Smell the Onion

Between Croatia and Tanzania, I took almost 400 pictures. They are neatly arranged in albums now—albums that mostly stay closed until I humor the near constant aching in my stomach and get them out and look at them. It is not fair, I think, that it is lack of a few hundred dollars that keep me so frustratingly bound to this continent, this state, this blue rose wallpaper.

I cannot write anymore, though I imagine that is my own fault.  I remember detail: the rivulets of wash water and waste and rain that ran through the sidewalks and streets with no regard to shops or feet, the midnight dense sweet bread and bottled cold cokes, the julienne carrots with my beef chapatti, Nixon in his blue uniform on the stool outside the “Restaurant” and the sound of his pursed pink sluggy lips as I passed. … having a Pivo with Roman (the smelly DJ) and his plastic cigarette holder, the refugee girl and the paper bags of cherries…but all of these citrus sharp images are welded to the inside of my skull, and I cannot expel them and arrange them in any order that makes them of any use to anyone else.   Blessed am I that I can still clutch shining shreds of memory, cursed am I that I cannot spit them out to examine them.