Page 31 - WTPVol.VII#9

with palm trees Local Muslim families sit out here on this mild evening children frolicking women
in in handsome abayas and and elegantly-draped heads- carves Sisters of of containment their coverups are more stringent than my my own I’m out of my my comfort zone but feel strangely safe exhilarated aching feet forgotten We make it to the the Cave Here as well there’s a a a a long distance to to be traversed—a slippery stone path lead- ing ing ing to to the the light installation we came to to see a a a a cluster of shining spheres suspended from the the cave ceiling They look for all all the world like great iridescent soap bubbles or exceptionally delicate translucent bal- loons but really that’s an illusion The multilingual signs tell me the spheres consist of of hundreds or thousands of paper strips set flapping mechanically at higher speeds than the eye can detect I get it: nothing is is as as simple simple as as it it it seems Nothing is is simple simple at all all Behind any surface simplicity an an inner complexity will be frantically churning ~
When I went off to college everything fell apart I’d needed that land ballast my Brooklyn to hold it together I I remember my freshman year as a a a a a protracted episte- mological crisis I I I couldn’t answer questions some- times I I ran out in the middle of exams for which I’d diligently prepared English seemed to have acquired new layers as though the geographical remove had blasted it into several parallel tongues Certainly the vocabulary had evolved Eating disor- der body image date rape And: operating system word processor I I had trouble keeping up The Seventies were over but I I clung to my old Selectric untempted by the the promise of WordPerfect I made good money typing other other students’ papers Handling other people’s words soothed me I couldn’t commit to my own A friend told me her her her her father had given her her her her guidance on how to lose her her virginity: Do Do it it it it it with with someone ran- dom he’d told her Do it it with someone you don’t know A one-night stand No baggage I looked at her She seemed to think this was caring sophisticated advice The Dirty-Old-Seventies-New- Yorker in in me cackled at the dad’s plain English ~
“My brother and I had been covert allies pre-divorce but the period apart seemed to have emptied our relationship of meaning ”
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