Travelogue – Issue 8 | February 2010
Channeling Ferlinghetti’s ‘Autobiography’
by Natalie Parker-Lawrence
I am leading a quiet life in the streets of San Miguel every day reading the Latin words in the Mexican churches. I have read the menus from cover to cover and noted and tasted the same food, deluded into believing the international differences between crepes and blinis and quesadillas. I read the newspaper daily, looking for a movie, a bar, an uncurtained window. I hear Mexico singing on the bus, I’ll Be There For You. One could tell that this bus is the same as an Indian or a Canadian train. I read song lyrics every day and hear my students wallow in the sad plethora of self-importance. I see where Neil Sedaka still feels laughter in the rain. I see they made, are making, will make Japanese women say arimaska at the end of all their sentences. I see another war coming and my stepsons will, unfortunately, be there to fight it on a continent that I do not want to visit. I have read the writing on the national election wall. I helped others read it and write it. I marched up Hospicio hill choking on air in my tight little lungs but hurried back to the hotel looking out for my rattled friend. I see a similarity between street dogs and me. Dogs are the true observers, walking up to the lowly and the important, peeing on the world in the streets of San Miguel. I have walked down one-way cobblestoned streets too narrow for buses. I have seen a woman take out the comic-book version of the Book of Mormon in Spanish to try to convert a stranger, a lonely man on the bus, teaching him to read.
About the author
Natalie Parker-Lawrence’s is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of New Orleans. She lives in midtown Memphis in a 100-year-old house. Natalie’s new full-length play is a collection of non-fiction monologues about insomnia, Cover Me at Dawn. Her essays have been published in The Commercial Appeal, The Pinch ,Tata Nacho Press, and World History Bulletin.
Next Travelogue: Dragon Deluxe: Pre-Departure Tips
Previous Travelogue: How to Lose Ten Pounds in Ten Days or Less
