The Midwest. Home of the three-word sentence. Home of bad hair and good company; rummage sales and craft shops. Home of all things broken-down, busted up and stitched back together with equal parts INTENSITY AND LOVE. Home of the harsh and quiet (formerly shy now brazen) scrapbookers who are plump and decisive. Home of very sweet strong silent type men; the rowdiest strong silent types you’ll ever meet. The don’t put any ice in my beer, hey come over and help me paint some fire stripes on my van kind of guys. With X Ray Specs T-shirts though instead of just Carhaart. Sparkling Clementine had recently come to a shocking realization; that she had bought into the whole yuppie time scam. Like that we should all hurry and faster infinitely until the pace of life becomes too much to cope with.
The North. Where the pine trees grow up tight and close knotted in around your heart. They never let go. Anybody raised here will attest to that. Where pickup trucks set sail into the luminous Friday night fish fry sky. Low cedars with bark all hung like suede and clustered like a bouquet. A walk in the park, with bright moon rising. With the lake that was deep enough to hold all life’s sorrows and bright hot joys. Deep enough to hold every chord you will ever learn without any spilling over. It’s visible from here and wide enough to fill your eyes with the yearning dreamer blues for years.
Peppermint tea and ginger brandy. With you. Inside your cozy winter house with sweet-scented steam on the windows. Fry bread and fine cheeses. Rajma and basmati rice. Cheap wine and good shoes. Bingo charms and bars aglow. A hometown love bender featuring the kind of emotion that will just take you out! Where neighbors who have nothing who go ahead and share despite that small fact. What was the music that we played that day? Ruby was one of them, that Paraffin song. And Helium. Neil Young for sure.
Nobody understands fancy things better than someone who can’t have them. Name brand things. Date underwear. Orange juice that arrives in the fridge already mixed. Velvet. Real velvet, not velour. Having nice glasses – not the year before the year before that but new ones. A brand new winter coat that flatters. And very good snacks. A postcard budget. Limitless, frivolous Polaroids. Lazy cab rides. An excellent haircut. Another round of coffee.
But Sparkling Clementine knows the difference. The distance between where she came from and who she is now.
It began with a beat-up idea about the best way to get around town. Now that can really get you going. Is it in a pickup truck with loads of kitsch and barn wood or the two-wheeled dream machine bike; rolling happily through night alleys and flowing social circumstances? Out on a dumpster-diving date. Baskets of fruit and flowers or whatever you deem necessary for a date night. You bring it forth in growling, sparkling Schwinn Tiger two-wheeled glory.
sparklegarden 