At the end of the summer I moved back home to my childhood house, the one with the wrap-around porch at the end of the street. In my favorite memories I am running circles around the house, chasing rabbits back into their holes as the sun sets through the golden filters of turning leaves. My memories are silent movies on repeat; I'm the only actor on the set, and the dialogue is unwritten.
I returned home to find that my memories had proven imperfect, and in place of white-washed wooden boards, the porch floor was scuffed and sagging. I kicked leaves through the posts and settled into my mother's favorite rocking chair. I folded my hands in my lap and tried to become as small as possible, thinking that if I succeeded I might just evaporate and how delicious would it be to evaporate and be swallowed by the wind?
Neglect had descended on the house in a blanket of dust so thick I could hardly find the way to my bedroom. I did, though. Kneeling on my bed I wondered what I would see out my back window and if the little boy in the backyard across the railroad tracks still wore pants cinched up above his stomach. I hazarded a glance. There was no funny little boy, no big yellow dog, just a gray looking woman raking leaves. The leaves were piled up in mounds of uniform height and circumference and looked like piles of dirt. I fell asleep thinking about groundhogs drinking coffee.
When I woke up, before I remembered where I was, I looked out the window. The piles of leaves had been strewn about by the wind. I thought of the coconut icing on German chocolate cake.
I made coffee for three and drank it all myself, practicing evaporation on the front porch. In the afternoon I returned to the window in my bedroom. She was there again, looking as faded and blurred around the edges as she had the day before. Piles of leaves kept her company in the descending light, nearly as many as before. But already the wind was lifting leaves up and away, swirling and scattering the work of the small lady.
I slept into the afternoon of the next day, and as predictably as rigged presidential elections, my vigilant neighbor was raking up leaves into their piles as she had for the two days before and, I began to assume, for every day since they had been falling. Into their neat piles everyday, all day, until they were stirred by the wind. In her persistence she seemed never to tire, although her appearance was one of pure exhaustion.
I wondered: In the winter would she pile up the snow too? And in the spring when life returned, what would she do then?
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
Picture Me
We had lucked out with the weather again, as usual. The leaves were at the peak of their autumn ecstasy and the cool, dry air felt invigorating in the sun, not chilly -- although a jacket did feel nice. This was my first time tagging along with my mom and sister since they'd started the tradition a few years ago. I'd always been jealous of their winery trips on Mom's conference break Fridays, so I was pretty pleased that things were working out.
I hadn't been to Augusta for quite some time, but I had two very clear memories of being there: one was from another fall afternoon when my mom had taken me, my siblings and our cousin Darren on a little jaunt to the idyllic hill town. All I really remember from that day was going to my mother's cousin's house and her not being there. But we got out and looked around Jane's front yard, which felt more like the edge of a cliff in No Man's Land Forest. I have an image -- probably because a photo exists of it -- of Andy and Darren dressed in Adidas casual wear, getting far too close to the edge, the expansive river valley spread out in the background. I remember being afraid they would fall off the top of the hill and hurt themselves. Then we'd gone by the tiny post office to see if maybe she was there. Jane's out delivering mail, they'd told us.
My other memory also involves Jane. The Mudd side of my family had converged on Augusta for the wedding reception of her oldest daughter. My dad didn't come. I imagine he was opposed to the party because of its being held at a winery, he himself being a staunch nondrinker. So when I saw Mom, our driver, drink her one fuzzy navel (a complete rarity reserved for weddings mostly), I began worrying that we were going to crash on those hilly, windy country roads. I was a nervous, conflicted child.
Anyway, what most people remember about that reception -- the people I talk to anyway -- was how disappointing the meal was. I can still picture my plate -- its 12" diameter a cruel joke -- with two little medallions of pork tenderloin, five green beans and one small, red new potato...before I'd eaten anything. Everyone at the table fought over the sugar cookies wrapped up in gift bags on the table, our tummies rumbling.
But I do have a fond vision of that night, one that I've based most of my stylistic aspirations on. Clear as a photograph, I can see Jane sitting at a round table, being pointed out to the room by someone's speech. She's dressed all in black, in a wrap dress with long sleeves, and her hands are cupped in her lap, one under the other. She is gently nodding in agreement, smiling demurely and blinking slowly. Her wavy hair is braided and cascades down one shoulder. She looks like she knows an amusing secret that she knows she can't laugh about.
So many times I've drawn upon this memory of Jane for inspiration, for guidance. I've attempted her steely magnetism like it's my job.
Jane has always been a relative on my mom's side who has fascinated me. There are musicians, Irish immigrants and a homeopathic doctor. Then there's Jane. She lived in California for a long time with her air traffic controller husband, working for the postal service. At some point they came back to Missouri, got divorced but stayed best friends. She's been delivering mail for years, and about five years ago she and her ex-husband bought a farm that backs up to the Katy trail.
This isn't an exact history, but you get the idea.
On that unreasonably gorgeous day, we had returned to the scene of the meagerly-portioned wedding feast, and after sating ourselves on wine and sandwiches, I mentioned this image of Jane to my mom and sister: the braid, the black dress, the detached yet elegant smile.
She was wearing pink. And she had her hair down. It was so long and pretty, they told me.
Then I remembered an actual picture of Jane as they'd described her. She was bubbly and childlike, an arm up high around someone, the shoulder of her dress bunching up to her ear.
I couldn't believe it. All this time I've been relying on a false memory, a "memory" that I can't attribute to any other person or event. I should have been upset -- unsettled at the very least -- but mostly I was amused. Because I can't for the life of me think of where I got this image of Jane, I know I must have created it myself, for myself. I blame it on a hunger to create, on a mind so full of people to whom I aspire, that it synthesized the best parts into one.
After all, who we become is completely up to us.
I hadn't been to Augusta for quite some time, but I had two very clear memories of being there: one was from another fall afternoon when my mom had taken me, my siblings and our cousin Darren on a little jaunt to the idyllic hill town. All I really remember from that day was going to my mother's cousin's house and her not being there. But we got out and looked around Jane's front yard, which felt more like the edge of a cliff in No Man's Land Forest. I have an image -- probably because a photo exists of it -- of Andy and Darren dressed in Adidas casual wear, getting far too close to the edge, the expansive river valley spread out in the background. I remember being afraid they would fall off the top of the hill and hurt themselves. Then we'd gone by the tiny post office to see if maybe she was there. Jane's out delivering mail, they'd told us.
My other memory also involves Jane. The Mudd side of my family had converged on Augusta for the wedding reception of her oldest daughter. My dad didn't come. I imagine he was opposed to the party because of its being held at a winery, he himself being a staunch nondrinker. So when I saw Mom, our driver, drink her one fuzzy navel (a complete rarity reserved for weddings mostly), I began worrying that we were going to crash on those hilly, windy country roads. I was a nervous, conflicted child.
Anyway, what most people remember about that reception -- the people I talk to anyway -- was how disappointing the meal was. I can still picture my plate -- its 12" diameter a cruel joke -- with two little medallions of pork tenderloin, five green beans and one small, red new potato...before I'd eaten anything. Everyone at the table fought over the sugar cookies wrapped up in gift bags on the table, our tummies rumbling.
But I do have a fond vision of that night, one that I've based most of my stylistic aspirations on. Clear as a photograph, I can see Jane sitting at a round table, being pointed out to the room by someone's speech. She's dressed all in black, in a wrap dress with long sleeves, and her hands are cupped in her lap, one under the other. She is gently nodding in agreement, smiling demurely and blinking slowly. Her wavy hair is braided and cascades down one shoulder. She looks like she knows an amusing secret that she knows she can't laugh about.
So many times I've drawn upon this memory of Jane for inspiration, for guidance. I've attempted her steely magnetism like it's my job.
Jane has always been a relative on my mom's side who has fascinated me. There are musicians, Irish immigrants and a homeopathic doctor. Then there's Jane. She lived in California for a long time with her air traffic controller husband, working for the postal service. At some point they came back to Missouri, got divorced but stayed best friends. She's been delivering mail for years, and about five years ago she and her ex-husband bought a farm that backs up to the Katy trail.
This isn't an exact history, but you get the idea.
On that unreasonably gorgeous day, we had returned to the scene of the meagerly-portioned wedding feast, and after sating ourselves on wine and sandwiches, I mentioned this image of Jane to my mom and sister: the braid, the black dress, the detached yet elegant smile.
She was wearing pink. And she had her hair down. It was so long and pretty, they told me.
Then I remembered an actual picture of Jane as they'd described her. She was bubbly and childlike, an arm up high around someone, the shoulder of her dress bunching up to her ear.
I couldn't believe it. All this time I've been relying on a false memory, a "memory" that I can't attribute to any other person or event. I should have been upset -- unsettled at the very least -- but mostly I was amused. Because I can't for the life of me think of where I got this image of Jane, I know I must have created it myself, for myself. I blame it on a hunger to create, on a mind so full of people to whom I aspire, that it synthesized the best parts into one.
After all, who we become is completely up to us.
