Thursday, June 13, 2013

4473. MANCHING'S MISERABLE MOTHER

MANCHING'S 
MISERABLE MOTHER
Well, here we are again  -  you are standing like
a prim doll next to the flowering cherry trees in
Branch Brook Park, while all around us a hundred
crazy Asians are taking pictures of each other  - 
posing like mascots and wedding dolls beneath
the petal'd tree. Kids squeal and shout; young
girls wince in their party dresses, and a few old
men  -  seemingly tired and bent  -  are slow and
overdressed, as if already late for their own western
funerals. What a strange world this is. Outside the
pictures, the hot-dog wagons and pastry trucks ring
bells and send aromas across the field like those
broadcast advertisements one sometimes sees in
the American skies. An ice cream vendor hawks, on
foot, his collected wares from a pushcart wagon he
drags across the grass as people already line up.
Captive audiences like this need never any introductions;
all the world over, wherever they go, they seem the
vain prisoners of their own indoctrinations. A bright
light, I see, across the water, is but another camera
person setting up a tripod and lights and easel; an
already tired fake backdrop to a day when nothing
fake like that is needed at all.

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