Monday, March 28, 2011

The Abduction of Amelia Earhart

I don't know much about her except for

'Adventure is worthwhile in itself'

but the moment I set eyes on

Collage by Joana Coccarelli


I knew it must have been.

Tonight I lay alone in the baby pool looking up at the salmon-smokey clouds in the night sky through artifically planted coconut trees in my auntie's housing estate, my ears were submerged in the pool so everything felt like a vacuum and I was somewhere else. Slowly I realised there was a ringing tone in the baby pool. Brrrrr...........brrrrr.............I sat up into the real world and looked around. There was no one else. Then I let my ears in again, they got filled up, and there it was, somewhere in the depths of the 0.6m pool......Brrrrr...........brrrr.................was it Amelia calling from outer space?

Then I got up and sat extremely still and my goosepimple legs were hugely magnified in the water and didn't seem like mine. Little bubbles were sprinkled all over my belly. They are like pearls you can't touch because they keep running away, you can't even feel their surface. But you can flick them up and they fly to the surface, like parachutes going the other way. I stared at the tiles with my eyes so close to the water it felt like my eyes were seeing that way by themselves, and the grimy turquoise tiles were like the surface of an alien planet with distorted proportions and no weather, and luminescent waves of light floated across the surface like gentle dancing, and I stared harder and it was like a miniscule Amelia was climbing the tiles which were steps from another angle, climbing endless grimy turquoise steps in an other-land that wasn't peaceful or bad but just. And then it was time to go home.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

My love, she speaks like silence

Saigon, please wait for me.

You have selected a departure date that is in the past.

'Spit your oranges into this basin!'
'I am falling off the castle! Hallllp!'
'Spit, SPIT!!!!!!!'
'I don't understand why we are not in the swimming pool?'
'Why did I ever fall in love with you? Too many oranges! Madness bloody manic madness stupid craze everyday from bloody pips and orange peels and orange-coloured faeces'
'Let's dive off the castle and forget about oranges forever'
'WHY CAN'T YOU EAT LEMONS INSTEAD'

Tuesday, March 08, 2011