The Bag Lady
(sans frontières par excellence)
The bag lady again, inhabitant of no city, dweller of dream.
The one dressed in the best of wool,
the shiniest of thrifty shop of Gucci shoes,
you could not tell but for a slight frayed edge,
moth bitten hole this side of sleeve,
in her thrilling dazzling mocca-green, castor scarf and skirt,
between you and I, her and Liz,
she the best in dress,
albeit the shine of shoe be made of spit,
this lady of color and of coordination,
with many wrinkles to her smile and to her face,
many wrinkles to her thighs and to her belly,
hallucinatory woman of many wrinkles
sets her mind to go to Paris,
sets her will to go on and find Alice,
that same Alice,
who with much malice interfered in her love,
way back way when.
So this my lady of fifty, of sixty, of seventy,
lined incised
slight trembling fingers
sets a light to this one last rag,
soaked in virgin olive, pure will not do,
sets a light in the tin of garbage can
on fire and warms her hands.
this bag lady of eighty,
and on she goes to catch a bus,
on her way to find a way to go to Paris,
to see the tower, to sip the wine, to touch the statue,
to fall in love and to find the malice.
Last I saw her, the bag lady,
she was singing songs inside a barge,
inside a bus,
impeccable as always,
this bag lady
that likes to be fed on grapes.
Charles Bukowsky, a poet I know very little about, states in an interview, and I am paraphrasing, that creation is a reaction to being. I like and embrace the notion that what I write is the imperative of my being – I need to imagine and write about what I live.
And I realize that I am not so interested in story telling – I want to cut a possible direct deal with the devil, since we are talking about Bukowsky’s disruptions.
I also want to cut a direct deal with the angels… that someone, not only in my generation, started equating with the good guys, the gods, the goddesses and the sophias of redemption, healing, recycling, re-purposing...
Now, as to reality, I am almost certain that I met the bag lady and I hope she made it all the way to Paris.
She appeared late at night, it seems, at the Tietê bus station, in downtown São Paulo. I have tried to recreate her face but all I have is an impression of a pixie smile, odd happiness in sparkly grey eyes, a very lined face, a short and plump middle aged woman, with longish wavy grey hair tied loosely with a rubber band. A grey skirt of many folds, a whitish blouse and silk, lots of silk scarves, none of them in bright colors. We stood next to each other at the tall counter, for a moment, sharing Brazilian cheese puffs (pãozinho de queijo) and guaraná soft drinks.
We spoke in English, she did not tell me much, only that she was an American traveling alone around the country, wandering and searching. No relatives anywhere. Three large shopping bags filled to the brim, and that is all she had. I remember shiny silk like cloth spills and have no idea what else was inside the bags… She asked me for directions to her boarding platform.
I was traveling mostly by bus in those days, no more extra money, no more airplane or private cars. The bus station was by then, my safe in between resting place in the big city.
To my surprise she popped up again, some eight hours later, in the Belo Horizonte bus station, at 5 the next morning, barely rising sun, again asking me for directions! She needed instructions to a cheap hotel and I could not help her… all my suggestions were places she could not afford, she told me, remnant filters from my previous middle-class neighborhoods, faraway from the bus stations… where transients and cheaper prostitutes lived, along the wide sidewalks, the large avenues of downtown, the all night busy, non-sanctioned, wholesale portals to the city.
Sometimes I think she is a figment, a dweller of my own dreams, an apparition from one of my futures.
But she did become a poem and made her way inside a book. I was even invited to attend her launch in Traverse City, and read her from the published page.
And then I remembered "The invention of Morel", a novel written in 1940, by Argentinian Adolfo Bioy Casares, where a mad genius creates a machine propelled by the tides to project reality reels on to the author's mind, and on to his narrator and the narrator's characters... imaginal love follows... all in a deserted island.
Back then, in my enthusiasm of the late sixties, I bought multiple copies in Portuguese, in the original Spanish, and in English and gave it away to friends...
Who is real, who are the authors, the narrators and who are the characters in life today? How many lives have I already lived? Inside how many realities? Reading about Bioy Casares is just as much fun as rereading the book now, in the hot summer of 2023.
Uncanny and troubling resemblances between the realities of then and of now.
I just ordered two additional copies and am enjoying the multiplicities...
I really like this; it is my favorite. What is her bag and what's in it?
Wonderful, very visual wad taken away.
Love it...