Friday, November 4, 2011
The Joy Is in the Dirt
On my way home I passed Art's produce stand. A sign by the road advertised russet potatoes for such and such a pound. I have no need for russet potatoes right now. My mother has a big plastic bag of them from Idaho languishing in the bottom of our pantry. Besides, right then my mind was crowded with the plethora of squash I have eaten and will eat in the future; there was a fresh carnival squash in my backseat at that precise moment, a variety that bears a suspicious resemblance to its sweet dumpling cousin...
Like I said, russet potatoes were not on my radar. Goat cheese and asparagus, yes. Goat cheese and asparagus together on homemade dough, baked and eaten like a pizza, definitely. In fact, that's dinner tomorrow night. But when I registered those two simple words -- russet, potatoes -- a nearly imperceptible rush of memories captivated me for the rest of the drive home.
When I think of potatoes, I mean, really think about them, my mind first registers their undeniable, glorious smell of dirt. I don't know many scents that can top the aroma of damp earth, a delight intensified by its rich color, one as tied to life as the color green. Beyond that I would probably think of a russet potato's manatee-like skin and the way it peels away like tissue paper when you bake it, but my potato meditation this afternoon didn't make it past that deep, dark, earthen musk.
Simply because of that sign by the road, a sign I only half-looked-at anyway, my collective unconscious cracked open and I started thinking about dirt under my nails and rocky soil passing for farmland. I thought about the wind, about the chill. I pictured perseverance and resourcefulness in the forms of the people who came before me, those Irish strangers I can only imagine. I constructed a vision of myself as a potato farmer, dirty from the shins down in faded jeans and a worn-out t-shirt, devising 40 different ways to prepare potatoes, half of them involving cabbage.
I remembered an Ireland I have never seen. I remembered fires and music and the unending night of winter. I remembered eating potatoes I had helped harvest. I remembered being poor.
Someday I'll get there. Someday I'll go home. Until then, the joy is in the dirt.
Like I said, russet potatoes were not on my radar. Goat cheese and asparagus, yes. Goat cheese and asparagus together on homemade dough, baked and eaten like a pizza, definitely. In fact, that's dinner tomorrow night. But when I registered those two simple words -- russet, potatoes -- a nearly imperceptible rush of memories captivated me for the rest of the drive home.
When I think of potatoes, I mean, really think about them, my mind first registers their undeniable, glorious smell of dirt. I don't know many scents that can top the aroma of damp earth, a delight intensified by its rich color, one as tied to life as the color green. Beyond that I would probably think of a russet potato's manatee-like skin and the way it peels away like tissue paper when you bake it, but my potato meditation this afternoon didn't make it past that deep, dark, earthen musk.
Simply because of that sign by the road, a sign I only half-looked-at anyway, my collective unconscious cracked open and I started thinking about dirt under my nails and rocky soil passing for farmland. I thought about the wind, about the chill. I pictured perseverance and resourcefulness in the forms of the people who came before me, those Irish strangers I can only imagine. I constructed a vision of myself as a potato farmer, dirty from the shins down in faded jeans and a worn-out t-shirt, devising 40 different ways to prepare potatoes, half of them involving cabbage.
I remembered an Ireland I have never seen. I remembered fires and music and the unending night of winter. I remembered eating potatoes I had helped harvest. I remembered being poor.
Someday I'll get there. Someday I'll go home. Until then, the joy is in the dirt.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Your Baby's Brain on Language
The research coming out on babies' brains and second languages is astonishing! It's almost enough to make me reconsider having my own little Antonio or Francesca.
This New York Times article has even more cool stuff on the topic.
This New York Times article has even more cool stuff on the topic.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
On the Verge
I finally printed off Tim and Sarah's Target registry. Weird. This is my first wedding. I mean, this is the first wedding I will be attending without my parents or siblings, and I am neither related to either party nor are their parents obligated to have me in attendance.
My friends are getting married.
When I was six or seven I used to look forward to wedding shopping. Well, really, the whole shebang was pretty exciting for me then--seeing all the pretty dresses and flowers in the church, followed by all-night wedding cake-fueled "dancing" in a dress with a twirly skirt--but going shopping, with a multiple page wish-list in hand like a treasure map...that was the ticket. Especially when we were shopping at Famous Barr. I vividly remember walking through the displays of crystal and china with my arms glued to my sides, terrified by the possibility of breaking anything.
On these shopping trips, my big sister would lead me to the china setting she had her eye on, as though all 14-year-old girls are meant to have their wedding wish-list at least started. Following suit, I would show her my favorite, and then we would hunt down the setting from the registry...and usually criticize the bride-to-be's choice. We were very harsh critics. Then again, we're talking about the mid-'90s, when a lot of the crystal...decor...still reeked of '80s tackiness, so, you really can't blame us.
Seeing that wedding wish-list as a treasure map was the best part, though. After we found the aisle, there was suddenly an unspoken contest between me, my mom and sister to find the item first. "Oh! Here! I found the cow-spotted melon-baller hidden these rose-shaped napkin rings!" Why do people ask for some of the things they do? Do they think they have a quota of absurd kitchen gadgets to rack up? I think wedding planning sometimes does impair judgment.
But then you begin to wonder if maybe they really do want all the things they're asking for. That's when the simple wish-list becomes a little too intimate for me.
You may roll your eyes at this, but there is something uncomfortably personal about a couple's wedding registry and knowing what sorts of shower towels they'll be using or which seat cover they'll put on their toilet. Maybe that's just me. It could be that my mom is to blame for my hang up; on principle, she never bought bed sheets for the newlyweds, and just seeing the desired sheets waiting patiently on the shelf embarrassed me, not unlike the way I felt when my mom would fast-forward through love scenes in movies we were watching.
But I will give her credit for raising me to be a gracious gift-giver. Her usual wedding gift of choice always had a uniting theme. She would never think of crossing genres, say, and give the couple a mop and a lemonade pitcher with a copy of their favorite movie thrown into the mix. No, Mom's typical gift was always something warm a homey: a couple baking sheets, a cookie jar, an oven mitt and (I may be projecting this memory, but...) a fresh batch of her famous chocolate chip cookies. [I'm not kidding around with the "famous" bit; I once had a friend tell me that everyone's house has a distinct smell and that my house smelled like chocolate chip cookies. People go nuts over those cookies.] At the very least, she would include that recipe with the other items, and maybe a couple other classics--for linzer and sugar cookies, snickerdoodles, the like.
So there I was in Target, trying to find a few items I could cohesively present together without being too practical or extravagant; no way was I buying the broiler pan, the replacement Brita filter or the Weber grill. Sorry, guys. I know you need this stuff, but I don't want to be the one to put my name behind the "From:". I finally settled on the cupcake carrier as a likely winner, whatever the hell that was, and I had already started planning out which cupcakes I would be whipping up for them when I noticed the "online only" where the aisle number should have been. My plan was dead in the water. Oh, and did I mention the wedding was about a week away at that point?
Instead, I pretended to forget the real reason I was there and did a little shopping for myself. That's the normal response, after all: denial, avoidance...
It's not that I am against the wedding of my two friends, I just don't feel old enough to be having friends getting married. They're hardly the first couple of my acquaintance to tie the knot, but they happen to be the closest to me. Tim actually called me the summer before they started dating officially. He told me that they had been hanging out at school for the past year or so, and when school started back in the fall they would probably start dating seriously. "She reminds me of you," he said. "I can't wait for you to meet her." I knew then. I'm betting he did too. He was so careful about it, "hanging out for a year" like that. So, yeah, I'm excited to see them get married...but I still feel like that kid with the treasure map.
Living at home with my parents, working on average less than 20 hours a week at a glorified diner, being single...it all adds up to me feeling stunted, behind. I haven't figured out yet what I want to be when I grow up, and the selfish child that I am is freaked out that other people my age have already.
Whatever. I never turn down an opportunity to dress up and wear shoes that click when I walk. It's going to be a beautiful day for a wedding, and I will get to see friends I don't see enough, so I'm looking forward to it, really. And in case you were curious, I'm giving them the cheese board, cocktail shaker and martini glasses they wanted from another store. Pretty warm and homey if you ask me.
My friends are getting married.
When I was six or seven I used to look forward to wedding shopping. Well, really, the whole shebang was pretty exciting for me then--seeing all the pretty dresses and flowers in the church, followed by all-night wedding cake-fueled "dancing" in a dress with a twirly skirt--but going shopping, with a multiple page wish-list in hand like a treasure map...that was the ticket. Especially when we were shopping at Famous Barr. I vividly remember walking through the displays of crystal and china with my arms glued to my sides, terrified by the possibility of breaking anything.
On these shopping trips, my big sister would lead me to the china setting she had her eye on, as though all 14-year-old girls are meant to have their wedding wish-list at least started. Following suit, I would show her my favorite, and then we would hunt down the setting from the registry...and usually criticize the bride-to-be's choice. We were very harsh critics. Then again, we're talking about the mid-'90s, when a lot of the crystal...decor...still reeked of '80s tackiness, so, you really can't blame us.
Seeing that wedding wish-list as a treasure map was the best part, though. After we found the aisle, there was suddenly an unspoken contest between me, my mom and sister to find the item first. "Oh! Here! I found the cow-spotted melon-baller hidden these rose-shaped napkin rings!" Why do people ask for some of the things they do? Do they think they have a quota of absurd kitchen gadgets to rack up? I think wedding planning sometimes does impair judgment.
