/yesod

Tag: women

  • eastern promises

    I find myself on a tour of a city somewhere in Eastern Europe. It is a dank, darkly industrial place — all smokestacks and ornate spires, brick walls stained with soot. Tagging along with a friend from junior high — he has made this trip many times before — I wander through the streets and shops, taking pictures as I go…

    …the market, full of cheap knockoffs of western products and strange gummy candies, bright as chemicals…

    …a flock of pigeons, black with soot, taking flight into a smoke filled sky…

    …the rushed tour through a defunct governmental building, paper-strewn floors and broken skylights, a crudely mimeographed guide handed out — rough paper decorated with crayon scrawls and stupid jokes about American super heroes. We join an Australian tour group, twenty or more strong, demanding their money back . . . but the scam artists operating the tour lock us out…

    …tagging along with the Australians, safety in numbers, despite the growing signs that they hide dark secrets — hints that they’ve been on this same trip for decades, damned and doomed to wander in a forgotten corner of the world…

    …gathering together in a crumbling courtyard for the night, an old movie shown on a sheet hung up on one wall . . . I am horrified to see a young girl, her wits damaged in some way, mutely servicing one of the Australian men with her hands while the movie plays, casting a sickening constellation against the jacket of the oblivious woman in front of them…

    …edging out of a brick archway, strewn with vines — no interest in seeing how the movie turns out, wanting to escape their company before the evening reveals even more distasteful secrets…

    …standing in a darkened alley, taking a picture of clothes lines fluttering overhead. Two men pass along a narrow opening. They pass by and, after some hushed t ones, they return — demanding my phone and whatever money I have. One of them is dark and menacing, the other blonde and aloof. Despite the danger, I refuse and, somehow, make my escape…

    …spending the night in an old flat, the women there gray with age and disappointment…

    …the men burst in, having tracked me to my little haven. Somehow I get the upper hand…

    …the dark man is kneeling, hands bound behind him. I slap his face roughly once, then again. His eyes raise to me, full of hate, and I pull back my balled fist…

    …and then I wake in the cold light, bare branches outside my window and my daughter murmuring across the hall.

  • flames, new and old

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated June 16th, 1998]

    …and, somehow, in my dreams I hear a huge crash — metal and glass — ignoring it, I dream on…

    …a flickering light from outside — flash of orange through the blinds — send me up to the window, women’s voices, laughing and talking . . . and I see them gathered around a fire, a smashed and twisted wreckage to one side, smoke from the fire rising through the branches above . . . I run out to comfort them but…

    ..I’m awake, my son crying in the next room…

    …dreaming again, this time the Queen of Middle Night puts in an appearance of an old girlfriend from years past — the red haired dancer. Old flame, slowly kindled, surprisingly warm. Her family home, my son and I just passing through . . . she embraces me, a big sister, a past lover — though she was, in reality, neither. Passing through the rooms, everyone sleeping quietly, I see a black puma chained in a dark corner. It blinks once, green eyes blazing, hungry. I walk away. Slowly.

    We move on and, when it is time, I go. Her farewell kiss is surprisingly sweet…

    ..and, in darkness, I am awake once again.