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Things I Forget
I'm working out by the lake on this house these people are having built at the site where their previous home burned to the ground. The next door neighbor says I look just like her brother, and, as far as I remember of that first meeting, apropos of nothing, said something about being part Lebanese (although that would have been my last guess as to the heritage of this petite blond woman), and I said oh that must be the connection, I am half Lebanese. She has been very friendly to me, which is a thing I had forgotten I cared about, until I realized I was missing it.

I'm looking out my window now at my next door neighbor's twenty foot palm tree. The bottom fronds are dead, the color of wheat, and are soaking up the evening Fall sun in such a way as to make them look plugged into a life source. There are the frail limbs of a weed tree with vibrant green leaves both in front and behind this vision of life infused death and the jagged remaining background sky is so blue as to look fake. I'll say nothing of the small puffy white clouds so evenly spaced as to imply the imagination of an amateur.

Right before the sun drops behind the auto title establishment to my west the dead palm fronds glow like they on fire, or like Tom Waits says, all Halloween orange, and I take a couple sips of stout beer and daydream about nothing, staring straight ahead at glowing words I don't understand while listening to another neighbor like clockwork call out for his ancient aging Sheba.

When I look back just a little bit of time has passed, the light has changed, and the fronds are sad scum soaked brittle-looking dead vegetation. The sky has no color. The clouds have blown away, and I'm not one word closer to describing what I sat down to describe--that recent midnight a woman got thrown naked from a car in front of my home.

- jimlouis 11-02-2002 7:23 pm [link] [2 comments]