But then you begin to wonder if maybe they really do want all the things they're asking for. That's when the simple wish-list becomes a little too intimate for me.
You may roll your eyes at this, but there is something uncomfortably personal about a couple's wedding registry and knowing what sorts of shower towels they'll be using or which seat cover they'll put on their toilet. Maybe that's just me. It could be that my mom is to blame for my hang up; on principle, she never bought bed sheets for the newlyweds, and just seeing the desired sheets waiting patiently on the shelf embarrassed me, not unlike the way I felt when my mom would fast-forward through love scenes in movies we were watching.
But I will give her credit for raising me to be a gracious gift-giver. Her usual wedding gift of choice always had a uniting theme. She would never think of crossing genres, say, and give the couple a mop and a lemonade pitcher with a copy of their favorite movie thrown into the mix. No, Mom's typical gift was always something warm a homey: a couple baking sheets, a cookie jar, an oven mitt and (I may be projecting this memory, but...) a fresh batch of her famous chocolate chip cookies. [I'm not kidding around with the "famous" bit; I once had a friend tell me that everyone's house has a distinct smell and that my house smelled like chocolate chip cookies. People go nuts over those cookies.] At the very least, she would include that recipe with the other items, and maybe a couple other classics--for linzer and sugar cookies, snickerdoodles, the like.
So there I was in Target, trying to find a few items I could cohesively present together without being too practical or extravagant; no way was I buying the broiler pan, the replacement Brita filter or the Weber grill. Sorry, guys. I know you need this stuff, but I don't want to be the one to put my name behind the "From:". I finally settled on the cupcake carrier as a likely winner, whatever the hell that was, and I had already started planning out which cupcakes I would be whipping up for them when I noticed the "online only" where the aisle number should have been. My plan was dead in the water. Oh, and did I mention the wedding was about a week away at that point?
Instead, I pretended to forget the real reason I was there and did a little shopping for myself. That's the normal response, after all: denial, avoidance...
It's not that I am against the wedding of my two friends, I just don't feel old enough to be having friends getting married. They're hardly the first couple of my acquaintance to tie the knot, but they happen to be the closest to me. Tim actually called me the summer before they started dating officially. He told me that they had been hanging out at school for the past year or so, and when school started back in the fall they would probably start dating seriously. "She reminds me of you," he said. "I can't wait for you to meet her." I knew then. I'm betting he did too. He was so careful about it, "hanging out for a year" like that. So, yeah, I'm excited to see them get married...but I still feel like that kid with the treasure map.
Living at home with my parents, working on average less than 20 hours a week at a glorified diner, being single...it all adds up to me feeling stunted, behind. I haven't figured out yet what I want to be when I grow up, and the selfish child that I am is freaked out that other people my age have already.
Whatever. I never turn down an opportunity to dress up and wear shoes that click when I walk. It's going to be a beautiful day for a wedding, and I will get to see friends I don't see enough, so I'm looking forward to it, really. And in case you were curious, I'm giving them the cheese board, cocktail shaker and martini glasses they wanted from another store. Pretty warm and homey if you ask me.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Puppy Love
June was ripe and plump
and peach-colored all over.
I was playing house in the city,
with a dog, a set of keys and a garage in the backyard.
The day exhaled into late afternoon,
and an overindulgence of summertime gave way to siesta-ing.
With arms and legs stretched out in opposition,
I welcomed the twilight breeze over every inch of my skin.
Almost imperceptibly, my charge appeared at my hip,
her solid body resting against my side.
No whining, no sad eyes;
just her quiet presence and a desire for affection.
I stroked her head, starting at the crown,
looped around her ear,
and let my hand rest on her shoulder.
Sometimes a dog's love
is the sweetest.
 | ||
| My furry little niece. photo by katie t |
Monday, September 12, 2011
Big Day
This is my big brother. He's the only brother I've ever had, so maybe I'm a little bit biased, but he is the best big brother that anyone could imagine having. And today he starts his firefighter training at the academy. He's pretty much amazing.
She's pretty cool too. ------------->
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Better Version of You
His hands are always clean, his hair always neatly trimmed.
He doesn't slouch over the table when he reads the morning paper,
And he brings me my coffee before I've gotten out of bed.
He's a doctor in the city, caring for children with no homes.
He runs five miles in the morning and then again at night.
And after a shower, he makes me dinner, and sings songs by Buddy Holly.
When he sleeps he doesn't make a sound, instead just holds me tight.
He doesn't fear death or the uncertainties of tomorrow.
And I've never seen him frown or put a single person down.
I've never found fault with him, and we never ever fight.
His parents call me once a week,
And I know he'll always be there for me.
But he's boring as hell.
He doesn't understand my jokes, and he agrees with everything I say.
He won't let me fix him dinner or lift a single finger,
And his parents call me once a week.
But I thought he looked just like you
And even walked the same.
So when he asked,
of course,
I told him my name.
He doesn't slouch over the table when he reads the morning paper,
And he brings me my coffee before I've gotten out of bed.
He's a doctor in the city, caring for children with no homes.
He runs five miles in the morning and then again at night.
And after a shower, he makes me dinner, and sings songs by Buddy Holly.
When he sleeps he doesn't make a sound, instead just holds me tight.
He doesn't fear death or the uncertainties of tomorrow.
And I've never seen him frown or put a single person down.
I've never found fault with him, and we never ever fight.
His parents call me once a week,
And I know he'll always be there for me.
But he's boring as hell.
He doesn't understand my jokes, and he agrees with everything I say.
He won't let me fix him dinner or lift a single finger,
And his parents call me once a week.
But I thought he looked just like you
And even walked the same.
So when he asked,
of course,
I told him my name.
Impatient
I am writing, which means I sometimes stare off, thinking, procrastinating, and just now I caught myself scanning one of my bookshelves. There are nineteen books on this shelf with bookmarks sticking out of the tops of them. And out of those nineteen, twelve of the bookmarks are within the first quarter of the book. Just sayin.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Audio/Visual Pleasures
At first I was a little wary of the new Bon Iver album. The single was a little off-putting, what with the airy, '80s Christian rock-inspired keyboard part. But For Emma was SO good, so I had faith in Justin Vernon and overlooked the misstep. Well, I was right to believe. Bon Iver will get under your skin, just feel free to skip the last track. My favorite--right now--is "Michicant" with all its absurd lyrics and that ding of a bike bell at the beginning. But because there is no decent video for that song and National Geographic just released this video for "Holocene," a video that makes me want to move to Iceland and be a fisherman's wife, this is what you get. I think it's a fair trade.
I'm also enjoying my fill of the new Beirut album, thanks to NPR's First Listen. There isn't a weak track to be found here, but there is definitely something about this one, the title track, that gets to me. Imagine a fish hook embedded in your chest, tugging incessantly, and you might get a sense of how this song makes me feel. Or something.
I'm also enjoying my fill of the new Beirut album, thanks to NPR's First Listen. There isn't a weak track to be found here, but there is definitely something about this one, the title track, that gets to me. Imagine a fish hook embedded in your chest, tugging incessantly, and you might get a sense of how this song makes me feel. Or something.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Eggs-istentialism
The whole apartment was still, save for the sound of cars in the parking garage behind our building and the birds flapping around the kitchen window. I was starting the day as I did most days, stirring a pan of eggs over a little blue flame, one hand on my hip, a flipper in the other hand. The coffee had already brewed and was just waiting to be poured. The bread was toasting and would pop up at approximately the same time that my eggs were reaching the perfect fluffy consistency. After so many mornings of choreographed egg making, I had gotten to be just that good at timing my toast.
I was an early riser. Mornings were my thing. I liked being alone in the cool, dewy air, trying to walk from my bedroom to the kitchen without making too much noise on the creaky floorboards. I felt like the only person alive sometimes, at least until the morning rush began and everyone showed up en masse for 8 AM classes.
So there I was, watching the runny puddles of egg congeal. I probably sighed with contentment. (Mornings induce a lot of sighing with me.) Suddenly, I heard a rabble of commotion on the other side of the wall. I was no longer alone. In a matter of minutes one of the bedroom doors rattled open, creaking on its antique hinges, and I heard Sara's footsteps and the jangling of her keys. I expected to see just a flash of her on her way out--she sounded like she was late for something--but she appeared in the kitchen doorway just as calm as always. She was never one to get riled up about being late for something.
She had a huge grin on her face as she watched me baby-sitting my eggs. She was always amused at anything I was doing, probably because it was always so foreign to her. She liked to tease me about my dinners ("What is it tonight? Chicken or fish?"), but I never said anything to her when she ate an entire can of refried beans or a tub of Cool Whip for dinner.
"Oh, Becca. Scramblin' eggs."
"Morning."
"You know, they say how you take your eggs is like your philosophy of life."
"Oh yeah? So what do scrambled eggs mean?"
"Uhhhh, I think it means you're an existentialist."
"Hmm. Yeah. OK. So, Sara, how do you like your eggs?"
"Unfertilized."
We never had much in common, but that morning we both got a laugh out of that one.
