| Delicate, innit? |
[May. 18th, 2018|11:13 pm] |
Wanted to get something off my mind, or invite something into my mind. Offer it something to drink, a bite to eat: a conversation, if you would. Treat the concept of a chat like Wyndham Lewis would (superior in a sense to books and art). It is what I have been missing, that is for sure: I know it like a - in some senses reluctant -vegetarian sniffing smoked meat in the kitchen. A chat, jebkuraa valodaa.
One thing makes you, or yr conversation partner, think of another. Like the monads of thought that drift off from yr control as you drift off to sleep, maybe, piemeeram, for the last time in a sun-spanked tram in Ilguciems [punctuation*] to wake up as female impresses her side into yours. Maybe it is the shirt I’m wearing: almost authentic cowboy purchased in Norwich circa 95: a riff on shlager sensibility, shlager sensitivity. Maybe it assisted her (tall classically womanly) generous allocation of weight. It has a call like latvieshu gravity: that and the insect bites and the gardening grazes.
We both get out at the National Opera and I see she is 4 months along at least. I lag behind as the bones need time to align in gait, and she falls over. Stumbles in stages to the asphalt, ending with both arms and knees glued to the spinning earth. She pushes herself up before I can get there to offer her my hand, but still I ask her if viss ir kartiibaa. Eh! It’s the weight, you see, kaut arii shii ir pirmo reize, kad esmu taa kritusi. And she falls in step and wants to talk, but.
No work possible in the heat after 3. Too hot to concentrate so I bale. Take an early microbus back to Baloži. Sleep hits with implacable force and relents at the last crossroads before the peedejaa pieturaa.
Hey, Kaimin! Roland, Roland, esam klaat!
She, sun browned, blond and fiftied rocks the sleeping fellow sitting behind her with her gardening-grazed hand. I recognise him straight off. I always wondered why he took public transport. Used to request his stop in rolling deep tones and confident cadence (without the pompus strut in the valoda). Guessed he’d probably been done for drink driving as on the way back in the evenings he’d sometimes been respectfully and politely smashed. Once I told him he’d forgotten his hat, to which in masculine resonance he’d thanked me profusely. Now, he looks thinner, as though he’s been ill, and he can’t be easily roused.
Roland, davai, mosties!
He rises, finally, in understanding, gives thanks in that old tone, and then looks for his bag.
Tev nebija soma, Roland.
No? Pateicos. He’s full as a ditch, and as he steps out he forgets to crouch and smashes his head on the metal door frame. We wince and the neighbour takes his arm and helps him on to the pavement, He looks around as if trying to figure out what had happened to him, but no curse words are spintered off.
All that culture. Roots. Punctuation: sapratne.
Naac , Roland, she takes him by the elbow, naac, davai, nac man liidzi.
* marks of time, peedeejais zvans, meita kleitaa |
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