Night

Filmy curtains
made from the gossamer
of mosquito wings
swirl
like the hem
of a lady's nightgown.

Darkness,
but no sleep
tonight.

At least
the air is salt.
The night
too hot
too hot
but at least
not thirsty.

There is nothing
but nothing
like a night that is thirsty.

J'ai soif,
he whispered.
Toujours soif,
encore soif.
Marseille is salt
and heat
but not dry.

Sleep doesn't come easy
in the city
with a thousand
sins
and a single truth.

So I will remain
a servant of this night.
I will watch
the play of white
against a square of living dark
and wait
to fall...
if I fall
asleep.

The City of Sound

Marseilles is a controversial city, and a pretty awful television series. I am leaving for Aix en Provence tomorrow, concluding the first leg of my very first solo travel experience. I scoured the internet for travel blogs written by unaccompanied female travelers. I read countless articles about safety. In the end, I didn't learn anything new and it all made me rather paranoid.

So paranoid, in fact, that I stopped wearing earbuds while moving around, as was my habit in Strasbourg and Syracuse. I wanted to be aware of my surroundings, alert to possible dangers. In the end it was a good choice, but not for the initial reasons.

I mean, I don't know. Maybe those are legitimate arguments. In fact, I feel like I've read somewhere that earbuds make you more susceptible to aggression because you aren't paying attention, or something.

But before I get too sidetracked, let me explain why I found music-less travel rewarding. I can't pretend it was some earth-shattering revelation, but for the first time in a long time I was aware of the sounds around me. The laughter of children, the peculiar Marseillais accent, the sound of waves, the ugly things some men said to me in the street.

Marseilles came alive in the most mundane way possible. I saw the sun on ancient stone, I smelled the fish market at 9 in the morning, I tasted the anise-sweetness of Pastis. But without headphones to pass the time waiting in the metro station, I heard the young man next to me muttering to himself as he wrote a song about some girl in Grenoble. A girl with lips like vermilion and eyes like something from "une rêverie Marocaine".

I heard the creak of the ferris wheel at the water's edge of the Vieux Port. I heard the soldiers complaining about the heat. One of them called out to me in greeting, and he tipped his beret politely in response to my equally correct response. Funny, I didn't know soldiers talked to tourists. They never do in Strasbourg, anyways.

I heard the Americans. Whole droves of them, big and small. Californians like me, and from elsewhere. I felt a sense of solidarity to them, the Californians. It made me feel- strangely- a sense of pride, a sense of patrie. Not to America, but to California.

I heard a lavender merchant cajole an older couple from Boston into buying an entire basket of little sachets to perfume the wardrobe, and bottles of essence, to calm the nerves. I visited his booth later. He was very kind. We talked and joked for a long time- a good use of my French. I bought a little bottle of essence myself, more as a gesture than anything else.

From time to time, I noticed my own voice as I spoke French. It surprised me every time, to hear the certainty and confidence. Nobody knew I had only been learning since last September. A lady selling little bracelets asked, and was flatteringly shocked. I am very proud of how quickly I have picked up French. I may never pick up the art of French dressing, or French eating habits, or ever really be able to correctly handle my fork and knife. But at least I can speak the language.

It is late. I am tired from the sun and all the walking, not to mention my brief bout of food poisoning. And just outside my window, someone is playing the clarinet. A couple is arguing. A cat is yowling. Night magic.

Gourmandise à la Cynthia

I was trying to explain Pan Catalán to Claire. I gave her the words I could and  drew in the air with my hands. We had just finished a plate of endive apiece, Claire and I. Her window was open behind her, blowing the shy perfume of rain-loosened soil into the kitchen. I drained my glass of wine. Claire refilled it automatically.

“Tiens,” she said, setting it by my plate. “Fin, c’est très à la mode, t’as remarqué?”

“Pas trop…mais j’imagine, ouais…”

We had been speaking about des gourmandises. Claire said that in the last few years it had become very popular in France to have a platter of little desserts with coffee.  I said I hadn’t noticed it especially, but could imagine that being the case.  Couldn’t you? Couldn’t you see someone taking an espresso after dinner, feeling the smoky bitterness wash away the velvety taste of wine and duck? Punctuating it with something sweet? Little tastes to stimulate the palate without detracting from the tranquillity of the café?