I was an early riser. Mornings were my thing. I liked being alone in the cool, dewy air, trying to walk from my bedroom to the kitchen without making too much noise on the creaky floorboards. I felt like the only person alive sometimes, at least until the morning rush began and everyone showed up en masse for 8 AM classes.
So there I was, watching the runny puddles of egg congeal. I probably sighed with contentment. (Mornings induce a lot of sighing with me.) Suddenly, I heard a rabble of commotion on the other side of the wall. I was no longer alone. In a matter of minutes one of the bedroom doors rattled open, creaking on its antique hinges, and I heard Sara's footsteps and the jangling of her keys. I expected to see just a flash of her on her way out--she sounded like she was late for something--but she appeared in the kitchen doorway just as calm as always. She was never one to get riled up about being late for something.
She had a huge grin on her face as she watched me baby-sitting my eggs. She was always amused at anything I was doing, probably because it was always so foreign to her. She liked to tease me about my dinners ("What is it tonight? Chicken or fish?"), but I never said anything to her when she ate an entire can of refried beans or a tub of Cool Whip for dinner.
"Oh, Becca. Scramblin' eggs."
"Morning."
"You know, they say how you take your eggs is like your philosophy of life."
"Oh yeah? So what do scrambled eggs mean?"
"Uhhhh, I think it means you're an existentialist."
"Hmm. Yeah. OK. So, Sara, how do you like your eggs?"
"Unfertilized."
We never had much in common, but that morning we both got a laugh out of that one.
Friday, July 29, 2011
B-Side Excerpt
I lingered in the half light between the end of spring and the beginning of summer, not yet awake enough to recognize the four corners of my room but conscious enough to have forgotten what I'd been dreaming about. I grappled with its lingering memory, knowing there was no use; I'd already forgotten what it was about. But I felt an urgency, like a shuffle of feet, in my chest, exciting and frightening. I glanced quickly to my right, relieved to be in bed alone. Still, I wondered what had happened over the last six hours that had left me paranoid. I pushed the feeling away and instead went looking for a strong cup of coffee. I was two cups and out the door before I remembered I'd been thinking about something.
And like a name you remember when you stop imagining someone's face, I remembered my dream. She had been there, on the side of a desert highway, making ice cream in a Ball jar, frantically shaking the thing up and down. I had pulled over and asked her why she was in such a rush. "Summer's coming," she'd told me breathlessly, as though Summer were a demanding sweatshop boss making his rounds. She had spoken to me in profile, and I'd followed her gaze to the horizon without seeing anything significant. The Dream Me nodded then before driving off in reverse. But I had remembered I had a note for her from my mother and pedaled back to her on the bike my car had suddenly become.
"Where are you going?"
"With you," she had replied, still not looking me in the eye. Then she climbed up into the basket on the front of my bike without a word, and I pedaled forward, blind to the road. Without realizing how it'd happened, she was sitting in my lap. Her shoulders had rounded into my chest, her hair scenting my inhalations, and then suddenly she was gone, melted onto my skin.
I said out loud, "Summer's here."
And like a name you remember when you stop imagining someone's face, I remembered my dream. She had been there, on the side of a desert highway, making ice cream in a Ball jar, frantically shaking the thing up and down. I had pulled over and asked her why she was in such a rush. "Summer's coming," she'd told me breathlessly, as though Summer were a demanding sweatshop boss making his rounds. She had spoken to me in profile, and I'd followed her gaze to the horizon without seeing anything significant. The Dream Me nodded then before driving off in reverse. But I had remembered I had a note for her from my mother and pedaled back to her on the bike my car had suddenly become.
"Where are you going?"
"With you," she had replied, still not looking me in the eye. Then she climbed up into the basket on the front of my bike without a word, and I pedaled forward, blind to the road. Without realizing how it'd happened, she was sitting in my lap. Her shoulders had rounded into my chest, her hair scenting my inhalations, and then suddenly she was gone, melted onto my skin.
I said out loud, "Summer's here."
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
I Slept Through July
Eh, hardly.
I've been quite busy, actually, working and playing, exploring the city, planning big things to come... Really, I've been making the most of life this summer, without worrying if I'll have enough money, or food or sleep, and I'm happier for it.
Nine bucks for a movie?
Want to do it again next weekend?
I've stayed up late to be with friends, found myself in awkward situations for the sake of adventure, had wine poolside and spent a lot of money on plane and concert tickets. I ate my first White Castle chicken ring sliders, applied for my dream job and been bitten up by clawed and winged critters in the country. And just today, I crashed the wedding of one of my earliest friends...with my mom.
I haven't been writing much; my summer has been more visceral than cerebral. But it's back to work now, at least while I'm off work.
I've been quite busy, actually, working and playing, exploring the city, planning big things to come... Really, I've been making the most of life this summer, without worrying if I'll have enough money, or food or sleep, and I'm happier for it.
Nine bucks for a movie?
Sure, it's just money.
Want to do it again next weekend?
Absolutely!
I've stayed up late to be with friends, found myself in awkward situations for the sake of adventure, had wine poolside and spent a lot of money on plane and concert tickets. I ate my first White Castle chicken ring sliders, applied for my dream job and been bitten up by clawed and winged critters in the country. And just today, I crashed the wedding of one of my earliest friends...with my mom.
I haven't been writing much; my summer has been more visceral than cerebral. But it's back to work now, at least while I'm off work.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Beat's Not Dead
who said what?
i said that
immaterial and possessed, i write with eyes closed because my eyes just distract. i write with eyes closed so i can touch my thoughts. i touch them and feel heat
touch the ridge of my neck and watch a line of fire pour down my spine
we scream in the night WOW because we're alive
we scream to measure our existence and delight in the excess, of joy, of humour because this is funny, this world of worrying and speaking too softly, of showing decorum and deference
we laugh because we know this world is a fantasy, the product of our eyes; i write with mine closed
we scream in the night because we are on fire, burning and burning before we explode into ash and cover the streets and get in your hair
we're funny you know, just because we are. we laugh because what else can we do
?
i said that
immaterial and possessed, i write with eyes closed because my eyes just distract. i write with eyes closed so i can touch my thoughts. i touch them and feel heat
touch the ridge of my neck and watch a line of fire pour down my spine
we scream in the night WOW because we're alive
we scream to measure our existence and delight in the excess, of joy, of humour because this is funny, this world of worrying and speaking too softly, of showing decorum and deference
we laugh because we know this world is a fantasy, the product of our eyes; i write with mine closed
we scream in the night because we are on fire, burning and burning before we explode into ash and cover the streets and get in your hair
we're funny you know, just because we are. we laugh because what else can we do
?
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Pensieri italiani
I remember Italian. I remember the way it felt to speak it, the way my mind had to contort itself to fit within the strictures of foreign grammar. I remember the way my thoughts followed suit, the way I felt Italian. I walked differently when I thought in Italian, my toes pointed and leading the way along the cobbled stone streets, my stride longer and slower than usual, head up high even though my eyes were vigilant to uneven stones. I felt invincible and a little bit invisible, the way a cat must feel invisible: seen but not understood. When I spoke, I spoke emphatically, repeating "Sì" over and over in rapid succession, just like Italians do. I can't explain it; I would never hiss out "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes" in a crazed stutter like I did in Italian. I was different. It wasn't just the place, the antiquity, the food; it was in the words and the way my lips had to pucker out at the end of certain words, the way my tongue did flips behind my teeth. Grocery shopping was even sexy: I kept a steady supply of pompelmo (grapefruit) and fagiolini (green beans). The line between English and Italian blurred the longer I was there; I took lecture notes in both languages, journaled in Italian, drafted bilingual shopping lists, spoke in Italian without meaning to... I can feel my stomach tightening just below my ribs whenever I think about it, a mixture of obnoxious nostalgia and longing over how easily the words slipped out sometimes and how on other days I could barely speak in any language. Lines of untranslated Italian appear in English books I read, and I have a selfish sense of pride because I understand and because they feel written for me, only for me. I despair at my forgetfulness and rejoice when my thoughts spontaneously arrange themselves into Italian sentences, subjects tacked on near the end and adjectives at attention behind their nouns. I hope someday I can reconnect with the unapologetic impostor I was that summer, she for whom the city would open up with the key of a few melodic words. Maybe someday I'll find her "getting lost" in side alleys, biting into a mela, oblivious to the juice running down her arm.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Too Much Thinking, Not Enough Doing
"All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality."-George Orwell, "Why I Write"
Monday, May 9, 2011
Mirror Image
The night of May 2nd I fell asleep reciting French verbs, or at least, I fell asleep murmuring combinations of sounds that could have been French verbs, my throat sore from hacking up a bunch of r's for two hours. Those meticulously measured puffs of air were the only music I heard before my mind turned off...
Between waking up in my parents' bed and being consumed in a dark blanket of snow, my dreams took me to a space station that looked like something from Star Wars, with octagonal portals covered in blinking lights and screens. Andrew and I were wandering through the set as if we were in a museum, hands in pockets, eyes up and overloaded. He was wearing khaki pants and a fleece pullover, not his typical garb. But the shoes I remember; he'd hiked Scotland in them. Approaching an elevator where an attendant stood with her hands behind her back, we decided to try out the game contained inside, the game being a sort first-generation, true-to-life video game--virtual reality without the technology. I took my spot, kneeling on a cheap, moving stage that looked like it'd been stolen from a carnival ride, while Andrew looked on.
