Liberty Hall in Lawrence, Kansas, was not what I had expected. I can't say what I'd imagined, but the murals of planets and angels playing on guitars and violins had not been part of the picture. Our seats were in the last row, among the stars practically, and my head was up there too, swimming in another galaxy, my thoughts light and surreal. When Jónsi came out, he possessed the only light, the rest of the theater awash in darkness. No one moved, and no one made a sound as he plucked out this song on his guitar. I remained paralyzed in my seat, certain that my physical being no longer existed, until I felt my eyes getting wet and remembered to breathe.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
He Was a Friend of Mine
A 2009 bottle of Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum met its match this morning just before noon at the hands of a 20-something malcontent born under the sign of Aries.
The death was swift but nonviolent.
The Jerry began its life in Edison, NJ, and was adopted in Columbia, MO, in 2009, by the same woman who finished it off. It had been in decline for more than a year, taking a turn for the worse in early fall 2009, a casualty of overzealous birthday celebrating.
The Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum enjoyed the weekend, rooftop lounges and playing Scrabble. It had fond memories of Dr. Pepper and plastic Shakespeare's Pizza cups.
It is survived by two-glasses worth of a 2008 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon, one bottle of Fat Tire, three ounces of Kahlua and about that much of a handle of Bacardi rum, but their futures aren't looking so bright either.
At its request there will be no formal burial, just a routine stashing under the bed.
The death was swift but nonviolent.
The Jerry began its life in Edison, NJ, and was adopted in Columbia, MO, in 2009, by the same woman who finished it off. It had been in decline for more than a year, taking a turn for the worse in early fall 2009, a casualty of overzealous birthday celebrating.
The Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum enjoyed the weekend, rooftop lounges and playing Scrabble. It had fond memories of Dr. Pepper and plastic Shakespeare's Pizza cups.
It is survived by two-glasses worth of a 2008 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon, one bottle of Fat Tire, three ounces of Kahlua and about that much of a handle of Bacardi rum, but their futures aren't looking so bright either.
At its request there will be no formal burial, just a routine stashing under the bed.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Gray Matter
I had already said good-bye to my parents and my aunts and uncles, leaving them by the spread of desserts. Allison and Skip were standing by the banister, chatting about this, that and the other thing. I joined them before setting out.
"Be careful or you'll get gray hairs like me," Skip was saying to Allison.
"Yeah, I've already got one, see?" I said, reaching for random hairs above my forehead. I'd acquired one silver hair the winter before, a hair that sticks straight off of my head like some sort of spindly limb waving in the breeze. I noticed it for the first time when I moved back home after graduation. I assumed, though, that it had sprung from my head during the hours spent researching and drafting my senior thesis. And, owing that I didn't see too much of a mirror that semester, this is entirely likely.
I couldn't tell if I'd located the rogue hair, but my uncle was gazing at me with that signature look of his, the one that always seems to be seeing you for the first time, amused and proud, no matter what he's about to say.
"That's stress, you know. You worry too much." Eff, I know. And now I have one more thing to worry about, thanks. But I didn't say that, just laughed it off, awkwardly.
I hugged my cousin and then made to move toward the door. Skip followed me, stopping at the hall closet to get his coat. I really didn't want him to walk me to my car, as much as I appreciated the gesture. I could feel myself closing up, as though bracing against the elements, and I didn't think I'd be able to muster up any amount of familial small-talk.
"Still making coffee?" Eh. Not one of my favorite topics.
"Yep. That's why I have to get home early. I'm opening tomorrow."
"Ah. Well don't work too hard. Try to have some fun while you're there."
"I always do." Liar.
"I love you, kiddo." My throat closed up. My own father doesn't say that to me. Really, with the exception of my mother, those words don't get passed around here too much.
"I love you too." hug.kiss.the smell of cigarettes and the scratch of wiry mustache hairs.
I started the car and felt the pressure in my chest, a swell of pride and gratitude trying to escape in the force of my exhalation. Right, left, right turn, and the oncoming headlights began to blur. The sound of sobbing surprised even me, but it was gone as quickly as it'd come.
Tears have a quota to be reached, and gray hairs too. Dark cars headed for empty houses are good in a pinch; at least then no one has to watch you break.
"Be careful or you'll get gray hairs like me," Skip was saying to Allison.
"Yeah, I've already got one, see?" I said, reaching for random hairs above my forehead. I'd acquired one silver hair the winter before, a hair that sticks straight off of my head like some sort of spindly limb waving in the breeze. I noticed it for the first time when I moved back home after graduation. I assumed, though, that it had sprung from my head during the hours spent researching and drafting my senior thesis. And, owing that I didn't see too much of a mirror that semester, this is entirely likely.
I couldn't tell if I'd located the rogue hair, but my uncle was gazing at me with that signature look of his, the one that always seems to be seeing you for the first time, amused and proud, no matter what he's about to say.
"That's stress, you know. You worry too much." Eff, I know. And now I have one more thing to worry about, thanks. But I didn't say that, just laughed it off, awkwardly.
I hugged my cousin and then made to move toward the door. Skip followed me, stopping at the hall closet to get his coat. I really didn't want him to walk me to my car, as much as I appreciated the gesture. I could feel myself closing up, as though bracing against the elements, and I didn't think I'd be able to muster up any amount of familial small-talk.
"Still making coffee?" Eh. Not one of my favorite topics.
"Yep. That's why I have to get home early. I'm opening tomorrow."
"Ah. Well don't work too hard. Try to have some fun while you're there."
"I always do." Liar.
"I love you, kiddo." My throat closed up. My own father doesn't say that to me. Really, with the exception of my mother, those words don't get passed around here too much.
"I love you too." hug.kiss.the smell of cigarettes and the scratch of wiry mustache hairs.
I started the car and felt the pressure in my chest, a swell of pride and gratitude trying to escape in the force of my exhalation. Right, left, right turn, and the oncoming headlights began to blur. The sound of sobbing surprised even me, but it was gone as quickly as it'd come.
Tears have a quota to be reached, and gray hairs too. Dark cars headed for empty houses are good in a pinch; at least then no one has to watch you break.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
La Solitudine Out of Context
15 giugno 2009
Stasera è la sera più bella che io abbia mai visto qui a Perugia. Ma anch'è il più triste perché non ho nessuno con cui goderci la bellezza e la tranquilità. Mi fa pensare di tutte le cose che mi fanno triste. Il fatto che io mangio da sola, vado in giro da sola e dormo da sola...e tutte le altre cose. Ma non importa. Ho mal di pancia. Ho mangiato una calzone con salsiccia questo pomeriggio. Ma non l'ho saputo che c'era la carne rossa indentro quando l'ho comprata. Era deliziosa tuttavia... Adesso, voglio ritornare a casa. Voglio leggere Jack Kerouac perché la strada mi chiama. Per me, la strada è analogo all'America ed io voglio tutt'e due. Amo Perugia ed amo l'Italia, ma...amo la casa mia di più. Vorrei bere vino rosso ma non da sola come io bevo. C'è un problema: con chi, allora? Quindi non berrò. Non pensavo che questo sarebbe stato completamente in italiano, ma non posso pensare in un'altra lingua! Quando vado a passeggio--dappertutto--i miei pensieri sono solo in italiano. È buono, sì, ma chi è questa ragazza? È lei, io? Sono io, lei?
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Com Panis
Generally speaking, yeast and I have a pretty good thing going (and I'm not talking about beer here). But sometimes yeast likes to keep our relationship spicy by doing its own thing. Granted, it's only acting under the influence of the weather--humidity levels and, more importantly, HEAT or the lack thereof--but there are times when I do feel slightly betrayed by my old friend, not to mention, I hate waiting around for it when it just will not rise.
But despite all that, I keep on baking with it. And after two years and much experimentation, I am convinced I have found the formula/method that produces the most flavorful loaf of whole wheat bread. Even so, this bread is not perfect; my one complaint is that the crumb is not dense enough, which means you'll have to cut thicker slices (oh darn) or have holey bread for your sandwich. A little more experimentation may be needed... Though bread baking is an exact science (it's known as chemistry, but my sister likes to call it witchcraft), for me, it's usually a lot of trial and error, and maybe a bit of luck.
What follows is a slightly altered bread machine manual recipe for 100% whole wheat bread. This can still be made using a bread machine, but if you have an entire day to devote to baby-sitting a bowl of bread dough, the end result is very much worth it. I've discovered that what really makes this bread is the sponge starter, but if you don't want to do that, just double the amount of yeast to 1 1/2 tsp, add that to the water and let it foam. Then add the other wet ingredients, followed by the mixed dry ingredients. [If you use the 1/3 C oats, let this wet mix sit for 30 minutes. Or use 1/3 C flour instead of oats and don't worry about letting it soak.]
100% Whole Wheat Bread, Irish Rose-style
Please don't be intimidated by this recipe. Once you've made it a few times you'll get a feel for the process, and baking bread will be no big deal. And when you've got this one down, this recipe makes another really superb loaf.
3 C whole wheat flour (divided)
1/3 C old-fashioned rolled oats
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/3 C flax seed meal (optional)
3/4 tsp yeast (unless not using sponge starter; see above)
1 C warm water
2 T warm milk
2 T oil (I use olive)
1 T honey
1 T molasses
1 egg, lightly beaten
To make the sponge starter, put the water and milk in a bowl. I microwave the milk but don't get it too hot. Together, the liquid should be the temperature of a cozy bath. I will even go so far as to run the bowl under the warm/hot water first so its cold metal doesn't heat up the liquid once I pour it in. Then add the 3/4 tsp yeast. Once it's gotten foamy (this is practically instantaneous), add the 1/3 C of oats and 1 C of flour and whisk until all is combined and bubbles are forming. Mix the other 2 C flour and flax seed meal together and spread it over the wet yeast mix to cover like a blanket. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a towel and put it in a warm, draft-free place (I usually put it in a turned-off oven with the light on). The starter will be ready after an hour and should be used within four hours, or it can be refrigerated for up to 24 hours. I usually let the yeast grow for about an hour and a half.
The yeast should grow enough that cracks form in your flour "blanket." This is a good sign that it's ready. Another good indication: you get a strong whiff of beer when you uncover the bowl. Whenever you decide it's ready for the next step, add the egg, oil, honey and molasses and stir to combine. Once it's come together, add the salt. If you have a stand mixer, use the dough hook to get all the ingredients well-combined. If the dough sticks to the sides of the bowl, add flour a tablespoon at a time. Using the stand mixer to knead the dough adds a lot of helpful heat, and I'll let that do its thing for maybe five minutes before I knead it by hand a few minutes more on a floured surface. Add flour as needed, until the dough forms a tight little ball.
Put the dough in a greased bowl and cover. Let this sit in a warm place for about 90 minutes. To check your dough for "rise done-ness," stick a thumb in the middle. If the puncture remains, it's ready. If the dough springs back, give it a little more time. Knead on a floured surface for a few minutes. To strengthen the gluten, gently stretch the dough as you knead it. Return to the bowl and cover. Repeat first rising.
After the second rise, grease a loaf pan to have ready. Place the dough on the floured surface and press out any large air bubbles. You should have a large square at this point. Fold the top end down halfway and bring the bottom up to meet it. Do this with the sides. From here, form your loaf by pinching the bottom seam together and by pinching down the ends. This part can get a little tricky, but just try to work it into something resembling a loaf of bread. Also, gently roll the dough back and forth so that it is as long as your pan. Put this in the greased loaf pan and let rise anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes. Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes, turning halfway through.
Rising tricks:
-Put a bowl of water in the bottom of your oven and turn the oven on for a minute of two. Turn off and put the bowl/pan in the oven with the door shut.
-Heat a pan on the stove. Turn off the heat and set the bowl/pan on the heated pan.
-Put a cooling rack over a tub of hot water. Place bowl/pan on the rack.
But despite all that, I keep on baking with it. And after two years and much experimentation, I am convinced I have found the formula/method that produces the most flavorful loaf of whole wheat bread. Even so, this bread is not perfect; my one complaint is that the crumb is not dense enough, which means you'll have to cut thicker slices (oh darn) or have holey bread for your sandwich. A little more experimentation may be needed... Though bread baking is an exact science (it's known as chemistry, but my sister likes to call it witchcraft), for me, it's usually a lot of trial and error, and maybe a bit of luck.
