Tuesday, November 22, 2005

how the universe changed color

Quis hic locus, qui regio? Qui mundis placa...
[what world is this, what kingdom? What shores of what world?]

and days like these are why i love this campus, this place of streetlights and foggy mornings [foggy mornings on buses travelling at 75 miles an hour through tennessee...i swear i saw them marching, troops coming forwards like spectors in the dim early morning light, darkness still sinking deep into the air, permeating like water in jeans, staining the place between those marching skeletons and my eyes.] this place of jasmine rice and mango lassi's and lounging on couches in warm rooms filled with laughing and sex (and the city...) and apple mango tea. senior citizens who climb fences and protest the world's atrocities, very small children who drum and drum and drum their hearts out, hippies with layered thermals and fraying jeans and dreadlocks, social causes dripping from their tongues like liquid methane, fueling their bleeding liberal hearts with ammunition to fight. fight until the whole world rests at night, beneath the silences of a global paz, lying in the comforts of their peaceful beds, filled with dreams about blackbirds who sing and men who throw themselves into the sea like porpoise, and how the universe changed color. the campus comes alive to me in small evocations of inspiration, these tiny glimmers of total, extraordinary greatness, as if the stones of the streets themselves were filled with the spirits of the muses. i see all of these secrets, tracing their paths through the eyes, through the feet and the hands and the hearts of all of these people who surround me everyday, and all i want to do is discover them. every - single - one. what does that glance of your eye mean? upwards and over, across the table, the one that no one ever thinks anyone will ever notice... but they do. just for a moment. what does it feel like to run down state without a thought in your mind for the way its freezing outside, or the way your hair is flying behind you like streaks of golden streamers, or the way the curve of your throat, head thrown back in laughter, must bring him to love you for the rest of his days. what is it about boys with cigarettes and girls with curving waists and elegant shoulder blades, the girls from the paintings in harlem and the boys from the folk songs in california...what is it about these people that is magnetic? i love these people. i love these secrets. they are like oxygen for me... the hidden qualities of people, who are so very protective of those enigmatic explosions. they are protective because these secrets determine their identities...their very insides, their bones and the blood cells and the tracings of that nervous energy which keeps you tapping your foot.

as much as i hate to admit it...i miss rochester.

listening to: new hip hop that will make you fall in love with hip hop all over again and this is a mix for tegan swanson who... (mixes sent to me by my loverly friend ms. katherine shireen assef. thanks, doll.)

reading: the master and margarita, invisible cities, and
a rumor of war

(soon to be)
eating:mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and possibly some turkey. possibly. i do enjoy naps...tryptophan is my friend.


Elaine Miller: [to William] Your Dad was so proud of you. He knew you were a predominantly accelerated child.
Anita Miller: What about me?
Elaine Miller: You are rebellious and ungrateful of my love.




1 comment:

kristen said...

love the quote... i have been dying to watch almost famous again. i guess once just wasn't enough. that is all. love!
ps. happy turkey day durio :)