Fumando con Lucia

Lucia Berlin’s short story collection A Manual for Cleaning Women has been published in Finland in two parts. The latter Dancing on roses has been just released and I got as ecstatic with it as with the first part. I found online quotes from her short stories and publish here one of them. My Jockey was in the first Finnish part  ❤︎ - and I fell in love with it!

My Jockey

I like working in Emergency—you meet men there, anyway. Real men, heroes. Firemen and jockeys. They’re always coming into emergency rooms. Jockeys have wonderful X-rays. They break bones all the time but just tape themselves up and ride the next race. Their skeletons look like trees, like reconstructed brontosaurs. St. Sebastian’s X-rays.

I get the jockeys because I speak Spanish and most are Mexican. The first jockey I met was Muñoz. God. I undress people all the time and it’s no big deal, takes a few seconds, Muñoz lay there, unconscious, a miniature Aztec god. Because his clothes were so complicated it was as if I were performing an elaborate ritual. Unnerving, because it took so long, like in Mishima where it takes three pages to take off the lady’s kimono. His magenta satin shirt had many buttons along the shoulder and at each tiny wrist; his pants were fastened with intricate lacings, pre-Columbian knots. His boots smelled of manure and sweat, but were soft and dainty as Cinderella’s. He slept on, an enchanted prince. 

The only reason I have lived so long is that I let go of my past.

Shut the door on grief on regret on remorse.

I exaggerate a lot and I get fiction and reality mixed up, 

but I don’t actually ever lie.

Fumando con Lucia / El País

Smoking with Lucia / The Parish Review

I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden

Along with the sunshine there's gotta be a little rain sometime

When you take you gotta give so live and let live and let go oh oh oh oh

I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden

I could promise you things like big diamond rings

But you don't find roses growin' on stalks of clover

So you better think it over

Well, if sweet talking you could make it come true

I would give you the world right now on a silver platter

But what would it matter

So smile for a while and let's be jolly love shouldn't be so melancholy

Come along and share the good times while we can

I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden

Along with the sunshine there’s gotta be a little rain sometime

I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden

I could sing you a tune and promise you the moon

But if that's what it takes to hold you I'd just as soon let you go

But there's one thing I want you to know

You'd better look before you leap still waters run deep

And there won't always be someone there to pull you out

And you know what I’m talking about
So smile for a while and let’s be jolly love shouldn't be so melancholy
Come along and share the good times while we can

I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden

Along with the sunshine there’s gotta be a little rain sometime

I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden

Along with the sunshine there’s gotta be a little rain sometime

By Joe South

#WEDNESDAY AROUND THE WORLD