Self portrait with everything broken
The mornings are spectacular here, it rains in the afternoons and the evenings are beautiful with clouds, but the air is fresh. I swam in the ocean, or rather bobbed around like a cork for hours. A Hungarian woman bobbed around with me, visiting, for a couple of hours. We didn’t have to move at all. Just laid on our backs and rolled around now and then to stretch our legs.
I have many wounds: everything is rompiendo (breaking). My head, my camera, my bracelet, and now my pen. Later: also my ankle…hurt but not broken.
I hit my head on an underwater ledge in the swimming pool while showing off to David, age 14. David, not me, though who would guess by my behavior. Have a huge knot on my temple—briefly worried about brain damage (10-20 minutes) but decided I couldn’t have damaged what I wasn’t using.
Also worried about cancer of the shoulder, but recalled incident a few years ago when was worried about thigh cancer and finally remembered I had walked up and down the front stairs 20 times the day before for put-out day. Actually ruled thigh cancer out fairly early that day because I hadn’t ever heard of it, in favor of dehydration. So, used my deductive reasoning this time to narrow down other possibilities to four hours of swimming, including but not limited to, the butterfly stroke and/or the fall I took with the backpack containing all the shells on Sugar Beach. I am planning an art project with them…the shells, not my wounds. Hope I can un-funk them. My wallet, money and passport are all really malo from ocean water.
Things to remember:
- Fat dog chasing owners in car down busy San Jose street with our bus behind beeping and flashing lights. Eventually they noticed us and stopped for their dog.
- Hungarian boy’s stories: a) said he was in a bicycle accident, in hospital six months, only walking again for two months; b) said he was 11 years old—ha. Didn’t even have all his permanent teeth. c) said he had raced in a bicycle world championship…at age what, 7? When I started to ask his mother about his bike accident, he flashed his arms in front of my face and shook his head desperately to make me stop, the little liar story-teller.
Hungarian Woman
Carmen the Chicken Killer by Sarah Curtiss 