Weekly 5-10 minute writing prompts from feather anchor adages.
27.10.10
WK 08 | The places I'd like to share with you
6 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Le Café Suffren
We’ll go there some stormy night. Sit out on the terrace under the awnings. Protected from torrents by the moveable machines the French have devised to shield café goers from sheets of rain chasing pedestrians across the boulevard de La Motte-Picquet. I’ll be have the agneau a le forestier. (sp?) Lightening sears the cream stone facades then the night drops back to neon and rain. We’re laughing, more than a little drunk. We order coffees and then cognacs. I hope it rains all night.
We wandered the beaches of Baleal and Consolacao nude sunbathing and picking up flotsam and trash from the sea for my sculptures. We walked every inch of that beautiful coastal city, taking pictures of Udos, the mummified dog, moon dances, and the narrow cobblestone streets. I think we stopped the nude sunbathing when we discovered factory workers watching us and jerking off in the grass above us.
Fridays were always the same, we’d head straight to Largo de Ribeira and take a seat outside A Popular, the seafood restaurant run by Alphonso and his papa Filepe Garcia, the singing merchant seaman. A bottle of red wine, bread and delicious fish stew that was never the same from one week to the next. Bass, sea mullet, sole, bream, mackerel, red mullet, conger eel, shad, blue fish, porgie, glaucus, golden bream in a beautiful tomato broth… We’d lunch for hours, savoring every detail of the meal. When the wine ran out, we’d have brandy and coffee and whatever else Filepe had on hand.
Alphonso was a beautiful teenage boy with spiked black hair. He was a big fan of American punk rock and thrilled us with his beautiful voice belting out songs from the Stranglers and Gang of Four. He met us in town one night and took us to a local bar where we drank florescent green absinthe and then climbed down into a cave where he lit candles along the rock wall edges. The ocean roared beneath our feet, he sang a Portuguese love song to us and we both fell a little bit in love with him. Remember?
The places I’d like to share with you, again. We stayed at our campsite in Peniche, Portugal for six weeks or more while we waited for our next installment of cash to come due. We fashioned a little home for ourselves there with the chairs we’d piked from the racetrack in Staffordshire, England and our tent from REI. That first day after a big rain storm, we went all over the campground loading wood onto the motorcycle trailer to build a platform to keep our tent dry. There was a kitchen compound nearby that we commandeered for our camp stove, transistor radio, dishes and supplies.
Do you remember those days? We rejoiced when we found a shop that sold used books in English and read 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. We bought a model of a ship and worked on it in our little kitchen in the evenings under our propane lamp. We listened to serials on BBC radio and drank so much cheap red Portuguese wine that our livers ached.
We established a routine to add some structure to our lives, mornings we’d walk two miles into town past the Industrias de Alimentação factory for rich dark coffee and sweeties and visit the markets for our evening meal. It impressed me how quickly you learned to speak Portuguese, those afternoons at Dos Hermanos drinking beer and watching Rouletta de Fortuno and Rua Sesamo really paid off!
Sometimes I don't know what to say. I look at you feeling inadequate. I hope to amaze you with the thoughts I have about what you are saying but the words don't seem to come out right. I flush, instantly embarrassed and wishing I had just nodded and kept my mouth shut. I can barely keep eye contact, I feel so awkward.
If only I could share with you the places in my mind. I have so many beautiful visions that I can't begin to describe. Places I wish I could share, dreams of a better way, thoughts I wish you knew. I wish I could help you understand me better. I wish I could let you know how your words and ideas affect me. Instead the words get stuck on my tongue and I feel like a child.
The places I'd like to share with you are the crystaline moments when all roads and talents intersect and you are the audience. You know and feel with assurance that you are your best. Everything you were born to be, studied for, practiced and committed to are woven together to shimmer like a scepter in your own iris. You know without doubt you are the best you can be. Ego and ambition have fallen away. The audience clapping and the till ringing, these things no longer matter. You are that beautiful creature beyond your dreams. I would love to share that place and moment with you, for you to be wordless to express the sensation of being whole, being formed, being cherished and generous beyond definition. Like the green flash over the ocean on a clear day just at sunset, you cannot command this moment to appear, you won't be able to duplicate it by desire or hold it captive. But it will comfort you when rock and bone and bitter wind bite at the seam of your person. The real you still runs unfettered in the milisecond mile of the green flash.
I don't know if you remember, the cafe just outside of Nordstroms, downtown. I used to go there often. I would drink my coffee and write in my notebook. Stories about the people sitting in that cafe. Sitting under that harsh fluorescent light. Feeling like I was in some painting that tried to talk about the human condition as it stood in 1987. A postmodern Hopper, if you will. I would share that with you. Not because you would understand, but because you would not. I would show you the world that you are too afraid to look at because it is dirty and grimy. It is not a coffee shop inside a department store. It is where the girls who worked at the department store could afford to eat. It is where they went to avoid your stares and where they went to talk about you. There was never any soft light and velvet cheesecake. There was a turkey on rye that was piled high, and chased with a cheap soda. There wasn't a comfortable chair that invited you to sit a while. There was only hard booths and counter stools that hurt your back and begged you to go back to work. But I would sit there, watching, learning. All day. I learned the patterns of the patrons and the waitress's names. All while you couldn't spare the place a second glance. I would share it with you because it deserves so much more than you.
