this page isn't big enough, or i don't know enough polysyllabic words, to tell you how good it feels to be here. my hands aren't big or quick enough to draw you a picture on this screen of life here. i want to whisper it in your ear and leave you with a pistacchio gelato kiss-print and the smell of the sea in your hair. i want to tattoo this tale on the back of your arm so you need a mirror or a friend to read it. I want you to fall asleep in the sunshine and dream this dream I've been living, and wake up and tell me, ok.
my last few days in sicily were spent ducking baby Mediterranean waves, hitch hiking in big trucks and fast cars, climbing on ancient obelisks and crumbling castles at odd hours, doing ceramics with the kids of Calatafimi after school, walking in the sun forever. Running around under the fat fat moon, and fava beans are the most delicious thing recently. More pubs and driving around very fast at night. Learned how to say the most important word in Italiano: soletico (tickle). Explored the ancient temple and theatre of Segesta. Learned how to slow dance (i think). Rode on a motorbike, worked in a greenhouse, moved a HUGE pile of wood. Deflected the Italian machismo. Bam!
For a few days I put up with the increasingly greasy approaches of a man who worked on the farm. I overlooked his overt grossness, telling myself that he was my friend, it wasn't a big deal. One morning I'd had really bad dreams (that Seward was cemented over, randomly) and when I woke up he was at it again, "why didn't you come to sleep with me? what's the matter, you don't like men?" I suggested that he give it a rest. He said, "ohhh, in italy it is tradition for the men to joke about the sex with the women. bla bla bla"
so i say, "oh really? that's part of your culture? ok. let me tell you about part of my culture. when an old man makes bad jokes about sex to me i say fuck off. or in italian, va'fanculo."
This, apparently, is a good way to make a point.
Everyday for the last three weeks I have walked down a big hill to let the chickens out of their coop, then hiked back up. In the evening I would go down again and feed them and collect eggs. Climbing that hill never got any easier, but I got stronger. The chickens did not get any less freakily aggressive, but I got braver. Life is fucking amazing, if you let it be.
Right now I am enjoying the hospitality of my friend Francesco in Palermo. We just looked at his work, which is documenting the plants and animals of the nature reserve that I lived in for the past few weeks.
Tonight, to London.
ps, my pits are sunburned, baby.
1 comment:
Ooooohhhh Sunburned pits. Mama Mia, i'd rub pesto in your hair and work anchovy oil into your chicken-pooped feet. More likely i'd listen to your raving genius, wing some gelato at you and smirk mischeviously as i fled down a steep dusty road, pursued by said gelato draped Amazon/Lucia. Hmmm, our legs are about the same length, i wonder if you'd catch me? I might just let you catch me so as to enjoy the sensation of being tackled by a gelato covered lust-muffin such as yourself. Ooof!
Missing you greatly. Sounds like you're up to your regular adventures. Miss hearing your snarky voice and chuckles. Congrats on school, remember just cause its got four walls and your paying for it doesn't mean you have any less to learn outside academia. Colleges just do a really good job of collecting a lot of smart people together in one place. All the more brains for feating upon.
Sounds like family is nuturing, in that gastric-ly distressing sorta English way. I look forward to seeing mine in Alaska in July. Lil' sis' is coming to visit in two weeks. Gonna take her scuba diving and surfing, hopefully she'll survive.
I've recently moved into a posh lovepad as close as you can get to the ocean in Seaview. Imagine where the castle shaped house is, cept on the other side. I fall ass-leap to coquis and ocean breezes, wake up to cooing mourning doves, chicken scratching sounds, and waves glimpsed between my toes. I'm contemplating aging rapidly so that i may have an excuse to sit in a chair in front of the ocean all day. Am building a huge furry double sized bed. Not sure about laundering fur whence matted with coco oil, chocolate, and mango-guava love juices. We'll see how it turns out. I mean it doesn't beat a bread truck with a cracked windshield, but i'm getting there.
So in other news:
Suzannah broke my heart, undid my spiritual growth, and stole my penis.
Sort of feels like someone taking a blender, forcing it through your belly-button then setting it to frappe. I think my shakras may be mis-alinged too.