What follows is a slightly altered bread machine manual recipe for 100% whole wheat bread. This can still be made using a bread machine, but if you have an entire day to devote to baby-sitting a bowl of bread dough, the end result is very much worth it. I've discovered that what really makes this bread is the sponge starter, but if you don't want to do that, just double the amount of yeast to 1 1/2 tsp, add that to the water and let it foam. Then add the other wet ingredients, followed by the mixed dry ingredients. [If you use the 1/3 C oats, let this wet mix sit for 30 minutes. Or use 1/3 C flour instead of oats and don't worry about letting it soak.]
100% Whole Wheat Bread, Irish Rose-style
Please don't be intimidated by this recipe. Once you've made it a few times you'll get a feel for the process, and baking bread will be no big deal. And when you've got this one down, this recipe makes another really superb loaf.
3 C whole wheat flour (divided)
1/3 C old-fashioned rolled oats
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/3 C flax seed meal (optional)
3/4 tsp yeast (unless not using sponge starter; see above)
1 C warm water
2 T warm milk
2 T oil (I use olive)
1 T honey
1 T molasses
1 egg, lightly beaten
To make the sponge starter, put the water and milk in a bowl. I microwave the milk but don't get it too hot. Together, the liquid should be the temperature of a cozy bath. I will even go so far as to run the bowl under the warm/hot water first so its cold metal doesn't heat up the liquid once I pour it in. Then add the 3/4 tsp yeast. Once it's gotten foamy (this is practically instantaneous), add the 1/3 C of oats and 1 C of flour and whisk until all is combined and bubbles are forming. Mix the other 2 C flour and flax seed meal together and spread it over the wet yeast mix to cover like a blanket. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a towel and put it in a warm, draft-free place (I usually put it in a turned-off oven with the light on). The starter will be ready after an hour and should be used within four hours, or it can be refrigerated for up to 24 hours. I usually let the yeast grow for about an hour and a half.
The yeast should grow enough that cracks form in your flour "blanket." This is a good sign that it's ready. Another good indication: you get a strong whiff of beer when you uncover the bowl. Whenever you decide it's ready for the next step, add the egg, oil, honey and molasses and stir to combine. Once it's come together, add the salt. If you have a stand mixer, use the dough hook to get all the ingredients well-combined. If the dough sticks to the sides of the bowl, add flour a tablespoon at a time. Using the stand mixer to knead the dough adds a lot of helpful heat, and I'll let that do its thing for maybe five minutes before I knead it by hand a few minutes more on a floured surface. Add flour as needed, until the dough forms a tight little ball.
Put the dough in a greased bowl and cover. Let this sit in a warm place for about 90 minutes. To check your dough for "rise done-ness," stick a thumb in the middle. If the puncture remains, it's ready. If the dough springs back, give it a little more time. Knead on a floured surface for a few minutes. To strengthen the gluten, gently stretch the dough as you knead it. Return to the bowl and cover. Repeat first rising.
After the second rise, grease a loaf pan to have ready. Place the dough on the floured surface and press out any large air bubbles. You should have a large square at this point. Fold the top end down halfway and bring the bottom up to meet it. Do this with the sides. From here, form your loaf by pinching the bottom seam together and by pinching down the ends. This part can get a little tricky, but just try to work it into something resembling a loaf of bread. Also, gently roll the dough back and forth so that it is as long as your pan. Put this in the greased loaf pan and let rise anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes. Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes, turning halfway through.
Rising tricks:
-Put a bowl of water in the bottom of your oven and turn the oven on for a minute of two. Turn off and put the bowl/pan in the oven with the door shut.
-Heat a pan on the stove. Turn off the heat and set the bowl/pan on the heated pan.
-Put a cooling rack over a tub of hot water. Place bowl/pan on the rack.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Snapshots
Growing up, I loved to draw and paint and make things with my hands. But I got away from it out of frustration; nothing turned out the way I wanted it to, reason being that I wanted to recreate something that already existed. It was like I wanted to make an exact copy of a photo or the perfect likeness of a flower. Of course, I never could. Then, one day not too long ago, it came to me. And it seemed so obvious, so art-school-101, but I had never thought about it really. Maybe other people do. I hadn't. Anyway, I realized that when I draw or paint, I envision the image as it exists, when, all along, I should have been envisioning what I wanted my painting to look like! I should have been working with what I have, not with what someone else has already created. In that moment of clarity, I realized that I am capable of creating my own world, and I can start now.
ø ø ø
Most Sundays, I'm the one in charge of opening the restaurant. This means I have to be there at 6:30, which means I wake up at 5. Driving to work takes me a little more or a little less than five minutes, and I don't shower or make too much of my appearance on these mornings. The real reason I jump out of bed at 5 in the morning is so I can eat breakfast and take a little trip via public television. After my eggs are fried or my pancakes are puffed, I sit down to breakfast with Rick Steves...and Rudy Maxa, shortly thereafter. It's not really important where they take me or even the travel wisdom they impart. The best part is seeing the sights, remembering the places I've been and planning for the trips ahead. And actually, I spend the first few languid hours at work daydreaming about Paris or Istanbul, trying to be anywhere but there.
ø ø ø
Luke brought the Beatles into my life. I was in love with Luke, and he was in love with the Beatles, so of course they became important to me. That was somewhere around fourth grade, or sixth... Who knows? I was in love with him for a long time. It seems strange that he was the first to really put them on my radar and not my parents. That was their generation after all. Hell, my grandpa took my aunt Phyllis to see the Beatles play at Busch Stadium in '66. Can you imagine? But rock 'n' roll was never really their thing. Anyway, Luke told me that once when he was home sick from school, he was laying on the couch listening to Magical Mystery Tour while his dad was in the kitchen making a rhubarb pie. Or maybe his dad was singing something from the album, or else Luke had been holding the record sleeve, thinking, "Holy shit, this is trippy.... And they're on to something." Luke couldn't remember the circumstances, but that album made him think of being home from school and discovering the Beatles while his father was in the kitchen. As for me, I still associate the Beatles with Luke, and vice versa, but now, whenever someone mentions rhubarb pie, I think of Mr. Prize.
ø ø ø
Our last night in Rome, the night before we flew home (I think it might have been a Wednesday?), my sister and I walked around the city after dinner to see all the tourist spots lit up. We stopped by the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps before making our way to the Colosseum, giddy on wine and the anticipation of being home. Across the street from the ruins, in front of the metro entrance and next to one of Rome's many accessible fountains, a man approached me. He looked to be 30-something, wearing simple clothes and not carrying anything but his phone. In Italian he asked if I wouldn't mind taking his picture with the Colosseum in the background. Flattered to have been taken for a concittadina--or at least someone who might understand his language--and high on the charms of the Eternal City, I eagerly agreed. He handed me his phone, and I pointed to a button, asking, "Questa qui?" This one here? He smiled just as wide as I surely was, and I probably counted to three in Italian, just to really lay it on thick. He thanked me and went on his way and I rejoined my sister, proudly explaining the exchange she had seen. I imagined the man sending the picture as an SMS to a girlfriend or mother somewhere in rural Italy, and I liked thinking that I'd be there too, in a way.
ø ø ø
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Sunday Wisdom
Recently, an acquaintance imparted this wisdom to me, advice that he had secured from his 102-year-old grandmother: The secret to longevity is a shot of whiskey and a glass of red wine before bed, every night. Clearly a woman after my own heart...
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Epilogue to a Tragedy in One Act
Tim is now engaged to be married.
Rob is officially dating the girl he proclaimed to be crazy.
Rebecca is wondering where the hell the past two months have gone.
Rob is officially dating the girl he proclaimed to be crazy.
Rebecca is wondering where the hell the past two months have gone.
In a Past Life
I was cool once. Outwardly, anyway. I played bass in a blues rock band and sang a little too. I was barely old enough to drive and years away from being legal when we first started out, but I could hang, or at least pretend to. Sure, we played a lot of dives, and I got more practice in rejecting creepy old men than I could ever have bargained for, but looking back, that's not what I remember. I remember the roadtrips and the couches we crashed on (stories for another time), listening to Dan drunkenly banter on about art and music in some dark corner of the bar, goofing out with Jeff on and off stage, and accepting the beers Andy would slip me. I remember the compliments and the kisses, the hugs and the handshakes. And maybe most gratifying of all, I remember the surprised looks on the faces of the guys in the bands we played with; before the show, I had just been one of the band girlfriends carrying her boyfriend's guitar. But after...that was something else.
I've traded in my bass guitar for...other things I guess. And more often than not, I spend the day in pencil skirts and kitten heels as opposed to bell-bottom jeans and sandals (even temps have to look professional). So things change. That's just what time will do. Those memories of being a rocker chick are part of me, though, and I'm glad for it.
Oh, by the way, I had bangs once that sort of made me look like Chan Marshall...when I was eight.
(meow)
I've traded in my bass guitar for...other things I guess. And more often than not, I spend the day in pencil skirts and kitten heels as opposed to bell-bottom jeans and sandals (even temps have to look professional). So things change. That's just what time will do. Those memories of being a rocker chick are part of me, though, and I'm glad for it.
Oh, by the way, I had bangs once that sort of made me look like Chan Marshall...when I was eight.
(meow)
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Lesson Learned
"That's the thing about our lives, isn't it? It's so easy to fall asleep when there's nothing to keep you awake."
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Hung
I'm a mess of contradictions: my head and heart are heavy, yet completely void of resolve, of stamina or intent. I have so much to say, but I can't begin to put it down; I'm not entirely sure of myself. I want to shake off what's been and start fresh, but I feel a foreknowledge of guilt and shame, enough to stop me in my tracks. I'm a method actor living a handful of imaginary lives, none of which resemble what I thought my life would be. My heart is filled with longing and deflated by loneliness. Conventional wisdom says, "Listen to your heart," but what if my heart is lying to me?
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
A Tragedy in One Act
ACT 1
Scene 1
Afternoon, a suburban shopping plaza, the Saturday before Labor Day. Bright overhead lighting. Small, shed-like building stands at L. Shed has two sliding windows with a menu posted between. Neon sign reads: "SnoBiz" above the windows. R. stands a deck structure with built-in benches along the perimeter. Partial shade roof covers benches R. of C. Two young men sit on either side of a young woman. All three are eating artificially colored/flavored, shaved ice from Styrofoam cups, with white plastic spoons. Conversation borders on gossip, centering on recent and upcoming marriages.
REBECCA: (Putting spoon down.) I still can't get over the fact that Lindsey's getting married, like, next week.
ROB: Friday. She's getting married this Friday.
REBECCA: (With genuine surprise.) WHOA! Crazy. (Pause.) Tim, that could've been you.
TIM: (Scoffs.) Yeah, right. Have you met the guy, Rob?
ROB: Yeah. He's really frat-y. And he's kind of racist. Like, he just tells really immature, slightly racist jokes.
REBECCA: (Shaking head.) So weird... We should crash it, Tim.
TIM: (Laughing.) Yeah, I'll show up and they'll stop the wedding and make me the groom. (Turning to ROB.) How'd you get to be an usher anyway?
ROB: (Looking indignant.) I have no idea! I haven't talked to Lindsey in months. Sarah was actually the one who told me to rent a tux. So I better be an usher because I paid a shit-load for it!
TIM: (Laughing with genuine good-natured amusement.) Are you taking your "girlfriend"? How the hell are you going to get through the wedding? Or the reception!
ROB: Huh, no! She's crazy. And she's not my girlfriend...It's going to be awful. But Joe and I are going to split the cost of a hotel room so we can drink before and after the ceremony. I'm going to be shit-faced the whole time. I don't have the emotional tools to deal with it otherwise.
REBECCA and TIM: (Excessive laughter.)
