impressions of an expat

somewhere over the rainbow (and other stories)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 11:47:00 +0000

Exactly two years ago I found myself flying through a corner of a rainbow, and landed in Oaxaca, Mexico. It was the last film festival I traveled to, a brutal and sweet experience in the harshest of realities, trying to wrap my arms around the slipperiest industry and failing magnificently. Surrounded by fresh faces and eager eyes I ran from the rooms and into the street time and again, wandering off with the camera in my bag as a companion. I took pictures of a blind man that sang on the same corner every day, of wedding parades, of an old woman waiting to see the dentist.

Literally somewhere over the rainbow, I met the ugliest answers to questions I had been dragging my feet towards for years. Cramming the most delicious food into my mouth, joking at the nightly rooftop cocktail parties, grinning like the Cheshire Cat it was all coming to an end. Actually, it had ended before it even started though - and on the plane back to New York and finally Moscow the bone-crunching undertow pulled me down into the murkiest depths. The entire world stopped a few months later, and it was easy to blame this sense on a general foreboding. We all feel like we are whistling past the graveyard on some days. There is always a cold draft, and a door we pass but dare not crane our neck to look inside.

The shutdown was a relief in some ways. No more pressure to succeed in the old ways. No more glad-handing and back stabbing. No more deceit. No more bloody competitions. No more disappointment. No more defeat. No more ass-kissing. No more winning. Just time with the family, playing board games after dinner as we kept out chins up.

It is so easy to drift into nostalgia, to remember the days past as better. It is so easy to speak of what we have lost - be it a cherished diner, a favorite pair of jeans or a way of living. It something we all share, some tiny thread that slips through every one of our pockets and ties us into one great messy bit of cloth. Well, that’s the romantic idea. In truth, we are just lost without any thread.

There is no looking back, no putting the toothpaste back in the tube.

We can only embrace the change, which is such a tall order when you were raised on different fairy tales, different glass slippers, different fairy godmothers. They all evaporate into history. They are all eclipsed by something worse or by something better or just something else. In Woyzcek, by Georg Büchner, there is a fairy tale about a boy that sits on a pot and cries when he learns all of this, that the stars are not the stars, the moon is not the moon.

Even if that rainbow was real, and I travelled beyond it - there was no magical story to wrap myself in, no happy ending, just the simple beauty of that blind man singing on the corner, his voice frail, no idea if anyone was listening but singing all the same, maybe because that is all that he knows how to do.

The falling boy (too bitter a fruit)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 11:53:00 +0000

He was 17. Big brown eyes, and a gentle smile. I imagine he had a good supply of wisecracks behind that bold chin. He played soccer on the national youth team. A young leader, a son, a dear friend to many. Zaki bought everyone in his class hamburgers after school was closed for a week in the aftermath of a suicide bomb attack. Somehow, I read all this, absorbing the details as they etch a picture in the dim morning light. He was one of many trying to escape, grabbing onto the plane thinking they would let him in. As it took off, and people surrendered to the moment, as they dropped back to the tarmac he did not let go. The wind grew, and still he held on. They say it reached 120 miles per hour before he fell off.

It is a strange phenomenon, this modern world of ours where we hear a story about someone we never knew, yet it stops me dead in my tracks. The memories flood back, all of the idiotic things that I did at his age, for no great reason. The risk was not even a trill, just that blind foolishness of youth as we dove headfirst without thinking, convinced we were invincible, that we knew everything.

The kitchen smells like sulphur and burnt matches. This young man’s random last words hang in the air all day. At one point, the new guitar comes out of the case and I think to write something about him, to paint just a little corner of the frame, not some giant canvas. To pay him some tribute with a few gentle chords. And yes, the bones of a song do appear but I do not like it. It is too bitter a fruit.

putting the boat back in the water

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 11:33:00 +0000

The hour finally arrives. A sharp pencil rests on a few empty sheets of paper. I dial the phone. There is no answer. Months of delays lead me to this moment, the day a sleeping pile of pages detours back to that messy path, the road to publishing my next book. I am a patient person. I know people have a lot going on, far more pressing than this pile of pages, these stories full of heartache and catastrophe. I try to call a few minutes later. I check the last email, and yes it is the right time, the right number. I scribble around the corners of those empty white pages, chewing through an entire hour. They never answer.

