THE MYSTERY AND MELANCHOLY OF THE STREET

Piano in Melanesian Pidgin is big black box with teeth, you hit him, he cry. Must take forever to reach the end of the sentence in Pago Pago. And why is Pago Pago pronounced Pango Pango, like it rhymes with tango? Where did that n go? If it's true the tango was invented in Argentina a century ago, why's their economy such a mess today and when will the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo get justice? All over the world women are named for what blooms—Daisy, Iris, Dahlia, Lily, Rose—but no man is named for a flower, which explains a lot about human history. Lady Day always wore a white gardenia in her hair, even though she wasn't allowed up the elevator with white folk. The Infanta of Castille may be the answer to the conundrum of London's tube stop, Elephant and Castle, whose origin otherwise—like ours—is an enigma, a vortex of mystery that must perplex even the most jaded urban commuter. I know it does me, these mornings when a humid breeze bodes another scorcher in the City of Brotherly Love. Wasn't Poor Richard lucky not to get himself electrocuted flying his kites into those lightning storms, so later he could have all his amorous escapades in Paris? A bad bounce last night caromed me into the Emergency Room with a busted clavicle. No sweat, you'll be shooting hoops again in no time the intern opined, pulling her figure- of-eight brace taut against my chest. But who can hear the word hoops without immediately seeing that little blond girl rolling her hoop up the ochre umber burnt sienna street in Giorgio di Chirico's famous painting that portends the rise of fascism in Italy according to art historians because the scene is a rigid geometry of arc and angle and her face is unseen, and though she seems carefree in the Tuscan sun, she's rolling her big innocent hoop into the looming shade.