Of course you could.

I once had something like that back home. Vietnamese coffee with strawberries cooked in maple syrup, with little almond cakes, with candied pecans, with mixed raisins. I described it all to Claire, who sat attentively before me. I explained that the strawberries were the crowning glory, the pièce de résistance. They were sliced and cooked in maple syrup with hints of lemon zest and pepper, topped with mint. I had demanded the recipe.

“Recipe?” my friend said. “What recipe? There’s no recipe.” But she wrote down what was in it, explaining that no two batches came out the same.

“Strawberries, maple syrup (I’ve experimented with agave. Don’t you make the same mistake) lemon juice and/or zest (or any citrus, really. Sometimes I don’t bother at all), vanilla extract (not if you have that cheap Costco shit. No buts, Cynthia), pepper (non-negotiable!), and mint for garnish (or cinnamon, rosemary, lavender, or whatever the hell else. Add nuts and I’ll kill you, though).”

The corners of Claire’s mouth turned downwards and she tilted her head pensively. You know the look. It’s the universal gesture of “ah, okay, not bad.”

“ Bon, j’ai tous les ingrédients dans ma cuisine, ” and she stood with a grin. I blinked dumbly back at her. Claire started pulling things out of the cabinets: maple syrup, pepper, lemons…

“Allons-y, Cynthia.”

“Maintenant?”

“Oui!”

“Maintenant, maintenant ? “

“Ben, oui!” Claire laughed at my surprise.

So we did. We sliced the strawberries with little paring knives against our palms. Claire drowned them in maple syrup and soon the kitchen was filled with the smell of it. Sweet, tangy  warmth, mixing with the quiet smell of rain slipping in from outside.

“C’est fini?”

I shrugged. The bright crimson of the strawberries had faded somewhat, and the syrup was bubbling.

“Pourquoi pas?” I said. Grinning, Claire switched the stove off and ladled the fragrant mixture into the two bowls I handed her. I ate mine with yogurt (soy, don’t fret!) and she ate hers nature.

It was good. The lemon added acidity to cut through the heaviness of the maple syrup, and the strawberries retained their freshness. The pepper was the snap, the vanilla the muted note of class.

“C’est bon!” Claire exclaimed. “Sucré, mais pas trop. Le citron est parfait…pas trop lourd…pas du tout. ” So we finished our dessert, laughing at the spontaneity of it all, and talking politics. Claire took out an old yellow notebook book to show me. It was a recipe book she’s had for over fifty years, since she was a little girl. It was filled with recipes, but also doodles, diagrams and notes taken by Claire as a child, Claire as an adolescent, Claire as a young adult, the Claire I know today. You could see the handwriting change, become neat, then extravagant, then elegant, then simple and clean. She flipped to a blank page, and wrote:

Gourmandise à la Cynthia.

 

 

sans titre

Lately
When it rains
It really rains
I mean
It pours
Truth
Lies
Drink
Tears
N'importé quoi.

Falling apart
Maybe
Is
Knitting
Newly together
Or maybe
Not.

You're crazy.
Crazy bored
Crazy lonely
Crazy lovesick.

France.
It's a dream
A hoot in hell.
Ah
But how beautiful
Is hell.

Devils?
Elsewhere.
Broken
Or not
Who knows.

It doesn't rain
Not in
San
Diego
But
In Santa Cruz

Also
No.
Only without.

Leave
Really really really
Leave.
Can't.
Come home.
No such thing.

Lately
When it rains
It's inside
Your
Two
Waters.

Return to Strasbourg

It looks like rain. I have Claire’s umbrella in my bag, but if it rains like it did yesterday, I will have to move inside. The papers have been prophesying rain for a week now. Claire tells me that when it is warm and humid, people look for clouds above the Vosges Mountains. For days now there have been a whole army of them. They arrived yesterday, to occupy the sky above Strasbourg. Yesterday the air went from quiet to thunderous as we sat the little café by Place Kleber.


I said I would come back, did I not?


It is not supposed to rain until 6 tonight. Yesterday I did not have an umbrella or a jacket with me, so I walked from the party to the tram stop in torrential rain. I have missed this rain. It rained a while back in San Diego. I was away.


This morning I took breakfast with Claire. I have missed long meals, where forks scraping against plates punctuate lively conversation.


