Miroslav Tichý. Source: lempertz.com
*
My hunger for love exceeds me
Which has been a continuous annoyance
.
Although possibly a passe
But I do love both women
And the people who imagined God differently
It is a strange game
Prince Salim, the future Jahangir, 1600. Source: Wikipedia
Emily
A daughter and a father, known as Emily and Bruce, arrived to meet with an accountant to discuss their situation. Bruce had been the owner of a store for many years of its successful operation, but in recent times had struggled to keep up with the evolving ways of commerce, in a world he could no longer understand, and had in consequence accumulated debts with his suppliers that exceeded his potential to return on current income. Having guaranteed the voice of his sole daughter, he allowed her to explain this situation, and the motive she had found to bring him in there. “We have come to find a way in which to finance our concern, with views not only to dissolve our obligations, but to rapidly increase our operations. I have numerous ideas that I believe may be of use to your financial institution. But before I get to these I will elucidate our current situation”.⟶
Ferdinando Scianna, Umbria, Melezzole, MESSEGUE’s Beauty farm. Source: magnumphotos.com
Olga was a screamer. It’s nothing you would have guessed about her, at least not at first. Or perhaps some would. Maybe almost anybody could have told me to watch out for a beauty school graduate with a military father. But I was shy, and clueless, and young, excited to be in a new place, excited to date a girl.
We met at the beauty parlor on Calle Numancia, near the main train station in Barcelona. It wasn’t just a beauty parlor, it was a huge complex, three floors, opened from ten am to midnight Monday through Saturday and until three pm on Sundays. You could get anything done there: nails, hair, waxing, electrolysis, Thai massage, California or Swedish massage, Botox injections, fish pedicures. Olga did waxing and I was both the massage guy and the handyman. I fixed broken lamps and collapsing massage tables, dealt with circuit breakers, repaired all sorts of broken nail-clipping tools. The owner, Adele, a French woman who weighed about 45 kilos, hired me the August I arrived from Buenos Aires. She liked that I had long hair, a thick black ponytail. You seem New Age, she said, and asked if I’d be interested in maybe teaching her tai chi.
Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Venice, 2003. Source: magnumphotos.com
On a major thoroughfare between a porn theatre and a filling station, it was just past the central cemetery and the bridge over the railway lines. A young communist lived in the room across from yours. He worked in a hotel. You had no job and no prospects but, for the moment, didn’t care. You’d sit together at the brittle table in the kitchen, all dark browns and orange, smoking, and listening to cassettes of sixties pop tunes, with small cups of coffee, now and again a beer. You had a couple of books and some traveler’s checks. Day after day you’d wander the sunburnt city, surprised, over and over again, at how often you got lost.
Istanbul by Ayhan Ton. Source: instagram.com/ayhanton
There is no escaping the fact. Since 2011, I haven’t been in downtown Cairo except twice, heavily sedated and only for as long as it took to run my unavoidable errand. With the help of medication, my condition had improved enough for me to go there frequently when the protests started in January that year, instead of being confined to Heliopolis as usual. After I was shot with a pellet gun and had to run away from hospital on the first day of protests, for a few weeks I returned to the hotspots of the revolution, but tear gas, shooting and all kinds of attacks often forced me (along with everyone else) to run for my life. This fucked it all up again, in time. Protest hotspots became indistinguishable from vast, crowded spaces too far from home. And, succumbing to my terror of both, I confined myself to Heliopolis.
Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Paris, 1996. Source: magnumphotos.com
On the Bus
Caught up short on the express bus and those drivers don’t stop for shit. I avoid the express because of my affliction but it was filthy out, brown cold rain, and here come the bus, and jostling, and I don’t notice, and it’s an express, and it won’t stop.
I’m good at first, plop down in a seat, bag under my feet, floor wet but seat warm.
Claude said it come from eating out of trashcans and such. They fixed us so we could not ever have kids and road us on a rail out of Utah.
I like to look into the houses, warm glows of lights, the bus passes.
I consider my options.
Bad to give us a bad name. And I do not call myself that. I’m a traveler. A time traveler. I travel all the time. Round and round the city I go.
But I can’t hold it any longer, and this an express bus, so here we go.
Need a boat to paddle out of here. Gives a whole new meaning to disembark.
Roger Ballen, from “Shadow Chamber”. Source: lannassignment2.wordpress.com
Literary Magazine Interviewer: First question. Do you see yourself as a “promising young writer”?
Promising Young Writer: That depends. Do you mean “promising” or “young”? You can easily apply both to me, or dismiss them. It’s a matter of perspective.
LMI: Let’s see, then. How old are you and what have you written that’s promising?
PYW: Well, I’m 28. So far I’ve written two books of poetry and one of short stories. I don’t like to evaluate my own work. It depresses me. And you can’t be objective about it. But it’s easy to say that I like only two poems in my first book, the rest belonging to the realm of lame beginnings. Maybe I will have a view of my two later books after some time. I guess it takes time to see your own writings as external objects so you can evaluate them as you evaluate other things. Actually, I admire and hate my own work with equal force, and that applies to everything related to myself. I also finished my first novel, the first part of a trilogy. I’m in the process of publishing it now.
Harry Gruyaert, Alexandria. On the ledge of San Stephano beach, 1993. Source: magnumphotos.com
Somehow
I was a teacher;
somehow
I considered that natural.
For this reason I began to bow
to words I did not say;
and to communicate my respects to my children.
I tried to make them understand that it was absolutely necessary
for someone to read,
to review with his parents—
while he hurls his shoe under the bed—
how exhausting and beautiful respect is:
that they have no future without words.
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