6 comments:
Le Café Suffren
We’ll go there some stormy night.
Sit out on the terrace under the awnings.
Protected from torrents by the moveable machines
the French have devised to shield café goers
from sheets of rain chasing pedestrians
across the boulevard de La Motte-Picquet.
I’ll be have the agneau a le forestier. (sp?)
Lightening sears the cream stone facades then
the night drops back to neon and rain.
We’re laughing, more than a little drunk.
We order coffees and then cognacs.
I hope it rains all night.
We wandered the beaches of Baleal and Consolacao nude sunbathing and picking up flotsam and trash from the sea for my sculptures. We walked every inch of that beautiful coastal city, taking pictures of Udos, the mummified dog, moon dances, and the narrow cobblestone streets. I think we stopped the nude sunbathing when we discovered factory workers watching us and jerking off in the grass above us.
Fridays were always the same, we’d head straight to Largo de Ribeira and take a seat outside A Popular, the seafood restaurant run by Alphonso and his papa Filepe Garcia, the singing merchant seaman. A bottle of red wine, bread and delicious fish stew that was never the same from one week to the next. Bass, sea mullet, sole, bream, mackerel, red mullet, conger eel, shad, blue fish, porgie, glaucus, golden bream in a beautiful tomato broth… We’d lunch for hours, savoring every detail of the meal. When the wine ran out, we’d have brandy and coffee and whatever else Filepe had on hand.
Alphonso was a beautiful teenage boy with spiked black hair. He was a big fan of American punk rock and thrilled us with his beautiful voice belting out songs from the Stranglers and Gang of Four. He met us in town one night and took us to a local bar where we drank florescent green absinthe and then climbed down into a cave where he lit candles along the rock wall edges. The ocean roared beneath our feet, he sang a Portuguese love song to us and we both fell a little bit in love with him. Remember?
The places I’d like to share with you, again.
We stayed at our campsite in Peniche, Portugal for six weeks or more while we waited for our next installment of cash to come due. We fashioned a little home for ourselves there with the chairs we’d piked from the racetrack in Staffordshire, England and our tent from REI. That first day after a big rain storm, we went all over the campground loading wood onto the motorcycle trailer to build a platform to keep our tent dry. There was a kitchen compound nearby that we commandeered for our camp stove, transistor radio, dishes and supplies.
Do you remember those days? We rejoiced when we found a shop that sold used books in English and read 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. We bought a model of a ship and worked on it in our little kitchen in the evenings under our propane lamp. We listened to serials on BBC radio and drank so much cheap red Portuguese wine that our livers ached.
We established a routine to add some structure to our lives, mornings we’d walk two miles into town past the Industrias de Alimentação factory for rich dark coffee and sweeties and visit the markets for our evening meal. It impressed me how quickly you learned to speak Portuguese, those afternoons at Dos Hermanos drinking beer and watching Rouletta de Fortuno and Rua Sesamo really paid off!
Sometimes I don't know what to say. I look at you feeling inadequate. I hope to amaze you with the thoughts I have about what you are saying but the words don't seem to come out right. I flush, instantly embarrassed and wishing I had just nodded and kept my mouth shut. I can barely keep eye contact, I feel so awkward.
If only I could share with you the places in my mind. I have so many beautiful visions that I can't begin to describe. Places I wish I could share, dreams of a better way, thoughts I wish you knew. I wish I could help you understand me better. I wish I could let you know how your words and ideas affect me. Instead the words get stuck on my tongue and I feel like a child.
The places I'd like to share with you are the crystaline moments when all roads and talents intersect and you are the audience. You know and feel with assurance that you are your best. Everything you were born to be, studied for, practiced and committed to are woven together to shimmer like a scepter in your own iris. You know without doubt you are the best you can be. Ego and ambition have fallen away. The audience clapping and the till ringing, these things no longer matter. You are that beautiful creature beyond your dreams. I would love to share that place and moment with you, for you to be wordless to express the sensation of being whole, being formed, being cherished and generous beyond definition. Like the green flash over the ocean on a clear day just at sunset, you cannot command this moment to appear, you won't be able to duplicate it by desire or hold it captive. But it will comfort you when rock and bone and bitter wind bite at the seam of your person. The real you still runs unfettered in the milisecond mile of the green flash.
I don't know if you remember, the cafe just outside of Nordstroms, downtown. I used to go there often. I would drink my coffee and write in my notebook. Stories about the people sitting in that cafe. Sitting under that harsh fluorescent light. Feeling like I was in some painting that tried to talk about the human condition as it stood in 1987. A postmodern Hopper, if you will.
I would share that with you. Not because you would understand, but because you would not. I would show you the world that you are too afraid to look at because it is dirty and grimy. It is not a coffee shop inside a department store. It is where the girls who worked at the department store could afford to eat. It is where they went to avoid your stares and where they went to talk about you.
There was never any soft light and velvet cheesecake. There was a turkey on rye that was piled high, and chased with a cheap soda. There wasn't a comfortable chair that invited you to sit a while. There was only hard booths and counter stools that hurt your back and begged you to go back to work.
But I would sit there, watching, learning. All day. I learned the patterns of the patrons and the waitress's names.
All while you couldn't spare the place a second glance. I would share it with you because it deserves so much more than you.
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