music: red right ankle, the decembrists
mood: pre-nostalgia

crabapple blossoms & well-weathered fencing,
a slice of avocado cheesecake without enough lime;
the last white tulip grows in our front yard.

places unbinding at their seams

song: milk bottles, beth jeans houghton
word: lucullan

scarborough bluffs, may 2008

i've been spending lots of time drinking tea, doing laundry, watching clouds. i add them as ingredients to my recipe-box mornings (twisting the dials of the machine before i leave the house, filling the kettle with water when i come home). i wear the shoes i bought in essaouira & parents of once-down-the-street children stare at my toes. this makes me happy in the loneliest of possible ways. mostly, i go to the park at the street's end, the one that's an empty playground and a field of half-wished dandelions. past the safety fence everything turns wild, tumbling down clay cliffs toward the beach, the lake, sky.

suburbia terrifies me with its house-proud & humdrum. lacquered. everything perfectly spaced, even the blades of grass grow in magnificent rows. there is no peeling paint; rust cannot creep into the over-oiled joints of garden gates. magnolia petals rotting into front lawns are the truest thing for miles. it's strange in a place with so little story, i am flocked with so much growing up. i look at a bench & see grade two picnics.

it's only a five-minute walk to the new library of supremely uncomfortable, but quite modern armchairs. (there aren't librarians anymore, just pads to weigh & catalogue our choices.) i sit with my grandparents at tea-time, go on afternoon runs. i am reading one thousand novels. tomorrow, i am going to make an experimental avocado cheesecake and in the evening, go to andrea & oso's goodbye party-concert.

i sit cross-legged in the clay, watching sailboats sail & birds glow black against the sky. right now, i want things falling apart in my hands.

these are the columns of rome

sound: summer teeth, wilco
taste: green tea & 'the wind-up bird chronicle' in my room

'rome is viciously a city,' says mum & i laugh but she's right; its ruby red nails are clutching at our postcards, the history we've learned and learned again. everything is curved seashell pink, alabaster, tawny green and our feet are so weighed to these sidewalks, cobblestones, ancient roads with time. japanese girls holding glossy audrey hepburn prints are wishing at the trevi fountain for the constant motion, day noises, night noises (cars, laughter, singing, swearing, secrets) of this place. opulent restaurants advertise juniper scented chickpeas & stewed pigeon legs (not to be confused with pigeon-peas & chicken legs) & fruit-men pile overpriced oranges inside their shriveled carts. our map is a misguided maze of piazzas and churches, everywhere becoming a once-way street. but on monday afternoon the city seems to pause, drowned out by the shelter of umbrellas & the lacquered sound of rain.

the giardino dell'iris

song: the return, adam & the amethysts
mood: effulgent

we stumbled into a hillside iris garden just outside the city, an almost deserted but entirely well-planned construction of early blossoms. nothing here is not an iris; they are lined up careful as the rainbow fingerprints of a glove-shop window. scents vary with their hues: marigold-coloured blooms smell of beeswax, the untame memory of orchids for violet, citron lingering about the snow-drops. the nearby tuscan fields are russet with olives, vermilion poppies and also, wild purple iris. i don't know what else to write. there has never been a place so beautiful.

there are pines & palms & plain-trees

music: dark horse, julie doiron
mood: do not step here

florence reminds me of rain & ice-cream & kindergarden stitching in candy-coloured leather. sparrows are singing and sunlight illuminates the undersides of all the olive leaves. a man sits at the corner, waiting for someone to buy palm-woven creatures but everyone walks by, everyone turns left. old women wear out gradual smiles and stockings pool around their knotted ankles. the grandfathers all ride vespas. up on the hill, san miniato al monte is a ghostly cardboard cut-out (i half expect puppets to appear from behind its ancient marble walls). i am almost hit by a bicycle when our alley is dead-ended by a duomo that is one hundred times its photographs. we picnic in playground structures, eating pineapple gelato for lunch & fresh truffles for dinner. a city's worth of yellow buildings wash the two-hours-to-midnight sky a rich, inescapable cobalt.

charming cobras in the square

the first days in morocco, h & i are constantly deciphering its strangeness, familiarities (everything smells of woodsmoke & gasoline, incense, charred meat, sugary mint tea, dusty bodies, a cacophony of spice). eventually we give up. 'everything and nothing, all at once,' i decide. according to h, this world does not allow description, elaboration into words. (pencil & paper are for taking surface impressions instead of making our own sketches.) we record lists of everything, thin spiraling columns through notebook pages. we are taking the inventory of days, of things seen and people we meet.

marrakech: our first bewildered medina moment, smoke, cats eating offal in the alleyways, the city's screaming midnight, early quiet of the morning. empty orange rinds & juice vendors, the kind-eyed fruit man, the dripping smell of over-fried fish. sitting on plastic stools to drink sweet, milky coffee before breakfast, hand-painted pottery, tin teapots, our tentative sips of tea. 3 euro picnic-table dinners in the medina, food-poisoning, fresh leather & fake handbags. donkeys, street urchins, billowing steam in the hamman. the mysterious art of spice-cones, a cage full of tortoises, desert-men, mountain-men, medicine-men. we learn the names of all the herbs and spices by heart.

essaouira: bluewhite sky, seagulls, buildings, seashore. soccergames on the beach, the smell of salt & fish, a pyramid of oranges, breakfast on the hotel terrace. radouane's spiceshop, candlelit seaside seafood feasts. burgundy carpets & drifting music, the constant roar of the atlantic. camels, parasails, argan trees. the feeling of timelessness & too much mint tea. mailing addresses copied into my journal, fish pastries sour with lime juice under the midday sun. bread bought for 1 dirham, wrapped in arabic newspaper & a wornout hand against my face. the sun is setting in the land, an evercrescent moon, everything speeding by.

and i haven't even missed the lilacs

music: oh, my stars - nina nastasia
feeling: still food poisoned

at leonardo da vinci airport, i stir packages of brown sugar into cappuccino depths, noticing how granules dust the surface then suddenly disappear. it is just after 6 am and a blackbird flutters trapped in the rafters. in the night, the building fills with the solitary, the waiting. they are bundled up in jackets & sleeping on windowsills, but i arrive from warm places and cover my body a patchwork of unsubstantial scarves. when i finish the ishiguro novel, borrowed from harriet's rooftop bookshelves, it becomes a pillow.

the rer is directed & misdirected by an out-of-the-blue metro strike. 'vraiment, j'ai un peu honte,' confesses a jovial frenchman, home-ward bound. i assure him my city runs parallel to such traveling trickeries. then he takes my hand (his is pale, dry, painted with age), suddenly grave. 'bonne chance, 'demoiselle, bonne chance.'

i accidentally follow the domestic arrival signs and end up in the wrong terminal. i wander in from the italian evening, walking as you would to meet me here. i do not clear customs. leading a troupe of officials & baggage handlers round the carousels, we are looking for my suitcase. the belts are quiet, the terminal empty except for a few rectangle reliquaries and the echo-y small-talk of airport uniforms.

we find my bag with the abandoned luggage and i clatter away, toward the dark halls of anonymous sleepers. grazie. bonna serra. i hear my allies calling in novel english voices, 'bie byee! byeee!' and when i turn to wave goodbye, they are busy blowing kisses.