(A group of five or six teenagers enter the deck area. Three girls are wearing collegiate wear--Southeast Missouri State University, Lindenwood University, University of Missouri-Columbia, respectively--one boy is wearing a mesh hat with a splattered paint motif and a black T-shirt reading, "LET'S FUCKING PARTY")
REBECCA, ROB, and TIM: (Each discreetly surveys the new group of patrons.)
ROB: (Whispering to REBECCA) Do you feel really old all of a sudden?
REBECCA: Yeah. Maybe we should have met at a bar...
CURTAIN
Scene 2
The three 20-somethings stand in the parking lot backstage of L. Each is holding a set of car keys. ROB dons sunglasses. REBECCA spins her car keys around on one finger. TIM shifts from foot to foot. Players are situated at least two feet apart from each other.
TIM: Well. It's been fun.
REBECCA and ROB: Yeah.
ROB: We should do this more often.
REBECCA: Yeah. We all live in the same town now, so we might as well.
(Momentary silence.)
REBECCA: (Awkwardly.) I'm so bad at staying in touch with people, even in the same zip code.
ROB: (Sighing with relief.) Me too! I'm always busy with work, and there's nothing to do around here.
(All agree.)
ROB: Yeah, O'Fallon is about the worst place for people our age. It's great when you're a kid and all...and when you're retired...but that's about it. (With gravity.) It's a great place to raise a family and a great place to get old...
REBECCA: Exactly. What a wasteland.
(Contemplative silence.)
TIM: Well, good luck at the wedding, Rob. And let me know how the subbing goes.
ROB: Thanks.
REBECCA: I will.
REBECCA, ROB, and TIM: (Simultaneously and between hugs.) Bye. Good to see 'ya. Let's do this again soon. (All walk in different directions, casting backward glances and waving good-byes.)
FADE OUT AND CURTAIN
Friday, October 1, 2010
Happy October
I feel fine. In fact, I feel pretty damn good. Hot in the cold, loose in the crowd; I'm ready to go. It's the first day of my favorite month, and the highway is opened up in front of me. Oh, and I'm a long haired child.
Shoo-bop, shoo-ba
Shoo-bop, shoo-ba
Thursday, September 23, 2010
This Time Last Fall
This first full day of Fall feels nothing like it, but I know cooler days will yield to long walks at sunset and hot tea sipped under blankets. The place where I live now, where I've always at least half-lived, isn't situated in an area conducive to the kind of walks I'm talking about though. Around here, if you start wandering and plan to be gone for a while, the only things you'll really see are all the things you've already seen...and then you'll have to see them all again on the way back!
No, the walks I'm talking about have the potential to turn into surrealist dreamscapes that meander between the precious and the absurd, but somehow nothing is surprising. Instead, everything makes you smile: the people who barely see you, the wind that makes you push your hands deeper into your pockets and wish you had a scarf, the scent of colder weather on its way...
I used to take a lot of these walks when I was still at school, when I should have been doing other things or after I'd successfully submitted these things to their respective professors. Saturdays were good days for long walks; no one ever seemed to be rushing about, including me, but there always seemed to be something happening.
One of these Saturdays I set out in a light jacket just as the sun was starting to droop in the sky, just as its blinding face appeared around the edge of my windows, beckoning me to get out of its way. Dylan was singing "I Was Young When I Left Home" on repeat in my head as I walked out into the street, and hearing it made the twilight a little bit dimmer, my heart a little heavier, and my throat a touch tighter.
The beauty of Nature inevitably breaks my heart, solely because of its loveliness. I know it will change too soon, and I regret my inability to bottle it, to imprison it in my pocket, knowing that even that would never be enough, nor would it last; one Fall I kept a red maple leaf in the pocket of my jacket, but by December it was dust.
Back on the street, I let my feet putter to wherever they saw fit, fully confident of their abilities. Somewhere on Hitt Street I walked past a haphazardly parked car with the back door open. No one was in sight, no one was rushing between the car and an apartment or a storefront, and there were no keys in the ignition.
Rejoining the crowd on Ninth Street, I witnessed the behind-the-scenes rushing about of a Bat Mitzvah celebration. How did I recognize this Jewish happening you ask? Ah, well...the marquee at the Missouri Theater clued me in.
Turning the corner I ran into my first wedding couple outside the Methodist church, where they were about to get into their getaway car. I didn't see anyone from the wedding party, and so I must have been the only one to witness their escape! They didn't see me, but I'm sure they were OK with our sudden complicity.
Coming out of Peace Park, near the journalism school, I crossed paths with my second newly-wedded couple. They too were unaccompanied by attendants or photographers, holding hands. She was looking down, smiling to herself, immersed in indescribable happiness. Chin up, he was facing forward, ready to take on the world. I smiled at him, but I'm not sure what I meant by it. Perhaps I was being conspiratorial, or mischievous, or maybe just grateful for being welcomed into their reverie for a moment. Anyway, I couldn't help noticing he looked younger than I am.
A few steps past the couple I noticed a sign for some sort of nerd party taking place in one of the classroom buildings. There were people coming and going, dressed in Medieval costumes. The sign outside that had caught my eye just said "Troll," but I assumed they were related. I wasn't intrigued enough to investigate, however.
There were people playing football on the quad, of course, looking just like they were part of a photo shoot for university recruiting literature, but for once I wasn't cynical about the scene. Indifferent in the face of school spirit, I instead appreciated the stillness of the season and all the serenity it holds...and scatters as it moves along toward winter.
I returned home with stinging cheeks, a runny nose, and hair that smelled like I'd spent the last hour at a bonfire (my favorite). I made pumpkin soup and had it with chamomile tea and honeyed toast from a homemade loaf of bread, sitting with Sam while she worked on an art project. I was sad that my walk was over but happy to be warm and joking around with my best friend ("This honey bear is so damn happy!"). But even then I knew days like that and shared moments like those would be over too soon...
No, the walks I'm talking about have the potential to turn into surrealist dreamscapes that meander between the precious and the absurd, but somehow nothing is surprising. Instead, everything makes you smile: the people who barely see you, the wind that makes you push your hands deeper into your pockets and wish you had a scarf, the scent of colder weather on its way...
I used to take a lot of these walks when I was still at school, when I should have been doing other things or after I'd successfully submitted these things to their respective professors. Saturdays were good days for long walks; no one ever seemed to be rushing about, including me, but there always seemed to be something happening.
One of these Saturdays I set out in a light jacket just as the sun was starting to droop in the sky, just as its blinding face appeared around the edge of my windows, beckoning me to get out of its way. Dylan was singing "I Was Young When I Left Home" on repeat in my head as I walked out into the street, and hearing it made the twilight a little bit dimmer, my heart a little heavier, and my throat a touch tighter.
The beauty of Nature inevitably breaks my heart, solely because of its loveliness. I know it will change too soon, and I regret my inability to bottle it, to imprison it in my pocket, knowing that even that would never be enough, nor would it last; one Fall I kept a red maple leaf in the pocket of my jacket, but by December it was dust.
Back on the street, I let my feet putter to wherever they saw fit, fully confident of their abilities. Somewhere on Hitt Street I walked past a haphazardly parked car with the back door open. No one was in sight, no one was rushing between the car and an apartment or a storefront, and there were no keys in the ignition.
Rejoining the crowd on Ninth Street, I witnessed the behind-the-scenes rushing about of a Bat Mitzvah celebration. How did I recognize this Jewish happening you ask? Ah, well...the marquee at the Missouri Theater clued me in.
Turning the corner I ran into my first wedding couple outside the Methodist church, where they were about to get into their getaway car. I didn't see anyone from the wedding party, and so I must have been the only one to witness their escape! They didn't see me, but I'm sure they were OK with our sudden complicity.
Coming out of Peace Park, near the journalism school, I crossed paths with my second newly-wedded couple. They too were unaccompanied by attendants or photographers, holding hands. She was looking down, smiling to herself, immersed in indescribable happiness. Chin up, he was facing forward, ready to take on the world. I smiled at him, but I'm not sure what I meant by it. Perhaps I was being conspiratorial, or mischievous, or maybe just grateful for being welcomed into their reverie for a moment. Anyway, I couldn't help noticing he looked younger than I am.
A few steps past the couple I noticed a sign for some sort of nerd party taking place in one of the classroom buildings. There were people coming and going, dressed in Medieval costumes. The sign outside that had caught my eye just said "Troll," but I assumed they were related. I wasn't intrigued enough to investigate, however.
There were people playing football on the quad, of course, looking just like they were part of a photo shoot for university recruiting literature, but for once I wasn't cynical about the scene. Indifferent in the face of school spirit, I instead appreciated the stillness of the season and all the serenity it holds...and scatters as it moves along toward winter.
I returned home with stinging cheeks, a runny nose, and hair that smelled like I'd spent the last hour at a bonfire (my favorite). I made pumpkin soup and had it with chamomile tea and honeyed toast from a homemade loaf of bread, sitting with Sam while she worked on an art project. I was sad that my walk was over but happy to be warm and joking around with my best friend ("This honey bear is so damn happy!"). But even then I knew days like that and shared moments like those would be over too soon...
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Every Chorus Was Your Name
Beards and lively stomp sections: these are just a couple good things about American music in general and this band in particular.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Direct from Wayne Coyne
"Say yes, motherfuckers. Say yes to life. Don't wait for happiness to find you. Make your own happiness now. Say yes to living... Give love. To love is not a waste."
-9/18/10
Monday, September 20, 2010
Manifesto: Art and Identity
"Writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world. It's ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You don't have to worry about learning things. The fire of one's art burns all the impurities from the vessel that contains it."-James Lee Burke
People always ask me--people I know, friends of my parents, strangers upon introduction--where I work. Before I graduated from college, the question had been, "What's your major?" or "What are you studying?" My response was then followed with, "So you're going to be a teacher?" Well, no...not exactly.
I resent the work question because it's the wrong one. Or maybe it's the correct question to be asking, at least in the minds of those who ask it because career choice usually defines your place in society, which helps others align themselves around you. But personal identity is so important to me, and I don't want to be defined solely by the way I make my money. I sometimes wonder if the importance I do place on identity is a bit unnatural, but when people ask "Where do you work?" or "What do you do?" I don't want them to reduce my identity to that of a waitress, which is basically what my current job has become. The question I'd rather be answering is, "Who are you?"
When I was playing in bands, I always felt like a bit of an imposter. I enjoyed playing music and some of my favorite memories come from that period of my life, but I was just getting by. It wasn't my purpose, my vision to write songs. This was my brother's identity. He has the natural talent and the discipline to cultivate it. I had the same approach to music as I did to my schoolwork: I was pretty good at what I was doing, but I did most of my practicing at the last minute, sometimes in the minutes before going onstage. Going to band practice always made my nervous because I was unprepared and knew that I was no good at improvisation; I felt the same uneasiness before my "Law in Classical Athens" class.
Even so, I got a kick out of telling people I was in a band when they asked what I did. It was nice having a label to fall back on: "I'm a musician. I'm a bass player. Yeah, it is cool." But my life has really taken on a different look since then, with my focus becoming much clearer, and I'm happier now that I've cut out the parts that weren't really me, the visions that weren't my own. People ask me if I miss playing music, and I think they're surprised when I tell them no, that I really don't think about getting back at it. [OK, sometimes I do miss it, but I know myself well enough now to admit that I don't have the discipline or the drive to do it well.] The fact that I could discard that part of my identity is further proof that it wasn't really my thing, just like softball wasn't really my thing, or journalism, or Teach for America, or pastry school, or...
I'm restless by nature, and this little quirk of mine makes it hard to really follow through on anything, particularly projects that require a lot of focus or slow and steady determination. This could be a major explanation for the inability of certain interests to really take hold. Maybe. I can think of only one interest that never fails to thrill me and keep me coming back and that thing is writing, the act and the art. I started my first novel when I was seven, and even though I only wrote about two and a half pages then, I tried again at ages nine and twelve with different ideas. I go through some periods of relative inactivity, but I always return, ready for more. It's taken me a while to learn, and I'm continually learning, sometimes to my chagrin, about discipline and persistence, so I suppose it's a good thing I'm still young; I have plenty of time to write my ten-years-in-the-making first novel, or what have you.
