Oblivio: Stories and such by Michael Barrish

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Birthday | Oct 11 2005

It’s K’s birthday today. We just returned from dinner, and a special activity awaits us, one we’ve been anticipating all day, but first I need to write something for Oblivio. I promised her this would only take 10 minutes.

Some highlights from the day:

• Visiting the carousel in Prospect Park, though it was closed.
• K’s first ever bite of roti at my favorite Caribbean restaurant, “Caribbean Restaurant.”
• My dead-on imitation, in the Tropical Pavilion at the Brooklyn Botantic Garden, of Werner Herzog “jungle” speech in Burden of Dreams (you have to trust this was funny): “Kinski says the jungle is full of erotic elements. It’s not so much erotic, but full of obscenity. Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn’t see anything erotic here. I see fornication and asphyxiation and choking, fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course there’s a lot of misery, but it’s the same misery that’s all around us. The trees are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing; they just screech in pain. Taking a close look at what’s around us, there is some sort of harmony. It’s the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It’s not that I hate it. I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.”

There was more, but I’m running out of time.

Our special activity, by the way, is ear coning. This was K’s idea. Think what you will, but we both find this romantic.