Tuesday, November 24, 2009

things happen, over and over again.

4101948376_61cc5e5c0c
Just then Luke said "New Orleans" and I really heard him.
4101121697_ef83e56763
Saw the wrought-iron balconies and the haze of heat and dust.
4099822312_d02ac50e36
Saw the slow-moving smiling people getting high in the sun, 
drinking black coffee down in the French market,

the big boats unloading fruit and fish, large healthy gulls screaming and turning, 
and nearly said "I'm going with you."

We both could hear the words hanging silent in the dusty room, 
the room waited, but I didn't speak.

Two things held me back. One was our code, our eternal tiresome rule of Cool,
that would have made it impossible for me to say those words without blowing our entire scene,

retrospectively even, blowing what had gone before, 
so that if I had indeed gone with Luke all the magic would have gone out of our coming together-

or so it seemed to us then.

The other was my total, unutterable fascination with Manhattan,

a love affair with the city that I was in the midst of, caught up in, it turned out, for many years.

An overwhelming love of the alleys and warehouses,

of the strange cemetery downtown at Trinity Church,

of Wall Street in the dead of night,

Cathedral Parkway on Sunday afternoons,

of the Chrysler building gleaming like fabled towers in the October sun,

the incredible prana and energy in the air,
4081226139_9cc606ce48
stirring a creativity that seemed to spring from the fiery core of the planet
 and burst like a thousand boiling volcanoes in the music and painting,
4099110219_ed2b756d51
the dancing and the poetry  of this magic city.

So, instead of speaking, I took his hand.

"When are you going?" I asked him.
"This morning, he said. 


Excerpt from "Memoirs of a Beatnik" by Diane Di Prima
Photographs by Anna Ristuccia 

I want to see stars, and snow, and ghosts.
I'm going upstate to hunt for all of these things.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is my favourite post you've done so far. I love the photos. And that picture of that girls face is beautiful!

Natalia said...

Ok, that does it. I'm linking you.

Keep up the amazing work!