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I dreamed I fell from the highest building, but that highest building was me. For my work took me to the ninetieth floor down by the glittering sea.
My sweetheart said, "Don't go in today, just snuggle up close to me." I said, "Sweet, you're naughty to say such a darling thing, but I'm saving for you and me."
She said "Tell your boss you're sick or so, we'll lie in a little bit more." But I sighed and slipped into my clothes and out of our bedroom door.
She turned to the wall and closed her eyes but didn't sleep in for long. She woke to a blaze of TV news, and remembered where I'd gone.
Oh! please, dear God, make me late for work down by the glittering sea. Let some minor incident slow my train to those canyons down by the sea.
I dreamed I fell from the highest building, but that highest building was me. For my work took me to the ninetieth floor by the glittering, glittering sea.
First we get drunk. Then some mini-blinis. The vodka (in a carafe!) was great. It's June but deathly cold, fog wraps round the sea. All seas are the same in the fog, could be the Black Sea, say at Odessa. Wraiths of Tchekovian silhouettes lining the boardwalk, old men barneying with each other.
I am grumpy though the vodka cheers for a moment, lifting the fringe of a curtain of an amazing world where nowhere is everywhere, where NewYork is Odessa, where nostalgia is not even on film. We are the film.
But this is a country for old men and I feel old in this cold.
Then we ride home to Greenpoint. Back to Brooklyn, you say. But we're in Brooklyn anyway, I say! Brighton Beach is in Brooklyn. First, you say, we have to go to Manhattan, to Sixth Avenue and catch the L train back to Brooklyn. It's as though we were trying to sew Brooklyn and Manhattan together. Back and forth back and forth.
I am grumpy. Of all the tall tales of the subway this is the longest. "You weren't talking to me", you said. Darling, I was talking to you; I was talking to you from a distance with my back turned.
Didn't you hear me muttering, like the little waves along the shore, nibbling away at the hard flat sand?
Soon there'll be not just half a subway car between us, but an ocean or a sky. But that shouldn't take much longer than a ride from Brighton Beach to Greenpoint! I say. Maybe it'll only cost one subway token! You get mad at me.
Oh don't get mad! oh come next flight! We'll stitch New York and Europe together. Making one big garment of our lives.
And we'll dine at home. I'll make you shrimp and yoghurt soup. Yes, and we'll drink Russian vodka and never go out-of-doors again. We'll wrap ourselves up in a big blanket stitched out of all the cities of the world and settle down.
Got home late calvados in the tapas bar was to blame
it was drizzling ice a cold mist
rose from the freezing waters of the Brouwersgracht
a gleaming skin of skid on hump-backed bridges
I saw a young woman on her bike
swivel in a dazzling unplanned piece of figure-skating
from vertical to horizontal
some rode to rescue her not a wise move so it proved
bikes spreadeagled on a street of glass like a heap of the slain
others wavering in pure good will did their best just standing still
call me deserter if you like I crawled back on hands and knees
dragging bike like a stubborn dog
clung to parapet with one hand bike with other
almost wrapped around myself but how to move when move meant slide
trying to push myself and bike at the same time forward
alcohol was my wheels trepidation did the splits
who knows how I made it home slept like a frozen doorstep
bike steaming in its shed old nag stabled at last
This month's ill part of me will be my feet. I distress myself looking at them. How shiny they are, the skin could be Chinese paper, surfaces like moon plateaux.
My feet are growing old faster than the rest of me – though running on ahead would be an imprecise description. Rather they stumble forward on their own momentum, like a great power past its prime.
Crusty they are too, with fissures. Less biology than geology. Unsafe for walking on, a foot fetishist's worst case scenario.
I visit chiropodists all over town. Each has a different version of what I should do. They look at my two tombstones, mentally wringing their hands. Mentally I watch them mentally wringing their hands.
Perhaps I'll need socks of elastic all my life. Don't worry, they say. Flesh-coloured, they're almost invisible, they'll soon become part of you.
Various preparations may be applied, three times a day. Don't expect a miracle however; you have unusually dry feet.
Others tell me the only solution may be surgery. How everyone has it these days. How you don't even need to overnight in hospital. How with lasers it leaves no scar.
How I can get a replacement with feet of clay.
Next month I will celebrate my teeth.
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