a draft from last night's workshop
There's a town in South America, one of those unincorporated villages where the stores have no walls, the doctors are all magicians, and the people can only move north. Of course they have all the traditional moving extremities. Feet. Rollerskates. Tractors. Physically, they can move in any direction that they'd like, but there's something about the town, something to do with lay lines, the Equator, magnetic poles and the way they affect brainwaves, that keep the people from moving anywhere but North of their own volition.
The people there are rarely disappointed wqith life because everything carries a sense of inevitability. Everyone has had that experience where they see someone on the street, or at a dance or bazaar, and they get that feeling in the pit of their stomach, it could be love or lust, but sometimes it's more than that, it's that feeling that this person is the one that's going to change their life in the way that their life is supposed to change, and they can never go to them.
My life is full of that, furniture decorated elegantly with notches for the ones that got away, and then reduced to splinters by notches representing the ones that never were. Like most people in this day, age and hemisphere, one not just of feet, rollerskates, and tractors but nuclear power, personal computers, and infinite regret, my stumbling blocks are mental, a fear of the imagined inevitable, so I drink my beer, sweep the sawdust into a pile in the corner, throw a mattress on top, and go to sleep. And I connive. I strategize. I invent reasons to meet someone where I don't have to tell them why I'm talking to them, I read and learn things in order to know a little about a lot, to have an opinion, a reason to butt in and expound.
In the town where people can only move North, a man may see a woman on the street and call to her, "You are beautiful, and I would like to know your name in case I see you again," and charmed or disgusted, her only option is to turn her head and respond before walking away, in the same direction as the man but too far apart to ever touch.
In this town, whose tribal name means nothing on my tongue but translates to The Place Where The People All Are Looking Toward God Always, the people trust each other. A person can turn a person, physically with their hands, to the shoulders or waist, in any direction. Once turned, a person can walk a straight line; away from God, askew from God, but possibly towards love, or home, or personal ruin, unril theuy fall asleep. In the morning, waking up, in a room with no walls, atop one of the beds that line the streets like bars and lampoasts here, stand and go North.
If a man and a woman and another see each other on the street, and the man has that feeling about the woman, or maybe that mysterious other, he will call out to her and she will respond, and put a set of variables into place. It is up to her now, to respond to the man or the other, to send them off in the same direction as herself, for better or worse, or to respond in kind, and ask the other to send the man to her, or her to him, to go off together.
In most cases, the other will oblige, but sometimes, when he or she is as cruel as the people you and I are likely to see on the street today, he can willfully keep them apart.
There's something about rejection there, the type of soul crushing rejection that keeps two people from being able to walk together towards God, where one must choose to go askew and the other must help them, that I find truly charming in the place where people can only move North, and look always in the direction of God, where even in rudeness, even in deceit, ecen in jealousy and selfishness, with fingertips pressed into shoulders or waist, that even in rejection, two people must embrace.
There is another word they have there, that makes an inelegant slug of my tongue when I try to say it, and poached, limping beasts of my fingers as I try to type it, that has no English synonym. Bo-Ouighyow, which translates roughly to, a little tango that means good bye.
[Currently listening to Gza's Liquid Swords]
The people there are rarely disappointed wqith life because everything carries a sense of inevitability. Everyone has had that experience where they see someone on the street, or at a dance or bazaar, and they get that feeling in the pit of their stomach, it could be love or lust, but sometimes it's more than that, it's that feeling that this person is the one that's going to change their life in the way that their life is supposed to change, and they can never go to them.
My life is full of that, furniture decorated elegantly with notches for the ones that got away, and then reduced to splinters by notches representing the ones that never were. Like most people in this day, age and hemisphere, one not just of feet, rollerskates, and tractors but nuclear power, personal computers, and infinite regret, my stumbling blocks are mental, a fear of the imagined inevitable, so I drink my beer, sweep the sawdust into a pile in the corner, throw a mattress on top, and go to sleep. And I connive. I strategize. I invent reasons to meet someone where I don't have to tell them why I'm talking to them, I read and learn things in order to know a little about a lot, to have an opinion, a reason to butt in and expound.
In the town where people can only move North, a man may see a woman on the street and call to her, "You are beautiful, and I would like to know your name in case I see you again," and charmed or disgusted, her only option is to turn her head and respond before walking away, in the same direction as the man but too far apart to ever touch.
In this town, whose tribal name means nothing on my tongue but translates to The Place Where The People All Are Looking Toward God Always, the people trust each other. A person can turn a person, physically with their hands, to the shoulders or waist, in any direction. Once turned, a person can walk a straight line; away from God, askew from God, but possibly towards love, or home, or personal ruin, unril theuy fall asleep. In the morning, waking up, in a room with no walls, atop one of the beds that line the streets like bars and lampoasts here, stand and go North.
If a man and a woman and another see each other on the street, and the man has that feeling about the woman, or maybe that mysterious other, he will call out to her and she will respond, and put a set of variables into place. It is up to her now, to respond to the man or the other, to send them off in the same direction as herself, for better or worse, or to respond in kind, and ask the other to send the man to her, or her to him, to go off together.
In most cases, the other will oblige, but sometimes, when he or she is as cruel as the people you and I are likely to see on the street today, he can willfully keep them apart.
There's something about rejection there, the type of soul crushing rejection that keeps two people from being able to walk together towards God, where one must choose to go askew and the other must help them, that I find truly charming in the place where people can only move North, and look always in the direction of God, where even in rudeness, even in deceit, ecen in jealousy and selfishness, with fingertips pressed into shoulders or waist, that even in rejection, two people must embrace.
There is another word they have there, that makes an inelegant slug of my tongue when I try to say it, and poached, limping beasts of my fingers as I try to type it, that has no English synonym. Bo-Ouighyow, which translates roughly to, a little tango that means good bye.
[Currently listening to Gza's Liquid Swords]
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