stoebe2
At first I saw bannana, the semi ripe bunches of fruit in costco that we take home to ripen on the counter. Bandana makes me think of the scarf with the white twisty scrolls on it, red or blue with white details or the little pink one folded so neatly in my daughter's dresser drawer..
Drums. I remember going to the University and sitting in the audience. The student we'd come to see was an Asian girl with long, long hair. We knew her from church and piano but had never seen her with mallets in her hands. Her arms flew as she beat out a rhythm that was something between a tribal beat and a symphony. The mallets were soft yet firm, a study in themselves, and her wiry presence on the stage electrified.
I picture a saloon with a man who wears a long reddish brown mustache. He’s in an old saloon with one elbow leaning on the bar, the bartender pulling the handle for a draft beer and a glass with a couple ice cubes in it in front of the man. He’s slightly sweaty and smelly, his language is gruff, when he speaks, which he doesn’t much.
I think about lines, waiting, tankers filling up and taking up a big space of cars at the pump. I think of Costco and exhaust and a man riding his bike with two empty plastic red gas containers to fill at a pump advertising free gas for one hour in the morning. We are out of gas when we have no energy to do anything. I think of an iridescent oil spill in the neighbor’s drive and my little fawn Chihuahua’s dainty paws stepping through the mess. I think of kitty litter that can be thrown into the mess to soak it up or the rain that falls, mixing with the oil and forming one large, diluted, oily puddle waiting to head to the ocean. I think of BP and their green logo and beleaguered British owner caught on film not quite knowing how to face the problem of his huge oil spill that is gushing and gushing toxins into our ocean, killing fish and affecting so many people’s lives and income. I picture his short cropped curly hair at odds in his discomfort with the picture of the man on a cruise ship, enjoying some of the fruit of his hard labor, someone who’s enjoyed the fruit of his hard work and now is caught in a problem of monumental proportions, really a problem beyond his political acumen.