![]() |
T-walls and Hindu Kush Mountains |
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean . . .
A mad woman.
Well, probably not crazy but forgetful?
A fear of flying perhaps, forgetting her Xanax. She’s pacing up and down the aisles, in
obvious discomfort, scowling, her elbows rubbing everyone’s shoulders.
![]() |
Kuwait |
On one of her rounds she bumped my arm as I was
writing in a notebook, causing my pen to fly into the air. Of all the places it could have landed it
came to rest on the giant breasts of a German woman sitting next to me. I was speechless, but she wasn’t, saying,
“That better be a good novel you are writing!”
The pacing lady became visibly angry, so whispers
began to circulate within the cabin that there may be a flight attendant
takedown, most likely by Olga with large biceps.
![]() |
Inside a church built by the Georgian
Army of discarded stones and Hesco barriers
Afghanistan
|
Later, after we deplaned, I saw her running to the
next terminal, late for her flight, her tail flying behind her.
![]() |
Georgian Church
Afghanistan
|
“I don’t hear your
words: your voice reverberates against my body like another kind of caress . .
. I have no power over your voice. It comes straight from you into me. I could stuff my ears and it would find its
way into my blood and make it rise.”
-Anais Nin to Henry Miller, from Henry and June
Sitting in a crowded café, reading Anais Nin’s diary, the room filled with women wearing full burkas. Of all the things to read in public in a double barrel Muslim country. Lord help me! If the authorities knew about this book, they’d have me arrested. I wonder what Anais and Henry would think about this scene? I imagine they’d love it.
And contrasts . . . Bedouins wandering across the desert on camels, green belching oil refineries in the distance. Beautiful white Bedouin tents pitched under innumerable hives of power lines, each with a skinny camel out back, and rows of Mercedes and Cadillac SUVs parked outside.
There are no temporary quarters here. So, I’m camped out on a picnic table under an
expansive sky with no clouds, no stars. Just
a low haze of something ominous and stinky.
Petrochemicals, sewage, blowing across the desert. Thinking that I’d cut off a finger for a purple
velveteen neck pillow right now.
Kuwait
3/17/18
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.