I hit different buttons and pulled on the levers and handles protruding from the elevator walls as the stage moved up and down, sluggish and rigid. We were both laughing hilariously, knowing how ridiculous this had turned out to be. The game stopped and the attendant handed us slips of paper to color in. I looked down at the outline of a little girl eating a slice of buttered bread, innocent and unwittingly coy, and decided to color her in blue and purple. With a colored pencil, I filled in the colors with vertical strokes, carelessly going above and below the lines. As we exited the elevator, Andrew handed me his little square of paper, looking me in the eye just a wee bit longer than was comfortable. He had colored her dress with the yellow-green pencil, and her hair he'd colored red. Hanging cock-eyed above her red head he'd drawn in a yellow halo.
In the morning, I was haunted by the image of the little girl, her deep wishing-well-eyes watching me, and I wondered where I had seen the picture before. Later in the afternoon, in the car with my mom and sister, listening to Helplessness Blues for the second time through, it hit me (as most answers do when you stop trying to find them): the girl in my dream is the little girl from the "Grown Ocean" video. I couldn't remember the last time I'd watched it, and I was astonished that my mind had conjured up her picture.
I double-checked my theory when we got home, and sure enough, there she is at the 2:55 mark, except, in my dream, she was the mirror image. The mind always fascinates me, but more particularly, my dreams never fail to amuse and amaze me in all their mystery and overwhelming power of recall. Perhaps they possess some spiritual power, but it could be that they are nothing more than waking life in mirror image.
My dreams--asleep and awake--tend to look something like this video, in its brilliant but faded colors, where everyone lives in the forest and dances through life; because why bother taking it too seriously? After all, as Robin Pecknold reminds us, life was made to end.
Between waking up in my parents' bed and being consumed in a dark blanket of snow, my dreams took me to a space station that looked like something from Star Wars, with octagonal portals covered in blinking lights and screens. Andrew and I were wandering through the set as if we were in a museum, hands in pockets, eyes up and overloaded. He was wearing khaki pants and a fleece pullover, not his typical garb. But the shoes I remember; he'd hiked Scotland in them. Approaching an elevator where an attendant stood with her hands behind her back, we decided to try out the game contained inside, the game being a sort first-generation, true-to-life video game--virtual reality without the technology. I took my spot, kneeling on a cheap, moving stage that looked like it'd been stolen from a carnival ride, while Andrew looked on.
I hit different buttons and pulled on the levers and handles protruding from the elevator walls as the stage moved up and down, sluggish and rigid. We were both laughing hilariously, knowing how ridiculous this had turned out to be. The game stopped and the attendant handed us slips of paper to color in. I looked down at the outline of a little girl eating a slice of buttered bread, innocent and unwittingly coy, and decided to color her in blue and purple. With a colored pencil, I filled in the colors with vertical strokes, carelessly going above and below the lines. As we exited the elevator, Andrew handed me his little square of paper, looking me in the eye just a wee bit longer than was comfortable. He had colored her dress with the yellow-green pencil, and her hair he'd colored red. Hanging cock-eyed above her red head he'd drawn in a yellow halo.
In the morning, I was haunted by the image of the little girl, her deep wishing-well-eyes watching me, and I wondered where I had seen the picture before. Later in the afternoon, in the car with my mom and sister, listening to Helplessness Blues for the second time through, it hit me (as most answers do when you stop trying to find them): the girl in my dream is the little girl from the "Grown Ocean" video. I couldn't remember the last time I'd watched it, and I was astonished that my mind had conjured up her picture.
I double-checked my theory when we got home, and sure enough, there she is at the 2:55 mark, except, in my dream, she was the mirror image. The mind always fascinates me, but more particularly, my dreams never fail to amuse and amaze me in all their mystery and overwhelming power of recall. Perhaps they possess some spiritual power, but it could be that they are nothing more than waking life in mirror image.
My dreams--asleep and awake--tend to look something like this video, in its brilliant but faded colors, where everyone lives in the forest and dances through life; because why bother taking it too seriously? After all, as Robin Pecknold reminds us, life was made to end.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Chubster
He suddenly appears at the edge of my vision, a round, squat preteen boy with a crew cut. He's dancing on the sidewalk, sort of doing the robot, but adding his index fingers to shoot from the hip. There's a chance he's dancing for the amusement of the boy across the street, Jonathon, my next door neighbor, and I chuckle behind my book. I can't see Jonathon from this side of the truck in his driveway, but when the chubby kid crosses the street, I assume he must be there and must have seen the spontaneous dancing. Or maybe not; Chubs recrosses the street just a few shakes later. But I don't see him until he's already back on his side of the street, hands up by his ears, shaking all ten digits in what looks like exasperation, but there's a good chance it's just more interpretive dance. I've never seen him before; he obviously doesn't get out of his house much, whichever one that may be. He approaches a house a couple up from mine, rings the doorbell and waits. No answer. He rings again, cupping his hands around his face to peer through the glass storm door. Still nothing. He rings again, this time opening the door to look inside. I'm laughing now, thoroughly amused and a bit incredulous at my luck, at this free entertainment that came to me, sitting here on my front porch. He presses the doorbell one more time and then scurries off to a corner of the porch where he can't be seen by someone coming to the door. A woman emerges and spots him in his hiding spot. She is about as dumpy and round in the middle as he is but taller and without the crew cut. Narrating from my front porch, she scolds him for ringing the bell so many times and making her get up from the TV. This is surely what happened, judging by the way he hangs his head and shuffles into the house, small enough to fit under her outstretched arm.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Birthday Bookends
I concede that April 2nd has some competition for the title of "Most Beautiful Day of the Year," and that day happens to be today, my mom's birthday. We spent the afternoon buying fresh produce and working on our sunburns, and tonight we played champagne drinking games to day-old coverage of the wedding across the Lake. But I don't mind sharing the title, and it doesn't come as much surprise, considering the source of our mutual good fortune. So, today, happy birthday to my mama, and tomorrow, wear your galoshes and zip up your rain slickers.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Have You Heard...
...the bass line of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"? I mean, really? I heard it for the first time last night with the help of in-ear earbuds, half-asleep in the backseat of my parents' car at the end of a trip in the dark. For as many times as I've listened to the white album, I had never realized just how intricate Paul gets with his bass line, playing his own solos under Clapton's. I sat in the car listening to it after everyone else had gotten out, not sure if I was just hallucinating in the space between wakefulness and sleep. I informed my brother right away, immediately questioning the validity of my observation. But in the clearheaded light of this morning, I know what I heard, and I want you to hear it too.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
"The moon's a fine dance partner..."
"...but he talks about it way too much."
Do yourself a favor and spend the five bucks for this ip.
Do yourself a favor and spend the five bucks for this ip.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Presented Posthumously
I can't remember a birthday that wasn't beautiful. Even last year, when my birthday coincided with Good Friday, there were no thunderstorms at three in the afternoon; there were hardly any clouds at all. We spent the day basking in the sunlight, riding bikes, drinking wine on a patio shaded by hanging potted plants. We found swings for flying--and jumping from. I fell and scraped my knee, laughing the whole way and then getting back on to try it again.
That morning I'd woken up to the sound of birds chirping and a cool, fresh spring breeze through my open window. My mother was already up, cutting up fruit and putting it in the special birthday bowl with the strawberries painted around the inside lip. She squealed with delight and hurried to come give me a hug when she noticed me coming out to the kitchen. Then we shared the last skinny wedge of pound cake she had made, a recipe of my grandmother's.
"You're a lot like her," she said, tearing up a bit. I could feel my own eyes tearing up and glanced into my cup of coffee. Being like my Grandma Genny is something I've always aspired to, assuming it was a lost cause, my own temperament being too impatient and short-fused to be like the calm, elegant woman I knew from photographs. And that's the only way I know her; her heart gave out eight days after I'd been born, proving that when one goes out, another comes in.
Other than her name, my Grandma Genny gave me her quiet presence, her resourcefulness and her musical abilities. That's what my mother tells me. Grandma didn't waste a thing: she used cereal box wax paper to wrap up cakes and leftovers, and she recycled the rinse water from one load of laundry for the next, using the last tub of water to scrub floors. She built a desk once, using a pattern and materials she'd ordered from a catalog and reupholstered a bench that had been falling apart. When my mom told me this, I finally felt connected to something that was bigger than myself and yet, of myself.
April 2nd is always the most beautiful day of the year. The weather makes everything feel like a rebirth, like cool grass between bare toes or a bashful ray of sun on your face. It doesn't seem to matter what the weather's doing in the days before my birthday--or even if there's been snow the week before--I can count on one nice day to spend outside, to celebrate being alive. And I know that's not by any coincidence.
