My Favorites Archives - The Pure Life of Dreams

October 3, 2024October 5, 2024

True Face of Thai Dancer is Reflected in the Books

Now I have my tickets I head towards the big top tent of the circus. The tent has a maroon covered canvas and in one corner and on a platform there is a group of Thai dancers in long maroon tunics, colors matching the tent. There are both boys and girls there and they dance in a steadily rotating circle and wave their arms above their heads.

The platform is surrounded by a red and brown painted picket fence which protects them from falling and a ladder leads up to their platform. At the top of the ladder two stacks of hardback books guard the entrance either side.

I am standing on a separate platform the same height as them but a few yards away, and decide to take a picture.

I step down to ground level and walk over to the ladder going up to their platform and from the bottom, I hold up my iPhone and aim it between the two stacks of books.

The face of a Thai dancer comes into view in the entrance as she circles the platform and though my iPhone is almost out of charge I take the picture and it captures the partial profile of the dancer’s face between the books.

Another woman with same maroon tunic sees me capturing the picturing.

“Hey!” she calls out accusingly as I look down at the picture on my camera.

I need to escape to the canteen.

Although only the front of the dancer’s face and her nose was visible through the entrance (her hair and the back of her head being hidden behind the left hand column of books), and although the ledge of the platform hid her body, her face is visible in its entirety, visible square on, in the reflection from the books.

Her face is lit in a silvery light. It is flat and slightly square and is framed with short straight black hair. It’s as if the books were acting as a mirror.

I am standing at the doorway leading into the food hall when the woman who called me out catches up with me.

I show her the photo, show her dancer’s face fully visible in the reflection from the books and the woman holds up her phone.

“Air transfer it!” She says but my phone’s battery charge shows red.

The woman is taller than the dancer whose photo I took and I suspect she is the leader of the group.

I hold the phone up and at first the transfer will not go through. I check my bluetooth and try again.

But this time the woman brings her phone flat against mine so that they are face to face and touching. This time the photo transfers.

The woman turns away from the doorway and the food hall tables and calls back to the dancers, “Hey, I got a picture from Bethesda!”

Did I reflect the real picture of Anyamanee in my story about her?
Blossom photo by Brett Sayles via Pexels, saturated for effect.
Thai dancer photo by Neo Siam via Pexels.

September 12, 2024October 3, 2024

Alexis Korner Gets 100% Likes in the Titty Bar

The comedian Alexis Korner was with us.

She was an ugly woman, overweight and wearing a tan wool man’s suit with a waistcoat and a brown fedora with a peacock feather. She tagged along with us after her skit, then Siobhan drove her home.

June 13, 2024June 22, 2024

The Russian Puppet

She could be Russian, I think, as she holds the door of the motel open for us to continue on through. She’s beautiful with her long bony arms and legs like a raggedy puppet. They move as if disconnected from her body.

Her face, too, is too sharp, her black hair, her pointy nose. And her eyes are large, almost bug like and deep brown. Her skin is stretched taught on those bones, those arms and legs and face, and its coloring is a pale grayish tan, but she’s beautiful you know.

She sympathizes with Liam because we are in the middle of a game and I’m winning because I have the weapon and he doesn’t. She too, knows the game but she is graceful enough to say nothing more about my winning even though she, like Liam, is very good at it and would, like Liam, usually win hands down.

Artwork by CoolArts223 via DeviantArt.

March 28, 2024June 7, 2024

Visiting the Japanese Mafia for One Last Time

Painting by Ellen Marcus. Copyright Ellen Marcus, reprinted by permission

I went there with Micky and we walked along the balcony corridor of the motel, pool-side, until we found the room. When we knocked and entered, on a large bed, there sat the Japanese man we were to visit.

February 1, 2023August 1, 2024

Bookstore Encounter

We are browsing a bookstore in Cleveland Park. Liam and I, and Lizzie and Siobhan, wandering the crowded store. And we are on the second floor on a balcony surround that overlooks the level below, when one of the assistants comes up to Liam and I. The two of us are sitting at a barstool table and she takes the third stool and sits with us.

She has straight black greying hair fashioned into a bob and a pale chinless face, and she is young, maybe twenty-five. She wears an oversized jumper, green with white flecks, and she looks like a big bear in the jumper. And she is explaining to us how the shop gets us to buy more books.

Then suddenly, “You have the same pullover as me!”

And it is true because I have a similar jumper, dark green with little white bits. She pulls one of the white flecks on her jumper to illustrate the point.

“You want to take me out?” she asks, directing her question at me.

I am taken aback. I’ve never had an affair and I don’t know what to say or where to start. And I can’t think of where we would go. Somewhere where Siobhan wouldn’t bump into us, but something nice, like a walk. Like in Dupont Circle, for the restaurants? Or Cleveland Park itself? A place where there are more interesting shops.

I am trying to think of something to say when she walks away to help a customer.

Then Siobhan walks by. She takes the ladder down to the first floor.. And I peer over the edge to look where she went but the ladder she took drops straight down. I would follow her but it looks dangerous. The rungs are painted an orangey brown and it does not look like something for the shop visitors to use.

“You’re not supposed to go down there,” I hear someone complain.

I peer again over the edge of the balcony, and sure enough, the lower floor looks like a backroom warehouse. A tall thin man who could be the manager is down there, and is handing someone a book. Then he adjusts the ladder at an angle, and bounds up the rungs, his spider legs wheeling, taking the rungs two or three at a time, before he jumps over the gate at the top, onto our level.

I have to find the shop assistant. There is an argument upstairs, and perhaps she is there to deal with it, but when I get there, I see that she is the source of the commotion. She is surrounded by visitors to the shop. It looks like they are trying to calm her down, but she bursts through them and takes the stairs up to the next floor. And I follow her, pushing past the crowd and up the stairs, and once I arrive there I find myself outside, on the roof. The assistant is even higher, sitting on her knees on a dark grey awning that partially covers the rooftop area.

She is wailing. “What about Daniel, what about him?” she cries, as she flops back against the awning.

I think Daniel must be an ex, or a fired store assistant and I think it best to leave her alone and return downstairs to meet up with the others. Besides, I cannot think of places we would go or things we would do. Even though I really want to do something with her.

Back on the ground floor, the four of us exit the bookstore together. We walk up the road a few steps until I pause.

“Hang on,” I say to Lizzie, Liam, and Siobhan, “I will just be a minute.”

I pop back into the store to find the assistant. I am holding a flyer advertising books, but it has too much writing on it for a space to write my number, and tear off for her. And if I give her my number, maybe she won’t even call.

Instead, she can tell me her number and I will remember it, or will write it down on the back of my hand.

Photo provided by Pixnio