Dee Dee, short for Deandra.
She told me, “Gulp! Before you know it, this night will be gone.”
I replied, “Sip! Savor the night because it’s not long.”
As Johnny hung her to dry and sighed, “Oh brother”
I enjoyed an evening that buzzed with bright technicolor.
There was a unique feeling of bliss and excitement in bicycling back home with bloodied knees as the sun went down. Sweat beaded on his forehead. An ice cream truck sang in the distance.
I was a child in the late 80s/early 90s.
The adults of that time donned baggy blouses tucked into high-waisted button fly jeans.
They sat in wicker chairs, and the scenery was doused in pale matte pastels.
For a few years now, I’ve seen the revival of 80s and 90s fashion and home decor trends.
I can’t help but wonder if it is evidence of my generation’s subconscious attempt to dress the part of Adult.
The patient could not recall his dreams, but reported that upon waking each morning his mind is tired and his emotions are drained.
He sank lower into the couch and gave the bridge of his glasses a nudge with his index finger. He sighed and then took in a breath to speak. After a moment of hesitation he continued:
“Sure, I sleep. But it is as if all my worries and insecurities continue to pace through my mind without consent. They stomp around wearing heavy boots and stiletto heels, leaping over synapses and gallivanting through fields of gray matter, treating my psyche like their playground.”
A man in a bright orange construction shirt walks down the side walk with a burrito cradled in his hands.
He approaches the street corner. With a practiced and precise high kick, he pushes the button for the crosswalk.
Childhood is double french braids
The quality of your day measured by the halo of stray hairs gained at recess
Outside the bar, people smoked cigarettes that smelled like memories. With each drag they experienced a snippet from their past. I buzzed through the looming cloud, holding my breath to avoid catching a whiff of someone’s first day of school.
Two blocks later, I pondered what memory I’d choose to live if I had one of those cigarettes. I had to shake off the temptation. Smoking the past is a vicious addiction. Everyone who’s tried it is in a perpetual state of trying to quit, always telling themselves the next cigarette will be their last. It’s too easy to keep saying, “Just one more memory.”
Drawing parallels between the “cafe peripheral” and Instagram culture
“There is something strange about the central image: the boy and the girl clearly have been abstracted from inside a cafe so they can be seen synoptically alongside the other figures, which are outside on the street. We know this because the chairs they are seated on are Thonet number 14, this the classic cafe bistro chair, the same model we see again in a sketch of Laghidze’s cafe from the same period . Zdanevitch has flattened the ecology of architecture of sociability, pouring the contents of the cafe’s interior onto the ground to make it visible alongside the other forms of public sociability that typically happen outside, all the while allowing the contrast between European and Oriental modes of sociability to come to light.”
Manning, Paul. (2013). The theory of the café central and the practice of the café peripheral: aspirational and abject infrastructures of sociability on the European periphery. Café Society. 43-65.
Inside a cafe, you are housed in an ecosystem different from the world outside its doors. All senses are immersed in the cafe’s ambiance: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. It is no wonder people escape to cafes for time alone to write and read, or to commune in small groups. The raucous city outside the window is subdued, making space for cafe patrons to express themselves and experience life within a temporary haven.
This reminds me of sharing photos on Instagram. In the photo stream, special moments are captured and protected from the world outside the frame. It is through those shared photos that we have an opportunity to express a concentrated piece of ourselves, even if something contradictory lingers just outside the frame.
A few months ago I had a stroll downtown. I walked past a young woman decked out in fashionable streetwear, posing for a photo on the side of a building. She stood in front of an oversized metal door flashing a peace sign. She smiled, cheerfully gazing at the lens. A man crouched behind a DSLR was dutifully taking her picture.
Out of frame, just a few yards away, a homeless man crouched in front of his sleeping bag. His pants sagged low and his buttocks were in full view of any passersby, skin discolored from dirt and grime. He was within spitting distance from the young woman, yet the emotional expanse between them was much wider. The viewers of the young woman’s photo would see only the world she created within the frame.
In Zdanevitch’s “Old Tbilisi Sketches”, cafe patrons are part of a different “architecture of sociability”, even though the world outside it might be very different. I cannot help but wonder if the young woman posing for the photo was also, in real time, transported to the confines of a world that exists only within the photo frame, isolated from the periphery.
It would be interesting to see a modern day take on Zdanevitch’s “Old Tbilisi Sketches”, bringing everything from my downtown stroll into view.
e-marginalia 