Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Our Place in Menelik Square

Menelik was the bastard son of The Queeen of Sheba (Makeda) and Solomon according to the Kebra Nagast, a part of biblical text shaved off by all but the coptics and the rastafari. He brought with him the Arc of the Covenant when he left Israel. We got an apartment in Menelik Square, I don't know if the lost Arc is here, but there are a lot of poor women in bright colors begging for money with their babies. One view from our balcony:



We are on the third floor and right at the end of Menelik Square. It is an active part of town. A lot of the time, after it starts to get dark, we hang out on the porch and watch people roam around. We watch the guy paint the circle white and watch the cabs picking people up and dropping them off. But its pretty boring. The interesting part of the city we can only hear as we drift off to sleep.


The beat sounds at first like a bad bearing in the overhead fan. Or maybe some gas in Ann's belly, next to me. Possibly some late night construction?...

No, it is the disco, Club Hermes, which Ann and I have dubbed "Club Herpes". In the basement of our building, it may yet make our brains gelatinous but we resist and reach toward sleep. Our dreams are bent, but as yet our intent is not. Though how would we know?

Look man, I love this place. It is so weird. People call me "Rambo" at first I thought they were talking about "Rimbaud" the poet, the guy who wrote "A season in Hell" before he actually moved to this region after being shot by Paul Verlaine and becoming an arms dealer and never writing anything else in his life unless you count signing for the weapons that the ethiopians used to repel the italians as writing. Because in French Rimbaud and in American Rambo sound exactly the same. But the Rambo they are talking about is probably Rambo 5 who is like 50 so its not so cool. Clearly I need a haircut.



There are these two screened vents close to the floor in the kitchen. The pigeons like to hang there, we walk in and hear the coo and its kind of nice. It is somewhat disconcerting to be cooking breakfast with a pigeon's butthole mere inches away but in the grand scheme of things...


No comments: