her potential for the rougher parts of life and the challenge to come.
There's nothing analytic here about yearning; it is manifest in every detail. I yearn not only for a literal home but also for a place in the world —a lack reflected in the empty landscape.
The yearning finds its way, in a certain kind of irony, into her memories. The sounds of the train metaphorically echo the rending of her old life. The dynamic is working on all those levels at once, all reflecting the same yearning.
Here's the opening of a short story, "Brownsville," from a book called Blues and Trouble by Tom Piazza. Again, the yearning comes out of beautiful moment-to-moment sensual details, all fit organically together.
I've been trying to get to Brownsville, Texas, for weeks. Right now it's a hundred degrees in New Orleans and the gays are running down Chartres Street with no shirts on, trying to stay young. I'm not running anymore. When I get to Brownsville I'm going to sit down in the middle of the street, and that will be the end of the line.
Ten in the morning and they're playing a Schubert piano trio on the tape and the breeze is blowing in from the street and I'm sobbing into a napkin. "L. G.," she used to say, "you think I'm a mess? You're a mess, too, L. G." That was a consolation to her.
The walls in this cafe have been stained by patches of seeping water that will never dry, and the plaster has fallen away in swatches that look like countries nobody's ever heard of. Pictures of Napoleon are all over the place: Napoleon blowing it at Waterloo, Napoleon holding his dick on St. Helena, Napoleon sitting in some subtropical cafe thinking about the past, getting drunk, plotting revenge.
I picture Brownsville as a place under a merciless sun, where one-eyed dogs stand in the middle of dusty, empty streets staring at you and hot breeze blows inside your shirt and there's nowhere to go. It's always noon, and there are no explanations required. I'm going to Brownsville exactly because I've got no reason to go there. Anybody asks me why Brownsville—there's no fucking answer. That's why I'm going there.
Last night I slept with a woman who had hair down to her ankles and a shotgun in her bathtub and all the mirrors in her room rattled when she laughed. She was good to me; I'll never say a bad word about her. There's always a history, though; her daughter was sleeping on a blanket in the dining room. It would have been perfect except for that.
The past keeps rising up here; the water table is too high. All around the Quarter groups of tourists float like clumps of sewage.
"I've been trying to get to Brownsville, Texas, for weeks. Right now it's a hundred degrees in New Orleans." This goal of getting to Brownsville provides a dynamic from the beginning. He says the gays are trying to stay young, but "I'm not running anymore." Hmmm—he's not running but he's trying to get to Brownsville; is there some sort of contradiction there? He feels he's getting old, nothing has seemed to work for him. He has a failed past, like Napoleon, whose history certainly contained a huge and final failure. His immediate failure is this breakup with someone—who used to say that he's a mess.
Well, he's a mess. And notice the walls of the cafe: . .. silhouettes of "countries nobody's ever heard of." His life is as meaningless as that; nobody's heard of him, and he's going someplace anonymous, where you don't have to explain anything, because he has no explanations. His own past is likened to Napoleon—"blowing it at Waterloo . .. holding his dick on St. Helena . . . sitting in some subtropical cafe," which is where our narrator is sitting at the moment, getting drunk. Napoleon was plotting his revenge. In this, he's different from our narrator, who isn't "running anymore." But we know that Napoleon's revenge never came, don't we? He's critical of Napoleon for this. He thinks he wants to go to a place where it's always noon, no explanations are required, you
There's nothing analytic here about yearning; it is manifest in every detail. I yearn not only for a literal home but also for a place in the world —a lack reflected in the empty landscape.
The yearning finds its way, in a certain kind of irony, into her memories. The sounds of the train metaphorically echo the rending of her old life. The dynamic is working on all those levels at once, all reflecting the same yearning.
Here's the opening of a short story, "Brownsville," from a book called Blues and Trouble by Tom Piazza. Again, the yearning comes out of beautiful moment-to-moment sensual details, all fit organically together.
I've been trying to get to Brownsville, Texas, for weeks. Right now it's a hundred degrees in New Orleans and the gays are running down Chartres Street with no shirts on, trying to stay young. I'm not running anymore. When I get to Brownsville I'm going to sit down in the middle of the street, and that will be the end of the line.
Ten in the morning and they're playing a Schubert piano trio on the tape and the breeze is blowing in from the street and I'm sobbing into a napkin. "L. G.," she used to say, "you think I'm a mess? You're a mess, too, L. G." That was a consolation to her.
The walls in this cafe have been stained by patches of seeping water that will never dry, and the plaster has fallen away in swatches that look like countries nobody's ever heard of. Pictures of Napoleon are all over the place: Napoleon blowing it at Waterloo, Napoleon holding his dick on St. Helena, Napoleon sitting in some subtropical cafe thinking about the past, getting drunk, plotting revenge.
I picture Brownsville as a place under a merciless sun, where one-eyed dogs stand in the middle of dusty, empty streets staring at you and hot breeze blows inside your shirt and there's nowhere to go. It's always noon, and there are no explanations required. I'm going to Brownsville exactly because I've got no reason to go there. Anybody asks me why Brownsville—there's no fucking answer. That's why I'm going there.
Last night I slept with a woman who had hair down to her ankles and a shotgun in her bathtub and all the mirrors in her room rattled when she laughed. She was good to me; I'll never say a bad word about her. There's always a history, though; her daughter was sleeping on a blanket in the dining room. It would have been perfect except for that.
The past keeps rising up here; the water table is too high. All around the Quarter groups of tourists float like clumps of sewage.
"I've been trying to get to Brownsville, Texas, for weeks. Right now it's a hundred degrees in New Orleans." This goal of getting to Brownsville provides a dynamic from the beginning. He says the gays are trying to stay young, but "I'm not running anymore." Hmmm—he's not running but he's trying to get to Brownsville; is there some sort of contradiction there? He feels he's getting old, nothing has seemed to work for him. He has a failed past, like Napoleon, whose history certainly contained a huge and final failure. His immediate failure is this breakup with someone—who used to say that he's a mess.
Well, he's a mess. And notice the walls of the cafe: . .. silhouettes of "countries nobody's ever heard of." His life is as meaningless as that; nobody's heard of him, and he's going someplace anonymous, where you don't have to explain anything, because he has no explanations. His own past is likened to Napoleon—"blowing it at Waterloo . .. holding his dick on St. Helena . . . sitting in some subtropical cafe," which is where our narrator is sitting at the moment, getting drunk. Napoleon was plotting his revenge. In this, he's different from our narrator, who isn't "running anymore." But we know that Napoleon's revenge never came, don't we? He's critical of Napoleon for this. He thinks he wants to go to a place where it's always noon, no explanations are required, you
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