I want to talk in technicolor

old lady with red sweater, dream # 1,347

She came early morning. I sat on the back seat of my little car. I made sure all the doors were locked. She stood outside wearing a granny hat and an old red sweater. What was she holding with both hands? A purse? A book? Gloves? The sun was cold. She looked at me for a long time.

What do you want?! Leave me alone!

This is for Noemi, a girl in Spain

I heard a song on Noemi's blog. It was the first day of 2011.  I guess you can say it was my first song of the year. She removed the song from her blog due to some poetic justice, so I'm taking the liberty to post it here.  Sorry, Noemi, "justice" in my house is just like Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr. used to say:  "just us."

I don't know anything about La Mala's music. Actually, I don't know a damn thing about La Mala, but this song kicks ass (Sad reality: the fact that I keep saying  "kick ass" whenever I like a song, tells me I would never make it as  a music critic for Rolling Stone).

My husband tells me that Noemi and I "almost" have the same taste in music. By the songs she posts on her blog, I can tell she and I  are equal opportunity listeners. I believe we can lend our ears to any song we like and not give a rat's fuck whether it is good or awful.  I'm sure once stoned, we will even listen to a punk version of Copa Cabana. 

For the record, I don't know much about rap or hip hop or whatever music is being sold to the skinny jeans generation. So, if you're expecting a Rolling Stone-esque type of musical critique of Mala's song,  I'm going to disappoint you. Too bad. So sad.  My only claim of rap knowledge is that when I was 14 or 15 or 16 years old I heard this one day:



But for the record, at that age I was still in love with this:



Okay, back to La Mala. Like I said, I know nothing about her music.  She speaks rapid Spanish and I have to click replay over and over in order for my California Spanglish ears to grasp meaning.  This song caught my attention and added  fuel to my recent obsession of landscape.  You see, ever since we returned from our recent trip to Mexico city/Puebla/Veracruz, I've been thinking a great deal of landscape and deception and how sometimes my brain  fills in the spaces that are unknown to me  with pretty lies. The culprit of my recent thoughts  is this film, which my  husband and I watched when we were in Mexico:



Yes. The setting of the above film is Barcelona and not East Los Angeles.  I, ignorant of Barcelona,  had previously filled the unknown territory with this:



Perhaps now you can understand how my brain fills those unknown spaces.  But Mala sings conozco esta zona /esta mona no se anda por las rama.......sin embellecimiento en este carro sin asiento....

Years ago, while waiting for the bus to take me to the airport, I asked a homeless woman who sat on the bus bench but with no plans of going anywhere: Does Berkeley lose its charm after a while? She looked at the hills and said, yes. 

I want to be a mona. I want to learn to truly see landscape....even if I see la misma mierda.

Reconsidering suicide: a little penguin shows me the way

(from Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World)

home

Kathi taught me visit the beach at 4 a.m.  It was good to learn to wait for the sun with her. She showed me how to bathe under a meteor shower one night and she never mind that I stayed up late talking to her husband about Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Kathi also taught me how to smoke pot. I didn’t know how to smoke regular cigarettes, so learning the fine art of getting stoned proved to be quite difficult for me.   I was a shy and an uptight girl so to release the “I” from the cage, Kathi had to play Girl by The Beatles.

Now, listen. I want you to follow the rhythm of the song and after each time  John sings " aah, giiiiirl" I want you to inhale long and hard. Got it?

At the end of the song I was flying.

It became routine to have The Beatles’ music playing on the background whenever I was at Kathi’s house. She sensed I was lost. She used to tell me that a Beatle’s song would always take me home.

Tonight my husband sleeps. I want to sleep and dream with him, but my thoughts and worries keep me awake. I already played Norwegian Wood and I me Mine over and over.

I want to go home.

(Kathi...I'm sorry I can't take away your Parkinson's Disease. I'm sorry I've never been a wise kinda of a friend)

Sugar Cookies

Are we conventional?

I ask my husband as I bake sugar cookies.

Depende, he says.

He expands on the definition of conventionality in a long Spanish narrative.

My ADD brain starts to wonder.

I wish I could speak Spanish like him. I stick my finger in one of his words.

Mantequilla.
Azucar.
Canela.

Sprinkling cinnamon on sugar cookies is conventional, I tell him.

But going to bed at 6:30pm is not conventional.

Ven.

We lay next to each other.

Tired.
Sleepy.

I turn on my side and grab Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee.
He falls asleep.

I start crying after reading four pages.

I close the book.
I reach for his hand.

I’m asking the wrong the question.

May I please I have a side order of blue pills?

I argued with the sales clerk for a while. She had neglected to give me the drugs that came with the Disneyland tickets. I was freaking out. Thoughts of being inside the amusement park with Sleeping Beauty under the influence of REALITY terrified me. I wanted my blue pills!

Just look at the fucking video!!!  You'll see that you only gave me the tickets!

I woke up. It was only a dream.

p.s.

My husband and I went to Disneyland last year and hated it the experience. However, we had a good laugh too. I never had a craving for blue pills until this dream.

(I can't claim to be a Traffic fan, but I love love love this song. I also like Mr. Winwood's face here. I want what his lungs inhaled)