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WHO AM I TO DISAGREE...?


~ 1 ~

... From cold Kasarmikatu in late Spring, a solitary red-and-pink candy-striped bedroom, my small fading pink rose-bud in a blue glass on the table next to a notebook full of new love-poems; the morning light bright, yet somehow strangely still, silent, Scandinavian-spartan; hidden in a by-road, secret, off Helsinki's Esplanad, a delicate cobble-stone walk away from Cafe Strindberg; the Nordic Lights are now shining all night, blotting-out all reason, all logic; and he comes to my arms like a shadow of a shadow, the Maya in his cool blue eyes like sacred Tibetan turquoise, his hair the colour of ancient golden amber ... ah, my love, my only love; my most beautiful lion-in-winter... !

... From that secret love-cave did she escape, yet again, crossing light-years in a second, far, far away into the future, towards the mad, sweet warmth of Broadway and her sweet, lost, kiss-craving souls from Long Island, and her red-leather-clad Queens'-angry adopted-by-Jews Disney-cartoon-angels, and her painfully-shy semi-Russian Wall Street account-execs, her golf-playing Kodak-AppleMac executives, still hiding all their passion and loneliness behind their beautiful angelic dancer's faces as sad as Mikhail Baryshnikov's...

... Annie Lennox, at war with Depeche-Mode; Smoooooth Jazz; CD-101.9...

sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree, you travel the world and the seven seas, everybody's lookin' for somethin'; some of them wanna use you; some of them wanna be used by you; some of em wanna abuse you; some of em wanna be abused...

--- Hold your head up -- !

 

~ 2 ~

...The choice was always between madness and sadness; this was clear-enough inside Houlihan's Irish pub across from the Lincoln Center fountain, by midnight, where her angry-adopted Regos-Park-Disney-cartoon-angel still searched wildly for White Album-love-songs before Dakota-death on a tired jukebox; it was clear, too, in the Naval Operations Manager's crazed escape from lonesome suburbia and to her arms inside his silver Mustang without enough quarters for parking-space in any by-lane, where ---- please, please, NYPDBlue! ---- just go away now, leaveusalone man, and let us soul-kiss and heavy-pet in peace all Tuesday-afternoon, willya, dammit--?; it was clear in his tenuous half-sentenced Russian omen-poetry about sinking boats, over the telephone from Wall Street just before bedtime; and it had been all too obvious inside Kierkegaard's mental hospital, where she had left him behind... clear as a diamond sparkling in the solitary madness of his studio-apartment on Aleksis Kiven Katu, with its constellatory curtains pulled tight against reality; RadioCite playing NordicTopTen on the radio, where everything was either black, or white.

...Sadness, madness; madness, sadness; madness, sadness --! interchangeable icons on the grand-piano-keys; the yo-yo of Yin and Yang inside an Amsterdam-Avenue fortune-cookie... ! Where was he; where was he -- ?... where will he be; where did we all come from; where are we all going together.... ?

 

~ 3 ~

... Lithium-frozen feelings; the asylum-tag still on his hospital pajamas; his eyes like the Baltic Sea divorced from springtime's Viking-Line pleasure-cruises, now frozen-over with ice; and me, smiling angelically in my wine-red velvet 50's dress, Stockmann's Christmas-cherub-earrings, and golden flea-market-pumps, skating a sharp scalpel-wound right through his frozen eyes... Bunuel's 'Un Chien Andalou' turned upside-down; and me, the rose-angel, the surgeon of life-and-death now.

... Seasonal Affective Disorder; Dr. Freud asks me to "understand his desperate need for Fugue, for escape from the freezing ice." .

.... The erotic comedy is so much easier to play-out over British-Breakfast-blend-tea and capuccino, up bright and early at a West- 66th and Broadway Barnes-and-Noble cafe... It's a lot easier inside the Lincoln-Center Saloon over chilled Chardonnay at happy hour, boisterous with European expatriates after the Opera on Friday, its side-tables laid-out with free kid's crayons... The erotic comedy is a whole lot easier when the accent is Long-Island, Regos-Park, Wall-Street, American-Beauty... It makes things a whole lot easier.