So good news is as soon as you and i get our preliminary date out of the way i'm ready to get married. You want the wedding invitations mauve or purple, remember they need to match the napkins. You should think about getting tickets for the family in advance. How you feel about moving the date up? ;}
My god it feels good to laugh at myself talking at an imaginary you. Sentences like that and constant self-referencing let me know i'm getting better.
Ugh. Been going through a big long depressio.....n.
Spending a lot of time alone. Not leaving the house, acting very mentally unhealthy. I can handle being hurt, being jealous, and being an idiot, but love denied HURTS! At least take the love and walk away, but don't reject it.
Feel like a man who lost his mate and daughter.
(insert me into any of fifty action movie plots at this point...."they took away his family, now it's payback time" : Hazen XV, "Smoldering Insousiance in Paradise - The Reckoning" in theatres this summer!)
(please note my sophisticated culturally sensitive use of "theatre" so very different than the Anglo-american Histro-revisionist Imperialist "theater" i'm thinking of you here.)
Yeah, so um like life really sucked for a while there. Suzannah's helping by being a raging snot, thus slightly weakening my unwillingess to stop being in lovewith/at her. I still unfortunately wake up and fall asleep most days thinking about her and Lilly. I hope to be better sometime before the apocalypse.
Been spending time hanging out with the obligatory hot blonde Russian chick who's new in town. I think she's attracted to my gloomy disposition, obvious sophistication, and smouldering looks. (smoldering+floundering= smouldering) I also think that her inadequacies in understanding english have helped to fool her into thinking i'm cool. We're just platonic, she's going through a similar situation, so we just hang. It's really weird. Been a few times when we almost kissed, just cause the timing and situation were right, then we realized that, that wasn't a good enough reason. Pulled back, both looked out our respective windows, like two strangers on the bus. I've really appreciated her being there though.
Part of me wants a safe casual go nowhere rebound, and the other part thinks i should take up meditational sittings and read more. Luckily the smart part drinks a beer, breaks the bottle over a table edge and threatens the airy-fairy new age part with a rough beer bottle shave if i should even so much as utter "om".
In the meantime i make a point of biking down to the beach at least once a day. Madam ocean is always willing to caress my flanks and send me ass over tea kettle. Lava's pumping fiercely, lots of whales. Mosquitoes are in full bloom.
Devin and Gretchen just got back in town, been making pasta messes with them, both seem good. Disoriented. (strange to see in Devin) I'll just keep pelting them with corny jokes and coconuts until they seem healthier. I think Vermont rubbed off on them, they seemed to have forgotten that happiness in Hawaii means excess, jubilation, and reckless spontanaiety. I'll kick that tempered Vermont sense of quiet contentment out of them soon.
I have several healthy reorientation regiments planned for your ass whenever you decide to bless us with your presence again. Surf, sand, sun, repeat. Food bliss, dance ecstasy, love, repeat. Corny jokes, plentiful play, deep insights, repeat. Rinse and towel or sun dry.
I just wanted to let you know that i love you and am with you wherever you are. You are seen and felt even in absentia.
Like a Eurotrash bedbug i'm along for the ride. Vodka and techno-trance, in the dirt. Blood and bedsheets.
This webpage is going to make me type in the letters "epgpoyp" so that i can leave this messege. It's one of those skewed authentication things you see so much on the internet these days, by typing in theses randomly generated letters I confirm my human-ness. I guess we skinjobs can read distorted text and computers can't...yet. We'll be in trouble when they can, Devin's iMac might be able to read my drunken handwriting and send me hatemail and viagra ads.
Point being "epgpoyp"
I think that's the sound your glass eye makes as it falls into the toilet. You know a night of drinking and dancing, your muscles are relaxed, you're exhausted, you lean over to contemplate your reflection in the toilet bowl, there you are; bleaery framed by your groin and.... epgpoyp! Your eye socket lets loose and then there goes your glass eye. Too bad, you really like that one. You contemplate fishing...
So what, my dear meditator, industrious woofer, earnest thespian:
"what does "epgpoyp" mean to you?"
kisses.
PS. i'll either braid or shave your armpit hair whenever you get back. Whichever you prefer.
I think there may be a moral about not crying over a glass eye or something too. Maybe it was something my grandma used to say about relaxing on the tiolet...
Anyway have fun, do stuff you might think wiser of later.
-hazen
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