Helpless babies alone in the forest.

Helpless babies alone in the forest.

Wine, Winstons, dirty dishes, 'Vif', a Cinzano ashtray -- all that's left [mercifully out-of-frame is the unheated bathroom with the window propped open] of our stellar home cooking experiment.

 

Bloody hell, Switzerland sure is cold. Leslie, Hillary and I doing anything to avoid study. Cooking, taking photos, endless smoking, gossiping about our landlady. But we were really sort of adorable.

 

This was in the 1960s. How does anyone survive adolescence? How did we?

 

I THINK these girls are stoned.

 

*

 

We were all in love

but didn’t know it.

We were all in love

continually. Bless

our little hearts,

smoking and drinking

and wrecking things.

Bless our shameless shame.

We were loud, invincible.

We were tough as rails.

We stole street signs

and knocked over bins.

Ripped the boards

off boarded-up stuff.

Slept in towers

filled with pigeon shit

and fluff. We kicked

beer bottles down

cobbled lanes.

Tires and chains.

Chains and wheels

and skin. The world

was always ending

and we the inventors

of everything.

 

— Melissa Stein,

“Anthem”

 

 

*

Done