Found in the archives
Jan. 9th, 2004 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertangoA vignette originally written for a late, lamented web project.
Still.
found on a crumpled piece of paper, lodged between a trash bucket and a bag of cat food, obviously thrown across the room...
==
It's an Indian Summer kind of night.
A few folks have strung up Chinese lanterns in the central square -- which is circular, really. The four main streets of town converge, and then ring the park-like plaza. Between each street are four buildings, pretty much all storefronts of one sort or another. The Hushville Herald -- my office -- is one of them. At first I just idly watch the commotion, my blue pencil bouncing on its eraser through my fingers onto the galley proofs on my desk.
There are no cars -- They haven't been allowed in the center of Hushville for years, so the streets are broad, grass-and-stone walkways.
In the gazebo, a quartet starts setting up: sax, bass, piano, drums. An upright piano is pushed along by a dozen kids and teenagers, all helping out, the cart wheels squeaking. The cart bounces over the grassy cobbles of the streets. A single-file procession follows, carrying the drums.
The strings of lanterns stretch from the gazebo to the street lamps, which are in the old-fashioned concrete post style, with blown decorative glass bulbs on the top. You've seen this style a thousand times, in noir movies. Before coming here to Hushville, I hadn't seen any still actually standing since I was last in Pasadena, where Caltech's Jenijoy LaBelle had asked me to speak on "Werner Heisenberg and James Joyce: Quantum Uncertainties in 'Finnegans Wake'".
The waning moon shines down on the plaza; just a bit bigger than Last Quarter.
The band plays. A crowd coalesces from all over town. Two, three hundred people, all dancing in the street. To swing, to rock, to the rare trance piece.
I take Juliet by the hand in the paper's office, and lead her out to dance among our neighbors. We slide together and become that single moving object that is a dancing couple. I place my hand on her back, and feel that fit we have. Which of us is the glove? Which of us the hand? I can't say. All as the two of us begin to sway to a slightly uptempo version of "Moonlight Serenade". Ah, the benefits of a preppy youth.
It's at moments like these -- when the community condenses out of the air, like sugar crystals in a finger-tapped flask of "sweet tea" from the South -- that I'm happiest with our choice to move here.
It's odd. The whole event feels like a Yanqui interpretation of the fiesta scene in Romancing the Stone. Yet I feel that much "Northern reserve" (either in North America or Europe) stems from the hard scrapple effort to survive a winter... and for this equinoctial moment, we ignore the one or two trees just tinged with color, we push from our minds the leaves of flame to come, to be followed by Old Man Snow... For this moment, we are warm, both inside and out.
A woman sings a torch song, one that swings oh-so-gently:
The singer's name is Kristina. Her song sounds quite heartfelt.
I wonder if Juliet sees anything in my eyes as I feel a brief pang of recognition in the lyric-----
Still.
found on a crumpled piece of paper, lodged between a trash bucket and a bag of cat food, obviously thrown across the room...
==
It's an Indian Summer kind of night.
A few folks have strung up Chinese lanterns in the central square -- which is circular, really. The four main streets of town converge, and then ring the park-like plaza. Between each street are four buildings, pretty much all storefronts of one sort or another. The Hushville Herald -- my office -- is one of them. At first I just idly watch the commotion, my blue pencil bouncing on its eraser through my fingers onto the galley proofs on my desk.
There are no cars -- They haven't been allowed in the center of Hushville for years, so the streets are broad, grass-and-stone walkways.
In the gazebo, a quartet starts setting up: sax, bass, piano, drums. An upright piano is pushed along by a dozen kids and teenagers, all helping out, the cart wheels squeaking. The cart bounces over the grassy cobbles of the streets. A single-file procession follows, carrying the drums.
The strings of lanterns stretch from the gazebo to the street lamps, which are in the old-fashioned concrete post style, with blown decorative glass bulbs on the top. You've seen this style a thousand times, in noir movies. Before coming here to Hushville, I hadn't seen any still actually standing since I was last in Pasadena, where Caltech's Jenijoy LaBelle had asked me to speak on "Werner Heisenberg and James Joyce: Quantum Uncertainties in 'Finnegans Wake'".
The waning moon shines down on the plaza; just a bit bigger than Last Quarter.
The band plays. A crowd coalesces from all over town. Two, three hundred people, all dancing in the street. To swing, to rock, to the rare trance piece.
I take Juliet by the hand in the paper's office, and lead her out to dance among our neighbors. We slide together and become that single moving object that is a dancing couple. I place my hand on her back, and feel that fit we have. Which of us is the glove? Which of us the hand? I can't say. All as the two of us begin to sway to a slightly uptempo version of "Moonlight Serenade". Ah, the benefits of a preppy youth.
It's at moments like these -- when the community condenses out of the air, like sugar crystals in a finger-tapped flask of "sweet tea" from the South -- that I'm happiest with our choice to move here.
It's odd. The whole event feels like a Yanqui interpretation of the fiesta scene in Romancing the Stone. Yet I feel that much "Northern reserve" (either in North America or Europe) stems from the hard scrapple effort to survive a winter... and for this equinoctial moment, we ignore the one or two trees just tinged with color, we push from our minds the leaves of flame to come, to be followed by Old Man Snow... For this moment, we are warm, both inside and out.
A woman sings a torch song, one that swings oh-so-gently:
This morning I woke up an hour before dawn You're sleeping beside me your face to the wall I can't stand to leave you but I know I can't stay That's why I'm practicing walking away...
The singer's name is Kristina. Her song sounds quite heartfelt.
I wonder if Juliet sees anything in my eyes as I feel a brief pang of recognition in the lyric-----