I make a quiet lunch. Eating in the dark kitchen with the wind whipping around the tops of the trees, I know what must happen.

Within an hour, I have placed a job listing and begin to hear back. Bright and shiny messages arrive, many complete bullshit, some over-selling and a handful are as smart and thoughtful as I could ask for. I send the first page of Papa on the Moon to three of them, to learn what they say needs fixing. I write by ear, not by rule. It is time to plug the holes, fix the cracks and gently set this boat afloat. By the end of the next day, I have found someone I trust. A name hangs in the darkness. A tiny face in a circle on my screen. A college they went to, and a list of degrees. Recommendations tumble down. Where they live. It paints just part of a picture and this is always a leap of faith - but I feel so foolish for resisting this solution. I could have done this months if not years ago. There is no looking back now. The road behind me is littered with bad ideas and empty plans.

The messages arrive. Good questions about what I meant in a given moment. Choices, and moving on to the next page. Editing is part of writing - there is nothing new in saying that, but finally it feels as juicy and full of promise as writing. It feels like the refrigerator is stuffed with fresh things to cook, the door barely able to close. It feels like an old pair of jeans that was too small suddenly fit again. It feels like that cold, sour air from the balcony that threatens an early winter has no hold on me. I am rewinding to summer. I am walking backwards up great hills of fresh cut grass, back all of the way to my childhood on our farm where the only friends were a big dog and the chickens. The smell of rotting pumpkins, and chimney smoke, the taste of homemade maple syrup.

no words

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 11:10:00 +0000

the fastest NO (a mistake)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 10:20:00 +0000

E had to go to some official office as part of her change in schools. An appointment was made. She went on her own to collect this document we needed. While she was out, I received an email from some government site that said she had missed her appointment. I called her, immediately cooking up a list of terrible things that had caused this.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I’m in the street.” She answered, relaxed. “I got the paper.”

“But I just got this notice that you did not.” I reply.

She makes that familiar little sigh.

“Well, I got it.” She said. “I’ll be home in a bit”

I sit in the empty apartment, wondering what good it does to cram bad news into a person’s life - to tell a lie so easily. Emails, text messages, a cascade of notifications rain down on us - immediate results, no waiting. How quick this world is at telling you what you did wrong, and when they are mistaken, no apology, no denial - just silence. If your personal data is leaked, they admit nothing but when your credit card is going to expire in six months you get nudged every day to update your payment information.

There was a time when you sent out a pile of query letter to agents, with fresh wet stamps on them and your best handwriting across the envelopes. It took weeks, even months to get the rejections - often just a photocopied half-slip of paper with a bland statement, sometimes an actual two sentence letter with a blue ballpoint signature on it. That gap of time between sending and hearing back let us forget, let us go on with our lives not waiting by the phone but working on something new, or rehashing something old. Now, we apply for credit cards and get rejected 30 seconds later. The noes come faster and faster these days, correct or mistaken leaving us no time to prepare, no time to put things in perspective, no time to soften the blow.

I imagine a great fish in the murky depths of the ocean, snapping up anything small that passes. Swallowing them whole, they are still alive for a little while - inside with nowhere to go.

being in nature

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 10:42:00 +0000

V is always bringing back a piece of outside with her. A handful of wildflowers, a graceful stick, a smooth rock. There is a museum of pinecones by our entry door, all her making. I don’t know if they are trophies or specimens - a careful exploration or a random habit. When I was a boy we often pressed flowers between the pages of thick books and forgot them, only to take a quick breath when we found them months later as they slid all papery to the floor and fell to prices.

People like to say “being in nature” but I wonder, is there really less nature inside or is it just a different one? There is still mold. There are still flies and dust, everything crumbling and returning to a mildewy powder at the slowest pace. Over time the cracks in the ceiling grow, the corners of doorways get rounded off. The floor scrapes in wild patches, just like paths in the forest.