If someone asked me today who I am, I wouldn't say that I'm a lost 20-something, a sister and daughter, a Midwesterner of Irish descent, a recent college graduate, a traveler, or the last born. I would say that I'm a writer, and I would have no apprehension in doing so. It wouldn't feel like a lie or an almost-truth. I don't see it as my career and don't know that I ever will, but that's exactly why it's the appropriate answer: my identity will not be defined by money. Writing has been the one constant on my vast list of interests and ambitions, and for all the ways its presence has changed and will continue to change in my life, it's not going anywhere.
The problem with giving yourself a tangible identity, though, which is exactly what I'm doing when I call myself a writer, is that words and labels elicit different images for different people. Words are just symbols after all. I am many things, all at the same time, but I know the words to use to make others understand the basics, even if they might miss the point. When I say, "I'm a writer" people still may only see me as self-indulgent and proceed to ask how I intend to make a living, but maybe someone sometime will realize that I write because I can't imagine not writing. I can't go a day without stumbling upon inspiration or without thinking in the narrative voice, always composing in my head.
I will never stop learning from writing, and I don't want to. I don't want to reach a point where I feel like a machine creating a product. It will always trip me up and make me want to pull my hair out, but it will never let me down or stop amazing me. I'm in love with writing, which means that a lot of times I hate it, but I always come back to it, because it allows me to see myself with clarity, my identity on display for anyone else who's paying attention.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Making Memories
Sometimes my memories seem more like dreams, or maybe all of living is really dreaming. I live most of the day inside my head, reenacting improvised scenes that didn't last long enough, assuming a character who is nearly forgotten to me now.
Today I can be 18 again, at Ziggy's farm, drinking my first bourbon(s), eating Colby Jack cheeseburgers at three in the afternoon. Then back to the barn we'd head for more music making, and after the sun set we'd sit around a bonfire, passing a bottle of Stone Hill red back and forth between us--but mostly just between Dan and me--dreaming up the days ahead, making plans.
I was the first to bed that night, just as the sun was coming up. A few hours later I awoke in a king sized bed with my brother an arm's length away from me, feeling sick and ill at ease.
Meg arrived in the morning (afternoon?), like Kerouac visiting Burroughs in New Orleans. She videotaped Jeff on the dock, on the boat, on the phone. Inside, we watched the World Cup, in disbelief about Zidane, and I felt like I was watching something from another planet, feeling more like a citizen of Riddle than of the world.
Was this one weekend? Or have I wrongly recalled a string of weekends, years apart, a pre-production weekend plus a post-production one? Was that the weekend we watched Spinal Tap on the side of the barn? Does it matter? Who can impose rules on the unconscious?
Or maybe none of this really happened.
Today I can be 18 again, at Ziggy's farm, drinking my first bourbon(s), eating Colby Jack cheeseburgers at three in the afternoon. Then back to the barn we'd head for more music making, and after the sun set we'd sit around a bonfire, passing a bottle of Stone Hill red back and forth between us--but mostly just between Dan and me--dreaming up the days ahead, making plans.
I was the first to bed that night, just as the sun was coming up. A few hours later I awoke in a king sized bed with my brother an arm's length away from me, feeling sick and ill at ease.
Meg arrived in the morning (afternoon?), like Kerouac visiting Burroughs in New Orleans. She videotaped Jeff on the dock, on the boat, on the phone. Inside, we watched the World Cup, in disbelief about Zidane, and I felt like I was watching something from another planet, feeling more like a citizen of Riddle than of the world.
Was this one weekend? Or have I wrongly recalled a string of weekends, years apart, a pre-production weekend plus a post-production one? Was that the weekend we watched Spinal Tap on the side of the barn? Does it matter? Who can impose rules on the unconscious?
Or maybe none of this really happened.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
The Food of Love
The two young women sitting across from each other at a small café table were undeniably cut from the same pattern, like that of a quilted doll. Both girls had round cheeks and smooth foreheads, which gave both an air of noble wisdom and childish innocence. The brown-haired girl sat back in her chair, with her hands set across her lap, palms uplifted. The blonde sat forward on her seat and spoke as though she were painting a pane of glass with her stories, letting her blue eyes tell the other half. Her sister's eyes--the same blue sea glass eyes, deep-set and round as marbles--smoldered with an unspoken passion, but her close-mouthed smile betrayed neither jealousy nor admiration.
He sat three tables over, watching the American girls, falling in love with each word. If he had been able to hear the fair-haired girl's story, he wouldn't have understood; French was all he knew of the world. But beauty knew no language, and he had never seen young girls so unblemished and golden. He gazed longingly at the long white fingers the blonde girl was waving around, creating stars at each fingertip. She was open and excited, a mischievous angel. She was easy to fall in love with. The other young woman, though, was harder to crack. She was intense, but stoic. Her body was taut, as though she were about to bolt through the café door and streak down Rue St-Benoit. When he looked at her, he saw a vibrating bottle of jazz riffs, tied end to end one to the other, knotted up and ready to explode. He gasped, suddenly, realizing he'd been holding his breath.
Summer in Paris was coming to an end, the light dying earlier than it had the day before and later than it would the next night. He wanted to love them, but he was too old. He wanted to speak of devotion, but he didn't have the words with which to profess it. So, instead, he gathered up his burlap bag and walked toward their table. The blonde stopped speaking and both girls looked up at him with their sea glass eyes as he put the bag on their table. Now that he stood next to their table, he discovered that the dark-haired girl had an unrefined splash of freckles across her nose and the blonde's skin was maybe a bit too oily. Moreover, her accent was a touch harsh, and her hands looked much older than her face. His heart sank a little; these women were just like all the other women he passed on the street: a little worn and even a little more ordinary. But the moment was over almost as soon as it had hit him. The old man loved them--had from the start--and he was willing to wait for the ethereal ladies he had first seen to reappear.
He wanted to give them something but had little more than a handful of bashful French words to whisper. Instead, he put all he had on the table; from his bag he extracted three melons and five tomatoes. The sisters sat stunned, staring long at the produce that had come to keep their coffee cups company. After several seconds that stretched beyond comfort, the sisters burst into a simultaneous chorus of laughter, harmonizing the sound of a staccato flute with the mellow meandering of a marimba. His heart swelled; their scorn wasn't even enough to change his mind.
All at sea, the old man went in search of a song. If he could not satisfy his appetite, an excess of music might just be enough to kill it.
He sat three tables over, watching the American girls, falling in love with each word. If he had been able to hear the fair-haired girl's story, he wouldn't have understood; French was all he knew of the world. But beauty knew no language, and he had never seen young girls so unblemished and golden. He gazed longingly at the long white fingers the blonde girl was waving around, creating stars at each fingertip. She was open and excited, a mischievous angel. She was easy to fall in love with. The other young woman, though, was harder to crack. She was intense, but stoic. Her body was taut, as though she were about to bolt through the café door and streak down Rue St-Benoit. When he looked at her, he saw a vibrating bottle of jazz riffs, tied end to end one to the other, knotted up and ready to explode. He gasped, suddenly, realizing he'd been holding his breath.
Summer in Paris was coming to an end, the light dying earlier than it had the day before and later than it would the next night. He wanted to love them, but he was too old. He wanted to speak of devotion, but he didn't have the words with which to profess it. So, instead, he gathered up his burlap bag and walked toward their table. The blonde stopped speaking and both girls looked up at him with their sea glass eyes as he put the bag on their table. Now that he stood next to their table, he discovered that the dark-haired girl had an unrefined splash of freckles across her nose and the blonde's skin was maybe a bit too oily. Moreover, her accent was a touch harsh, and her hands looked much older than her face. His heart sank a little; these women were just like all the other women he passed on the street: a little worn and even a little more ordinary. But the moment was over almost as soon as it had hit him. The old man loved them--had from the start--and he was willing to wait for the ethereal ladies he had first seen to reappear.
He wanted to give them something but had little more than a handful of bashful French words to whisper. Instead, he put all he had on the table; from his bag he extracted three melons and five tomatoes. The sisters sat stunned, staring long at the produce that had come to keep their coffee cups company. After several seconds that stretched beyond comfort, the sisters burst into a simultaneous chorus of laughter, harmonizing the sound of a staccato flute with the mellow meandering of a marimba. His heart swelled; their scorn wasn't even enough to change his mind.
All at sea, the old man went in search of a song. If he could not satisfy his appetite, an excess of music might just be enough to kill it.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Expecting Rain
 |
| photo by katie t |
Like a dog
Chasing its tail
You followed me around.
You followed me down
The driveway, overgrown,
Led beyond the line of light.
Trees singing, groaning,
The storm covered us
Like a blanket my mother
Bought and sold
To the Mexican lady next door.
Summer nights I'd leave
My window open to the sound
Of lightning and the flash of
Thunder in the distance like
Cannons unrestrained,
Blowing past
And present into
My bedroom, full of
Light as the wind
Whipping through the garden
Left me breathless.
You left me like a dog
In the field, overgrown
With questions only
Whispered to the trees, and the moon
Stood on its head
With a halo of ice
Cold and distant, years away
From where we started.
You left me at the end
Of the driveway in my passivity.
You left me expecting rain.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
The Truth Lies in Proust
"...it is not only the physical world that differs from the particular way we see it; that all reality is perhaps equally dissimilar from what we believe ourselves to be directly perceiving, which we compose with the help of ideas that do not reveal themselves but are functioning all the same, just as tress, the sun, and the sky would not be the way we see them if they were perceived by creatures with eyes differently constituted from our own, or with organs other than eyes, which fulfilled the same purpose and conveyed equivalents of trees and sky and sun, but not visual ones....
...people do not, as I had imagined, present themselves to us clearly and in fixity with their merits, their defects, their plans, their intentions in regard to ourselves (like a garden viewed through railings with all its flower beds on display), but, rather, as a shadow we can never penetrate of which there can be no direct knowledge, about which we form countless beliefs based upon words and even actions, neither of which give us more than insufficient and in fact contradictory information, a shadow that we can alternately imagine, with equal justification, as masking the burning flames of hatred and of love." Vol. 3, pp. 60-61
Food for thought/more truths:
Kerouac thought of himself as "a running Proust." Coincidence that I love them both or that I'm thinking about simultaneously revisiting The Dharma Bums? Not on your life.
*Translation copyright © Mark Treharne, 2002
...people do not, as I had imagined, present themselves to us clearly and in fixity with their merits, their defects, their plans, their intentions in regard to ourselves (like a garden viewed through railings with all its flower beds on display), but, rather, as a shadow we can never penetrate of which there can be no direct knowledge, about which we form countless beliefs based upon words and even actions, neither of which give us more than insufficient and in fact contradictory information, a shadow that we can alternately imagine, with equal justification, as masking the burning flames of hatred and of love." Vol. 3, pp. 60-61
Food for thought/more truths:
Kerouac thought of himself as "a running Proust." Coincidence that I love them both or that I'm thinking about simultaneously revisiting The Dharma Bums? Not on your life.
*Translation copyright © Mark Treharne, 2002
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Impressions: A List
When I listen to Ryan Adams, I hear and/or think about:
When I listen to Ryan Adams, I feel:
proud swaggers, black and white photos, '63 Chevy's, whiskey for dinner, grass stains, the sun setting, sleepy afternoon sex, shoulder squeezes, Chicago, Wilco, road trips, road trips to Chicago in a '63 Chevy, the crack in a boy's voice, hangovers, summer sweat and sticky dirt skin, dusk, dusk over the black hills, waitresses bringing coffee, waitresses with pencils in their hair, chirping, drawling, drowning, diving, cowboy boots, brief summer rain showers, bonfires with red wine, small towns, Kerouac, greasy hair, cramped legs, fuel lights, mileage, impatient children, dew, the West, a smile smiled into a lover's neck, missed connections, the desert, a whisper in the morning
When I listen to Ryan Adams, I feel:
an ache, everything
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Driveways
D: "What are you doing out here?"
R: "Lounging."
D: "In the driveway? What if a car drives off the road?"
R: "Mom. I haven't seen any cars drive by the whole time I've been out here."
