Wee a.m.
the cat sitting on
my right hip bone
kneading my side
heavy voice outside
drunk, in a language
I can’t make out
woman-shriek
pierces the night
dull thumping
shirt on shirt
half asleep I
egg on the fight
atta, go at ‘em go
my organs
under the cat’s
administration
I hear
scuffling
Jog my memories: Eight Stops on the Train from Amsterdam Amstel to Gouda
=
My first year in Holland: I was told that I’d save money if I got off at Amstel and took the metro to the opera house and I can still remember the round face and blues eyes of the person giving me that advice in the Utrecht Conservatory canteen in between sips of bad coffee.
—-
My accountant, who chose not to humor me when I insisted I would buy real estate in Amsterdam’s city center, sitting in his office taking in my next new artistic plan and calculating in his head how much of a tax break that might make me and curious as to how much longer I would insist on keeping up this parade of losses.
——-
The night when Beyoncé nearly blew my eardrums out and I struggled back home, elated to have gone and relieved to be allowed to regain my senses in peace.
—
The day, thirty-five euros richer, I climbed out of an econo-vehicle after a performance in the polder.
———
Where I always wonder what it would be like to have to go to that… what is it – a village- a suburban hell – a jolly place to be inside on a rainy day with an option to muck out a horse stall always on hand – out on some errand/social call/pretense. What on earth will possibly take me there? Of course, I would never resist the invitation…whenever it comes.
————————-
Gamely pushing my old dog in a red stroller over the loose gravel and mud, getting picked up by an econo-vehicle for a rehearsal out in the polder.
—————–
The birthday party for a singing student who was an official government squatter, occupying a whole floor or hundreds of potential cubbyhole spaces, in a 1970’s building on an industrial terrain. Admittedly a tough home to decorate.
———————————-
Yes, look, on the left there’s the house where a friend’s husband physically and emotionally repeatedly attacked her and, on the other side of the tracks, the woods where I took my old dog one day for a treat away from the city and we both ended up peeing in the bushes.
—–
A place where I hardly recognize who I once was and don’t know what to feel anymore, but it is a nice town and my friends tell me they are never going to make it out of there.