Bonjour, to the two men sitting at the table behind me. I can see on my screen’s reflection that they are reading over my shoulder. Ah, they are laughing.


You speak English? A little. Well, I must congratulate you two for you eyesight…the words on the screen are a little far from you.


I see. Non, Vous parlez bien anglais. C’est vrai. C’est vrai.


Anyway, I went to the modern art museum just near Claire’s appartment. I took the long way this time, looping all the way around. It was a morning for walking. Warm, but not too sunny.


I visited the new exhibit, lingering by my favorites in the permanent collection on the first floor. Antibes, Le Soir, by Signac. Der Wald, by Campendonk. Kandinsky. Everything Kandinsky.


Good-bye, Charles, Antoine. It was nice talking to you.

Salary

The salt stung,
bleached what was black,
dried what glowed,
healed what wept,
and purged what festered.

Rocks,
shells,
jagged bits of glass,
bit
at toes and ankles
like flesh hungry piranhas
as the tide roared in.

The salt danced
a wild madrigal,
shook out seaweed locks,
like a banshee.

And it becomes like blood.
And like blood,
how freely it flows.

Shut eyes
forgot the perch of the sun.
Salt replaced it.
Salt was the only truth,
the sole surviving reality.

From salt we came,
and to salt we return-

not the sun.

Nice, Côte d'Azur

Maybe the sun will stay here a while. The quad blooms with it, with grass and daisies and frisbees.

This Summer I will visit Lyon. Perhaps Lyon will be like Nice. Nice is the first city I visited unsupervised. It is so beautiful there, with its narrow alley-streets and palm trees. I was homesick there, because it reminded me so much of San Diego. I had not realized how much I missed cacti until our train roared past the shore and I saw them, standing lone and proud, among poorer grasses.

Nice really is not much like California, besides the climate. The people are different, and the sand is different. The beaches are made of rocks that hurt when you stretch over them. But the air is sweet and fine and salty, and the rocks slowly arrange themselves to the curve of your body the longer you lay there. Soon you are as one of them- a big, fleshy stone who has created its own hollow.


We rented an AirBnb- my first- up a goodly hill not far from the center of town. It was maybe ten minutes' walk from Place Garibaldi. It was funny to me that an Italian national would have his own square in a French city. But it was not that funny and maybe I was trying to show off my learning.

We walked twenty miles a day, to the beach, to Matisse Museum, to the market to buy fresh figs and tomatoes to eat with basil grown en plein air. C'est magnifique, mademoiselle! Regardez!

Nice is the closest I have been to Italy, and Hannah dreamed of Florence as we drank fine Italian red wine with dinner. Perhaps I will go to Florence this Summer too. I have wanted to go after reading The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie, and hearing him speak about it.

San Diego nights are violet, Strasbourg nights are blue, and Prague nights are the blackest of black. But in Nice, the nights are golden. Warm, molten, sensuous. The waiters were better educated than doctors. One Signor Luca spoke French, English, Spanish, and Italian. He spoke the last with our new friend, whom we met while stuck in the castle, as he brought us our aperitifs, our arrabiata, and our limoncellos. Their voices danced, lilting like an Irish brogue, but smooth like a Colombian song.

I bought some soca to eat on the train back to Strasbourg.

We missed that train, so I ate it for lunch instead, inhaling the cracked pepper smell and wiping the oil off my fingers with a napkin. (soca is a chickpea pancake sold in Nice).

Anyways, we took the night train back.

Kitsch is in

The Lennon Wall is not hard to find, but we were confused by Czech street signs and  mulled wine. We overheard a group of Italians say that the Wall was just past the French Embassy. We agreed to look for it, and after finding it waiting stolidly for us, disagreed which direction to take from there.

Eventually we remembered that Prague has city-wide WiFi (although I only recall it working in certain areas). Anyways, we had a nice walk and we were not concerned that we were lost. And we realized that there's a sense of satisfaction in tracing a path with your finger on a map, or marking the whole thing up with pencil and imbuing that crinkled document with the scent of a coffee shop.

The light was nearly gone by the time we got there. At dusk, there were not so many tourists. I remember that we crossed a bridge with a silent, white-and-gray cat whose agate eyes followed us. There were locks clustered thickly all up and down the poles- paying respect to Paris, but in a fashion that is infinitely more practical. There was no danger of sagging wire here.

