DEAR RIA,
In my little coffee shop. It is Monday. It is live jazz night. All the other regulars shy away from monday nights which means that I can relax exempt from the usual obligatory small talking typically associated with my visits and I can just...ahhhhh... I'm a little aroused by the music and the little style magazine I just flipped through...a little self loathing going on at the same time. It's been an overall hot jazzy sort of day.
Watched some old 1930's stag films last night- a little event staged by one john, an archivist for the city of dallas. Keeper of the vault that contains the precious JFK assasination investigation- our city's sole claim to fame. He's a Dallas historian by matter of default, and after the flicks he told us stories about Jack Ruby and his burlesque night club featuring the beautiful and infamous Candy Barr- a woman of such moxie that it charmed the pardons out of the state for any crime of her choosing. I spent most of the day fixed on the internet- revisiting my weekend friends and their blogs, and digging for more on the illustrious Candy Bar. Her photo depicting her in various poses with her sholders twisted, back curved, tummy pulled inward and little pasties sucking at her nipples. I conclude, the death of the pasty is such a sad sad thing. Let us take a moment of silence, maybe one or two breaths longer than what is usually given in those times of national crisis that often prelude entire shifts in universal conciousness.
___
And again back to these trumpets and saxaphones taking over the world. I'm wondering what it is like to pour over one tangible thing for so many years until you really own it. To reinvent yourself over and over again and to have that thing be part of it...maybe even instigating it. Your friends ask about it before they ask about your mother's health or guess at how old the kids must be by now...because they love you with THAT THING. What is that- to have a thing? Mike pulls Alberto close- and gets on to him about his needing to write 'It's the most important thing'. I snorted a bit at that- and I'm trying to understand why. Jealosy I guess. I fall in and then out of love with too many things- like affairs that become part of my own special collection- so personal and poetic. I can't allow one to grow for worry about what new thing I might not have a chance to absorb. Working on relationships always felt like something was wrong. Love is easy and totally sexy in this style magazine, in the disney movie, and on that vacation to NYC when you spent the night with that hot asian guy from queens in a surfer band- or that next year when you went back and it was the london web designer who stayed up all night with you just to walk you across the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise because he couldn't leave you just yet- but then left the next afternoon (his face framed outside the subway car starring- and everyone in the car in the seat in front of you starring too wondering why you're smiling like that, if you're going to start crying, or maybe even try to stop him). Your boyfriend back home none the wiser- only suddenly...less important.
Well, the musicians here have taken a break...only they sit and say nothing- anxious to begin the next set. It's really just for us coffee drinkers (turned martini sippers) resting from the music now..
Goodnight faithful pen pal.
A- Dios.
calluna vulgaris
h.