Tuesday, April 2, 2013

First Word: Larissa Higgins: Thursday

The Traffic Meets its Regular Thursday, and Cannot See.

I become bubbles on Thursday afternoons; I put my foot through the door, it goes sliding and roll out in a stream of great and shining soap bubbles.  Big enough that cars would fit inside, if they were small cars - a cloud of iridescent rainbow bubbles bouncing along Isidora Goyenechea, filling up the street and causing terrible traffic snarls in front of the Hotel W, and we - I - all of me, bouncing up and out across the Plaza Peru, celestial pin-balls careering out of order and I - me - shimmering, delightful in our chortles, watching all the snarl. 
            We play more than fair. Chilean traffic, with its color blindness, its red is green and traffic-lights-are-staging-posts, all those blind turns at speed from inside lands, and all of its pedestrian-who?-Oh-was-that-you?  has finally met its comeuppance.  All at once.  Bubbles are worser drivers: anarchic and with no front end.  You cannot tell which way we might - or might not - go, and when we choke the street, piling on top of ourselves, shimmering hugely, pin-wheeling off of stopped cars, you can hear the gears gnash and snap, and engines growling, mired -              
            We laugh merrily, colors slip and twist as we go rolling over, on and up, all elastic recoil and perfect (because we are)conservation of energy - emotional and kinetic both, they barter, bouncing back and forth, and always higher, glittering in the sun, bouncing from building to building and always up- a rainbow frothing skywards, an iridescent soapy dragonfly BOILING of happiness -              
            All you drivers, sitting in your cars, cooking in the heat and looking out and around and stewing- come out and look UP at me - at us - at all of it, where  I - we are - and am, dancing above you in the sun.  Step out of your cars, let loose your arms, let out the snarls and draw the colors of the city in, and laugh-

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