V and N have a habit of planting things in tiny pots. A sprig of rosemary, a promising avocado pit, a collection of lemon seeds. Invariably they grow, sucking up water, sprouting and crawling up the kitchen windows, every day a deeper green and a few millimeters taller. Earth and sun, water and attention. It seems so simple but I have never been capable of it.

In the depths of winter, in the dimmest mid-day their leaves grow luminous and smell like Spring if you brush a finger against them.

a pregnant moon

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 11:50:00 +0000

The moon hangs low. There are bright spots in the sky that could be stars or just approaching airplanes. That single ice cube in my last drink has melted down to a sliver, and the cool air wraps around us.

A backyard. The low chirp of cicadas. The sweet smell of burning wood and wet earth, and a certain hushed silence. All as foreign as a trip to Mars.

The country, where you nod off early and sleep well. Even if the houses are crammed next to each other and some tennis courts lurk a few minutes walk from here, it is not the city. Voices are lower. Concerns evaporate, or at least seem so far away, no longer hanging from our ears like wet noodles. The children run in random circles, spying a raspberry bush or a papery white butterfly. Hands dig deep into pockets as the sun drifts away, searching for a little warmth as that cool, fresh air rolls in.

And then it is time to pack things up, to walk the rooms one last time, as insects circle our heads. We head back, that moon hanging lower and lower in the trees, swollen maybe even pregnant as the traffic trickles past.

patience (blowing bubbles)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 11:21:00 +0000

It was an in-between summer. High school was over, a half-hearted break-up with my prom date felt more like a deflating balloon than a hard split. College was hanging in the distance, inching closer each day. Playing in a band and singing for the first time in little places packed with sweaty faces on the weekends. And then a job appears, to help teach swimming to kids at a lake a good ten miles from home. I am not a trained lifeguard but no one cares. I’m just there to help, an extra set of hands and eyes as long as I wake up and pedal my bike there by eight, I’ll get a paycheck every two weeks.

The classes began with the youngest children, many not even five. We spent weeks getting them to walk into the water up to their knees and then their waist. Next, gulping for air, slapping their faces into the water and blowing bubbles until there was nothing left inside. After this, some kicking and gliding. Maybe because the water was murky, some days more green some days more brown, maybe because of the muddy bottom squishing between their toes, their fears got the best of them. A boy named Leon, who had constant line of snot under his nose. A girl named Samantha, who always wore leopard spot bathing suits. They shivered in the cold, shoulders tall as they poked their toes at the edge, as we nudged them in, as we showed them how to blow those bubbles over and over and they shook their heads no. I began to understood it was just fear, nothing special that was stopping them. Just a vague sense that something bad would happen if they tried. Better to stand at the edge and make excuses.

Some days it rained, but the kids were dropped off all the same and we had to entertain them. There were buildings with tall ceilings where they taught dance classes, and we were let in - to play duck duck goose or red light green light. It was good medicine, to be part of the shouting and running around in circles, that sense that we were safe and sound and could just play another round until someone came to pick us up. Time stretched into a zero. Nothing behind me, nothing in front of me, nothing to do tonight - just counting heads and yes, the bathroom is over there but come right back when you are done and hey, Timmy is back from vacation!

At one point, they all took the plunge and blew those bubbles. It just took some patience.

of fountains and wells

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 11:39:00 +0000

V waves a tiny apple in the air. “These are for making wishes and then you throw them.” She explains from the sunny balcony just after breakfast. The apple is red and yellow, a little bruised but with a long healthy stem.

“Not now.” She adds. “For later.”

My thoughts wander to the fountains where I always throw a coin. Fontana di Trevi. The ones outside the Metropolitan Museum. For luck, for the people we love not selfishly for ourselves. For the future. For health. I have been tossing coins since I was as young as V, down dark wells, at the edges of rivers, and sometimes just into the darkest nights. It is a comforting habit. A choice. Nothing can stop us from doing this.

