earth turtle

I dreamed the earth was a sea turtle. I did. Its back was crawling with tiny humans frantically hacking at its shell with ice picks, and the earth turtle just floated there, placid, docile. It knew but felt no pain. It was looking into my eyes. I have been there, you know, inches from a green sea turtle, suspended in time and place as it held my gaze, trying to know what I was. The earth turtle of my dream stared at me just like that, eyes full of ancient wisdom and profound sadness. They know not what they do, they seemed to say.

love

Someone, a Facebook friend, a total stranger, wrote on her wall Where there is love, there is life (Gandhi, she said), and that might be true. In Paris there is love, that is true, just like you always heard. I told some Africans once Don't go to LA, you can smell the hate. They went and saw concrete and concrete and famous names in sidewalk stars, but no hate, or maybe they didn't recognize it. No stars on Paris sidewalks, but there is love spilling onto them, at least in my neighborhood.

zen

This living in the moment thing is a nice idea but it's just survival. Two bars of pick a song and maybe a hit of weed and suddenly a beach and flowers and the smell of coconut for example. Don't dare poke around for the loss pleasure joy pain that lie ahead or behind that you would see if you could see, would let yourself see, over the high, high walls of this moment. But those walls are there for a reason. Anyway, there is more than enough inside them, usually, if you're doing it right.

three dog night

For a split second it's adorable but by the time the picture's taken you're mad. They have no right, they can't even feed or shelter themselves. But then, who could deny anyone, especially them, that doggy affection, protection. The warmth with winter coming. Dogs mean more coins in the bucket. Exploitation. But they're all happier for it, and you wonder who rescued whom.

elephant

I knew that cloud. Not the flying elephant; the one above it. It had come for me before, though not often and not in a while. It always dissipates, eventually, or I shake it somehow, usually on my own power. But I had to hop on the flying elephant to outrun it this time.

devil inside

You construct yourself and you're solid. You know the stuff of you. You could find your way through you with your eyes closed and your hands tied behind your back. Until the day. And then you wonder where in you that stranger, that danger, have been hiding all this time. Or if they just got in. And how?

age with grace

I will call her Grace. She is my mother, her mother, and her mother. I am aging, not yet aged, but soon enough. Her hat is not red, she has no society. She has forgotten she was ever beautiful but maybe if she chose that pink and that green she has not forgotten beauty. Next time I will talk to her. I will call her Grace. I will see her and raise her. There but for grace go I.

tmh

They play pedestrian chicken here in Paris, the too-many humans on the sidewalks barreling, careening, shoulder checking. And they invade your eyes as if entitled. In California there was sauntering and no trampling, or the shelter of your car. Sunglasses to keep the other humans out too. But there's not enough sun here to keep the people out of your eyes.

always

Faith is always, always misplaced.

plain ugly

It's usually there, somewhere, but you don't always see it at first and too often you miss it entirely. The hidden treasure. For a moment I did not see that these panes held the sky and then some. By now your crowded mind ignores the details, processing only the minimal information you require to comprehend and navigate your world, your life. Unlearn this. See everything again.

substance

It's so easy and usually fun to be cute and on display but some days you would rather be invisible. Then no gaze can assault you, you don't feel the heat and breath of pressing faces. Words cannot be directed at you. No demands. Other people take up less space when you disappear, rather than the other way around.

the happiest place on earth

A carefully constructed world where dreams come true, just like in that when you wish upon a star song, one of the songs pumping mandatory joy into your head through speakers hidden on anything fixed while you stand in line for Peter Pan or a toilet. Everywhere, people drenched and drowning in thick, sticky fun. The sparrows at the happiest place on earth are heedless of the princess purses and pirate patches in the gift shops. All they need to be happy is crumbs.

webcam

It's just Thursday here, in Paris, but I talked to everybody and they talked turkey. It's just Thursday here, though. So I went to a webcam that showed me my beach. It looks like it's just Thursday there, too. The ocean doesn't even know that much.

that red

There was a single early bloom on the gerbera she had transplanted months ago at the last possible moment from the greenhouse window to the ICU corner of the planter just outside the front door. Real light, real dirt. That red. She felt it in her throat. I love that color. It makes me happy. It's not the color, her friend said. It's the beauty. Then for a long time the beauty was there, caught in her throat.

stigma

Skritch silence skritch is wake up in Paris music made by men in green sweeping water-filled gutters with plastic brooms. People tend not to wear the color here. My favorite. In winter you need it most. I gobble the greens of the trash men and their brooms with my eyes. There's not enough to go around. But they are there with their music, early in the morning.

foreign soil

This was home before. Skies full of palms and air that feels more like my own breath. I am here for a time, for a moment, and surprised to find that the dream state persists. So there is nowhere real, now. I'm trapped on the other side of the mirror. That's OK. Most of me has always lived there anyway.

unreal

There is a quality to the light here and something else I don't know what, but it never seems quite real. For some of us no other place will do, and so we exist in a dream state. In American cities, you find coffee in tiny cups and backwards accents on wrong letters. They are not Paris.

just me

Solitude. An essential part of a balanced diet. Sometimes you can even find it in Paris, on a Saturday evening, in June.

one day

One day he was there, finally. Orange hair, hungry. The sweetest day. Others came, that day and others, to others. They keep coming and then one day they are men and they are magnificent, these men we made. But who wouldn't trade this one day for the other—just for one day?

camouflage

A tiny, cobblestoned side street in Paris. A dark office. Comprising its unsightly façade: a once modern doorknob; dull, discolored paint and metal—no match for the elements; shiny curtains of some synthetic fabric. Impersonal and cold. Neglected. But not devoid of beauty, thanks to the serendipitous harmony of hues. And then, this cat. Blending perfectly with the inadvertent palette and yet, in high contrast. Soft, warm, alive.