Mark's Pages

January 8, 2003:

Backroad bed and breakfast, somewhere in America. Rain tattoos a picture window while crackling flame dances inside an iron-grilled fireplace.

They take inventory of their rain-gear. Guitars: a Hummingbird and a Dobro roundneck. Boombox with Nick Drake and Tinsley Ellis, and Sir Victor Uwaifo, and the Mohatella Queens. White candles sputter on a tabletop, and around a porcelain bathtub filling with clear warm water. Nikon and Olympus cameras; a Toshiba laptop; hiking boots; bubblebath; books; and for the stars, a telescope on a tripod.

Lovely dark-haired woman sits on the bedside, picking out the guitar chords she's learning. Her toenails are painted darkly sparkly winey-red; her red cowboy boots stand drying by the fireside. Tall man kisses her on the back of the neck as raindrops thrum the windowpane. Their bath is ready, and a picnic on a low folding table: fresh bread, apple slices, yogurt, organic gruyere. They have wine and bubblebath and an evening without cares and a night to sleep away in each other's arms, in this unknown bedroom somewhere in America.

And we'll stop in small towns to see movies sometimes, hey? In old theaters where teenagers make out in the back rows.

And we'll eat mashed potatoes in roadside diners, on the back roads, not the Interstates.

And every night the stars will be different.