The origin of this act is built around the belief that water holds spirits. That water can be holy, and sacred. These coins are gifts, tiny sacrifices to express appreciation. But in winter, the fountains are turned off. The wells freeze over. Without realizing it, we save our wishes then.

I look down at the playground in front of our building and imagine it is already winter. This secluded life, this living in rooms while the storms and this sickness play out beyond the windows make the seasons pass so quickly. Summer was just beginning and somehow - now it feels like January.

Eggs with the thinnest shells

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 11:17:00 +0000

I never imagined squeezing a piece of fruit at the market as something that could be taken for granted. I never imagined months and months of groceries being delivered to the door, some bruised, some rotten, some alright. Eggs with the thinnest shells ready to be broken. Meat in sagging, bloody bags. A glance at the prices on the receipt, watching things climb week to week, as if no one will notice while everything changes in that familiar dark of winter and the longest white nights.

Instead of shopping and buying what looks best, improvising a dinner plan from a passing whim - I defrost something from the freezer instead, concocting dishes from a bland collection of vegetables that are bought on tiny screens. Stabbing at pictures of red onions and pumpkins, the process gives me an immediate headache. They had Padron peppers once, broccolini once, rainbow chard a few times but chances are it is just the same potatoes and dirt clogged carrots that stare back at me on the laptop in the kitchen.

Yes - everything has changed and to ignore this is to blind yourself. But there are the people in the street without a care in the world, walking their dogs, dragging their children on scooters, smoking long slow cigarettes and laughing with ugly voices. The playgrounds are still full. At night, there are random smacks of firecrackers downstairs.

The new guitar looks back at me.

I did a few shows in New York, singing and playing and it was terrifying. I would rather make raw, tender music in my living room and send it to you through those giant wires that stretch across the bottom of the ocean than play a live show. I would rather make music you listen to alone at 2AM, driving an empty stretch of highway with the entire world wrapped around you. As everything outside changes, the music does not. It is a constant, a spring of cold water to douse on the back of my neck. It is a blanket, a favorite pair of jeans, an old friend, a challenge, an invitation. Something real, in this blind age that I fear will go on for decades.

Poison

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 09:45:00 +0000

The poison fingers its way in, at that invisible moment when the warning light blinks on the dashboard all too late. Cell walls falling like dominoes, the virus tucks itself into every corner of your body. It latches on like a baby at its mother's breast, or a miniature lamprey. It will never let go. It will be there when you sleep, breathing quietly in the shadows and when you wake up coughing, eyes full of sand. It is your new companion, your new partner.

Days twist by, and this cold shadow becomes familiar as your chest tightens. Headaches appear like storms, rolling in slow and then suddenly drenching everything in its path. Strange coughs fall from your mouth even though you never smoked. Measurements in recipes get confused, repeated and read wrong, as you stare at your hands sticky with dough that should be much easier to knead.

Flavors fade, and your tongue sits numb and bloated as salt and chili somehow taste the same - like cardboard that numbs the roof of your mouth. Water tastes stale, wobbling around the inside of your cheeks before you gulp it down. Coffee smells like a cemetery and the thought of a glass of wine turns your eyes green.

The breeze helps, when it presents itself late at night. I runs across your forehead the way you wish you mother ran her hand when you were young. But that never happened.

the gospel of ciabatta

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 11:22:00 +0000

When the sky is falling, I cook. When all else fails, and life is reduced to a scrap, an empty book of matches, a thin shadow of what I thought it was supposed to be, I pull mixing bowls from the closets. A pinch of yeast, warm water and flour are stirred into a paste and left overnight. The magic happens when everyone is sleeping.