We were alone when we first approached the wall. The Lennon Wall is not very tall, and if not for the graffiti, would be quite unremarkable. The original portrait of John Lennon has long been lost beneath layers of paint and ink. I really did think it would be bigger. I also thought it was just a wall by itself; I did not think it would be attached to anything. In other words, I did not expect it to be functional as an actual wall.

It was funny. Not beautiful, not even a good symbol of protest anymore. It was to fight the coming of kitsch, but in its acquisition of status as a tourist destination, it has became an instrument of Kitsch. The Wall was supposed to be a canvas for the disillusioned and politically conscious youth to splatter their passionate outrage. It was supposed to be their space to decry the excess of the government, of the West, of wealth, of human conceptions of morality and justice.

My eyes traced a lopsided heart. "Marissa and Alex!! August 2015".

But, as Kundera said: "kitsch is an integral part of the human condition". Can we help our own inability to live in the extreme climate of awareness? Can we be held responsible for refusing to leave the warmth of illusion, the safe circle of indifference? Perhaps not.

We heard later that a group of protesters ("damned hippies," exclaimed a red-faced gentleman, throwing his scarf indignantly over his plump shoulder) painted over the messages and pictures because they were kitsch. Disgusted at the Wall's new role as a pawn of the tourism sector and loss of symbolic revolution, they tried to return it to its previous condition- a blank wall and a canvas no longer.

That obviously failed.

A group of American students came, armed with stencils and spray paint. They left behind an image of Richard Nixon, and an image of what looked like a school mascot. In fact, it was some feline animal that looked like every wildcat mascot I've ever seen.



We returned the next day after breakfast. It was a good time to go, although there were more people. There was even a segway tour (which, by the way, are everywhere). Why walk when you don't have to? Hannah has a horror of segways. I turned my face to the sunshine and laughed at her grimaces, listening to the man singing and accompanying himself on the guitar.

No need for greed or hunger
a brotherhood of man...

I wondered if he had children. I threw a few koruna in that man's guitar case and we left quietly for Malá Strana.

AKA I'm Cold

Sometimes the wind blows outside like it's trying to break in. Once I stared outside and imagined a woman scratching at the glass, shrieking and howling like a ghoul. It reminds me of Ireland, especially when it's also raining.

Already this place with its moody skies and sullen clouds feels suspiciously like home. I have come to know the cold winds that blow like spurned women, and the emerald grass that grows stubbornly despite the snow. The sun comes out from time to time, and suddenly sweaters are pushed up past the elbows. People wear shorts in 50 degrees, which is so strange to me.

Those are the good days. Sometimes weeks on gray weeks go by and I feel that a part of me withers as it shivers. The cold and snow really aren't that bad, although they tell me that this Winter has been uncharacteristically mild (woe is me), but snows have a way of making me forget how to speak. It blankets the persistent grass, and it blankets my mind. Curiously, softly, languidly.

I do like bursting through doors and unwinding my scarf, unbuttoning my coat, shrugging it off. I like to bring the clean scent of cold in with me, letting it roll off me in waves, smelling it cling to my hair and my hands. Days like these, I can feel my face growing longer, my skin shrinking from exposure.

I do not welcome this. And yet it touches me. This incessant gray moves me strangely, and not like the glass-shard gray of Irish seas. I go numb here, I think.

It is good I am here. But someday I will be always beneath sun and salt.

Budapest

I think little girls aspire to be princesses because they have an idea of power manifested as beauty, grace as elegance. To be a princess is to be revered. Exalted. Worshipped in the heaviest, earthiest sense of the word. Worshipped in a manner that defies the most sanctimonious braying of clerical authority. Worshipped for belonging to not only the cult of woman, but the race of deity. Somehow, all this is made vastly clear to a girl, a knowledge lost as the world's reality is impressed upon her more and more each day.

I had almost forgotten myself. I have not been a little girl for a long time. Like two weeks, at least.

I heard, after we descended the bus and began searching vainly for a taxi, that Budapest is most beautiful in the Summer. Imagine the city beneath azure skies, a sensual sun glinting off jewel waves, a warm breeze sighing in verdant leaves. 

