The Old Resurrection

an excerpt from

Anecdotes from the Western Bubble

by  Thoreau Lovell

“I want to be five,” my daughter says, holding up the fingers of one hand.

“OK, you can be five, and I’ll be five too.”

We’d just seen photographs of the Great Quake and Fire, days before the 100th anniversary—streets of rubble—this street, that street, nearly every street around where we are standing.   Now the layers of resurrection are polished and shiny for the tourist cameras.   Feeling is supposedly more important than numbers—the diminishing sand; the cold and bitter shadows.   Sometimes I feel five or fifteen or a hundred and fifty-five.   Sometimes I’m all silence and static.   We stare into living rooms as we pass by on elevated tracks—young artists; old factory; large, curtainless windows.

“It’s getting harder to be someone,” I sing under my breath, hoping my daughter doesn’t hear me.   Truer now than ever, that old song.

					The Old Black Hat
The Old Disorder

[ photos by the author ]

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