In the morning it is a sticky and fragrant. Somehow it smells like the ocean. More flour, more warm water and it becomes a taught dough that clings to every pore of my skin. All you have to do is let it rest. There are such lessons in cooking. To listen for a certain sizzle, when to let things breathe, when to slap them down hard, how to cut against the grain, how to separate muscle from sinew, skin from bone. And then a slurry of more yeast, water and finally some salt. It comes together in a wet mess, some grown-up playdough that I squeeze and fold, twist and swirl. Eventually it grows taught and smooth. It will rest once again, get folded again. Rolled out and layered as this simple paste becomes strong, as it matures hour by hour until I cut it into two loaves and cook it on a stone with the oven cranked up as hot as it will go. A pan of water is tucked into the bottom to create steam, and with any luck a good crust.

The loaves sit on the kitchen table, like peace prizes as the world crumbles.

Later, I make sauce. If you are Italian-American you might call it gravy (not that I have a drop of Italian blood in my veins). We all have our recipe, our catch-phrase and it really does not matter what we call it, just that we make it. Of all days, today is Sunday and I am accidentally making Sunday gravy without even knowing it. As the kitchen steams up, I think about that question people like to ask - are you Jewish? Are you Christian? Are you a Buddhist? And then that long, slow pause as you chew on the prepared answer you keep handy, but maybe today you’ll speak differently. You might be surrounded by atheists and agnostics. You might be surrounded by people that pray with crystals pressed tight in their hands. Today, I answer this question with a smirk, and say that a good bowl of pasta is what I believe in more than anything else in the world. The making of it, the humble purpose, the wish to sit at a table with family and friends and spoon into it, chewing on a museum of garlic and olive oil. What is more noble than nourishment? I could easily say that a bowl of pasta saved my life more times than reciting lines from an old book written by clerics. Cooking gives us a real purpose. It is an expression of love, and care. What better way to describe religion?

There is an old Russian saying, that when the cook is in love they over-salt the food.

I slice a heel from one of the fresh loaves of ciabatta, and dunk it in the sauce. Chewing on it, soft and sweet and almost too hot for my tongue I understand the bread is just a bit too salty.

How to squander a magical life

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 11:19:00 +0000

Back in New York, people are going on vacations to the beach, slapping each other on the back after a perfect joke at a corner bar, walking the streets as if nothing has happened. This is how it feels to be left behind, to imagine that life that was not lived while you walk the same rooms, drifting around like a dust ball while the streets grow more and more infected, while this country fulfils its destiny - to be nothing more than a gas station and a graveyard. I remember what life was like after a collective disaster in New York. You swept it under the rug and went right back to squandering your magical life on rooftop parties and expensive meals, new shoes and good coffee. It was a shadow that you passed from time to time, a shudder of cold air from an imaginary air conditioner and then it was behind you. You did not have to chew on it for so long.

Here, the madness knows no end. It stagnates, and devours. It grows in the sun and under the low hanging moon. I sprouts white hairs across my face each night as I walk the same rooms and look out the same windows as last year. Those old trees are there, and must have grown but for all we know they have been shrinking. It has been a year of disbelief, a year when nothing you heard felt like the truth, just a convenient answer, a comfortable explanation as people die by the minute, as the streets flood, as the wildfires burn, as the hospitals stand like dark monuments to nameless battles in a forgotten war.

There is history on every street here, and somehow it all feels like a parking lot. A name on a plaque every so often, a gesture towards a life well-lived. Eduard Tisse, I knew your name when I young. I will nod to you if I am ever on that street again.

the shimmer

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 05 Jul 2021 11:19:00 +0000

Somehow, the old case is pulled from the closet. In the back of my mind I had hoped for a horn part on the album, but did not want to assume it would happen. The instrument almost bursts from the case as it is unzipped - maybe it gained some weight. The reed soaks on my lips. The neck is twisted in. The neck strap dangles, always in the way. It smells of oil, and cork. And then the first note. Breathy, and sour. There is no way to detour this sinking feeling that I do not sound the way I used to. All the same, I know it takes time and practice. I am like a 6-year-old, impatient and ready to be disappointed.

The afternoon unfolds as I lay down track after track, all sigh and moan, all wail and whimper. If I play them back together, they shimmer.

This is the last song to record on the new album, a collection of instrumentals. I had no idea how much more the music speaks when you remove words from the equation.

