~ ~ ~
11.17.76. What I saw sans Polaroid this afternoon: a skeletal dog missing large patches of hair and covered with crimson pustules who'd had both its hind legs broken at some point. They'd mended so misshapen he had to sort of drag-hop them behind him. Yet there he was busily trying to hump an equally skeletal bitch in heat. Every time he mounted her, his bad legs caused him to slide off, only he wouldn't give up. He just kept draghopping himself after her, rising briefly, clutching her around the waist, losing his balance, toppling to the side.
~ ~ ~
11.17.76. I feel like I am always moving, Taru. Like I am never exactly where I am.
~ ~ ~
11.18.76. At sunset they begin burning off garbage across the plains. Smoke rises like mist in front of the bare mountains. Since the government doesn't see a future in these buildings, it restores them haphazardly, ignoring the architectural styles, using materials bearing no relation to the origi
Atop a temple teeming with European tourists, a sweet little Burmese girl holding a single postcard in her hand just sat down next to me. Her postcard shows the same view I am witnessing. She blows her nose into the fingers of her free hand, distractedly wipes the mess across her belly, turns to me and says: Where you from? You want buy postcard? All I want is to live these next three minutes by myself because I won't ever get to live them again. I give her a quick mechanical grin and return to the sunset, try very hard to pretend she's not there. Where you from? she says, undaunted by my indifference. Hello. Hello. Where you from? How long you be here? Mister, mister, where you from? Hello?
~ ~ ~
11.18.76. Finally gave up on me and left. I'm guilty. I'm relieved. Each of the Germans has gone, too, dispersed to watch the sun sink from a vantage point away from the others. They've gotten on each other's nerves. Tourists approach this scene with their cameras raised, framing, trying to control what and how they'll remember when they return home. In the process, they block other tourists trying to do the same, elbow the local Burmese out of the way. What in the world do they do with all the photos they take? Look at them once and stash them away in a shoebox, an album, a drawer? Show them after a nice dinner to a group of captive friends who feel the event nothing if not an imposition? Or maybe they just forget to develop them altogether? Maybe at the end of the day the simple act of arranging the shots in the viewfinder, cropping the world over and over again, is the only thing that really matters.
~ ~ ~
11.19.76. Remember Jean and Geoff, Taru? How they planned on going to Penzance, of all places, for years and years, then at the last minute decided not to because they'd read so much about it, seen so many pictures of it in travel catalogs, they said it felt like they'd already been?
~ ~ ~
11.20.76. Last night the trio came in
~ ~ ~
11.21.76. I'm thinking I'll hang around here a little longer, then continue on to Mandalay. I've always wanted to see that place. I suppose I should be unnerved by them ditching me like that, maybe even hurt, but, shit, all I feel is let loose.
~ ~ ~
11.22.76. Decided what I really want today, Taru. I really want to sit down across from you in our bakery on Bleeker and Cornelia like we used to do right after college, order almond croissants and lattés, and talk about how the saddest thing is how every McDonald's smells the same no matter where on the planet it is.
~ ~ ~
11.23.76. What do you imagine the schoolkids in this photograph made of the
~ ~ ~
11.24.76. At lunch I ate several tables away from these two American women with sun-mottled skin who could have been in their mid-forties or their mid-sixties. Having ordered, I went over and asked if they'd mind taking my photo. It was only after they'd agreed, after I'd thanked them and returned to my table, after the couple had reentered their conversation, that I realized I'd interrupted the story the short brunette was telling the tall redhead about how one day her older sister had just up and disappeared. It was unclear when this was, but the short brunette was still clearly shaken. I picked away at my food, pretending I couldn't hear them. The short brunette explained that, because of the age difference, they had never been that close. It was an ordinary day, then it was a horror. Those were the words she used. She said everything became something else in her life with a single phone call. It felt like moving while standing still. How can such a thing happen? the tall redhead asked her, leaning forward on her elbows. Like this, responded the short one, snapping her fingers. Just like