It was December. We had come from Prague. Prague, that lovely city who wears a wintry morning like a lady wears a silk scarf. But Budapest is the morning, declining cover. Strange, how demure and yet brazen with nakedness. That is Budapest.

I was remembering thrones made of air and diadems of moonstones on the ruined walls of an old Hungarian castle. The view was a UNESCO world heritage site, which is silly somehow. But it keeps skyscrapers from popping up and ruining the skyline. 

There, the Danube flows beneath the Chain Bridge. There, the old quarter of Buda, with its winding boulevards and ancient winds. There, the Parliament building, with its flying buttresses. There, where we stayed in a beautiful Airbnb near the city center.

And I felt royal. The day was cold, and the scarf wound around my throat suddenly became chased with silver threads, pinned in place by mother-of-pearl clusters the size of my pinky fingernail. The cheap coffee in my hands became the richest, smoothest blend. It was all very romantic, I assure you.

Ah, Buda Castle. I dreamt about it last night, actually. And the silvery grayness of the sky, the cover of clouds, offsetting the sea of red rushing up that big hill with the statue of a lady holding a leaf/branch/thing like Rafiki holds up baby Simba that is supposed to remind people of their freedom. It is a funny story that Norbert told us (our tour guide, who introduced himself as Norbert the Hungarian, like the Hungarian Horntail named Norbert in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). It didn't feature in my dreams, because Soviets rather ruin the illusion of royalty. 

btw, that's a smudge, not a UFO

But for your information, that statue was erected by Soviets in 1945, to celebrate the Hungarian people's liberation from the Nazis and their gratitude to their Communist liberators. Then, after the fall of Communism in 1989, the city wanted to tear down the very kitsch reminder of Soviet influence, only the statue was so darn big that it would have cost an enormous sum to tear down. So, Norbert said, tapping his nose knowingly, the city came up with an ingenious plan to circumvent such obstacles: they covered the whole thing up with a big tarp, waited three days, and unveiled it as a new statue.

I think that is accurate. I scribbled some notes down in the margins of my map of the city. 

I would like to return to Budapest, and see it when the weather is warm, but there is something regal about it when the sky looks like snow and the Christmas markets sell hot, spiced wine. And because I first began listening to him while writing a paper on the imposition of religiosity on ethnic conflict, James Bay to me is Budapest. When I hear "Hold Back the River" I think of the red wine our hosts left us, and the bluey glow of this laptop, and the sound of its keyboard. I remember wet hair spilling on my shoulders, the fatigue of my eyes, the pages of National Geographic that papered the walls. 

Budapest is a city that by day reminds you of days past, and by night, makes you feel old, and grand, and wise. It is a city of dreams without substance, sparkling like diamonds. Perhaps I will go back when I am older and wiser and it will not be so. That is likely, for like a mirror, it will show you yourself.

Go to Budapest. Take the waters in the Turkish baths leftover from days of Ottomania. The food is cheap and very good.

Thinking about, without actually, reading

Today the weather was fine. Never in my life would I have thought I'd ever think 59 degrees Fahrenheit "warm", but there you have. Compared to -15 it's beautiful.

 I have been thinking about reading recently. I don't have a lot of time, and I waste what time I have. Today, though, we spoke a little about Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, a throwback to freshman year of high school for most of us. It made me nostalgic, and now I am sitting in the quad because the weather is fine and because I want to be quiet and think about reading.

I am thinking about Winter nights when the sun went down sooner. Naturally, it didn't actually, but that's how I like thinking about it. I am thinking of the frost on my mother's car when she came in to pick me up from school. She used to smell like mint, if it was near Christmas time, because her old company used to hang garlands that smelled inexplicably of it. Some bizarre, likely carcinogenic air freshening agent, no doubt.

I am remembering how I used to be sprawled on my stomach, hanging upside down from chairs, or curled on my side, reading. I always pretended not to see her.

I am remembering the warm light in our old house, the way it was absorbed by the pages of a book. It was so wonderful to read about other people eating when I was skinny and hungry, and then go down and eat. I used to like reading at the table, something my parents never tolerated.

I am remembering also the shed in the garden, where I liked to repair to, with a glass of milk and a bag of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies. I read Pollyanna there, and Helen Keller's autobiography. I also read some book about a boy named Jeb, and his friend, Onion John. I can't remember what it's called.

