, all day, every day.
*
Lately, I've been writing and reading in all the languages I know. I wrote a poem in a basement surrounded by dictionaries and my new fleece coat. Outside, the wind, a few flakes of snow, and sun. I've been trying to get back into writing, which is hard when it seems life makes a dearth out of small things. I'm only left with big themes, futures, large paved roads leading past overrated sunsets into an artifice of blinding light. And I can't write about that light. I'm too busy squinting.
Norway has been colder than expected. I live with a French-speaking woman who wears tribal clothes and believes in the power of exercise. She's gone this winter. I missed her briefly, but she'll be back. Now I fill the concrete walls with Russian men, caught between their covers when it's cold outside. I flip them like pages; their words get me drunk like vodka. I wake up with headaches. And sometimes when they leave me, I lick the pulp from the bottom of juice cartons, finding small consolations. Each eyelid of fruit, crushed, tart between my teeth.
*
Prévert makes a sad sound from me, but sometimes I laugh. It depends on the day, but a few days or hours after Christmas and it seems the latter is right for the occasion. Now, all I need to become truly exuberant is a treasure hunt. On the list: more fleece, perhaps pyjamas; the Love Actually soundtrack, perhaps sourced from a bookstore or two; and hot cocoa and a book, all about dreams and hopes and idealism, coursing through young veins.
*
Lately, I've been writing and reading in all the languages I know. I wrote a poem in a basement surrounded by dictionaries and my new fleece coat. Outside, the wind, a few flakes of snow, and sun. I've been trying to get back into writing, which is hard when it seems life makes a dearth out of small things. I'm only left with big themes, futures, large paved roads leading past overrated sunsets into an artifice of blinding light. And I can't write about that light. I'm too busy squinting.
Norway has been colder than expected. I live with a French-speaking woman who wears tribal clothes and believes in the power of exercise. She's gone this winter. I missed her briefly, but she'll be back. Now I fill the concrete walls with Russian men, caught between their covers when it's cold outside. I flip them like pages; their words get me drunk like vodka. I wake up with headaches. And sometimes when they leave me, I lick the pulp from the bottom of juice cartons, finding small consolations. Each eyelid of fruit, crushed, tart between my teeth.
*
Prévert makes a sad sound from me, but sometimes I laugh. It depends on the day, but a few days or hours after Christmas and it seems the latter is right for the occasion. Now, all I need to become truly exuberant is a treasure hunt. On the list: more fleece, perhaps pyjamas; the Love Actually soundtrack, perhaps sourced from a bookstore or two; and hot cocoa and a book, all about dreams and hopes and idealism, coursing through young veins.