Private Yoga Instructor Santa Monica & Los Angeles Westside private yoga classes in-home or on-location Jennifer Pastiloff Contact Jennifer (310-926-0172) Yoga at home - comfort and convenience! |
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| The Collected Works of Jennifer Pastiloff ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Vacation With Mother, Fla. Found: an old Beautiful Florida postcard Rescued from an airless womb of antique sepia in the corner of a dirty box- the floor of a thrift shop off Sepulveda and Palms. Date: 1982. 20 years old, 3,000 miles away from 183 Hooper Street, Apt. 2 Brooklyn, New York. Date pits stuck to the glossy side of it Propped on my desktop. I stole it. Slid it in the side pouch of an eel skin purse before continuing to browse through lamp shades, steel fans, broken tables- without so much as batting an eye. Why should I? Stuck between dulled wedding photographs and ripped yellow sewing patterns. Who was going to miss this old card? A bored shopkeeper files her nails, clears her throat, arranges the delicacies of her store and, as if they were pickles and sausages, she realigns and refreshes them for purchase. Arranging and rearranging, rows of necklaces, vanity mirrors. She, in searching for perfection in presentation- doesn’t notice my thievery. How did Beautiful Florida end up in Los Angeles among rubble and ash: the usual thrift store amenities. Suffocating inside this coffin of strangers’ memories, this postcard is a revenant thing: I have raised it from the dead. Exciting: This! Someone else’s life. I am resurging a life, resurrecting it from mold- exhuming a fossil, an era so far past the date, soupy in ink, the smudge a work of Modern Art instead of a day, a month, a year. Addressed to a Tadea Genty Alice Gordon, perhaps two people, although no comma lies between them. Lovers? Mother and daughter? Roommates? I can change whatever I want! I can make anything happen here. I am Omnipotent, A Creator: I can reinvent a past. I can unborn a child, undo a death, keep them in Florida ( if I wish), undo the fire that burned the building in Brooklyn down, have the postcard lost in the mail, unreceived. I can make the father stay, never having left them. I can even make them fix their relationship (whoever they are) after that one big fight right after the Florida trip. Gloria writes they are having a nice time here in Florida Florida has pretty much stayed the same in the last twenty years from the looks of the photo on the postcard. Postmark: Ft Lauderdale Mama looks great. I imagine Mama fat, Sitting on her recliner in front of Phil Donahue, a blank postcard on the card table by the framed picture of Jesus. A box of cereal in her lap, fistfuls of corn flakes fall to the carpet and no one looks up from the new television set. Beautiful Florida. j.pastiloff |