It smelled so musty in there. It was always too warm, and I don't know why I liked hiding in there so much. Maybe it was that no one ever thought to look for me there.

When we spoke of To Kill a Mockingbird, I also thought of Pan, and Asta Solilja, and Per Petterson. I should like someday to go to Norway.

It is already 5, and the light has not gone. It was fine today.

Remembering Casablanca in Syracuse

Today snow fell in large clumps and it was strange. I am well used to snow by now, but still I ran and exclaimed jubilantly at the blemishes I made in what was smooth and white. We spun with our tongues out and roared when we caught some wayward snowflakes.


It is very late, so likely there will be less sense and more truth in what I am saying. I opened this document with the vague notion that I ought write about my experiences on my home campus, and also that I wanted to explain my little poem a little. It is not my intention to say anything against Casablanca, or Morocco, or Africa. My poem, however flawed, captures honestly how I felt in the moments after it all happened.

I did cry, and I did hate those men. I never thought of the difficulty of their situations, how the economic disparity created desperation that forced crime rates to rise. The iPhones they stole could buy groceries for months. I had 400 durham in the bag one man tore from my shoulder, but that is nothing. Forty euros, maybe. Funnily enough, I remember adding that little bag and its contents to my list of grievances. It cost me 9 euros, a not-quite-impulse buy from an H&M in Place Kleber. It was black, and the perfect size for going out. I still can't understand why its loss bothered me so much. It was as if the fact of taking it from me was stripping me of an externally imposed femininity that I held to nonetheless.

The man was small and nondescript. I never even saw his face, although he took little care to hide it from me. He hit me across the ribs with his crowbar- hard enough to bruise, but I knew immediately that they weren't broken. When he saw that I wasn't fighting back, he grabbed the bag, gave a jerk, and took off, the cheap strap flapping absurdly behind him. I watched him go. I don't know why I didn't try to run. I turned and watched another crowbar descend on my friend. I heard the thud as it hit her between her shoulder blades. Michelle screamed.

It seems almost ridiculous now, as I sit in my dorm, miles and months removed from that day. I feel safe here, and already the room begins to take on the familiarity of home. I have never dreamt of that night in this bed. It is too comfortable, that bed.

Morocco was a funny trip, because Fez and Chefchauen don't seem to belong with Casablanca. I will write more about them later, when I am more capable, and again, when I return to Morocco. But Casablanca was so strange because I never saw anything of the city. Only the train station, the walk to the Airbnb, and the little streets around it. We bought wine in a corner shop, and bread that we were thankful for later. We had come by train from Fez that afternoon.

I remember that it was 10 when we finally left for dinner. I wore my friend Anna's green sweater. She wore it just the other day, and I could not stop looking at her in it, remembering and not remembering. We went to some Italian restaurant, because it was not too far. Still, we had to take taxis. When we left, some five men followed us back in a car. I suppose you can guess all that happened next.

To add insult to injury, we were all immediately and violently ill afterwards. Food poisoning. So we never saw the beautiful mosque in Casablanca, nor the beaches, nor the markets. Non-Muslims are not permitted to enter most mosques, but this one in Casablanca was an exception. However, we were sick. Terrible stuff. Police swarming the apartment, asking me questions in Arabic and then French, about our passports, and to recount again and again what happened.

I remember waking up the next morning unable to move, sweating profusely. My head hurt so badly that it took all my energy to turn it away from the light streaming in from the window.

I am leaving out many, many details. I do not want to paint a bad picture, and one day I will write a post that presents Morocco glowingly. It is a wondrous place. It is hard for me to remember it all here and now. It is also hard to keep from submitting to MENA stereotyping. You know, the lurid descriptions of the mysticism of the Orient, the enigma, the seductive, beguiling sands.

Sometimes I am afraid to walk alone, or at night. During those few days in San Diego, I saw a man in my driveway and I was afraid. I had bad dreams for a long time, but that's life. We were not seriously hurt, and it was a good lesson to learn.

Go to Morocco. Go safely, and do not carry too many valuables. Let the mint in the tea soothe in the heat of midday. Let the Berber talk you into buying their wares- they are beautiful and stoutly made. I bought a rug as a gift. Dyed saffron and poppy.

I can hear the snow. Isn't that odd? It shouldn't be possible.

Good Night.