... Every few blocks on Helsinki's bleak highways is a full-up mental hospital, such is the Nordic Xanadu; while down here, home again on Broadway, there was my fat friendly homeless madman, asleep again, just like sametimelastyear, under the same sun or moon at every traffic-island, who woke up gently like a baby when you offered him a box of kid's crayons; and then, you begged me to kiss you; "Why don't we doitintheroad; no-one will be watchin' us....?".

... Love was so very much easier when the accent was New York. No amount of Prozac-prescriptive moanings can ever take the funny edge off an American man in pursuit of the erotic... My Richard-Gere Naval officer, suicidal in L.I., turned out to be all hot action and no talk ... But cute indeed; a jolly good romp...! The grass is always greener; me, the sultry exotic orchid, was his ultimate turn-on; and any life was better than a life in Long Island, with its never-ending mortgages, Edward-Scissorhands-neighbours, divorce-debts, and White Salaried Time... I was the fantasy he had never dared to dream, which suddenly came true in one flash of a computer-screen; his startled, shy offer of an office-cell-phone number, desperate love-talk, and a crescendo of erotic e-mailed digital photographs of his phallic re-awakening...! I am not complaining ... Melting in my arms like a schoolboy, delirious with gratitude ... as for the incensed, insane Finn, my sailor-boy's "cleaning his gun" now, to take care of that...! --- Hey --- take it easy!--- this is America! --

"...Everything you do or say drives me totally crazy, sweetness... I'm losin' my mind, thinkin' of the things you do... You make me lose all of my logic and control and gentlemanliness --- waaaay too easily! --- Hey, is this Halloween-witchcraft or what --? So? --- are we gonna be 'friends-exchanging-bodily-fluids'... ? ...I'm kinda leery of your Psycho-guy out there in Nutland; don't tell me about him, will you ... I've been pretty miserable for many years myself ... I really gotta sit down and jus' thinkaboutitall; will instant-message you again soon, promise, sweetness... your lips are drivin' me insane! -- "

"... You're leavin' me, to go get married to some nut-job in Swissland! -- And all you do is talk about him, 24/7; guess I have to 'respect' that? -- This doesn't interest me at all; I'm looking for someone who's single, and who's interested in me, not in painting me naked!... But -- tell me, do you find me attractive?... ... Wasn't it good to see me?... ... I think you're breath-taking....! Now, send me an e-mail, willya?... I wanna send you my Aishwarya and Sarita C. photo-archives... ! Promise me that it's written in stone now that you're coming to my place, to watch 'The Making of Eyes Wide Shut' on DVD? ... It will mean the world to me to give you your first REAL movie-experience...!"

.... Life is good, / Life is sweet; / Grab yourself / A front-row seat....

"...Dras voite! Kak vui pozhavaite? ---"
"...No, sweetheart; I am NOT Russian; I take my time! ---
"...And I'm not Danish either, sweetheart; I'm no breakfast-pastry! ---
"...Am I a Cosmopolitan Cosmonaut? --- Now, are you getting all Russian again, sweetheart? ..."

"... Ohhhhhh --- Bay-bie! your British accent TURNS ME ON : BIG-TIME....! --- 'not at Tall'! --- But, hey, you're jus' bored and want somethin' to do, jus' to while-away your hours before you fly off... sure, you're clever; you're engaged to some Nazi in Europe, and you wanna go to the movies with your Jewish cartoonist-muse in Manhattan...! that sounds pretty clever, if you ask me -- ! And, that voice of yours -- it's Great-Gatsby-meets-BBCWorld !... If you want somethin' to do, do a series of Satanic paintings, with goat's-heads and Pentagrams, like Dante's Inferno or the Canterbury Tales, will you....?"

"... You are very intriguing... Very interesting... Very mysterious...
"... Love is the connection between Two / That empowers both / With the strength of Many."

" --- Hey, Sugar-momma ---! Are you ready for love? ... I'm jumpin' into the shower, and will see you at the Opera Fountain, in an hour! --- Kisses ---! "

 

~ 4 ~

... 'Seize the Day', in pink and rose-red typeface on the computer-screen...

... Carpe Diem; I am here, Kierkegaard's there...

... I don't wanna hit any icebergs; the millennium-script is still unfolding in this Divine Broadway Comedy...

... What's the Password?

--- Fidelio...?


  --- Srimati Lal,
    November 2000,
    New York City.

 


 

 


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