On Not Flying to Hawaii

I could be the waitress
in the airport restaurant
full of tired cigarette smoke and unseeing tourists.
I could turn into the never-noticed landscape
hanging identically in all the booths
or the customer behind the Chronicle
who has been giving advice
about stock portfolios for forty years. I could be his mortal weariness,
his discarded sports section, his smoldering ashtray.

I could be the 70-year-old woman who has never seen Hawaii,
touching her red lipstick and sprayed hair.
I could enter the linen dress
that poofs around her body like a bridesmaid,
or become her gay son
sitting opposite her, stirring another sugar
into his coffee for lack of something true to say.
I could be the reincarnated soul of the composer
of the Muzak that plays relentlessly overhead,
or the factory worker who wove this fake Oriental carpet,
or the hushed shoes of the busboy.

But I don't want to be the life of anything in this pitstop.
I want to go to Hawaii, the wet, hot
impossible place in my heart that knows just what it desires.
I want money, I want candy.
I want sweet ukelele music and birds who drop from the sky.
I want to be the volcano who lavishes
her boiling rock soup love on everyone,
and I want to be the lover
of volcanos, who loves best what burns her as it flows.

Alison Luterman

13.4.10

I need a light visor.

For those of you who remember the show, Northern Exposure, the characters had to deal with lack of sunlight, due to living in Alaska. One character, Walt gets severely depressed and resorts to the use of a light visor. There is an actual disease called seasonal affective disorder which is a result of gloomy days without sunlight. I seriously think I suffer from this during the gray month of January. Perhaps a light visor would alter my doldrums.

“When Walt gets depressed due to the lack of sunlight, Joel fits him with a special light visor. He immediately becomes addicted to the contraption and abuses it by increasing the doses well above the prescribed levels. Feeling invincible, he chops wood without gloves and gets into a fender bender with a snow plow. Chris and Holling finally stage an intervention and Walt agrees to use the visor in doses, monitored by Marilyn.”

 

http://store.lighttherapyproducts.com/index.php/products-for-seasonal-affective-disorder/light-visors

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