The horn parts are done, but I leave it out of the case. It languishes on the couch, as the afternoon sun reaches deep into the rooms for an hour. Let it see a little of the world, I think to myself. Let it get some sand between its toes.

Later, V points at it. It could be be an escaped octopus, or a robot butler if you could see her mouth hanging open. I play it for her and she nods, satisfied. Maybe she sees a little bit of my former life, the man with the old horn, balancing two slices eaten in the street on the way to a gig on Avenue B. Or maybe, she sees none of this, after tiptoeing beyond her curiosity and ready for dinner.

the storm (naked and afraid)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 11:46:00 +0000

And as the storm arrives, it is already dark - as if someone went back in time and turned out all of the lights 20 minutes ago without anyone noticing. The sky cries out and it is difficult to think of this weather, and nature itself as something that is not human. How easy it is to feel so angry, to crack thunder under your feet in pain and disappointment. How lovely does it feel to be drenched, flooding the streets with everything inside you?

The storm is drunk on itself as I slap the balcony windows closed. The air smells of frogs and fresh mud. A shirt N left out to dry swings in the kitchen window, as if it is alive too - twirling and pirouetting on a cheap coat hanger as the storm rolls over us. Crying and dancing, every random object seems to be living more those people down there, afraid in the street trotting to their cars between the raindrops.

The trees bend in a hard wind and some will fall.

Later, there will be the sound of chainsaws as they hack its carcass into pieces that are left there, naked and broken for days until someone takes them away.

the dove (many hands)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 15:30:00 +0000

The guitar arrives, and a young man waits in the hallway as we take it inside. I crack the case open, that new car smell wafting out. It needs to be tuned of course. The body slides out, all reflections and odd details. It feels so solid in my hands, like a tiny mountain. There is a dove on the pick guard, where my hand rests for a moment before the first strum.

As I brush across the strings for the first time I think of the life it lived before now. The factory, the workers that shaped it. Great lumbering machines and thunderous sounds. Clouds of paint and gloss and sawdust. So many hands that it took to build it. Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers until the guitar was called done, a tiny sticker on the back of the neck with someone’s name scribbled on it. And then somehow it made its way here of all places. The eighth floor, and our messy living room. Me, on a stool with an Am chord, in the hot afternoon.

It goes back in the case, so snug.

Time to pay the man in the hall.

cold water (broken)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 11:53:00 +0000

A death of a thousand tiny cuts is more than a wry expression, more than a dark laugh at the night sky. Some battles are won with the gentle click of a door as it closes. Some changes sneak in like the edge of the sky as it grows brighter, just before the sun rises. These changes are unrecognizable, until the inevitable presents itself and it is all too late.

The hot water is turned off for ten days, as it is every summer. Little notes were tacked to entry doors, an official warning with dates and hours. It has become a lesson in tolerance, a bitter stretch of time to boil pots of water and fill a basin in the tub that we keep for this sole use. Cold water is mixed in until the temperature is somewhere between scalding and lukewarm. Standing with a bar of soap like some old west movie the splashing and makeshift bathing runs its course. The basin grows murky, and it is all tossed down the drain, somehow feeling just as dirty as you stepped into the tub. But you swallow all of those twinges of anger and humiliation. It’s just hot water for Christ’s sake. It’s only ten days.

And then the magic term that blankets it all.

“It could be much worse.”

This is the soul-crushing refrain. How can anyone complain, knowing that in another breath, they are actually so lucky? This is how you control people. This is how you tape their mouths shut. This is how the battle is lost. We are thankful by nature. We drift past a terrible car crash and think “thank God that was not me”. In our humility, we are chained to tolerance and in this tolerance, anything can be done to us. Take away one thing, and get me used to it. Take away more the next day, and the next. Whittle me down to a splinter, and I will wrap my arms around my wife and kids and say “at least we are ok”.