D: "Still. What will the neighbors think if they see you lying out here?"
R: "That I must be enjoying this lovely patch of shade."
D: "Come on inside. People will think you're drunk."
R: "Oh, Mom."
R: "Lounging."
D: "In the driveway? What if a car drives off the road?"
R: "Mom. I haven't seen any cars drive by the whole time I've been out here."
D: "Still. What will the neighbors think if they see you lying out here?"
R: "That I must be enjoying this lovely patch of shade."
D: "Come on inside. People will think you're drunk."
R: "Oh, Mom."
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Sound Bite
Overheard in the women's locker room after a water aerobics class:
"Did you find your hearing aid?"
"Huh?"
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Suicide Legs
It's been far too long since my last near-death experience, and, at the risk of sounding like a speed junky with no concern for self-fulfilling prophecies, I'm thinking it's time to hit the road again.
By the time Katie and I arrived in Napoli, we were ready to gorge ourselves on pizza and wine. The train ride from Sicily had taken about nine hours, but it felt like several days had passed by the time we stepped onto the platform. I wished a buon viaggio to the woman with whom I'd changed seats, feeling a touch guilty to be getting off the train bound for Rome, filled with hot and agitated Italians who had not anticipated so many delays.
Dinner was similar to others we'd shared: I spoke Italian to the waiter, who responded in English, and we ordered wine, two pizzas, and this time...stuffed, fried zucchini blossoms... On our way out after dinner, a busboy said a few French words to us in passing, filling me, yet again, with a wicked pride at having successfully hidden any conspicuous American-ness from the Italians.
We were filled up on fatigue and bellies full of wine and flowers, which made for a giddy walk back to the hostel. I could feel intoxication creeping through my limbs, making every step lighter than the one before, and suddenly, I had to move, and fast.
I weaved in between people on the sidewalk, unaware of my sister's whereabouts half of the time, just trusting that she was still somewhere behind me. We made it to the main thoroughfare, at least six lanes across, and I nearly stepped out into the path of a speeding Vespa. Katie held me back, though, ever the big sister.
Almost-dying is not nearly as big as the rush of life returning to your veins. With death's grip on your wrist, half of the blood in your body freezes, leaving you cold at the impending expiration of your physical body. Then it passes, and suddenly your body is on fire, the blood writhing beneath the skin like lava below the earth.
That wasn't the first time my lower limbs almost got me into trouble in Europe. In Rome, I'd stepped onto busy streets seconds before my mind had decided it was a bad idea, eliciting a couple of feisty horn honks, but I'd always made it to the other side. My legs have a mind of their own, and the rest of my body has no choice but to follow. If ever I slowed down to a leisurely pace, a crippling fatigue would set in and turn a simple walk into something unbearable. So I walked faster.
Confronting death, weaving in and out of wide-mouthed tourists in ancient cities, feeling like my identity could be defined more by one day than my 21 years combined...these things were on my mind when we got back to our hostel around 10:30 at night. The other women in our room were already all in bed, and we tried to slip in undetected, but the tiny girl in the bed next to mine sat up when she saw us. I must have been glowing like a lightning bug.
I felt like a giant when she came over to me, this wee person who was probably about my age, holding something rectangular in her hand. It looked like a phone, but it was the remote control to the air conditioner. She spoke to me in Italian, asking me to help her turn the air conditioner on. The words tumbled out of me without a moment's hesitation. It still took us a few minutes to realize that someone had unplugged the air conditioning unit, but I was giddy with pride at my instantaneous Italian!
I was bubbling over with excitement and pride as I got into bed, looking for someone to turn to and wake up to tell my news. But there was no one, so, instead, I told the venetian blinds and the orange light outside and the street traffic and the car alarms, and I fell asleep, purring like a baby rocked in a cradle.
I have never been so many people as I was last summer. Every morning, I woke up a blank slate, curious to meet the me I'd be that day, depending on where we'd been and where we were going next. I was lonely half the time, hungry all the time and only really clean for the five or ten minutes I was in the shower. The locals and the tourists were never sure whose side I was on, but I felt at home wherever I was.
This summer, the days seem to move ahead at a frenetic pace, but I haven't been following. I'm content, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm not praying for a path that leads six feet under, but I wouldn't mind feeling like my body were, again, engulfed in flames.
By the time Katie and I arrived in Napoli, we were ready to gorge ourselves on pizza and wine. The train ride from Sicily had taken about nine hours, but it felt like several days had passed by the time we stepped onto the platform. I wished a buon viaggio to the woman with whom I'd changed seats, feeling a touch guilty to be getting off the train bound for Rome, filled with hot and agitated Italians who had not anticipated so many delays.
Dinner was similar to others we'd shared: I spoke Italian to the waiter, who responded in English, and we ordered wine, two pizzas, and this time...stuffed, fried zucchini blossoms... On our way out after dinner, a busboy said a few French words to us in passing, filling me, yet again, with a wicked pride at having successfully hidden any conspicuous American-ness from the Italians.
We were filled up on fatigue and bellies full of wine and flowers, which made for a giddy walk back to the hostel. I could feel intoxication creeping through my limbs, making every step lighter than the one before, and suddenly, I had to move, and fast.
I weaved in between people on the sidewalk, unaware of my sister's whereabouts half of the time, just trusting that she was still somewhere behind me. We made it to the main thoroughfare, at least six lanes across, and I nearly stepped out into the path of a speeding Vespa. Katie held me back, though, ever the big sister.
Almost-dying is not nearly as big as the rush of life returning to your veins. With death's grip on your wrist, half of the blood in your body freezes, leaving you cold at the impending expiration of your physical body. Then it passes, and suddenly your body is on fire, the blood writhing beneath the skin like lava below the earth.
That wasn't the first time my lower limbs almost got me into trouble in Europe. In Rome, I'd stepped onto busy streets seconds before my mind had decided it was a bad idea, eliciting a couple of feisty horn honks, but I'd always made it to the other side. My legs have a mind of their own, and the rest of my body has no choice but to follow. If ever I slowed down to a leisurely pace, a crippling fatigue would set in and turn a simple walk into something unbearable. So I walked faster.
Confronting death, weaving in and out of wide-mouthed tourists in ancient cities, feeling like my identity could be defined more by one day than my 21 years combined...these things were on my mind when we got back to our hostel around 10:30 at night. The other women in our room were already all in bed, and we tried to slip in undetected, but the tiny girl in the bed next to mine sat up when she saw us. I must have been glowing like a lightning bug.
I felt like a giant when she came over to me, this wee person who was probably about my age, holding something rectangular in her hand. It looked like a phone, but it was the remote control to the air conditioner. She spoke to me in Italian, asking me to help her turn the air conditioner on. The words tumbled out of me without a moment's hesitation. It still took us a few minutes to realize that someone had unplugged the air conditioning unit, but I was giddy with pride at my instantaneous Italian!
I was bubbling over with excitement and pride as I got into bed, looking for someone to turn to and wake up to tell my news. But there was no one, so, instead, I told the venetian blinds and the orange light outside and the street traffic and the car alarms, and I fell asleep, purring like a baby rocked in a cradle.
I have never been so many people as I was last summer. Every morning, I woke up a blank slate, curious to meet the me I'd be that day, depending on where we'd been and where we were going next. I was lonely half the time, hungry all the time and only really clean for the five or ten minutes I was in the shower. The locals and the tourists were never sure whose side I was on, but I felt at home wherever I was.
This summer, the days seem to move ahead at a frenetic pace, but I haven't been following. I'm content, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm not praying for a path that leads six feet under, but I wouldn't mind feeling like my body were, again, engulfed in flames.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Into the Desert
Give me the road, like an open hand, that I might trace its lifelines along the length of my own, forgetting that we are not the same, but maybe we are, because every thing is a jumble of molecules and particules, and who knows whether tomorrow will come, and what does that mean anyway?
You see a lot of beautiful stuff out here, alone. The landscape so flat and naked, inviting and unpretentious. I look out over the arc of my steering wheel, transfixed by the sheer nothingness in front of me.
Then there's a little girl smoking a cigarette by the side of the road. A pick-up truck pulls over, and they ride off into the sunset. The trucks and the cigarettes and the paved highways simmering in the slanting evening sun, who's tried so desperately to make everything explode. He worked all day to heat the Earth to its boiling point, but night is drawing his power from him, like a whisper, or a kiss on the ear.
And the Moon hastens the revelers of the night, who emerge like children into the dewy dusk, the sweat of day finally evaporating, and they shout and laugh with glee, saying, we waited all day for this!
You see a lot of beautiful stuff out here, alone. The landscape so flat and naked, inviting and unpretentious. I look out over the arc of my steering wheel, transfixed by the sheer nothingness in front of me.
Then there's a little girl smoking a cigarette by the side of the road. A pick-up truck pulls over, and they ride off into the sunset. The trucks and the cigarettes and the paved highways simmering in the slanting evening sun, who's tried so desperately to make everything explode. He worked all day to heat the Earth to its boiling point, but night is drawing his power from him, like a whisper, or a kiss on the ear.
And the Moon hastens the revelers of the night, who emerge like children into the dewy dusk, the sweat of day finally evaporating, and they shout and laugh with glee, saying, we waited all day for this!
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Desperation: A Dark Look at the Potential Consequences of Irrational Decision-Making
I heard from my mom who heard from my aunt that Dress Barn is hiring. Actually, Dress Barn is desperate for help. While she was making her purchases, my aunt was solicited by the cashier, who asked if she knew of anyone who wanted to work. The aunt didn't volunteer my name, which is surprising considering how the older generation of my family seems to jump at the opportunity to volunteer one of their spry young kin for some sort of disagreeable task as though by being related this sort of thing is acceptable and should at times be appreciated--but I digress... All of this just happened to transpire on the Saturday--let's face it, one of the many Saturdays--when I was in the middle of (another) existential crisis revolving around my current unemployment, my future aspirations (or lack thereof) and the prospect of a perpetual wealth of possibilities (all of which I know I am capable of succeeding at, the real dilemma being which to do first).
Any other day, I would not have settled for working in retail. Retail is the one area of employment I just can't see myself working in. I would be much more content delivering pizzas--happy even--if such an occupation were not so disregarded by my parents for one, but folding blouses and dressing mannequins? Hell no. And especially not at Dress Barn. The name itself sparks images in my head of boxy, matronly dresses and floors covered in sawdust. (My sister bought her Confirmation/eighth grade graduation dress from Dress Barn. It was a rose-colored, button-down, full-length dress covered in little rosettes down the front, with short sleeves and a collar...and shoulder pads, epic shoulder pads. It was 1995, and I was in first grade, but don't let that fool ya. I developed a speedy and steadfast aversion to Dress Barn and everything that name summoned up into my over-active mind. That's how I was as a child, attributing characteristics to people and places based on their names; growing up I was terrified of the flea market...)
So that was the ongoing prejudice for Dress Barn that I began my day with, as I do everyday, whether conscious of it or not. And yet, after I heard of the job opportunity, I was so...conflicted. They are desperate. I am desperate. Wouldn't that be a match made in heaven? a blissful marriage where all needs are met, at least the basic need of an employee and employment, respectively?
Here was a J-O-B, an adult situation to add to my life that would also add some numbers to my shrinking bank account while also allowing me to create an alternate universe for myself, one in which I help middle-aged women with no sense of style find clothes to feed that taste. Of course, as this other person in this other world, I would actually enjoy my new-found calling, going so far as to adhere to a frumpy dress code consisting of floor length, floral skirts and pastel tank tops...but not sexy, low-cut tank tops. I'm talking about the ones where the sleeveless-ness begins right at the armpit, sort of where Barbie's arm attaches to her plastic shoulder; imagine what Barbie looks like when her arms fall out and you would see me, except, this pastel tank top I will take to wearing will not show off my (nonexistent) curves, and the only sex appeal will be generated by the obtrusiveness of the seam of my bra, crossing straight across the cup: above the seam is lace, below is silk (in case you were wondering what the seam is for). That's about as risqué as it gets, and that's not saying much. But if I'm feeling frisky, I might get a perm; girls with straight hair always spend their lives wishing they could have those lush curls...and vice versa.
