Friday, December 7, 2012

fever dreams

Obligation trumps feeling, and I thought I'd feel better after puking, but everyone else is out sick and in a few hours so will I. Even the head honcho here told me to go home because I never take off work unless I'm almost dead. Hopefully I'll be all in one piece tomorrow and before I go anywhere.


3 comments:

  1. There aren't any vomitoria beneath the trees. Sheesh.

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  2. We were talking about the great things
    that have happened in our lifetimes;
    and I said, "Oh, I suppose the moon landing
    was the greatest thing that has happened
    in my time." But, of course, we were all lying.
    The truth is the moon landing didn't mean
    one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963
    when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been
    the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince
    (our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I'm sure),
    on a street where by now nobody lived
    who could afford to live anywhere else.
    That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me,
    woke up at half-past four in the morning
    and ate cinnamon toast together.

    "Is that all?" I hear somebody ask.

    Oh, but we were silly with sleepiness
    and, under our windows, the street-cleaners
    were working their machines and conversing in Italian, and
    everything was strange without being threatening,
    even the tea-kettle whistled differently
    than in the daytime: it was like the feeling
    you get sometimes in a country you've never visited
    before, when the bread doesn't taste quite the same,
    the butter is a small adventure, and they put
    paprika on the table instead of pepper,
    except that there was nobody in this country
    except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
    of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love.
    "Great Things Have Happened" by Alden Nowlan

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