emma b. says

Monday, December 03, 2007

The neighbors have wind chimes, and they chime and they chime all throughout the night, they come screaming into my dreams.

It's not like the buses on Haight street, and it's not like the forgetable ruckus of the trashmen in the lightwell, it's preening in its insistance, shrill in its loveliness. It's not even the bittersweet constant consolation of tire tread on pavement, here it's the constant companion, but I am far enough from the street where the melancholy whoosh hides its febrile music from me.

I am getting acquainted with the pattern of rain on the gently corrugated plastic pounding out an unfathomable rhythm, I listen before I sleep.

I am reminded of San Francisco, when my raindrop reverie is interupted by the screaming of the trains. What do you call the cry of the trains, anyway? I don't remember, if I ever knew at all. I think I thought freight trains were some sort of antiquated notion, but they tear through Portland's midsection with a bombastic and persistent fury. I am reminded of home, when I first lived in the City, I remember being awakened by a constant lowing, what the fuck, I thought (that was in the days before we abbreviated such things) and so it went, until one foggy day I realized that what I was hearing was the fog horn.... And maybe such antiquated things don't work so well anymore, seeing as how that captain managed to ram the base of the Bay Bridge , maybe he was listening to his iPod, as I am now.

Perhaps there is a song there, the parallel between the lowing of the foghorn and the baying of the train, I might have tried to sing it during the middle reprieve of my Positively Shitty Week last Thursday.

I didn't get the job that I wanted, and I probably can't afford the house that I just bought.... but there is always a solution, or in my case a fortuitous consolation form of a possible temp to perm gig at the big hospital on the hill. If nothing else, it's an opportunity to oggle the cute doctors and monitor their schedules, next time I split my head open, just in case....

I was overdue for a good falling down, and so I did.

I was out on the front porch attempting to extinguish a cigarette after having consumed some of that vaguely illegal smokeweed when I went ass over tea-kettle and caught the cement backing of the stairs with my neck. Yes, my neck. Since it was nigh into my Positively Shitty Week, I just though to myself, well, at least I am not dead, but jeebus, that stings like some sort of unruly motherfucker. Subsequently I went to a cocktail party in a full length peach polyester dress trimmed in maribou with a rather unsightly case of road rash on my neck -- I told a young lady that it was due to a rather hirsute Italian gentlemen who took necking quite literally.... if only.

really, if only.

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