Have I sunk so low? Is money really more important than my own self-worth? And even if I didn't start dressing as though every day were Easter Sunday, would my happiness remain intact? Debatable.
Reluctantly, I agree to run errands with my mom, mostly to get out of the damn house, which is beginning to feel a bit like a prison cell, a stifling, soul-sucking trap. Before we leave, though, I add Dress Barn's number to my cellphone, hoping my spirits will rally before my desperation presses the TALK button.
Any other day, I would not have settled for working in retail. Retail is the one area of employment I just can't see myself working in. I would be much more content delivering pizzas--happy even--if such an occupation were not so disregarded by my parents for one, but folding blouses and dressing mannequins? Hell no. And especially not at Dress Barn. The name itself sparks images in my head of boxy, matronly dresses and floors covered in sawdust. (My sister bought her Confirmation/eighth grade graduation dress from Dress Barn. It was a rose-colored, button-down, full-length dress covered in little rosettes down the front, with short sleeves and a collar...and shoulder pads, epic shoulder pads. It was 1995, and I was in first grade, but don't let that fool ya. I developed a speedy and steadfast aversion to Dress Barn and everything that name summoned up into my over-active mind. That's how I was as a child, attributing characteristics to people and places based on their names; growing up I was terrified of the flea market...)
So that was the ongoing prejudice for Dress Barn that I began my day with, as I do everyday, whether conscious of it or not. And yet, after I heard of the job opportunity, I was so...conflicted. They are desperate. I am desperate. Wouldn't that be a match made in heaven? a blissful marriage where all needs are met, at least the basic need of an employee and employment, respectively?
Here was a J-O-B, an adult situation to add to my life that would also add some numbers to my shrinking bank account while also allowing me to create an alternate universe for myself, one in which I help middle-aged women with no sense of style find clothes to feed that taste. Of course, as this other person in this other world, I would actually enjoy my new-found calling, going so far as to adhere to a frumpy dress code consisting of floor length, floral skirts and pastel tank tops...but not sexy, low-cut tank tops. I'm talking about the ones where the sleeveless-ness begins right at the armpit, sort of where Barbie's arm attaches to her plastic shoulder; imagine what Barbie looks like when her arms fall out and you would see me, except, this pastel tank top I will take to wearing will not show off my (nonexistent) curves, and the only sex appeal will be generated by the obtrusiveness of the seam of my bra, crossing straight across the cup: above the seam is lace, below is silk (in case you were wondering what the seam is for). That's about as risqué as it gets, and that's not saying much. But if I'm feeling frisky, I might get a perm; girls with straight hair always spend their lives wishing they could have those lush curls...and vice versa.
Have I sunk so low? Is money really more important than my own self-worth? And even if I didn't start dressing as though every day were Easter Sunday, would my happiness remain intact? Debatable.
Reluctantly, I agree to run errands with my mom, mostly to get out of the damn house, which is beginning to feel a bit like a prison cell, a stifling, soul-sucking trap. Before we leave, though, I add Dress Barn's number to my cellphone, hoping my spirits will rally before my desperation presses the TALK button.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Unlikely Allies
I fake-smile at her from across the kitchen table to show that I am annoyed to have my morning solitude interrupted. Instead of the usual, "Let it go" that is meant to put me in a calm, Zen-like mood, but which only ever serves to frustrate me further, she fake-smiles back as though to say, "I know. Me too."
Saturday, May 1, 2010
May 1, 2009: The Green Man with the Ashtray Hand
I was lounging, fetchingly, on the brick walkway of Lowry Mall, just opposite the Memorial Union clock tower. A man with long, dark hair and a dark beard sat in front of me, just past beyond my feet were planted, but I wasn’t paying him much attention. Suddenly, he came around to me and held out his tattooed stump of a left arm, and where a hand should have been was a decorative ceramic ashtray. In the ashtray was my turquoise ring, which I hadn’t realized I’d dropped. It must have rolled down to where he was sitting when I wasn’t paying attention. He had a brilliant and slightly capricious smile—a real charmer—but I let him sit down with me anyway. Across from me on the ground he was suddenly whole again, and the tattoos were gone. He looked like Devendra Banhart. Maybe he really was. I thought about Chase in San Francisco and how I would be less frightened in this situation if this strange man were Chase instead. (But even Chase scares me slightly; he’s too skinny.) As the bearded man spoke to me, I noticed that his skin had a slight greenish tint to it, like he had at one time been a plant and was now taking human hormones; he wasn’t quite there yet. I think he told me I looked colored too. ME? You’re green! What? He didn’t believe me. We sat there gazing at each other, fingers entwined. We slept together on the couch in the sunroom, and when I heard her stirring in the kitchen, I wondered what Jacquie would think if she saw us there together.
Friday, April 30, 2010
La penitenza
I dreamt I lost my identity
to Marcello Mastroianni
in a bigtop production of an
8 1/2 framed dreamscape of sorts,
bumbling and fumbling over
an easel of genius where the girl
with the meaty thighs waited for me
to commandeer my palette and brush.
Striking a pose, a hand on each hip,
she explained the penance charged for my
years of icy disaffectedness:
"In reverse order, paint the portraits
of all those you have seen pass away."
I saw them all lined up in tight cells
waiting patiently for my approach,
but I regretted the task at hand,
hoping a bell would sound to wake me.
The gymnast called out to the butler
with spite: "Vorrei ice! Vorrei giaco!"
And in my head, I corrected her
"'Ghiaccio' is what you really meant."
Perhaps I'd been wrong, like most artists
in my line who realize the truth
only at the end of the poem;
so maybe she really did want a
coat of mail and not a cup of ice.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
A Taste of Proust, or, Notes from a Bookful of Quotes
For anyone intimidated by Marcel Proust and his In Search of Lost Time, here are a few passages* that I made a note of as I was reading. This is just a sample of some that made me chuckle or nod my head in agreement. And if you're still with me at the end, a bit more Proust, Monty Python-style.
"But even with respect to the most insignificant things in life, none of us constitutes a material whole, identical for everyone, which a person has only to go look up as though we were a book of specifications or a last testament; our social personality is a creation of the minds of others. Even the very simple act that we call “seeing a person we know” is in part an intellectual one. We fill the physical appearance of the individual we see with all the notions we have about him, and of the total picture that we form for ourselves, these notions certainly occupy the greater part. In the end they swell his cheeks so perfectly, follow the line of his nose in an adherence so exact, they do so well at nuancing the sonority of his voice as though the latter were only a transparent envelope that each time we see this face and hear this voice, it is these notions that we encounter again, that we hear." Vol. 1, p. 19
"...but what delighted me were the asparagus, steeped in ultramarine and pink, whose tips delicately painted with little strokes of mauve and azure, shade off imperceptibly down to their feet...with an iridescence that is not of this earth. It seemed to me that these celestial hues revealed the delicious creatures who had merrily metamorphosed themselves into vegetables and who, through the disguise of their firm, edible flesh, disclosed in these early tints of dawn, in these beginnings of rainbows, in this extinction of blue evenings, the precious essence that I recognized again when, all night long following a dinner at which I had eaten them, they played in farces as crude and poetic as a fairy play by Shakespeare, at changing my chamber pot into a jar of perfume." Vol. 1, pp. 123-24
"Of all the modes by which love is brought into being, of all the agents which disseminate the holy evil, surely one of the most efficacious is this great gust of agitation which now and then sweeps over us. Then our fate is sealed, and the person whose company we enjoy at the time is the one we will love. It is not even necessary for us to have liked him better than anyone else up to then, or even as much. What is necessary is that our predilection for him should become exclusive. And that condition is fulfilled when--at a moment like this, when we do not have him with us--the quest for the pleasures that his charm gave us is suddenly replaced in us by an anxious need which the laws of this world make it impossible to satisfy and difficult to cure--the senseless and painful need to possess him." Vol. 1, p. 239
"Seeing that a meeting between [the gang of girls] and us was inevitable, and knowing that Elstir would call me over, I turned my back, like a bather as a large wave comes in: I stopped, letting my illustrious companion walk on without me, and stood outside the antique shop we happened to be passing, stooping toward its window as though fascinated by something. I was sorry not to be able to appear to have something other than the girls to think about, and I could vaguely foresee already that, when Elstir called me over to introduce me, I would put on the interrogative look that reveals not so much surprise as the desire to appear surprised--each of us being as bad at acting as our witness is good at reading faces--that I would even go so far as to point at my own chest as though asking, 'Who? Me?' and then walk quickly over to them, my head bent in docile obedience, and my expression a cold mask hiding annoyance at being dragged away from my study of old china merely to be introduced to people whom I had no desire to know. I went on gazing into the shopwindow, waiting for the moment when Elstir would shoot my name at me... The certainty of being introduced to the girls had made me not only feign indifference toward them, but feel it. The pleasure of their acquaintance, having become inevitable, was compressed and reduced..." Vol. 2, p. 435
"Those who have the opportunity to live for themselves--they are artists, of course...--also have the duty to do so; and for them, friendship is a dereliction of that duty, a form of self-abdication. Even conversation, which is friendship's mode of expression, is a superficial digression, through which we can make no acquisition. We may converse our whole life away without speaking anything other than the interminable repetitions that fill the vacant minute; but the steps of thought we take during the lonely work of artistic creation all lead us downward, deeper into ourselves, the only direction that is not closed to us, the only direction in which we can advance, albeit with much greater travail, toward an outcome of truth." Vol. 2, p. 485
"I had thought the love I felt for Albertine did not depend on any hope of physical intimacy. However, once that evening's experience appeared to have ruled out all possibility of possessing her...what followed was quite the opposite of what had happened when Bloch first informed me that women were there for the having: as though I had been in love not with a real girl but only a wax doll, it turned out that my desire to enter her life, to go with her to see the places where she had spent her childhood, to be initiated by her into the sporting life, gradually detached itself from her; my intellectual curiosity about what she might think on this or that subject did not outlast my belief that I might be able to kiss her. My dreams forsook her as soon as they ceased to be swayed by the hope of possessing her, which I had believed did not affect them. They were then free to recruit one or another of Albertine's friends, if her charm impressed me on a particular day, and especially if I could see a possibility of being loved by her; and so I turned first toward Andrée." Vol. 2, pp. 512-13
*All quotes are taken from the 2003 Penguin Books translations of Swann's Way (Vol. 1) and In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (Vol. 2).
