Sounds & Images
It had a very calming affect, like an underwater blurriness floating through time. It wasn’t at all similar to the thunderous cacophony of over-stimulus at say an electronics store where you stand in front of the dozens of screens blaring loud commercials and bright colors with the children around the aisles near you begging to leave the store to go out and play, throwing tantrums at the feet of their parents.
Then, a guy walked out of his apartment to reach up and twist the light bulb outside his front door so it turned off and stopped blaring brightly in through his windows. At first I thought how nice it must be so tall to make that small effort just a part of his everyday life. Then I thought how inconsiderate he must be since that light is most likely very necessary for his neighbor to get her key into her lock and open her door. But I also had to remind myself that he is the guy that helps the old ladies up to their apartments with their groceries – so everyone has their faults, right?
I am reading a book, “Eleven Minutes,” given to me by one of my best friends, Ixel, who I just visited in New York and who I love very dearly. I don’t know why she insisted that she buy this book especially for me. I am hoping that I will discover the link by the time I finish reading.
Also, I have to clarify my last post in which I put a photo of Ixel and her mangled “Grandest Drunk-Fall” face. Apparently, although she is fun to laugh at with about her famed drunk-falling, this injury is the exception to the rule. She and her boyfriend went to a bar in Krakow that night completely intent on getting drunk and thereby sustaining the appropriate injuries. Upon their entry to said bar, Ixel became friendly with a stranger (as is her way) and she and Brian then had an (unwanted) new best friend for the rest of the evening who insisted on buying them drinks.
After Brian was half-way through with his (and Ixel had naturally pounded her entire drink in that time,) Brian realized that something was not quite right and that it would behoove them to go back to their hotel right away. Ixel argued a little, wanting to have a little more fun out on the town, but she was soon unable to walk and Brian had to almost carry her home. Their new best friend followed them the entire walk back to the hotel.
(Ixel and I have always joked around about “rufying” ourselves on nights when we expect to get particularly drunk or on mornings after having gotten unsuspectingly mortifyingly drunk. We never knew that either of us would ever actually get “rufied.”)
Brian and Ixel made it into their room unaccompanied and the next morning they awoke to the sight of Ixel’s bloody face stuck to her pillow. Neither of them remember what happened after they got home but they assumed that she had gotten up in the middle of the night and slipped in the room somewhere and hit her head on the corner of the marble table. She and I think her injuries look like she jumped in front of a moving bus or at the very least like she dragged her face across the pavement, but Brian insists she was upright for the duration of their walk home.
Knowing how crazy/careless? we can get on vacation, Ixel and I were grateful that it was not a girls’ vacation and that a man taller than six feet was accompanying her because otherwise, she might have woken up without one of her kidneys or worse.
To Rena and Andrea, who are leaving for Thailand in May, please be careful.