June 2012
12 posts
4 tags
France 6-23-12
Surprise plazas are a thing here, like forest clearings depicted in moves, much of them sun-dappled and hiding dryads and faeries.
The clearings, not the plazas.
Inclined and cobble-stoned, even the gray of the pavers is tinged with rose and the setting sun over the harbor paints odd and faint shadows into the corner of the eye. A door opens onto blue ocean, and the gray stones there are damp...
3 tags
France 6-22-12*
Jean-Claude Izzo was the first to entice me toward Marseilles, the second largest of France’s cities I am told. Paris may be built of lights and romance, but Marseilles was built on boats and commerce.
Izzo’s Total Chaos trilogy follows the adventures of a police detective in Marseilles. The book is equal parts food and drink paired with tales of love triangles, murder and intrigue, the...
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France 6-21-12
Soft orange tinged with red, bleached white walls and a little concrete gray. These are the colors of this town as the sun begins its journey overhead.
Around one corner a man sweeps the narrow street that leads to his shop and another in a wifebeater takes a break from cleaning the windows to enjoy a morning cigarette. Between the buildings is a view of the blue sky over the blue water. The...
5 tags
The Boat Ride
I’ve thrown my coat over it, but already I can feel the lips of the stab wound on my upper arm speak red down to my fingertips.
Here’s to hoping that the night will hide the color of my bleeding from the people passing me on the Bowery as I walk south.
Running east from the Corlear’s Hook, I think that I lost them over a wall on Stanton Street. I crashed down into the...
3 tags
France, 6-20-2012
Driving from Nice to San Tropez, we pass short mountains with a face of red rock, an echo of Arizona.
Arizona.
I am told that it has no geoligical similarities with any of the other rocks in the area and its closest cousins are in Africa.
Club music pulses from a nearby villa while my aunt and mother play Besique, the wind snatching at the cards they lay down. Soon they’ll be plazing 52...
3 tags
France, June 19, 2012
A plane ride, that first cafe noisette, that first pan au chocolate and the first Gauloises Blonde on French soil. Again, as with so many times in my life, I am waiting on a train to carry me… somewhere.
In this case Nice, before that it was The Lower East Side or the Bronx. Perhaps the Liceu metro stop on la linea verde to the base of Las Ramblas by El Colom in Barcelona.
My beloved...
4 tags
Ah Shit
It’s a scandal-laced moment, though maybe just a private one, when you’re sitting at the bar with that favorite beer, that favorite bourbon, and they’re playing that good music.
And you realize you don’t have any Sam and Dave on your iPod. None. It ain’t even in your collection and you feel like you’ve misplaced the love of your life.
The worst part? You left that love cold, gave it a 20 for...
3 tags
Hey Darlin'
I can see the whites of your eyes over his shoulder, peering my way under the brim of his fedora as if you were the one wearing it.
Stop looking. That shit ain’t cool. You see that man right in front of you? Sure, he looks like he skipped a few meals and smoked throughout his early childhood.
But really look at him. Pay attention to the way he looks at you when he brushes his palms down...
4 tags
Hey guys,
This is a recording of the version of...
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3 tags
Green Grapes and da Vinci
Green grapes, cold from the refrigerator, will always remind me of Leonardo da Vinci. A sickly child, I was affected by everything. Chasing a toy beneath the couch I had somehow consumed a dust bunny. As the tiny creature hopped down my bronchial tubes, it left a fit of coughing in its wake. Asthma followed, tubes spasmed and my body doubled over on itself. At three years old, it did not have far...