I go to the faucet, twisting it left by habit and nothing comes out but a gasp of stale air. My head shakes, forgetful as always – a creature of habit. I twist it right, and cold water spurts out. It is splashed on my face, the back of my neck and I catch myself in the mirror, broken.

the rose

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 12:11:00 +0000

Down by the river, a rose sits on the pavement. Normally, I would pocket it to stand in a water glass when I got home. A flurry of people in crisp white shirts are decorating the glassed-in deck of a boat. There are boxes of flowers on the tables, and this one must have gotten away. I stand and watch them for some time, wondering if it is a wedding or a birthday that will soon fill this space, all laughter and messy toasts, children in carefully chosen outfits trotting from stem to stern.

A smell comes up from the river, brackish and foul. Algae and gasoline.

This rose is fake, the green stem nothing more than painted wire.

I think of 28th street between Sixth and Seventh Avenue in New York. The street of flowers is its secret name. Each shop is crammed full of blooms, some common, some exotic but without a doubt - every single one a soul can imagine is found here. The sidewalk is impossible to navigate, a labyrinth of discarded boxes peppered with rose petals. In any sunny window you will see a lazy cat or two, licking their fur in a bright spot ignoring the circus outside. I have a habit of walking on this street without fail, the opposite of a detour - a destination. Early in the morning with a coffee in my hand, late at night when the boxes are piled high and the faces are going home. It is a perfect stretch of concrete.

Who celebrates with plastic flowers? Who are they fooling?

I think of those random piles of flowers by the side of the road, where someone died. Stone piled on top of stone as the cars whizz by. I think of how a good hard rain will knock peonies to the ground, all rotting petals and mud. But at least they lived, at least they harbored bees and did their part.

The fake rose flips in a wind that picks up. Its petals shiver as it rocks back and forth. I could nudge it somewhere, like a dead bird by the side of the highway but I do not. Turning and heading back home I picture the kitchen table, with a random plate of cookies on one side. V's toys strewn across the edges. A forgotten water glass. A receipt we do not need. A place to sit and write, a place sip to wine and talk long after the kids have gone to sleep.

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noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 13:06:00 +0000

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thank you

Marco

The picture is the picture. The story is the story.

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 31 May 2021 12:52:00 +0000

Last week, I heard someone admit "You can buy the truth." Or, better said, "You can pay to publish fiction as fact." It was no shock. This has been going on for years, but no one wanted to know about it when I jabbed my fingers at this sad little wound. With generous helpings of willful ignorance, our heads in the sand we pass the days and months. Reality is bought and sold for a small fee every minute and we gladly finance this charade.

It is maddening.

As maddening as a Spring that is not Spring. An open road that is closed for no reason.

The price tag dangles, and spins in the breeze. The truth is on sale. You can buy two and get one free, just for today.

I was taught to write what I know, to gnaw on the bones and present the fruits of this labor in a humble bowl, with as few words as possible, without explanation or apology. The picture is the picture. The story is the story. The song is the song. You are not there to defend it, or explain how personal it is. It must stand on its own, on the truth that it speaks to, the very marrow of your experience, or what you have witnessed - the messy, molten center that throbs and wobbles as it is read.

This is the only way to write authentically. If you just want to entertain, the truth is a nuisance, a gnat in the room to ignore.

to call home

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 24 May 2021 12:04:00 +0000

The Moscow wind whips up, gnashing the trees, tossing limbs to the earth. It goes nowhere, like a toy train set turning long ovals around and around. It is just on. I try to walk, even in the pouring rain, to simpley go outside - but feel such a sense of relief in the elevator as I return. Inside, there are old guitars and a bag full of harmonicas. There are good things to eat, tucked into the fridge. The familiar spines of books stare back at me.

Being an expat during a pandemic sharpens all of your feelings, the joy and the resentment. I could not feel farther away from a country that has a new habit of ending sentences with "getting back to normal" while the rest of the world burns.

