associated in random thought

the thoughts i think

grooving to jill scott this morning, i feel like an african queen. deep down, under this pasty skin tinged with just a touch of vitaligo, i am a sista. really. ask my sister, eileen. she'll tell you.

i was on a james baldwin kick recently, thanks to heather. i think i've read about 10 of his books now. while i was reading just above my head, i dreamt every night that i was a black woman. really. in an otherwise ordinary dream--you know: go to the store, run into madonna on the way, trip over a crack in the sidewalk and suddenly you can fly--i'd look down at my arms, and find that they glowed a dark bronze. "and to think, all this time i thought i was white," was my response every time. and then i'd flap my dark arms, and fly all the way to mcdonalds for a coke. like you do.

the thoughts you think when you're home sick in bed are scattered, yet fluid. the turtle tank sits on the bookshelf to the left of the bed, and so i often look up to see my turtle staring down at me. tino is gigantic these days, his shell the size of a kaiser roll, and his grass green eyes often meet mine. he knows me well, and eats tuna and carrots from my fingers. i pet his head when i clean his shell, and it feels like a finger in a rubber glove.

the tank is a tiny wild kingdom. i brought tino five feeder fish recently, to hone his hunting skills, should he ever have to be relinquished to the wild. one died immediately: suicide by the power of suggestion, i suppose. i believe he ate two, as they haven't been seen for weeks. however, two fish remain, one big and one small, and fish and turtle seem to have created their own little ecosystem. tino eats his pellets, and the fish eat the crumbs. oftentimes, they hide underneath his belly, and he enjoys watching them swim furiously, a school of two, around the tank. i suppose they are pets now, and so i've named them: rudolph and herbie.

turtle-tank watching makes a sniffly girl sleepy, and so i try to sleep, a difficult task when one nostril is plugged, and the other one is overworked. i close my eyes and breathe through my mouth. i think sleepy thoughts of 21st street when i was 12 on a bicycle. i can remember every square of sidewalk from cherry to poplar streets. i ride my blue tenspeed over the stony, the smooth, building momentum, accelerating for my moment with the tree-root lifted concrete of a bike ramp. my front wheel jumps: i am airborne. i land. i skid to a stop and look back at the long rubber line behind me. i am pleased. i abandon sidewalk for street and do figure eights awhile, humming songs to myself, thinking of the day i'll drive a car. and then i abandon my bicycle altogether, and sleep.