s u m m e r
streams in japan
I slide the headphones off and eject the promo CD from the player while slowly turning to the left on the orange, duck-taped stool. The noise of the record shop comes back as the Flaming Lips become only a pleasant memory. The sun is setting through the plate glass windows, over the old Sears warehouse, and the orange light makes her skin glow and leaves my own arms warm. She's got the new Wait's CD. I wanted it, but she beat me to it and she's sitting there listening and her eyes stare straight ahead and she moves slowly and comfortably back and forth.
She's a look of confidence on her face, though her features reveal more than a little room for vulnerability, but only in moments like this one. Only in the stolen ones. Her dark hair is fine and I imagine her eyes are bright with pleasure and the warm hue of Vodka.
Her stool is covered with shag carpet and one rung is broken but she taps her right foot anyway, her long legs stretched out to one side. Now her back is almost turned to me and I can just see a one quarter profile, and one beautifully small and intricate jade earring. It looks as delicate as hair pulled through silk, the old method of blind-stitching outlawed in China around 1904. Yeah, in the sun it looks as if a child blind-stitched her earring on.
I'm close over the silk. Breathing in the years. Admiring the one thousand vertical and horizontal stitches per square inch. Not believing the color achieved by the dye in the hair. Not comprehending the minerals involved. Not quite understanding their rarity. As rare as an individual. As rare as her, sitting a few feet away.
As rare as our chance encounter here. As rare as the lines around the world dividing it into sections and holding it together through geometry, the sextant, the compass, shear space, and the traveling waves that bring sleep on these unbearably warm summer nights.
Back home a bottle of port breathes for next week. An old black GE fan oscillates and blows soft white ash from the tray by the bed.
I fluff the pillow under my head, roll over and drift back into sleep again.
goodnight 5.10.99