Ivan Dobnik - Vilenica

42 · Mircea Cărtărescu
deconstruction and tribalism
pragmatism and navel gazing
with life so dreamlike …
I’ve seen San Francisco, the blue harbor with ships
and farther out the ocean with forested islands.
the Pacific, if you can imagine that!
I dipped my hands in the Pacific “thanking the Lord
for my fingers.”
I felt a longing to take leave of my wits.
and in Ferlinghetti’s famous bookstore (it does exist!)
it was as if
in a waking dream or a book …
I went gaga over San Francisco’s freeways
and Grant Street with so many Chinese tchotchkes
and towering palm trees and the really hilarious
girls in the hair salons
(customers
watched themselves not in mirrors but in color monitors),
and American nights–remember, Mircea T.?
near your house and Melissa’s, after
a long afternoon of watching sci-fi movies, eating tacos
and drinking Old Style beer
when we went out and the stars overwhelmed us
the planes floated noiselessly through them
and in your car, an old Ford with frigid air,
you took me across the deserted city to my homey
Mayflower Residence Hall.
and the Thanksgiving and Halloween Parades
with old bankers dressed as bears and clowns
the Czech boy who was hooked on Faulkner
and the small Korean girl in the yellow Cambus
and the melancholy of yellow leaves in Iowa City
and the two of us, Gabi and me, shopping for hours
in Target, K-Mart, Goodwill
and in the fantastic mall downtown …
… I chewed cinnamon candies my first morning in Washington
a camera dangling from my neck in the bitter cold of Dupont Circle …
… I paid $7 to see the New Orleans Zoo
but it was raining and the animals all stayed in their dens …
… in the taxi arguing with the black driver,
not getting a word of what he was saying: “Hey, man …”
… wonderful meals in Chinese and Thai restaurants
and the most wonderful at Meandros, the Greek joint in Soho …