Conversation Starters, Conversation Killers

So, my “pick-up lines” have been a little more successful in the Midwest than in the Northeast, to put it mildly. But then again, it may also be a difference between 2008 and 2010.

Northeast, Harvard Coop, Cute Bookseller, Summer 2008.

me: Hi…. um, what time do you knock off?*
cute bookseller: Excuse me?
me: Er… do you want to get maybe coffee or dinner with me?
cb: No.

Midwest, Red House, River experience Cafe, Sound man who looks like John Lennon. Yesterday.

I’m at the counter buying a drink.

me: Hi! You look like John Lennon.
John Lennon-lookalike: Um, thanks! I’ll take that as a compliment!
me: It was!
JLl: I like to play his music…
10 minutes later, I am halfway through a strawberry lemonade frappe (excellent), he walks over.
JLl: Hey.
me: Hey. Do you work here?
JLl: Yeah, I’m working at Rock Camp, which is for teens who want to be in rock bands.
me: Cool! When I was 13, I wanted to be in a rock band. But I didn’t grow up around here, and we didn’t have something like that.
JLl: So are you visiting?
me: Yes, I’m from Singapore.
JLl: Cool! Which part of Singapore?
me: Singapore. It’s not a very big island.

We talk a bit about exactly where Singapore is located, geographically. He’s been to Thailand.

me: I’m “sailing” down the Mississippi, except not really, because I don’t have a boat. And I’m making a film while I go.
JLl: Cool, where are you headed next?
me: Wisconsin, probably. I have a long-lost cousin there I’ve just met.
JLl: You should take the Great River Road. I’ve been that way myself, it’s very beautiful. It looks like Japan.
me: I’ve never been to Japan.
JLl: Me neither, but I’ve seen pictures, and it looks like that. I was going to this Zen retreat centre run by a guy from Kyoto.
me: Oh! I hear that Kyoto is the most beautiful bit of Japan. They have a lot of sheep, or so I hear.
JLl: So you just came over from the museum?
me: Yeah! It was great!
JLl: I never get to go there, even though it’s so close by. I just don’t have the time.
me: Well, you want to see some sketches I made of the art there? I saw some really cool Haitian art, and the John Deere collection was fantastic!
JLl: Sure!

I proceed to show him my sketches of the Figge, two posts below/under the “Art” category.

JLl: There’s a lot of Jesus.
me: Yup.
JLl: Well, that’s the Midwest for you. Lots of Jesus.
me: Yup. Not necessarily a bad thing.
JLl: Oh no, Jesus is cool! I like Jesus. It’s some of his followers I can’t stand. I’m a fan.
me: Me too!
JLl: By the way, you are missing one H in “Rhythm”
me: Oh. Yeah. I can’t spell.
JLl: Sorry, I was an English major.
me: I was an English major, too, and I still can’t spell.
JLl: Listen, you have a good day now. I have to work!
me: Bye!

I finish off my strawberry lemonade frappe.

*”When do you knock off” is Singaporean Parlance for “What time do you get off of work?”. Apparently it doesn’t mean the same thing in America. You learn something new every day.

**John Lennon Lookalike’s real name is Lars.

***Also, I wouldn’t entirely blame the Northeast, because I think I was very awkward in 2008. But then, I still kind of am.

Hiroshima

John Hersey’s Hiroshima begins:

“At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.”

(from the Writer’s Alumnac)

2004:

The Apocalypse Museum

We unearthed the Earth and found a dead museum,
stonestruck, the dead, as though catastrophe
had wiped them out, had claimed the hollow heads,
the bleeding eyes, now dried, paleoanthropic.
Some mated, hands to hearts and eye to eye,
eyes gazing up into the gravel sky.
Small units sat and stacked themselves in flats
around a table lost, without their necks.
Neck to neck the screaming shuttles came
the flaming wonder fossiled on their face.
In granite corridors we found the poor
their lashes bit with frost. Soldiers swaddled
in warm uniforms. They paved the floor.

They had, it seems, first invented metal
They wear it round their heads and round their arms
in shapes, and some embed it in their hearts.

In the museum we found the empty art.
The pillars held the posts of massacre.
Dust preserved the ancient manuscripts
and marble, a mausoleum for the heart.