That morning I'd woken up to the sound of birds chirping and a cool, fresh spring breeze through my open window. My mother was already up, cutting up fruit and putting it in the special birthday bowl with the strawberries painted around the inside lip. She squealed with delight and hurried to come give me a hug when she noticed me coming out to the kitchen. Then we shared the last skinny wedge of pound cake she had made, a recipe of my grandmother's.
"You're a lot like her," she said, tearing up a bit. I could feel my own eyes tearing up and glanced into my cup of coffee. Being like my Grandma Genny is something I've always aspired to, assuming it was a lost cause, my own temperament being too impatient and short-fused to be like the calm, elegant woman I knew from photographs. And that's the only way I know her; her heart gave out eight days after I'd been born, proving that when one goes out, another comes in.
Other than her name, my Grandma Genny gave me her quiet presence, her resourcefulness and her musical abilities. That's what my mother tells me. Grandma didn't waste a thing: she used cereal box wax paper to wrap up cakes and leftovers, and she recycled the rinse water from one load of laundry for the next, using the last tub of water to scrub floors. She built a desk once, using a pattern and materials she'd ordered from a catalog and reupholstered a bench that had been falling apart. When my mom told me this, I finally felt connected to something that was bigger than myself and yet, of myself.
April 2nd is always the most beautiful day of the year. The weather makes everything feel like a rebirth, like cool grass between bare toes or a bashful ray of sun on your face. It doesn't seem to matter what the weather's doing in the days before my birthday--or even if there's been snow the week before--I can count on one nice day to spend outside, to celebrate being alive. And I know that's not by any coincidence.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Hot Tamales
We were heathens in that place of pilgrimage
eating tamales so hot our noses ran for miles
down State Road 98.
The hunger for heat, for fire, was stronger than
a desire for dirt, even holy dirt dug
out of the Blood of Christ mountains.
Two dollars fifty bought us a lot of heat and
a lot of surprise, but we practiced playing it
cool, two gringos in the desert.
Votives and ex-votos lit the patio
outside the restrooms where we splashed our faces
and washed the burn from our hands
We left Chimayó--with holy dust on our toes,
the blood of Christ flowing beneath our wheels--
profane pilgrims of Fire.
eating tamales so hot our noses ran for miles
down State Road 98.
The hunger for heat, for fire, was stronger than
a desire for dirt, even holy dirt dug
out of the Blood of Christ mountains.
Two dollars fifty bought us a lot of heat and
a lot of surprise, but we practiced playing it
cool, two gringos in the desert.
Votives and ex-votos lit the patio
outside the restrooms where we splashed our faces
and washed the burn from our hands
We left Chimayó--with holy dust on our toes,
the blood of Christ flowing beneath our wheels--
profane pilgrims of Fire.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Boy with a Camera and a Collared Shirt
He's on the phone again. This makes numero dos on the phone calls. Maybe he's a photographer. The first time I saw him, he was photographing the bushes in the pseudo garden behind the art building where I spy him smoking cigs from time to time. He's always wearing a collared shirt: first a red polo, followed by a black one of the same variety, and today he's wearing a long-sleeved button-up. From here it looks like a pale, pale pink polo...but I can't be sure.
He's always smoking a cigarette. But of course; I only see him when he's outside the art building on a smoke break. I watch as he peers into the closest bush. What is it? A bird flies out and he follows its movement: straight out to his right, then back around his head. Too bad his eyes aren't following the bird as it streaks past my window.
He's got a beard and looks like the missing link between Ray LaMontagne and Adam Goldberg. Other art students approach him, shake his hand, but I'll never meet them. I won't meet him either. At least, I haven't yet. I guess there's always a chance I might. But I'll only know it's him by the camera and the collared shirt.
He's always smoking a cigarette. But of course; I only see him when he's outside the art building on a smoke break. I watch as he peers into the closest bush. What is it? A bird flies out and he follows its movement: straight out to his right, then back around his head. Too bad his eyes aren't following the bird as it streaks past my window.
He's got a beard and looks like the missing link between Ray LaMontagne and Adam Goldberg. Other art students approach him, shake his hand, but I'll never meet them. I won't meet him either. At least, I haven't yet. I guess there's always a chance I might. But I'll only know it's him by the camera and the collared shirt.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Ceci n'est pas une vie: Révisé
This is an updated, extended and more realized version of a first draft of this post from last March.
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, but he never did. He had moved his work out into the dining room earlier that week, finding that the long mahogany table was better suited to his blueprints than to dinner parties with four other couples. His gaze was intense and steady; steely gray eyes scanned the pages, never once giving a thought 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 now wasn’t the time to bring it up. She wasn’t even convinced she wanted what she was trying to sell him. She only knew that she was supposed to want children at this time in her life and marriage, that this was what all women her age were doing, and that they were happy about it. She merely assumed it was something she had to mention because, well, it concerned him too.
She let the silence cloud her eyes and instead pictured a scene from five years before when she had first met him, standing outside the university library, smoking a cigarette and 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 transcend the temperature, to find warmth among the sunlight 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 was actually quite cold—painfully in fact—standing there in a trench coat or that his favorite book was No Time for Sergeants, with Stone’s Love Is Eternal a close second.
When he had first seen her, with those bright eyes and straight teeth, he’d immediately pictured her assimilating nicely within the designs he had laid out. She had great potential, just like a vacant lot between Spring Garden and South Streets. Her demeanor implied that she was full of stories, a great conversationalist, which would come in handy at promotion time, when the boss would need to be plied by perfectly planned five-course meals. She was stately, and only a little wild: the box 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. Her hands were slender and white, and she waved them around while she spoke, as though directing a dance of imaginary moths. He could barely suppress the flutter of surprise that came into his voice when she perched next to him and asked for a cigarette.
Through the smoke screen between them she could tell he was dazed and seemed to be a little annoyed. “You remind me exactly of my father,” she said, a glimmer of amusement entering her voice. “He never had much to say either.” He wasn’t sure what to make of such a comment so he kept quiet, pondering the weeds coming up through the cracks in the sidewalk.
She let out a lengthy stream of smoke. “He’s actually why I started smoking in the first place. But he smoked a pipe. I wanted to smoke a pipe too, but every time my mother caught me fiddling with one she would hand me a cigarette from this really ornate cigarette case she always kept in her evening clutch. She didn’t even smoke. Huh.” She paused, remembering, realizing. “I guess I really started smoking because of my mother. Cigarettes, anyway.” Seeing no reaction either way from her new companion, she continued. “But that damn pipe of my father’s… I stayed by his side every evening while he smoked it, waiting for him to impart some golden advice or wisdom, y’know? I really believed in what that pipe was supposed to mean. A man smoking a pipe was clearly a cultured man. But he just sat there, like it didn’t matter.” She had forgotten her audience, the cigarette between her fingers turning to ash.
“Stodgy. Your father must have been a bit stodgy.”
Her eyes suddenly sparkled in ecstasy, and she let out a quick laugh. “Stodgy! That’s him exactly. Brilliant…”
He had switched over to smoking a pipe shortly after their wedding, about a month after they’d moved here from Philadelphia. She had dropped out of college when they’d married—which was fine because she’d assumed she would have more time to paint independently—and he’d taken up smoking a pipe. In a daze, she watched him puffing in and out until his image 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. Anyone would agree to that. It may have been a painting of a pipe, but why should that strip the image of its name? It was her stubbornness that kept her from giving in to the artist’s meaning. She wanted to believe that images could speak truths, that people were who they pretended to be and that each mother pushing a baby in Central Park really did have everything her smile implied.
When he set the pipe down to get a better look at his work, she went over to the coat tree, sending random thoughts his direction as she walked through the apartment. “Did you know the human heart will continue to beat even after it’s been separated from the body? Granted, it has to have an oxygen supply, but just think: it doesn’t need us! How about those Cubans? Do you think they’re full of it or are we all going to self-destruct?” He never replied, and she began to wonder if she’d said anything at all. “I’d like to go to Cuba, I think. Drink rum and smoke cigars…” she whispered to herself as she thumbed the collar of her husband’s trench coat.
She took the coat from the tree, trading it for her apron. In pen she inscribed her cigarette pack with the line, This is not a cigarette, leaving them there in exchange for the pouch of pipe tobacco she would be leaving with. On her hand she wrote, This is not a life, laughing at the double meaning of it. And foregoing the necessary umbrella, she slipped out of the apartment wearing only the lightweight trench coat. Turning the corner where their building stood, she stepped into the oncoming traffic, blurred out between the drops of rain.
If he heard her leaving, he made no movements, instead focusing on the task in front of him, looking up only when he smelled the casserole burning in the oven.
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, but he never did. He had moved his work out into the dining room earlier that week, finding that the long mahogany table was better suited to his blueprints than to dinner parties with four other couples. His gaze was intense and steady; steely gray eyes scanned the pages, never once giving a thought 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 now wasn’t the time to bring it up. She wasn’t even convinced she wanted what she was trying to sell him. She only knew that she was supposed to want children at this time in her life and marriage, that this was what all women her age were doing, and that they were happy about it. She merely assumed it was something she had to mention because, well, it concerned him too.
She let the silence cloud her eyes and instead pictured a scene from five years before when she had first met him, standing outside the university library, smoking a cigarette and 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 transcend the temperature, to find warmth among the sunlight 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 was actually quite cold—painfully in fact—standing there in a trench coat or that his favorite book was No Time for Sergeants, with Stone’s Love Is Eternal a close second.
