skonen_blades

One thing I like to do is set my iPod to ‘receive’, set the radius to ten meters, and just take a long walk.

Everyone on the street has their buds in. I walk through a group of teens. Track five from Linkin Park’s post-death album crashes into my headphones followed by the final strains of Cancer Seed’s classic debut, overlapping with Speed Coma’s new track Anthem.

Ever since New Year’s Eve of 2012 and Jenny’s famous walkout, I’ve been wallowing in self pity. I can’t shake it off. I’ve been trying but it’s her face that haunts my mind. The sexual memories are actually fading much quicker than the imagery of her laughing or specific moments of affection. That’s how I know that I’ve got it bad.

It’s raining out, a fine mist. There is footage up on the main square’s giant screens of the final troops coming home from Iraq. It’s been looping for days. There is a world-wide sigh of relief but a quiet unease for the future of energy. How Do We Keep the Lights On has become the new catchphrase for Obama’s second term. He’s up there on the screens, too, waving from his wheelchair, survivor of two attempted assassinations. Wu Tang 2.0 has dubbed him Teflon Black.

A gaggle of shoppers pass me with their buds gleaming white. Long, lithe women with that European air of lazy majesty. Flight attendants here on a layover, I guess. In my head, their Europop trickles in, all minimalist synth and languages I don’t recognize, layered as they pass around me. I hear what I guess is Scandinavian hip-hop fading into a German ballad as the last woman passes. She glances at me as I nod my head to her music and she grins.

It’s been raining for a year here. A new record every day. We’re at a higher elevation but the coastal cities have been in a state of emergency for months. Necessity is the mother of invention, though, and now that rich people’s estates are being threatened on both coasts, forward motion on Atmosphere Healing bills are being passed through the governmental law-making bodies at a regular pace. We are an entire planet of people that hope it’s not too late.

I’m walking past the art gallery now, past the drug dealers and the old people playing chess for money. Their headphones are big and waterproof, making the people look like ancient DJs or bugs. Strings of Mozart and Wagner trill through my headphones as I pass the chess tables, along with the slow reggae of Marley and the dubstep of RE-Shine from the dealers relaxing on the steps like the rain is sunshine.

It’s like spinning the dial on a radio tuner and every station has something different going on. I’m thinking of Jenny again but these walks always calm me down. I feel a kinship with the world, like we’ve both been hurt, like we’re both crying, but we’re getting better.



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This is a playground.

Ganesh and Shiva are skateboarding, sporting ripped jeans and body piercings as they carom around the swells and hollows of the concrete park.

Ganesh’s skateboard is strong enough to support his weight and wide enough to support his feet. It’s a monster-truck version of an ironing board. He goes up off the lip of the park’s rim, supporting his weight on one tusk for a time-stretching second before arcing back to earth.

Shiva gathers speed down into the valley before pumping into the vertical that leads straight up into summer afternoon sky. Her wallet chain scrapes the concrete. A shower of sparks chases her up out of the park into the air.

She hangs there for a second, all of her arms splayed out like an asterisk, like DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man drawing come to life, like a throwing star, before gravity coaxes her back down the well.

She’s quick at getting the board back under her taloned feet before meeting the wall again in a speed-ridden kiss. Her sandals hold on tight to the turns she’s taking. She stretched out the armholes of the wife-beater she’s wearing to be wide enough for all of her arms. Her handplants are a staccato triple-slap that echo around the park.

She turns a many-spoked cartwheel that would make a bicycle tire jealous.

Ganesh’s hoodie flaps in the wind as he punishes the bounds with which gravity shackles him. Momentum becomes his ally as he crashes into turns with the sound of a locomotive turning into a roller coaster. He trumpets his joy through his trunk as he leans low.

On his grey-blue skin, three tattooed tears creep out from behind his Oakleys. The dozens of hoops he has through each of his massive ears ring like jingle bells in the wind. Graffiti wraps each thick tusk. Tags from friends. They’re like ‘get well’ scribbles on a cast only these ones say ‘get better’ and they never go away. They’re there in front of him all day, every day, telling him to keep going.

The tattooed tears say that it’s hard, mama. It’s hard.

They both have tribal whorls, celtic curls, and ancient symbols wrapped in ink around their bodies. These tattoos embrace them in the symbols of their new culture.

Jesus sits back from the edge, an orange beard on his chin. He smokes, sitting on an amp, the elbows fraying on his loose, green cardigan. He’s Kurt Cobain come back to watch.

Bast is beside him, boobs swollen with implants, thong rising high out of tight and fraying jeans; a porn hopeful. Her giant eyes trace every movement of the skaters. Her ears swivel like radar dishes, seeking out the sounds of tiny prey.

Mohammed is beside them, rocking the IPod, listening to the old Beasties concept album about 911 and nodding his head.

These three and dozens of others ring the lip of the park, waiting for their turn to skate or just congregating to watch because there’s nothing else to do on a school day.




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