I remember that life on East 1st Street, and how I did not venture above 14th for a good six months because I lived in the center of the storm. Nothing happened outside of those blocks it seemed, nothing that mattered. People knew my face, nodding in the street while balancing coffees and a bacon, egg and cheese. I talked to the crackpots, conversations about who invented Disneyland. I felt safe, and understood. Of course, that was all a pipe dream, a generous fantasy to wrap myself in. I saw the towers come down from my living room windows. I saw rage in the streets, racism and bigotry, rich fools and star fuckers. The city I thought I would never leave became a hollow dream, a false prophecy, a broken promise.

In the end, it was not difficult to leave.

But where to call home? Four walls and my family, that has been the only answer I can muster. Four walls with windows to stare at that relentless Moscow wind. Windows we crack open when it finally gets warm and cigarette smoke curls in from our neighbors. Windows that grow bright in the middle of the night, the sun backwards here while everyone is sleeping.

the birdhouse

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 17 May 2021 10:42:00 +0000

A sagging, metal cage is tucked inside a corner of this park.

I ask N what it is.

"For pigeons." She explains. "A bird house."

But there are no birds. Just a faded sign that hangs crooked from the fence, a path that is not walked. No feathers. No bird shit. No sounds of cooing or flapping wings. Just the wind that moves the trees around, suddenly full of tiny leaves. Just us on this bench, with V scraping a plastic spoon into an ice cream cone.

I sit with the building behind me, sure that another relic will be gone if I glance back over my shoulder at it. Every shed painted the brightest blue, every concrete garage, every old swingset - they disappear in the middle of the night, ripping down by a secret society leaving not a splinter in the grass.

They are documented as a habit - a compulsion.

"This could all be gone tomorrow" They seem to say.

Pick-up sticks (the crossing)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 10 May 2021 11:06:00 +0000

There are hundreds of worms on the sidewalk, strewn across the puddles like someone threw them up in the air and let them fall like pick-up sticks. They are inching away from fresh cut grass and water-logged earth towards the street where trucks and buses churn past. They are homeless, tiptoeing towards death. Blind and slow they cross this stretch of pavement, all sharing this collective dream. It is so intensely ironic, so sad, such a gruesome metaphor for anyone that glances down at them. How are we any different?

No one is out for once, as the rain pelts down and the puddles stretch into ponds. The city floods so easily, as there is no sewer system here just earth that grows soggy until it can absorb no more. I smell things that are green - the tiny buds at the ends of tree limbs. Then smoke, and lamb fat as someone makes shashlik in the woods. Then sour detergent, ammonia and gasoline that stretches into dull rainbows in parking lots.

A woman is leaving our building just as I go in. I hold the door for her, and she stares at me once, wordless, no nod of the chin as if I do not exist.

no words

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 03 May 2021 13:33:00 +0000

no words

Those days are gone (future stories)

noreply@blogger.com (Marco North) — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 11:52:00 +0000

I knew this would not be solved quickly. Everyone that says "when we get back to normal" has this stagnant smell of hope to it, knowing damn well that there is no old normal to rewind back to. This is our new normal, as ugly and sad as that sounds it is what sits on the table and stares back at us day in and out. We are as healthy as our weakest neighbor. We are as vulnerable as the poorest country in the world. We are indeed "all in this together" like it or not. Paint that phrase as a sweet thought or a harsh truth, the result is the same.

I think a lot about the next generation of writers, the future storytellers growing up in seclusion. These are people that do not know what it is to hide in the corner of a noisy party, and trade observations with a stranger. They know nothing of chance encounters in bars and airports, of the magic randomness of a few words traded on the subway, a joke from a passing commuter. They know nothing of the conversations that strike up, or are overheard. They know nothing of eyes meeting across a room, blind dates, crowded dive bars and truck stop dramas. I try to imagine what stories will be written in this vacuum, the quarantine limbo. Anne Frank did it of course. It can be brilliant. It can be done.

All the same, I see a decade of bubbles ahead. Tone deaf islands of experience, sour tasting chapters, nothing that smells of real life, a diner on a rainy day, a park just before dawn, a 4am walk all of the way home not taking a taxi as you witness the people puking from cars, the lover's quarrels, the old woman picking through the trash for gold, the lone wingtip in the middle of 5th Avenue.

Those days are gone.