following the flare
I walked home from work in one continuous stripe of sunlight past the canal-side patios crowded with burnt shoulders. Past the old slanted houses with their dimpled windows squinting in this improbable burst of summer sun, and past the Domtoren tower that jumped into 3D view as if it were embossed onto the blue. And my heart quickened inside my chest cavity with a loud whirr of gratitude.
When dinner turned out to be a pound of cherries and a single clove cigarette from the pack someone smuggled me from my Indonesian homeland, the whirr of gratitude morphed into a contented purr.
I wish that I could bottle this all up and shoot it like a flare back into last year — so that the burnt-out, frightened me would look up, see a neon glimmer in the haze and start to believe that happy life-sated days were just around the bend.
They are for you, too. See my flare?
I can’t comment on your spiritual or mental state–I don’t know you well enough–except to wish you well. Your writing, however, is a bright silk scarf gliding over skin–seamless, freighted with pleasure, and effortlessly vivid. I can imagine you curled into a window seat, gazing out at the street as you savor your bidi. Keep it up. Ken
Thank you, Ken!
Your writing is so powerful and visual — I feel as though I am living this with you. They say a picture says a thousand words, but I think you’re stuffing several photos into each of your sentences.
Thanks, Jess! It’s the very specific word pictures that stick with me once I finish a book (like when Nick walks into Daisy Buchanan’s living room and the winds whips up the curtains towards the “frosted wedding cake of the ceiling”). I hope my pictures stick, too. (:
I’m grateful to come across your writing and pictures. How to describe, the words and images feel like a lazy summer afternoon. Trickle feeding emotions. Well, I came across you after updating the cover on my page with an image I shot. Apparently you where on it, a friend of you tagged you and I followed that path to here :)