Everyone I care about is pissed at me today.
I took the T to Harvard Square, I was running to my own Elysian Field, my Valhalla. I was punk, I must have some brethren there.
July, 1996.
Skinheads head reading Neiztche on the curb, curling and twisting his words to their purpose. Rastamen selling velvet paintings and Afro-centric jewelry. Someone is banging steel drums, someone else is playing an upside-down- bucket with splintered drum sticks. Harvard students race by, keeping their eyes and head straight. Sometimes looking around you means feeling something unpleasant.
I walked off the train, the smell of burning wires, piss and sweltering pavement, soothed my senses. I am home.
Home. A word. An idea. A permeable vision. Home for the punks with rich old Hippie parents who force feelings and dinner and uncomfortable conversation. Home to old gutter punks who would as soon spit at me, if they weren't trying to fuck me. Home to the strungout nodders who are polite enough to take the needle from their veins and leave it in the Dunkin Donuts toilet. Home to the Messiahs, the bible thumpers, the enlightened and filthy.
It's where I go when when my world dissolves and I am heady with rage.
So what, if I am a reluctant suburban mother, now? So what if I want to blow up this life? So what if Harvard Square became an overhyped whorehouse for the Capitalists? I have become what I used to despise.
Happy fourth of July, America.
