''The clarity that does so much damage.'' (Jack Gilbert)
Still, men could have been crushed, and weren't. Their bodies bounced back elastic. I think of Hemingway. His novel about the rodeo. Writing the voice of an impotent man. What making love felt like, then putting pen to the paper to become that other man. I write by hand now and really it doesn't change everything. And eventually he killed himself. Do people still ask themselves why? Or is his genius enough? To explain?
I walked home eating Churros. Fried dough in sticks, rolled in sugar. I learned about it in high school but thought it would be bad, it was foreign and could not convey the grease, the sugar, the outer crunch and the inner give. It was magnificent. I ate and the air smelled like ylang-ylang flowers. The sensuous luxury of nature here doesn't matter. People don't appreciate it more. Life isn't more graceful, or just, or intoxicating. It's only amazing to see from far away, as a picture of what you don't have. Here it smells like ylang-ylang. The men push each other with their hips to get closer to the parade of women in lingerie. The next event.
But maybe that is how nature should be appreciated. Incorporated silently into life, like furniture. Comfortable. A staple. Closer, not separated by the distinction of ''that special thing''. And people's lives here are slower. Their world is small. I imagine they feel very safe. Jill asks, ''What do you suppose it would be like to grow up in a town like this?'' ''Probably, I'd be happier''.
''I am not writing about myself as a rational human being. I am writing about the substances of an animal and female life: magic, pain, the cracked nails of four feet, and the days like this one, when it is difficult to speak to a good-looking man.'' (Bhanu Kapil Rider)
Men in cowboy hats. So many. I love men in cowboy hats. They're sexy until I see their faces, up close, and then I look away quickly so they don't think I'm interested. All the men in the bars are old. I stumbled into a dance, next, of grinding high schoolers. I felt like a rabbit. I can't do this.
If I can't express myself poetically in my own language, what hope do I have for speech? It is such an act of faith, this approximation. Yet, for all the exteriority, how we think we know each other. What we know is what gets out. Not beyond that.
Leaving a party is the same in every country: alone, early, I know I've never fallen in love after sundown anyway. My head is clear and sober.
The last American women who worked at the hotel brought a man from town home, they fucked, and he got furious that she wouldn't pay him. After. We're assigned different, secret rules. So many men here have said I'm the most beautiful woman they've seen. While the women with no cellulite in their legs dance by, incandescent and prepared for this. All this.
I don't trust anyone. But I trust the shyness in myself that knows what it doesn't want.
I am a very nice symbol. But I am awkward. I am beginning to own how awkward I am. It is its own form of stubbornness. I know I live an equally bright life in other forms.
I understand the immigrants who assimilate poorly. How does anyone manage such flexibility. To overcome being foreign? The heart, maybe, doesn't distinguish. But. Everything else.
There were fireworks in the park bursting right above my head. It felt like the first time. My hair doesn't glimmer like tape. A small boy blowing bubbles into the rodeo. A bull through an incandescent globe. Bucking, then calm, and caught, unenthusiastic and afraid.
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