Despite the fact that the snow does not fall on the sea





The other night, left the place that's become home over the past years for what will be at least a year.  And despite all my shit-talking, despite the fact that you've tried your damnedest to wear down my resistance and innate sneer when I see a flier with the words toddler pilates, despite how many of your inhabitants dress like toddlers, despite the fact that I no longer talk like I'm from where I'm once from, despite the fact that the trephination drill will have to slip and plunge deep into wet grey matter before I could get used to the word hella, despite the fact that the snow does not fall on the sea, still - it's a dislocation that will be felt with all the subtlety of that slipped drill.   At the very least, I'll miss a certain kind of fog and, far more, a certain set of people.  Those who know who they are, we'll be in touch.

Now though, I'm in a city that swaps out a certain haze for that fog and other people, who, as always, are not other people, but specific ones - a non-set, not equivalent because equivocation is not friendship, it is value, and I do not "value" my friends - who I miss when away from them.  (And soon, in another city and country, where they burn trash, not to dispose of it, but because it doesn't get disposed.)  As I've said and felt too often, there's too much earth between places, and the ocean is not made of ice.  It isn't a frictionless slide between islands.


Here's to heat death, then, at least until the absolute point that all matter becomes motionless.  Until then, we'll take schooners mounted on long running blades, catching gusts and scraping up and down the coast, faster than soil.

Until then, let's get better at hot-wiring real fast cars, "borrowing" helicopters, harnessing deer.  And at not putting up with, not settling down, and at getting done with all this, all this drudge and miring that stands between us and works itself up under our eyelids, that you can't just blink away like a mist, no, not at all.

4 comments:

Giovanni Tiso said...

Safe travels, Evan.

ECW said...

Thanks, G. With any luck, I'll see you in Italy, if you get the homeland returning urge when I'm there.

Giovanni Tiso said...

Everything going to plan, I'll be going home for two weeks with the oldest boy in April. That's Milano, but he really, really wants to go to Pompei for the middle weekend, which is currently the subject of intense budgeting...

ECW said...

Well, keep me in the loop as time approaches. I should be around in April.