Hotspot

 

 

Hotspot 120 x 100 x 1.8 cm - mixed media on canvas

 

 

 

FRAU B. CLOSES THE DOOR

 

It seems always when I head down the stairs

Frau B. wants to come out of her

apartment at the same time but closes

her door just before I get there,

waiting until I pass. She’s well into her seventies,

her voice rich with dialect and a warm creamy finish,

hair the color of permafrost, face pale as snow-powdered ice.

 

Adding insult to injury I meet someone at a party

who’s read Umberto Eco’s doctoral thesis on

medieval aesthetics, Aristotle filtered through a hugely

drunk Aquinas. I try to back out but recognize too late

though that it’s I who have read the book and seem to be floating

away from myself like a doomed, somewhat boring astronaut

cut free from a space station for exiled book nerds. A dream

or am I surprised by the strangeness of my own reading

 

split off from myself like the time I smoked Killer Weed

in the army and was arguing with a facet of me that was

standing outside the barracks on bits of broken glass.

Frau B. plays Mary Had A Little Lamb or Jingle Bells (depending on

the season) on what sounds like the song flute I faked

playing in the sixth grade. Finally an explanation

for why she avoids me presents itself: I’m just too damn old for her.

Just as Aristotle was too old for Aquinas was too old for Umberto

Eco and yet that didn’t hinder them, why should it hinder me?