"But even with respect to the most insignificant things in life, none of us constitutes a material whole, identical for everyone, which a person has only to go look up as though we were a book of specifications or a last testament; our social personality is a creation of the minds of others. Even the very simple act that we call “seeing a person we know” is in part an intellectual one. We fill the physical appearance of the individual we see with all the notions we have about him, and of the total picture that we form for ourselves, these notions certainly occupy the greater part. In the end they swell his cheeks so perfectly, follow the line of his nose in an adherence so exact, they do so well at nuancing the sonority of his voice as though the latter were only a transparent envelope that each time we see this face and hear this voice, it is these notions that we encounter again, that we hear." Vol. 1, p. 19
"...but what delighted me were the asparagus, steeped in ultramarine and pink, whose tips delicately painted with little strokes of mauve and azure, shade off imperceptibly down to their feet...with an iridescence that is not of this earth. It seemed to me that these celestial hues revealed the delicious creatures who had merrily metamorphosed themselves into vegetables and who, through the disguise of their firm, edible flesh, disclosed in these early tints of dawn, in these beginnings of rainbows, in this extinction of blue evenings, the precious essence that I recognized again when, all night long following a dinner at which I had eaten them, they played in farces as crude and poetic as a fairy play by Shakespeare, at changing my chamber pot into a jar of perfume." Vol. 1, pp. 123-24
"Of all the modes by which love is brought into being, of all the agents which disseminate the holy evil, surely one of the most efficacious is this great gust of agitation which now and then sweeps over us. Then our fate is sealed, and the person whose company we enjoy at the time is the one we will love. It is not even necessary for us to have liked him better than anyone else up to then, or even as much. What is necessary is that our predilection for him should become exclusive. And that condition is fulfilled when--at a moment like this, when we do not have him with us--the quest for the pleasures that his charm gave us is suddenly replaced in us by an anxious need which the laws of this world make it impossible to satisfy and difficult to cure--the senseless and painful need to possess him." Vol. 1, p. 239
"Seeing that a meeting between [the gang of girls] and us was inevitable, and knowing that Elstir would call me over, I turned my back, like a bather as a large wave comes in: I stopped, letting my illustrious companion walk on without me, and stood outside the antique shop we happened to be passing, stooping toward its window as though fascinated by something. I was sorry not to be able to appear to have something other than the girls to think about, and I could vaguely foresee already that, when Elstir called me over to introduce me, I would put on the interrogative look that reveals not so much surprise as the desire to appear surprised--each of us being as bad at acting as our witness is good at reading faces--that I would even go so far as to point at my own chest as though asking, 'Who? Me?' and then walk quickly over to them, my head bent in docile obedience, and my expression a cold mask hiding annoyance at being dragged away from my study of old china merely to be introduced to people whom I had no desire to know. I went on gazing into the shopwindow, waiting for the moment when Elstir would shoot my name at me... The certainty of being introduced to the girls had made me not only feign indifference toward them, but feel it. The pleasure of their acquaintance, having become inevitable, was compressed and reduced..." Vol. 2, p. 435
"Those who have the opportunity to live for themselves--they are artists, of course...--also have the duty to do so; and for them, friendship is a dereliction of that duty, a form of self-abdication. Even conversation, which is friendship's mode of expression, is a superficial digression, through which we can make no acquisition. We may converse our whole life away without speaking anything other than the interminable repetitions that fill the vacant minute; but the steps of thought we take during the lonely work of artistic creation all lead us downward, deeper into ourselves, the only direction that is not closed to us, the only direction in which we can advance, albeit with much greater travail, toward an outcome of truth." Vol. 2, p. 485
"I had thought the love I felt for Albertine did not depend on any hope of physical intimacy. However, once that evening's experience appeared to have ruled out all possibility of possessing her...what followed was quite the opposite of what had happened when Bloch first informed me that women were there for the having: as though I had been in love not with a real girl but only a wax doll, it turned out that my desire to enter her life, to go with her to see the places where she had spent her childhood, to be initiated by her into the sporting life, gradually detached itself from her; my intellectual curiosity about what she might think on this or that subject did not outlast my belief that I might be able to kiss her. My dreams forsook her as soon as they ceased to be swayed by the hope of possessing her, which I had believed did not affect them. They were then free to recruit one or another of Albertine's friends, if her charm impressed me on a particular day, and especially if I could see a possibility of being loved by her; and so I turned first toward Andrée." Vol. 2, pp. 512-13
*All quotes are taken from the 2003 Penguin Books translations of Swann's Way (Vol. 1) and In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (Vol. 2).
Friday, April 23, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Prematurely: Summertime
I remember sitting pretty in the dog park
with my purple dress on
and taking walks the long way home,
through the neighbors' lawn.
In May my mother and I picked
strawberries in the morning dew
and talked about the way things were
when she'd been twenty-two.
You followed me to the bend in the creek
back behind the old highway road.
There we put our feet in the water 'til the fish
came to nibble and suck our white toes.
We were late for dinner and naked as Adam
sitting back to back in the setting sun.
Then you drove me home in your father's car,
and I fell asleep against the window.
It didn't matter the next week, though
when the spring as it was began to show.
As cold as kids without their shoes
and slow as bums without their booze
we turned our faces inward and away
while we tried to keep expectations at bay.
But we brushed aside the risk of memory
instead deciding it best to be free
because Summer comes just once a year,
and in the Winter our hearts will freeze.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
A New Plan
If all I ever do with my life is grow up to be old and fat and happy, that will be enough. Now, where to begin...
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
Buon giorno!
Inizia la tua giornata con un bel caffé all'italiano! Con Illy anche tu puoi fare la colazione come un italiano. È come io l'ho fatta stamattina.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Food for Thought
My mom keeps a little daily, devotional flip calendar on the windowsill in our kitchen. We usually aren't very good about keeping it on the correct date, but the thought for April 6 was:
In the small stuff...you'll know something becomes meaningful when it goes from your head to your heart to your hands.
This statement could go a lot of ways, but today, as I was rolling a ball 'o dough around and around between both hands, I thought, There was a moment in time when I thought it would be cool to bake my own bread, and here I am baking a loaf every week...and doing so makes me undeniably happy.
So I guess, little devotional calendar, I would like to add that something can also become meaningful when it goes from your head to your hands to your stomach.
In the small stuff...you'll know something becomes meaningful when it goes from your head to your heart to your hands.
This statement could go a lot of ways, but today, as I was rolling a ball 'o dough around and around between both hands, I thought, There was a moment in time when I thought it would be cool to bake my own bread, and here I am baking a loaf every week...and doing so makes me undeniably happy.
So I guess, little devotional calendar, I would like to add that something can also become meaningful when it goes from your head to your hands to your stomach.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Mi media naranja
Spanish men are a lot like Spanish reds: deep, dark, and slow-moving. Pour yourself a glass and admire the way the wine clings to the sides of the glass like a thick syrup, something akin to blood, which would be just a few shades lighter than the Spanish wines I've got on my mind...
During the siesta, while Madrileños were home enjoying long, languid lunches, we scurried from shaded bench to shaded bench throughout Retiro Park to escape the near-100 degree afternoon heat. We'd finished our spinach empanadas and were trying not to expend our energy with too much talk when a tall 30-something Spanish man approached us and asked in English for a pen.
As Zoe fished in her purse for the pen that was most certainly waiting to be found, the other three of us went into paranoid tourist mode, keeping one eye on the zipper of our bags and the other on the surrounding bushes and pathways where a quick-fingered accomplice may be lurking. But no one else was around, and I had a small combination lock on my purse zipper, so my eyes inevitably drifted in the direction of the tall Spaniard who was writing something on a pad of paper: a poem? a delirious insight? a grocery list?
The overgrown curls on his head hung around his head like vines the color of coffee grounds, complementing the caramel of his skin. Both his cream colored button-up shirt and his khaki pants were linen and seemed to exist in orbit around his limbs, not clinging to his skin nor swallowing them whole, rather, just, being there. His leather sandals had seen Madrid many times over and cradled the his strong feet in their bed.
I think he probably stood there for little more than three minutes, but I can see him so vividly in my memory. Madrid was my first taste of Spain, and although the pick-pocketing on the metro had prejudiced me slightly against the Spanish, I was quickly realizing that Spanish men were more to my taste than the Italians. In Italy--at least, in my experience as a short-term Perugina--the young adult men were fussy and conceited, like something straight out of a Gucci ad, complete with lavender colored button-ups, pointed leather shoes, and feminine sunglasses. They complimented me in Italian then playfully demanded I show some gratitude. That's not to say I didn't see my fair share of bearded Italian granolas, especially in the college town of Perugia, but when I saw this Spanish man standing mere feet away from me, all Italian men paled.
I knew nothing about this Spaniard, but the caramel of his skin called to mind the dirt of the field and the toiling of a farmer. I pictured him tending grape vines in the heat of the day and sipping coffee in cafés at night with other intellectuals. Was he a Socialist? His skin looked warm and sweet. An Italian's olive skin would be pale and sickly in comparison, suggesting dubious occupations in back alleyways, away from the sun.
But don't get me wrong! I saw many genial Italian men with whom I could have a friendly conversation, but maybe that was part of the reason I was so intrigued by this Spaniard. Whereas I could communicate with any mammismo over the advantages of tiramisù gelato over zuppa inglese, conversing with this man might have proved a bit prickly. Sure, we could have made it work, between my Italian and first grader's Spanish and his Spanish and (I'm assuming) English, but some things would have gotten lost in translation, and then words must become obsolete.
He finished his note-writing and gave Zoe her pen back. Would you believe I was surprised to see him go? But he did, and I was... The four of us double-checked with each other to make sure nothing had gone missing during the interaction and then moved on to the next bench where I practiced the flick of my fanning wrist and my best come hither look, hoping it might fool someone into believing I was a Spanish señorita.
During the siesta, while Madrileños were home enjoying long, languid lunches, we scurried from shaded bench to shaded bench throughout Retiro Park to escape the near-100 degree afternoon heat. We'd finished our spinach empanadas and were trying not to expend our energy with too much talk when a tall 30-something Spanish man approached us and asked in English for a pen.
As Zoe fished in her purse for the pen that was most certainly waiting to be found, the other three of us went into paranoid tourist mode, keeping one eye on the zipper of our bags and the other on the surrounding bushes and pathways where a quick-fingered accomplice may be lurking. But no one else was around, and I had a small combination lock on my purse zipper, so my eyes inevitably drifted in the direction of the tall Spaniard who was writing something on a pad of paper: a poem? a delirious insight? a grocery list?
The overgrown curls on his head hung around his head like vines the color of coffee grounds, complementing the caramel of his skin. Both his cream colored button-up shirt and his khaki pants were linen and seemed to exist in orbit around his limbs, not clinging to his skin nor swallowing them whole, rather, just, being there. His leather sandals had seen Madrid many times over and cradled the his strong feet in their bed.
I think he probably stood there for little more than three minutes, but I can see him so vividly in my memory. Madrid was my first taste of Spain, and although the pick-pocketing on the metro had prejudiced me slightly against the Spanish, I was quickly realizing that Spanish men were more to my taste than the Italians. In Italy--at least, in my experience as a short-term Perugina--the young adult men were fussy and conceited, like something straight out of a Gucci ad, complete with lavender colored button-ups, pointed leather shoes, and feminine sunglasses. They complimented me in Italian then playfully demanded I show some gratitude. That's not to say I didn't see my fair share of bearded Italian granolas, especially in the college town of Perugia, but when I saw this Spanish man standing mere feet away from me, all Italian men paled.
I knew nothing about this Spaniard, but the caramel of his skin called to mind the dirt of the field and the toiling of a farmer. I pictured him tending grape vines in the heat of the day and sipping coffee in cafés at night with other intellectuals. Was he a Socialist? His skin looked warm and sweet. An Italian's olive skin would be pale and sickly in comparison, suggesting dubious occupations in back alleyways, away from the sun.
But don't get me wrong! I saw many genial Italian men with whom I could have a friendly conversation, but maybe that was part of the reason I was so intrigued by this Spaniard. Whereas I could communicate with any mammismo over the advantages of tiramisù gelato over zuppa inglese, conversing with this man might have proved a bit prickly. Sure, we could have made it work, between my Italian and first grader's Spanish and his Spanish and (I'm assuming) English, but some things would have gotten lost in translation, and then words must become obsolete.
He finished his note-writing and gave Zoe her pen back. Would you believe I was surprised to see him go? But he did, and I was... The four of us double-checked with each other to make sure nothing had gone missing during the interaction and then moved on to the next bench where I practiced the flick of my fanning wrist and my best come hither look, hoping it might fool someone into believing I was a Spanish señorita.
Grown Ups
It'll be raining in an hour, I think to myself on the way back to my car. The air feels warmer than it did when I'd arrived, and I have the sensation of a warm, wet rag held against my mouth and nose. I think of my dad, knowing he's the one I have to thank for my hyper-sensitivity to changes in the atmosphere.
I like the sound the soles of my Mary Janes make on the pavement--clopping along, almost like high heels but quicker and more self-assured--and my shadow on the ground--long, lean and proud. Despite the humid night, I'm breathing much easier outside.
In Dan's basement, with our other high school friends, I hadn't been able to keep myself from falling back into the way I'd been then, a shy and doting hippie girl, scared by the sound of her own voice and unsure of the way she felt about anything. I had been painfully aware of the way I tugged on my earring or pushed my hair back every time I had started to say something, but I'd pretended that no one else was aware of it.
Despite lingering insecurities, I had put myself out there, stepping into the conversation, heavy with the boring realities of adulthood suddenly confronting all of us, something we'd never envisioned from our posts at the lunch table, heads thick with clouds of varying dreaminess. But we got here somehow and can do little else but keep going.