Casablanca

They came in the night.
They'd lain in wait,
planning and brooding
on angry stomachs

as not even rats can.

Men.
two, three, five,
(or so we heard)
who grabbed for us
and brandished rusted crowbars
and a knife meant
for chubby, childish fingers.

We fled?
We must have. 
We fled into brick and mortar
that welcomed us 
like the board welcomes a steak.

Like a dream, it was.
Yet it was not a dream,
for Casablanca is warm in my dreams.

And I cried.
Not as a child,
not as a woman,
not as an American,
not as the daughter of a fortunate man,

But, my God, I cried.
Inshallah, a cry I knew and didn't know.

I cried because they took my phone and my money.
I cried because strange men grabbed me
and groped for more things
they could take from me.

I cried because I was small.
They made me little again,
a child wailing for her mama
because men bruised her
and flung her aside.

I cried because I was scared
and never thought to fight back.

I cried because I couldn't stop 
once I'd started.

And an evil part of me
wished their mothers could see
how
low 
their
sons
fell
so that they would cry too.

The terrible weight of mortality,
I remember,
balanced on the point
they held against
Anna's green sweater.

I cried 
because I didn't want to play 
at being grown up anymore.

But now I do not cry.
Maybe the cameras will catch them.
Maybe even the police will help us then.
But maybe not.
Maybe there's no one we can trust.
Not even the doorman
who asked me kindly to sit,
and offered me Café au lait.

We will leave Casablanca tomorrow.

Home Again

February is fast approaching, and I haven't posted anything for nearly two months. I not only didn't post, I didn't write. Not once. I think not doing something is as habit-forming as doing it. Entertaining the idea is always much more strenuous than the act, and I think it must be like that for everyone. I was also afraid that I wouldn't be able to say what I wanted to, but that's never the point anyway. Words will come like rivers, jumbled and bold and unrepentant. I am finding that they aren't the ones I look for, but they'll serve all the better for it.



I often think of Strasbourg now that I'm newly settled into my dorm in Syracuse. The last 2 things I'd posted were about the terrorist attacks in Paris. The remainder of my term was shadowed by them. I did not go to Berlin the following weekend, and people were afraid. Stunned, but life went on. Strasbourg had its Christmas Market, and it was greatly reduced by cautionary measures.



I can't help but feel that somehow I didn't appreciate my last days as well as I should have. They say you fall in love with the first city that loves you back- not your family, but you. I miss Strasbourg so much that it must be true. I miss my friends, I miss hearing the guttural elegance of Alsatian French, I miss the serpentine curls of smoke from Claire's cigarettes and the way the smell lingered for hours by her chair.

Quais Rouget de Lisle

Sometimes when I can't sleep, I whisper the tramlines to the darkened room. F, Place d'Islande and Elsau. B, Hohenheim Gare. C, Gare Central. D, Poteries. And so on. I trace my path to my university building, lingering over the tram lines and stops, and the streets I walked on. We always met at Gallia. There was a bar near there, just along the river, that we went to every weekend in the beginning. Jimmy's, it was called. I never figured out who Jimmy was.

I'm not such a child that I don't see that I miss Strasbourg because it was the site of that terrible and beautiful uncertainty,when you are more adult than child for the first time. I'm not such a grown-up that I let this fact make me sensible. Frankly, I don't have a single sensible bone in my body.

Half Timber in San Diego

San Diego is the home I knew as a child, Strasbourg the one I knew as a changeling. There will be others, of course. But these nights, these are the two that make me lay awake and think and think and think.

In my little gray-blue room in San Diego I have a box stuffed full with train tickets and the set list from the Hozier concert in Amsterdam and maps. Brown paper from the markets of Nice all the way to Fez, holding figs and oranges with fleeting ideas scribbled on them.Even a coaster I stole in a drunken stupor from Oktoberfest. When I come home in March I will put them in order. You will hear then how Rue des Cordonniers looked those fine December evenings. But some things I have in this orange sketchpad, like the angry poem I wrote after being mugged in Morocco.

There are many things I never wrote down. The Lennon Wall, the towering irony of it all, and the first Cat Cafe I ever went to was in Prague. The Tower of London, paling to the wild Irish beauty of Glendalough. Some things I will never remember, and some have become part of me, mingling with blood and bone, like San Diego during a rare storm.



I think I will go back to France next year.