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Showing posts from March 11, 2001

Soft Splashdown: Hitting the States 2001

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The monster truck. One of the first things I encountered in America. Apart from cinnamon buns. "Don't leave your head back here. Just go up there and live your dreams." Douglas pushed me forward into the queue. "Go orn, git." A few years ago I would have taken these words, uttered by a lover, as proof that any seeds of a relationship we might have been sewing had now reached their use-by date. But as I stood beside my companion of the past five months, studying his averted eyes, matted hair and stroking his heavy, sun-beaten hands, I took his words as they came. He was, after all, a veteren of more than four years living in survival mode on a remote strip of beach on a Panamanian island, fighting off the indians, living his dream. He pushed me towards the shuffling migration line. I hung onto him like he was a dead man walking toward the electric chair, and all the while his eyes looking behind us self-consciously. "Y' just go do your thin