At low-tide, I walked bare feet in the wet sand
feeling for oysters. At midnight I slept
in beds where others had slept before. And at high-tide I watched the ocean
spit back to shore what it could not swallow.
Pine trees leave their resinous sap under the fingernails of those who climb for pine cones. The smell of pine cones roasting in hot coal and opening slowly to show the pine nut shell often surrounds me in my dreams. And I wake up, lick my finger hoping to taste again the pine resin under my nails. All I taste now is my impersonal moment, surrounded by the Atlantic.
The streets are cold already, and the ladies of
pleasure waiting in windy corners, even colder now. Yet they wear skirts with
easy on-off zippers, faux tiger skin shoulder bags, high boots with uneven worn
heels, and makeup the color of proletariat in Romania. They do not say good evening,
they do not look at you. They know who has an interest in giving them 15
minutes break away from the cold street. And who does not.
At low-tide I walked bare feet in the wet sand. I
cannot remember anymore how many sunsets I have watched; so I just walk in the
sand and I do not cramp my toes feeling for oysters. I have missed sunsets in
Porto and in Malaga; I was late for sunrise in Kyoto and in Oslo. But I watched
many a sun set here and there. Funny, they all now seem to have been alike.
I have an ashtray made of petrified seashell a Touareg
sold it to me in the Sahel, near Tunisia’s mountain range. I wanted to smoke a
cigar and let the ashes cover the tray. Or, find an old pipe and puff on it
when the streets are cold and the Atlantic in rage. Then, scrape the pipe bowl
and empty the half burned tobacco into the ashtray from the desert. And let the
room fill with the acrid smell of smoldering pipe tobacco. Instead, I put the
ashtray next to the sink and found a small, jasmine-scented bar of soap to fit
in it.
But tonight, when lights of apartments around me
turn off, one by one, and the only sparkle is from fake Christmas trees near a
few windows, I will become one with the shadows of the night and watch a
black-and-white movie from the 1930s. Perhaps “Ladies of Leisure” where B.
Stanwyck is so vulnerable and sublime. Or, I will look for that old pipe, the
bowl lined in Meerschaum, and settle in a deep chair with an Armenian poetry
book upon my belly.
It will be a good way to wait for sunrise.
December 6, 2012
©Vahé
Kazandjian, 2013
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