When he had first seen her, with those bright eyes and straight teeth, he’d immediately pictured her assimilating nicely within the designs he had laid out. She had great potential, just like a vacant lot between Spring Garden and South Streets. Her demeanor implied that she was full of stories, a great conversationalist, which would come in handy at promotion time, when the boss would need to be plied by perfectly planned five-course meals. She was stately, and only a little wild: the box 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. Her hands were slender and white, and she waved them around while she spoke, as though directing a dance of imaginary moths. He could barely suppress the flutter of surprise that came into his voice when she perched next to him and asked for a cigarette.
Through the smoke screen between them she could tell he was dazed and seemed to be a little annoyed. “You remind me exactly of my father,” she said, a glimmer of amusement entering her voice. “He never had much to say either.” He wasn’t sure what to make of such a comment so he kept quiet, pondering the weeds coming up through the cracks in the sidewalk.
She let out a lengthy stream of smoke. “He’s actually why I started smoking in the first place. But he smoked a pipe. I wanted to smoke a pipe too, but every time my mother caught me fiddling with one she would hand me a cigarette from this really ornate cigarette case she always kept in her evening clutch. She didn’t even smoke. Huh.” She paused, remembering, realizing. “I guess I really started smoking because of my mother. Cigarettes, anyway.” Seeing no reaction either way from her new companion, she continued. “But that damn pipe of my father’s… I stayed by his side every evening while he smoked it, waiting for him to impart some golden advice or wisdom, y’know? I really believed in what that pipe was supposed to mean. A man smoking a pipe was clearly a cultured man. But he just sat there, like it didn’t matter.” She had forgotten her audience, the cigarette between her fingers turning to ash.
“Stodgy. Your father must have been a bit stodgy.”
Her eyes suddenly sparkled in ecstasy, and she let out a quick laugh. “Stodgy! That’s him exactly. Brilliant…”
He had switched over to smoking a pipe shortly after their wedding, about a month after they’d moved here from Philadelphia. She had dropped out of college when they’d married—which was fine because she’d assumed she would have more time to paint independently—and he’d taken up smoking a pipe. In a daze, she watched him puffing in and out until his image 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. Anyone would agree to that. It may have been a painting of a pipe, but why should that strip the image of its name? It was her stubbornness that kept her from giving in to the artist’s meaning. She wanted to believe that images could speak truths, that people were who they pretended to be and that each mother pushing a baby in Central Park really did have everything her smile implied.
When he set the pipe down to get a better look at his work, she went over to the coat tree, sending random thoughts his direction as she walked through the apartment. “Did you know the human heart will continue to beat even after it’s been separated from the body? Granted, it has to have an oxygen supply, but just think: it doesn’t need us! How about those Cubans? Do you think they’re full of it or are we all going to self-destruct?” He never replied, and she began to wonder if she’d said anything at all. “I’d like to go to Cuba, I think. Drink rum and smoke cigars…” she whispered to herself as she thumbed the collar of her husband’s trench coat.
She took the coat from the tree, trading it for her apron. In pen she inscribed her cigarette pack with the line, This is not a cigarette, leaving them there in exchange for the pouch of pipe tobacco she would be leaving with. On her hand she wrote, This is not a life, laughing at the double meaning of it. And foregoing the necessary umbrella, she slipped out of the apartment wearing only the lightweight trench coat. Turning the corner where their building stood, she stepped into the oncoming traffic, blurred out between the drops of rain.
If he heard her leaving, he made no movements, instead focusing on the task in front of him, looking up only when he smelled the casserole burning in the oven.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Warthogs & Plumroots
Daddy's eating waffles in the dining room--one diamond-shaped waffle and one strip of bacon. "Daddy, that will not do, there are supposed to be two." So back to the kitchen I must go, in search of his second strip. I find Kurtis in the kitchen--which has suddenly become an office--instead of in the sink (his weekend post). I pretend I'm not searching for the lost bacon, instead gravitating to the odd bush in the middle of the room. It looks just like an inverted purple ginger plant, and I yank off a chunk, peeling it like a potato. Imagine my surprise: the tuber tastes just like a plum, juices running down my arm. I follow the drips with my eye and notice the warthog at my ankles. It's sucking at my skin (I can feel its nostrils like little suction cups), insatiably hungry for my scent. His tusks press gently on my calves, nostrils trying to grab hold, but it's not enough; that's as close as he can get. I walk away. He follows, snout pressed to my skin; I have a warthog for a friend. Back in the dining room I offer the strange new fruit root (root fruit?) I discovered while looking for the bacon. ...Or has the bacon been looking for me?
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Helplessness Blues
When I hear Fleet Foxes I see medieval knights in chainmail, ethereal. Now I see the men in an orchard, picking apples off the ground, until the spring rain comes and rusts their second skin...
I'll be trapped in this daydream, gratefully, from now to May 3. And on indefinitely, after that.
I'll be trapped in this daydream, gratefully, from now to May 3. And on indefinitely, after that.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Model Behaviour
Quitting coffee blows. Don't try it. Or maybe, don't get hooked on the stuff in the first place. At its "height," my caffeine consumption was limited to two cups--or 12 ounces--with breakfast. I don't drink soda or caffeinated tea later in the day, so this shouldn't have been a problem, right? Well, turns out it was becoming a problem, the happy high coffee used to give me replaced by paranoia and the shakes. Add to that hypoglycemia two hours after breakfast, and it just wasn't worth it anymore. I don't know about you, but I hate that a morning where I don't almost pass out is an exceptionally good start to the day.
I've been cutting back for the last month or so--first it was one cup of coffee + black tea, then I was down to just tea--and it really has made a difference. I no longer have to eat an entire second breakfast by nine o'clock and I can walk around without feeling like I'm going to fall over. Then again, I can no longer communicate effectively, a pulsing headache being only partly to blame for that. It reminds me of the David Letterman quote that's painted on the wall at my favorite Columbia coffee shop: "If it weren't for the coffee, I'd have no identifiable personality whatsoever." Terribly sad but true.
So how did I get started down this slippery slope of dependence? Modeling of course! How else do these things happen? But seriously.
I took a handful of odd jobs my freshman year of college, and one of them was with the office of disability services. Twice a week, I attended a Drawing III class with a girl who shared my first name. Oh and she also happened to be a quadriplegic. My job was to help her with her desk and in arranging her supplies. If you're wondering how she actually drew in this class, she did so with a special mouthpiece stick that had a pencil at the end of it. I helped her with that too. The whole situation turned out to be a fantastic experience for me; I got valuable drawing lessons without having to do the homework, and she was something of a mentor to me, as she was only a semester away from graduation and I was just starting out. That and I made seven something an hour.
About halfway through the semester, the teacher brought in nude models. That was definitely new for me. It wasn't the nakedness that made me squeamish, but rather, the possibility that there was some sort of nude model etiquette/code that I was going to screw up because nobody had informed me about it beforehand. Sure, everybody else would be staring at and analyzing each and every naked angle of these girls (the teacher--a hot-to-trot young grad student with curly hair, bright turquoise eyes and a deviated septum--never did bring in any dudes), but that's what they were there for. My presence, on the other hand, was relatively unnecessary except at the beginning and end of class. I knew it would be unnatural to look the "other way" for all three hours of the class, but I didn't know what the appropriate amount of observation would be (again with the model etiquette). Somehow I knew, though, to completely avoid eye contact. I shouldn't have been so prudish, though; I was practically invisible to the ten other people in the room anyway. But I did make sure to have a book to read on the days they had a nude model, to be safe.
Around the end of the semester, however, the professor started bringing in models for portrait drawings. The girls (again...) only had to sit there for 30 minute stretches, just staring straight ahead. They didn't have to smile, frown, hold their hand to their foreheads in a dramatic, forlorn expression; they just sat there and stared. Thinking out loud, I said something to Rebecca about where they came up with these girls. Was it a job they could get hired to do, and did they have to be nude models to be portrait models? Turns out they didn't; that next semester I added "art model" to my growing list of odd jobs.
My first assignment was for a different drawing class. It was in the afternoon, and, afraid that I would be late, I was high-tailin' it across campus. This was my first mistake. Not only was I nervous, but now I was hot under all those layers of warmth, and I could tell I was sweating profusely. I had made it in time--early even--so I went to the bathroom to powder my nose. I cooled down eventually, but my second mistake was worse. I had worn contacts, thinking that glasses would be too inorganic for an art class. Well, maybe it's because I have unnaturally dry eyes, but when I stare at one spot on the wall for more than, say, 40 seconds, my contacts start to harden on my eyeballs. And I know what you're thinking, but I was allowed to blink and it does not help.
My next modeling gig was actually a handful of sessions with the same painting class that lasted two weeks, every Wednesday and Friday from 8:00 in the morning to 11. This was before my internal clock set its alarm for 6 AM, but it was worth it for the money. (If I remember correctly, I was being paid 11-something an hour, which was great for someone who'd never had a job before college.)
