Future Ex Buys Pajamas
We begin our descent somewhere over Normandy when I read in Let’s Go! France that the Eiffel Tower is this beacon for suicide. Host to twelve successful attempts every year. Katja tells me the jumpers tend not to be locals. She says no Parisian would be caught dead anywhere near the Eiffel Tower, and by the...
Vietnam: Four Ways
1. Silk At the fabric market, a two-tone silk in mauve and gray shimmers, then billows when I free it from the bolt. Delicate cranes fly along its fold. An old woman studies me studying the silk; I can’t let go. “This is so soft,” I say, “so—” But it’s in English. The old woman...
Wonder in Africa
After my first visit to Dakar in 1989, I left disoriented. Now I felt reassured to be back. Pulling into the driveway of the hotel that I had once hoped I would never see again, my taxi stopped behind a huge black limousine, out of which poured an entourage of muscular men and fashion model...
Displacement
This is the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas. Here you can see the giant Tin Man just inside the front door, rosy cheeks, a smile straight as piano keys. It’s only the top half of him lounging on the floor, the part with a heart stuck like a prize to his left chest. You can...
Driver Ants
The night we arrive in Uganda, my mother wakes to the sound of rain, not a storm, but a steady slap of drops against pane. She rolls over, her body weary from the plane and the children and the jetlag. Although we are at the top of a hill, windows flung open to catch a...
Spinning Down
On that perfect Caribbean afternoon, while my spouse napped, I had paddled out to a shallow coral area to snorkel. Alone. I knew better. The water was quiet, the coral gorgeous, so I swam beyond the shallow area for a better view. Without any warning, a wall of surf, instant and rogue, picked me up...
Dessert
In Alba, Italy, rain and a market. In my hands, the white greased paper that once held an entire rotisserie rabbit. Its bones clack together as hooves, a horse in the distance. I clutch this paper coffin to my chest, as if for warmth, and scan the piazza for a garbage can. My hunt for...
The Ugly Friend
In Prague my attractive friend and I meet two Swedish men at a vegetarian restaurant. We share a communal table. Outside it is raining as is the case all summer in various locations around Europe. Instantly the men begin smiling and then whispering to each other in Swedish. I am eating soup, lentil I think...
Missing Mao’s Ear
“Y M C A,” I hummed the English words to the song on the train’s loudspeakers. My friend Luc marked each alphabet letter with his arms. Outside, rice fields stretched into the setting sphere of the sun, a discus of fiery flaming red that the Buddha had thrown into the sky. The man next to...
Monsieur Young and the End of Existentialism
In front of Basilique de Fourviere, up in the sky, my face moist from the cold mist moving, I saw the whole city of Lyon spread out in front of me, squat geometric shapes of brown and white and gray. I watched the specks that were speeding cars on a distant highway. I saw the...
“Tetanus, You Understand?”
September 2, 1994:Has anyone ever loved you as much as me? October 12, 1995:My possessions thrown into the arms of skeptical moving men, my three tiny dogs snatched and trundled into an apartment with white-painted walls, my mother arrived from North Carolina and sleeping on the floor inside the frame of a mattress-less bed. Fled,...
The Wheelbarrow Dance on the Harbor of Cascais
The weather had been announcing itself all day, first as a mist tossed high off the distant hills of Sintra, then as a quick bleating pulse through the angled streets of Cascais. By evening we were wishing for the sweaters we hadn’t thought to bring to Portugal at the summer’s height. We were remembering the...
Into the Sierra de San Francisco
Mid-way up the Baja California peninsula the highway arrows through the Vizcaíno Desert. The Sierra de San Francisco rises bronze-gray and ragged in the east; to the far west, towards the Pacific Ocean, are the scattered pointed peaks of the Santa Claras, faded to a dusky lavender in the distance. The sand and the cactus...
What I Didn’t See in Cuba
I saw no looming billboards screaming in primary colors. No large images of alcohol, cigarettes, or women’s bodies. No assault of flashing neon lights. Both the landscape and cityscape were the colors of the earth–the greens of the countryside or the dusty grays, browns, and pastels of decaying urban architecture. Occasionally, a political sign jarred...
One Tough Bastard at the Metropole
“One Tough Bastard” is playing this Saturday at the Metropole Bar & Cinema. The title is intriguing, but today is only Tuesday and it’s not really the cinema I’m interested in as much as the bar upstairs. It’s been a long day of trudging around Arusha–the city in northern Tanzania, where I live and teach...
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