Monday, November 8, 2004

the wild blue yonder




red.
i would dye my hair bright red on arrival. i would drink my coffee black - de rigueur - and develop, with possible difficulty, a taste for brown rice and abstract jazz. i might even smoke, if only for effect. i would wear sandals and silver and pierce my ears: once, twice, maybe more. i would use my first name instead of my second. i would seize each day. i would dare.
i had plans.
i was nineteen, and ready for a new me, and i had three days and three nights on the cross-canada train to deliberate my re-creation.
when i stepped onto the platform in vancouver, though, to my dismay, a distant
western aunt - hastily deputised by my worried father - strode forward to greet me, and bustled me off to coquitlam, to a pink chenille bedspread turned neatly down, to old family photographs and anecdotes; i escaped to independence as quickly as i politely could, but the liberation of true anonymity evaporated like the steam in her constant kettle.
my hair remained blonde. i only learned to smoke a decade later in a town in southern holland. the delights of abstract jazz still totally elude me. but three earrings and a tiny tattoo later, i still try to seize every day, and i will always dare, because i can't not.
and i'm still called what i've been called my entire life.
it's who i am, after all.

10 comments:

  1. And a ";-)" from me too. You know why...

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  2. I LOVE this story. I think it might be my absolute favorite. Oh, dear Lynn - please write more stories about your life, I know you've got so many to tell. ;)
    And a tattoo????! ;)

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  3. I relive similar fantasies every time I step foot on an airplane.

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  4. Lynn - check your email, I'm planning another trip to Amsterdam... :)

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  5. This is simple one of the best reads I had in ages - more of this, Lynn ;-)

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  6. I agree with Razzi.
    Great!

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  7. I am not nineteen anymore, but I still have the same feeling very often, still ready for a new me. I will start with my hair, i do not know which colour yet, maybe this picture will help me.
    Mooi verhaal!!!!!
    Do you like jazz ?

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  8. impressed by the way you tell this simple storys
    it's so recognisable and understandable... but damn i wouldn't get one single word on paper like you do...

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