Scott had left at 10:30, as work for him began the next morning at 8. Rob and I stayed a while longer, and the three of us had discussed jobs and business classes, apartments and commutes. Dan filled us in on the summer internships he was deciding between and Rob recounted how the recording process was going with the band. When asked what my future plans involved, I had shrugged by way of response, hoping that would be enough, then quickly adding a few acceptable possibilities, for the sake of conversation.
Shortly after 11, I'd announced it was time that I head out. Hugs were shared, and I promised Dan that I would come visit him in Springfield, knowing even as I agreed to it that it would never happen. Instead, I hoped that lunch on Wednesday would be an adequate substitute...
The TV had still been on when I'd come up from the basement, but Dan's mom was not around anymore. I saw myself out, closing the door quietly behind me.
From the porch to my car down the street, I am relieved, content, thrilled to be moving again, one foot in front of the other with my heels creating a rhythmic pulse to accompany my thoughts; my mind drifts from the impending rain back to high school. The me tonight laughs at the me then, the naive little girl in love with the quiet guitar player, the same one who these days she won't be driving distances to visit.
I like the sound the soles of my Mary Janes make on the pavement--clopping along, almost like high heels but quicker and more self-assured--and my shadow on the ground--long, lean and proud. Despite the humid night, I'm breathing much easier outside.
In Dan's basement, with our other high school friends, I hadn't been able to keep myself from falling back into the way I'd been then, a shy and doting hippie girl, scared by the sound of her own voice and unsure of the way she felt about anything. I had been painfully aware of the way I tugged on my earring or pushed my hair back every time I had started to say something, but I'd pretended that no one else was aware of it.
Despite lingering insecurities, I had put myself out there, stepping into the conversation, heavy with the boring realities of adulthood suddenly confronting all of us, something we'd never envisioned from our posts at the lunch table, heads thick with clouds of varying dreaminess. But we got here somehow and can do little else but keep going.
Scott had left at 10:30, as work for him began the next morning at 8. Rob and I stayed a while longer, and the three of us had discussed jobs and business classes, apartments and commutes. Dan filled us in on the summer internships he was deciding between and Rob recounted how the recording process was going with the band. When asked what my future plans involved, I had shrugged by way of response, hoping that would be enough, then quickly adding a few acceptable possibilities, for the sake of conversation.
Shortly after 11, I'd announced it was time that I head out. Hugs were shared, and I promised Dan that I would come visit him in Springfield, knowing even as I agreed to it that it would never happen. Instead, I hoped that lunch on Wednesday would be an adequate substitute...
The TV had still been on when I'd come up from the basement, but Dan's mom was not around anymore. I saw myself out, closing the door quietly behind me.
From the porch to my car down the street, I am relieved, content, thrilled to be moving again, one foot in front of the other with my heels creating a rhythmic pulse to accompany my thoughts; my mind drifts from the impending rain back to high school. The me tonight laughs at the me then, the naive little girl in love with the quiet guitar player, the same one who these days she won't be driving distances to visit.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Ceci n'est pas une vie
She made a monocle out of the house key ring and stared at him for several minutes, succeeding—but just barely—at suppressing fits of gleeful, childlike laughter while waiting for him to look up at her, having felt the pull of her gaze; he never did. He had moved his work out into the dining room, finding that the long mahogany table was better suited to his blueprints than to dinner parties of five couples and ten place settings. His gaze on his work was intense and steady; steely gray eyes scanned the pages, paying no mind to the woman at the other end of the table.
When she realized he wasn’t interested in her game, she pretended to engage in his. Taking a pen from the front pocket of her apron, she sketched a five-sided house the size of a half dollar on a corner of the nearest page of blueprint paper, and on the inside of the little house she drew a heart, incessantly retracing the two lines, leftsiderightsideleftsiderightside, until the rhythm of it all had created a hum in her brain.
Pausing, with her pen anchored to the bottom point of the heart, she looked along the length of the table.
“Y’ever think maybe…that maybe it’s getting to be a good time…I mean, it’s been two years now and you’re doing well at work…and most married people by now, you know…” He had yet to look up, but she could tell from the quickening pace of the puffs of smoke issuing from his pipe that it wasn’t worth the effort trying to sell him on something she wasn’t convinced she even wanted. She only knew that by now she was supposed to want children and so assumed it was something she had to mention, a topic not unlike the suggestion of a new restaurant, which, come to think of it, usually became an awkward point of contention for them anyway.
She let the silence cloud her eyes and instead pictured a scene from five years before when they had first met, standing together outside the university library, smoking cigarettes; he had been wearing a lightweight trench coat in the mid-February freeze. She’d assumed then that he was some kind of artist, too poor to afford adequate outerwear and such the thinking-man as to be able to transcend the temperature and find warmth in the furnace of his musings. Enchanted, she’d asked him for a cigarette, which he lit for her with a match plucked from a matchbook bearing the name of a nearby literary café. She didn’t realize then that he was the one who was supposed to be enchanted by her, nor did it ever occur to her that he might have actually been painfully cold standing there in that trench coat or that his favorite book was No Time for Sergeants, with Stone’s Love Is Eternal a close second.
When he first saw her, with those bright eyes and straight teeth, he immediately pictured her assimilating nicely within the designs he had laid out for his life. She had great potential anyway, just like a vacant lot between Spring Garden and South Streets. Tall and slender, the pleats on her skirt were perpendicular to her patent-leather belt, which he could only see because she had forgotten—or neglected—to button her winter coat, an oversight that had given her the likeness of a bird in flight as she ascended the stairs to the library. He couldn’t believe she had perched next to him and asked for a cigarette.
Between puffs, she had spoken to him of her father, explaining that she had taken up smoking because she loved sitting around him while he smoked his pipe. If it had been acceptable for a woman to walk around smoking from a pipe, she said, she would have, but she settled on cigarettes instead.
She remembered how he had switched over to smoking a pipe shortly after their wedding, about a month after they’d moved here from Philadelphia. Their marriage had been the end of art museums and libraries and the beginning of a tyranny. She had dropped out of college when they’d married—no major sacrifice, as she’d never really felt that she belonged in that realm—and he’d taken up smoking a pipe. In a daze, she watched him puffing away until the image on her eyes had become a watercolor, and she thought of that painting. "This is not a pipe," it said to her, poking her in the ribs like something was supposed to be funny, a joke. But it is a pipe, right? She knew that it was a pipe. Either she didn’t have the imagination to understand or she didn’t have the patience to smile kindly and move on.
She put the pen back into her apron on her way to the coat tree by the door, sending nonsensical questions his direction as though she were testing sound levels on a microphone: "Have you ever climbed to the top of a hill just to see the sun rising out of the valley below? Or maybe, have you ever walked a path just to see where it ended? Do you even remember my middle name?"
In the silence that followed, she exchanged her apron for his trench coat, first taking her pack of cigarettes out of the pocket and leaving just one for him. With her pen, she wrote a good-bye note in five words on the cigarette: "This is not a cigarette." What did it matter that he would probably never see it? She gathered some sense of satisfaction from the jab, but maybe she really only felt vindicated for having stolen his beloved trench coat.
Foregoing the necessary umbrella, she slipped out of the door of the apartment carrying nothing more than her pocketbook. Unsure of where she was going, thinking only of finding a pipe for smoking and picturing a downtown lunch counter, she stepped into the street, her image blurred out between the drops of rain and the headlights of oncoming traffic.
If he heard her leaving, he made no movement to stop her, instead going about the task in front of him, looking up only when he smelled the chicken potpie burning in the oven.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
100 Years Is Never Enough
Today is my grandpa Mudd's one-hundredth birthday. To celebrate, I put my morning mug of just-poured coffee into the microwave for an extra bit of heat, thinking, as I lifted the deep black liquid to my mouth, That is H-O-T very warm.
If he were still alive and well, we would have taken him to breakfast at Burkempers, a place I haven't been since I was eight, at which age it felt like our food took an hour and a half to reach the table and the bathroom was dark and scary. I can remember Grandpa charming all the waitresses, who called him "Mr. Mudd" and treated him like their favorite uncle. Mom would have presented him with a bag of fun-size Snicker's, which he would have torn into with panache, leaving a handful of wrappers in his empty coffee cup.
After a stop at the bowling alley next door, the rest of the day would have been spent visiting friends and relatives and taking many smoke/Snicker breaks before the night's festivities. I'm not sure what we would have done to celebrate, but I know G-pa would have eaten a plateful of cookies and cake 'n' ice cream before opening presents--another jacket just like the old one he's got on, a box of Crunch 'n' Munch, fresh white socks with "MUDD" already printed on the toe...
I still remember the way he smelled. I'd try to describe it, but that seems somewhat cliché. But I can smell him still, even after he's been dead ten years. And with that smell comes the feel of his rough cheek against my lips and his rounded shoulders inside my embrace, his soft, black hair, sticking up a little in the back because he's just taken his hat off after being outside for a cig...
I'm suddenly remembering things I haven't thought about in years, and I realize just how much I miss my grandpa. I wish I could have known him before his mind went and I was put in charge of writing down his story for him to read later and remind him of his name. It's likely I'd assumed then that if he just read what I'd written in his diary--mundane anecdotes about his neighbors at the nursing home or a statement about his favorite meal--he'd remember on his own. It was the same case with the photo album of Andy and I posing at different spots in the first nursing home Grandpa lived at, collected in an album with strips of paper reading things like, "Rebecca walking down the hall from the dining room" or "Andy standing in front of your apartment," stuck in the sleeve along with the picture. Anyway.
My grandpa Mudd was somewhat of a rockstar. No, seriously! I can't describe it; it's just the truth. In the days between his death and funeral many stories were shared from his life, and he has since been immortalized in my memory.
If he were here today, I'd be sure to sneak him a chocolate chip cookie topped with a spoonful of peanut butter and a pipe for smoking, as long as he promised to give me a few puffs.
If he were still alive and well, we would have taken him to breakfast at Burkempers, a place I haven't been since I was eight, at which age it felt like our food took an hour and a half to reach the table and the bathroom was dark and scary. I can remember Grandpa charming all the waitresses, who called him "Mr. Mudd" and treated him like their favorite uncle. Mom would have presented him with a bag of fun-size Snicker's, which he would have torn into with panache, leaving a handful of wrappers in his empty coffee cup.
After a stop at the bowling alley next door, the rest of the day would have been spent visiting friends and relatives and taking many smoke/Snicker breaks before the night's festivities. I'm not sure what we would have done to celebrate, but I know G-pa would have eaten a plateful of cookies and cake 'n' ice cream before opening presents--another jacket just like the old one he's got on, a box of Crunch 'n' Munch, fresh white socks with "MUDD" already printed on the toe...
I still remember the way he smelled. I'd try to describe it, but that seems somewhat cliché. But I can smell him still, even after he's been dead ten years. And with that smell comes the feel of his rough cheek against my lips and his rounded shoulders inside my embrace, his soft, black hair, sticking up a little in the back because he's just taken his hat off after being outside for a cig...
I'm suddenly remembering things I haven't thought about in years, and I realize just how much I miss my grandpa. I wish I could have known him before his mind went and I was put in charge of writing down his story for him to read later and remind him of his name. It's likely I'd assumed then that if he just read what I'd written in his diary--mundane anecdotes about his neighbors at the nursing home or a statement about his favorite meal--he'd remember on his own. It was the same case with the photo album of Andy and I posing at different spots in the first nursing home Grandpa lived at, collected in an album with strips of paper reading things like, "Rebecca walking down the hall from the dining room" or "Andy standing in front of your apartment," stuck in the sleeve along with the picture. Anyway.
My grandpa Mudd was somewhat of a rockstar. No, seriously! I can't describe it; it's just the truth. In the days between his death and funeral many stories were shared from his life, and he has since been immortalized in my memory.
If he were here today, I'd be sure to sneak him a chocolate chip cookie topped with a spoonful of peanut butter and a pipe for smoking, as long as he promised to give me a few puffs.
Maybe four years before my time, this was most likely taken by my mother.
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