by J. Scott Grimes
I couldn’t write in my bedroom or at the kitchen table, so I booked a flight to Africa and found that Café Haffa’s famous tea is just mint and boiling hot water to which I had to add far too much cheap white sugar to enjoy and that I couldn’t write there either. Burroughs. Ginsburg. Bowles. Genet. Perhaps even Kerouac. They could all write in Tangier, but all I could do was wonder what on earth camels were doing on the beach. What all the praying was about and why Allah needed so much attention and why everyone simply dropped whatever they were doing to talk to him. Or even more confusing, that they would go hungry and thirsty while living right against the ancient sea. I learned to write, as a boy, back in the mountains, far from saltwater and a long, long time ago. When I went back there to watch my father die and then shortly thereafter to be turned into ashes in a can, I found I couldn’t write there any longer, not like I used to. I can’t write when it’s too hot, nor too cold. I can’t write if my head hurts and my body aches, which is always. I can’t write when I’m complaining, which occurs even more often than the migraines. There are not enough cold, dark places. Truly cold and truly dark. That’s a place I could write. I’m just sure of it. But, would I be able to see and what would I talk to Allah about after all? Maybe I could make him something too sweet to drink in the night.
J. Scott Grimes was born and raised in Virginia and has lived in Europe for 20 years. He currently resides in Germany, where he publishes mostly academic work from time to time.
Little Leaf Literary Journal 