Thursday, June 22, 2006
i stand in a line of unfamiliar women, toes ready to dance in their red high heels.'choose a partner,' says the instructor, and the line surges forward to claim one of the nervously smiling menboy-boymen standing before them. for some reason i go straight to a slight, bespectacled young man wearing khakis, a white shirt and an expression of something akin to the dread of being picked last for a team. his name is stavros, and as i lightly place my hand in the slightly clammy L of his thumb and the rest of his fingers, he whispers: 'thank you for picking me.' i smile and follow his tentative lead, and tell him athens is beautiful. he smiles shyly, and changes the step smoothly.
in the pavement, at unexpected moments, i discover round yellow metal plaques. 'at this place on ---, 19--, michael something looked up.' 'on 17 march 1974, mary something adjusted her hat in this window.' and i would stop and look up, and wonder what michael saw coming down the sidewalk, or who. the shop window is still there, and i tilt the brim of my paperboy hat and feel like the unknown mary something, who is alive in the smile i present to the plate glass.
we creep down in the shadows and suddenly one, two, three, four, we've taken off across the clipped moonlit grass, running for all we're worth, chiffon dupattas bannering out behind us and hair coming undone. the stadium looms empty and shadowy around us, and we run up and down a burlap covered pitch, four small ghost girls twirling and whirling in the balmy night breeze, laughter dancing on the wind and mischief in our toes.
"I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head
and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
...
I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary."
women here don't wear wedding rings. they wear gold bracelets, two or three or four, and sometimes a strange expression.
curiouser and curiouser. say you're a codfish and we'll call it a night.
Mina at 12:41 AM
