1:00 am in Finland, now a twilight caressing water, pastel rainbow-wet laquer. The Land of a Thousand Lakes, and not a moment of darkness from our northerly-poleness. The Spring has just begun here, blue bells breaking from their caps, foxglove wild along the road. I left the house for a midnight run, puffing the mist of tarn and light, just the cottonwood dripping it's tissues, and lilac turning it's shoulder toward the breeze. The past days have spilled from the lip of the cup. It seems as if our times give rise to curiosities of grit and diamond, and how I want to tell you stories, these of loyal and devoted poems.
I left raging Rome in a dust cloud from Napoli, on tour with Titubanda to the slums of Scampia. In a rented bus we passed red wine from the jug (before noon), singing Richie Valen's songs, crunching cookies and dried fruits, playing soccer at the rest stops. The hooligans are goofy, I spent a weekend wrought with pain from laugh-gut. Scampia, you New Yorkers, is the Bronx times 10. The people made giraffe-necks over balconies to see us marching down below, and oh to watch the children smiling from their windows, then rush the street to meet us eating fried polenta! We slept in bunk beds and sprawled out on floors, gyrating across the night to the songs of Puglia. There was flute and drum and a ghostly Arabic singing, while children sped acoss the piazza on motorcycles too big for their britches, nearly killing swarths of people (with the sounds of it alone).
Before all this I'd been in sleepy Ciampino, where I found a little old man as I arrived off the train. The day I departed he popped into the cafe where I stood, to which he insisted on providing an escort to the station, owing, of course, to our miraculous reunion. He was sunken and spritely, with slanted eyes and a chisel-crow's nose. The proudness of this noble grandpa, I didn't dare burst his bubble to tell him I knew where I was going. We hugged and shared our stranger's vows, about paths crossing again and such, and I couldn't help but feel I had met the eldest of friends, that I was in the presence of enormous love. You see: everything that anyone tried to tell me, about people, the men, and women, are not yet true. The manly ones are not made of slime, they are kind and genuine and earnest. The women are not catty and hateful, they have met me like long-lost sisters.
So back i was in Rome again, to the smells of garbage and subway, where I packed my bag and hauled off to spend a solemn night in the airport. On the train I had a cabin alone, and felt a mischievous sense of emancipation. I fancy-footed up and down the aisles when all a-sudden the lights went out and I was shuffled into darkness. The night heat whipped through the windows, iron hiss of screeching tracks, a humble thrusting of side-to-side, and alone, in darkness, I was a kid in a candy store...one of my favorite moments yet. I found a sweet little enclave with a group of homeless men and knocked myself to sleep. In the morn I sailed to Finland, where I caught a bus through birch and glistening lakes, and stepped afoot to the harassment of a cigarette-fanged boy. (I was wearing mix-matched dots and stripes and boots, some silver and my knapsack, for it was cold as hell and what I could manage.) It seems because I am quite dark by now, and
folks assume I look "Romanian," this boy and others regarded me with stares having reckoned me a gypsy! When I told them instead I was American, they laughed and would not believe! As the gypsies are viewed with racist distrust, it h
as been interesting to wander the streets and wonder. I have been spending these days with Karin and Jani, Vera and Aron, making food and taking walks and feeling the contrast of calm. Today we gathered flowers for Midsummer, and wreathed the heads of the kiddies before jumping into the freezing lake.
How many more I wish to share, how difficult to offer shards of mirror! Did I mention that I am happier than I have been in all my life? That there are parts of myself I never knew existed? And these with all things fall like leaves, for
tomorrow will earn what does not yet exist, and today will be buried as these ardent exploits ever are. But for now, we live, and so, goodnight!
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