Letters to Friends: Tisatula

Notes from when I stayed with Erica in Sweden

The air is fresh here like Oakland’s isn’t, it makes you feel like this urban landscape is temporary, that one strong gust of Scandanavian air would lay waste to the apartment towers and roadways, leave only seascape. Seeing so many children makes me more sure I don’t want any. Weirdos stand out here like tits in a photo, and by weirdos I mean goths or punks or poor people not wearing beautiful, creaseless clothing. The children look like air-brushed dolls, with wide-spaced eyes and candy-corn lips, I want to run my fingers across their cheeks, I don’t. Erica tells me they go to Malasia or Thailand or the Mediterrranian to get a tan, that's why so many of them are butterscotch brown, so golden they match their hair. But they don’t wear sunscreen so all the old, middle-aged Swedes have skin like crumpled butcher paper. They love their sweets and I eat coco-balls every day I am here. They have bins and bins of candy. Everyone here settles down, makes a family, buys a home, gets good at making meat lasagna. They feel quiet and demure, and I am bored. I am not running away. I am running to Berlin.

Say it like a threat. 

Waking up to fighting is like waking up to tsunami. At your windows, crashing against the glass, filling you with damp and wet and slush. That immediate knowing you must leave or drown. 

a friday's impressions/

through molasses/hardwood warmth/fuck/where?/night/it's still night/i/curled up in front of the heater/stagger out of dining room/fridge glow/gobble leftovers/hope gin eats food/not me/drag off contacts/into fur bed/out/./because sleep broken into snacks/i/wake still dreaming./