since i started caring.

1/23/08 7:44 PM

Things I have noticed since I started caring about other living things.

1. upon dismounting my bicycle on Lincoln road in Miami beach wearing the block’s only 1970s inspired fashion that isn’t from this season’s runway shows, a man pointed at me and pointed at my mess of shower-wet hair and said to his friend, “now there’s a beautiful woman.” And as I looked down at my long-since painted red toenails and my pant legs rolled up to my knees, I believed him.

2. I am compiling a list of songs I would like to do my own versions to; including…

a. Close to you, The Carpenters
b. the great beyond, R.E.M.
c. no rain, blind melon
d. at last
e. turn, turn, turn
f. man on the moon, R.E.M.

3. I am listening to the U.K.’s very own pop anti-princess lily allen’s hit single on repeat until I learn all of the parts where she speaks very quickly in british slang.

4. my cat feels softer and cuts me less with her toenails.

5. a homeless man, after observing that my pant leg was treacherously pinned in between the greasy chain and chain guard of my bicycle (rendering me motionless), pushed himself up off his seat in the gas station doorway and proceeded to lift up the back end of my bike, spin the wheel, and successfully free me from myself. only later did I realize that I didn’t even have enough change to buy AIR from the AIR machine to fill my tires.

indian scarves.

It's too hot to wear a scarf here, but sometimes I have to. In New York I lived in scarves and hats. Walking from the studio on 36th down through town to somewhere near Union Square, singing or cursing, depending on the day. I could hide behind glasses, expose my paint-chipped toes and strum three chords on my guitar all afternoon with an audience or not. I left that city with a smile. I wanted something new to bitch about.

So here I am in Miami Beach, creating a mental list of do's and don'ts for the next destination I happen to land in.

It has to be cool enough (at least in the evenings) to wear a scarf. Especially the glittered thin ones I liberated from India.

It's factual that smell conjures up memories. I find that music does the same. When I have Indian scarves draped around my neck, I smell the sandalwood and see the children's kites flying over the horizon. I feel the gravelly soot beneath my tired feet and hear the songs of early morning street vendors. Sunny, the bidi vendor, asks me how my day is and where I am going. I feel alive and real and there, in a land where I felt I was supposed to be.

I don't feel like I am supposed to be here, but there must be a reason or two. Maybe it is simply to reveal to me the necessity of weather encouraging the hug of a scarf, however thin. And that next time I should use this factor as the deal maker.

cheap champagne.

Slane Public
MacDougal/Bleeker, NYC

Man with two weathered Polaroid cameras, one weathered grey dreadlock dangling from his chin. Smith Ski goggles wrapped around his head. Three new tennis balls held onto his vehicle by steel spokes and a black plastic bag carrying garbage hangs from the handlebars.
He bobs his head slightly to the acoustic music drifting from where we are to where he is. He is close enough to touch if I stand, but I'd rather not.
I sit at a spotlit table, glasses of cheap champagne and wilted roses. Eyes searching for those pieces of our youth that spark remembrance. No one asks questions to direct the conversation. The volume is too loud to hear the answers anyway. But the air is cool and the drinks are cheap and if we choose to capture a Polaroid moment, we can--but we won't.

european writing.

While attempting to do a resume for a friend of mine, I am struck by the fact that European English writing is almost completely indecipherable. I feel like I am reading script from the walls of some crumbling castle wall where moss grows very very green.
There are loops and curves that have no place in the word, although I admire the roller coaster sensibility of overcomplicating pieces of straight and semi-curved lines.

fishnet lady.

On this, my 27th birthday, I am noting the posture of the older woman across the street, standing at the Automated Teller Machine.  Her shirt is made of fisherman's ocean net; her hair, a silvery sort of blonde.  Her story, one of late night dancing 'neath the disco ball's mini reflecting squares.

desperation.

Paris, my year-old Bengal kitty, is cleaning the synthetic fur of a Walgreen's style stuffed cat with her pink tongue.

It's sweet and semi-disturbing.  

It's not as though the stuffed cat (let's call her A.L.F.) has any life within it.  I mean, the scratchy grey hair of A.L.F. has little in common with the sparkle soft feel of Paris.  

Is she really that lonely?

Will her licking create a plastic hairball?