Hello from Paris,
I lolled in bed yesterday morning, dreaming of a foray inside the city to a gallery or museum, or park. But then I got up and made coffee, noticed how dirty the floor was, and decided to vacuum the place. In the bathroom, I glanced into the mirror and had to immediately cut my hair.
Then there were dishes. Then lunch. Then more dishes. And somehow the day passed until we met a friend at a café and chatted about a film while we watched the cigarette traffickers do their thing on the corner in front of the metro. At some point somebody told me they were Kabyle, Berbers from Algeria. It’s a gig.
Mine, at the moment, is revising that unwieldy ultra lezzie book that I’ve called A Word of Our Own. I’ve been lying awake a lot at night, struggling with how difficult it is to give a structure to impressionistic writing without destroying the heart of it. There’s also how my family painfully haunts much of it.
The whole thing is like holding a water balloon or a squirming baby who refuses to behave. Besides, here and there are lies. I can’t identify them for sure. But I smell them like a starving giant looking for bones. I think it has to do with anger which I am hiding even from myself. I, I, I after all these years stutter and stumble to a halt anytime I come near to plumbing its depths.
Suppose deep down I want to break things. Starting with these inadequate words. Suppose I do, leave the whole thing in shards. So what. Big deal. What have I got to lose, really? No job. No contracts. When the censors, when the bailiffs come, there’ll find nothing to take.
Reading this week…
That’s it for this time.
Think about giving this a
Disgruntledly yours,
xoxo K