Formational
A Playlist with Vignette
Playlist
Cherryeater
Have you ever caught yourself during a formational moment? Maybe triumphant?
I feel so rich materially when I am folding laundry after not doing any for a whole week. So many socks, all the underwear, my favorite trousers with pixel art on them. So then I know being intensely happy comes from what you already have.
Three levels of paving outside a set of glass doors, a sparse tree alleged to grow avocados but yielding only small, white, sticky flowers. A patch of delicate purple flowers no more than two centimetres in diameter, resistant to salt, fire, slugs, storms and weed killer. Five loose bricks, a bench with white wrought iron arms in arabesques, several small wooden blocks, a radiator that has yet to be taken to the dump. My body sitting-lying on a felt blanket with M&Ms printed allover, back in the garden, outside my home. There is a blue ceramic blate, or bowl?– you know the hybrid dish that can be used for pasta, curries, rice, the flat based plate that’s a bowl, this one has dots and some flowers on it. I painted those. The base of it is painted peach because airy, light blue and warm, soft peach pair beautifully. The plate-bowl has inside it a punnet of red strawberries, some of which are slightly bruised from being tossed around a colander earlier. The plate-bowl has inside it some cherries – maybe twenty seven – purchased from a store selling fresh fruit and New Age CBD drinks alongside banana milk, sangak, four flavors of Arizona iced tea and lentils. I walked there earlier and I had two conversations, one to tell a woman the price of the cherries, one to talk about an unfortunate incident in my neighborhood.
I’m eating the blackest of the cherries. I tossed the pips into the bush at the back of the garden and tie the stems in my mouth. Otis is asking me to try a little tenderness but today he’s singing just for me. I used to find that intensely embarrassing to read and articulate, but its true. There’s a fat cloud in the shape of the Stay Puft man’s head making way for the sun, and the cones in my eyes are painfully aware of the vibrancy in my skin ––– you know when you become glittery because you’re illuminated so sharply. You shouldn’t do stupid or unkind things for a paycheck if you’re so bright. There’s a pale pink and a bright blue sharpie pen, and some paper by my side.