The first morning of class, I hung around the classroom door, nervously observing the art students running around, setting up their easels and preparing brushes, wondering where the teacher could be. I spotted him, then, watching everyone like I was. He was an impish looking fellow, older than most grad students, but probably younger than 40, with glasses, a goatee, ponytail and receding hairline. He noticed me eyeing him and came over. "Are you the other model?" Say what?? Right around the time I was figuring out that this guy was not in fact the art professor, a tall older gentleman with distinguished white hair and glasses came in with some books under his arm. I turned back to the man who had just addressed me, suddenly unnerved by that, "other model."
I started having terrifying visions of me and this slick dude posing together. What if we had to pose as though we were part of some scene, gazing into each others eyes? No. That would have been way too much for me to handle, especially at that hour of the day. Fortunately, I didn't have too long to wonder. The professor spotted us right away, and set us on a daïs in the center of a circle of easels, on two chairs, back to back, separated by a red sheet hung from the ceiling.
Things started out well enough. I had made sure to wear glasses that day, which I took off when it was time to get to work; visually, the classroom was extremely stimulating, and I would let my fixed gaze wander ever so slightly--when I could tell all the students were behind their easels--enjoying the artwork hung on the walls or specialty papers rolled up on shelves on the back wall (even if I couldn't see too well); the teacher did wonders for my self esteem, paying me glowing compliments on the undertones in my skin (as if I had any part in that), which my pink shirt "really brought out." The gig was good. By about 8:30, though, my butt hurt and my eyelids were getting heavy. I vowed that the next day would be different.
On Friday I added a cup of black coffee to my usual dining hall breakfast, whispering fervent requests over the steam, imploring it to make it easier to sit in a chair and stare at the wall for three hours (minus breaks). OK, I wasn't really talking to my coffee, but I gulped it down feverishly, relying on its abilities. And, well, that morning at breakfast, my life was forever changed.
The same could not be said for my modeling buddy on the other side of the curtain. (His name was Neal, by the way, and I saw him once, with his hippie wife and their baby, getting ice cream at Sparky's, and it felt like I was running into an old friend. I use that word not because we were super chummy but because, when you know intimate details about someone, referring to him as "friend" makes it feel more normal to be in possession of said details. Anyway, we acknowledged each other warmly, just like old friends.)
Things were going well. I was fully caffeinated, and I was really feeling it, mostly in my eyelids. I was still sleepy as hell, but like magic, my eyes were wide open. I could've stared a hole in the back wall if I'd wanted to! Fantastic, I thought. But somewhere between admiring the artwork displayed around the room and making awkward eye-contact with the students as they emerged from behind their easels to take a look at me while I was taking a look at them, I felt something hard and solid hitting the back of my head. Sometimes it was just a gentle tap, at others it was an aggressive smack. When the solid, round object rested itself at the back of my head and even pushed me forward slightly, I realized it was Neal behind me, falling asleep on my head. No fucking way.
When the professor gave us a break so he could lecture, Neal and I went out into the hall, unlike the class before when I at least had stayed by the door, reading and rereading the flyers pinned to the bulletin board, pretending to be thoroughly engrossed and not wanting to be bothered. Neal took off right away, looking for a Coke-induced fix. I whipped out a book right away--Ivanhoe--hoping it might serve as a polite repellent. It didn't. It was actually a conversation starter.
"So you a big reader? Yeah, I never was into books much. My wife is, though. What are you studying here?"
"Journalism."
"Oh nice. Yeah, see, you're smart and you like to read and write. That's good, that's really good. I have a niece that's kind of like you. ...So how'd you get into art modeling?"
"Oh, I was a classroom assistant for a girl in a drawing class that always had a lot of models. It seemed like a pretty easy way to make some money. You know."
"Yeah, yeah. I started modeling when my wife was in grad school 'cuz it was the only job I could do on heavy drugs. You know, just sit there and zone out. Now I just do it 'cuz I like it. But you know where the real money is, is the weekend modeling. Yeah, they pay cash. The teacher just passes around a hat at the end of class and that's your pay. It's great. All nude modeling, though. I can give you the guy's number if you're interested. It's not set up through the office downstairs."
"Oh, OK. Sure, that'd be great." That's what I said, but what I was really thinking was something more like, I'm sure it's great money, Neal, but no amount of money is worth having you fall asleep on my head while both of us are naked and being ogled at by old hippies...
He never did give me the number of "the guy," nor did the topic of his hammering on the back of my head ever come up. But it kept happening, and I could almost tell what time it was by how soon I felt the blow to the back of my head.
During another modeling break, during another modeling assignment, I was wandering the halls of the art building, admiring the student work. In one of the stairwells, a floor to ceiling sketch caught my eye. It was a drawing of two nude models, but their images had been drawn many times over, in different poses, overlapping themselves in some places. I thought the composition was fantastic. But then I looked a little closer. My eyes about popped out of my head when I noticed that the male model had a goatee, ponytail and a receding hairline. I suddenly felt really dirty for looking at naked Neal and scampered off to wash out my eyes.
A couple years after my foray into art modeling, I considered getting in on the weekend community art class, the one Neal had so highly recommended. I had grown more adventurous in the intermittent semesters, and I thought it would be a fun challenge to stand in the middle of a classroom and toss off my robe as though no one were there to witness it, just to see if I could do it. But one Saturday morning, I spotted an older gent with a portfolio under his arm walking behind the art building and decided that maybe I didn't want a bunch of senior citizens immortalizing the curves of my thighs on a canvas their grandchildren might find stashed in the basement...
(Fun fact: I wrote this while high on coffee. It was the only way.)
I've been cutting back for the last month or so--first it was one cup of coffee + black tea, then I was down to just tea--and it really has made a difference. I no longer have to eat an entire second breakfast by nine o'clock and I can walk around without feeling like I'm going to fall over. Then again, I can no longer communicate effectively, a pulsing headache being only partly to blame for that. It reminds me of the David Letterman quote that's painted on the wall at my favorite Columbia coffee shop: "If it weren't for the coffee, I'd have no identifiable personality whatsoever." Terribly sad but true.
So how did I get started down this slippery slope of dependence? Modeling of course! How else do these things happen? But seriously.
I took a handful of odd jobs my freshman year of college, and one of them was with the office of disability services. Twice a week, I attended a Drawing III class with a girl who shared my first name. Oh and she also happened to be a quadriplegic. My job was to help her with her desk and in arranging her supplies. If you're wondering how she actually drew in this class, she did so with a special mouthpiece stick that had a pencil at the end of it. I helped her with that too. The whole situation turned out to be a fantastic experience for me; I got valuable drawing lessons without having to do the homework, and she was something of a mentor to me, as she was only a semester away from graduation and I was just starting out. That and I made seven something an hour.
About halfway through the semester, the teacher brought in nude models. That was definitely new for me. It wasn't the nakedness that made me squeamish, but rather, the possibility that there was some sort of nude model etiquette/code that I was going to screw up because nobody had informed me about it beforehand. Sure, everybody else would be staring at and analyzing each and every naked angle of these girls (the teacher--a hot-to-trot young grad student with curly hair, bright turquoise eyes and a deviated septum--never did bring in any dudes), but that's what they were there for. My presence, on the other hand, was relatively unnecessary except at the beginning and end of class. I knew it would be unnatural to look the "other way" for all three hours of the class, but I didn't know what the appropriate amount of observation would be (again with the model etiquette). Somehow I knew, though, to completely avoid eye contact. I shouldn't have been so prudish, though; I was practically invisible to the ten other people in the room anyway. But I did make sure to have a book to read on the days they had a nude model, to be safe.
Around the end of the semester, however, the professor started bringing in models for portrait drawings. The girls (again...) only had to sit there for 30 minute stretches, just staring straight ahead. They didn't have to smile, frown, hold their hand to their foreheads in a dramatic, forlorn expression; they just sat there and stared. Thinking out loud, I said something to Rebecca about where they came up with these girls. Was it a job they could get hired to do, and did they have to be nude models to be portrait models? Turns out they didn't; that next semester I added "art model" to my growing list of odd jobs.
My first assignment was for a different drawing class. It was in the afternoon, and, afraid that I would be late, I was high-tailin' it across campus. This was my first mistake. Not only was I nervous, but now I was hot under all those layers of warmth, and I could tell I was sweating profusely. I had made it in time--early even--so I went to the bathroom to powder my nose. I cooled down eventually, but my second mistake was worse. I had worn contacts, thinking that glasses would be too inorganic for an art class. Well, maybe it's because I have unnaturally dry eyes, but when I stare at one spot on the wall for more than, say, 40 seconds, my contacts start to harden on my eyeballs. And I know what you're thinking, but I was allowed to blink and it does not help.
My next modeling gig was actually a handful of sessions with the same painting class that lasted two weeks, every Wednesday and Friday from 8:00 in the morning to 11. This was before my internal clock set its alarm for 6 AM, but it was worth it for the money. (If I remember correctly, I was being paid 11-something an hour, which was great for someone who'd never had a job before college.)
The first morning of class, I hung around the classroom door, nervously observing the art students running around, setting up their easels and preparing brushes, wondering where the teacher could be. I spotted him, then, watching everyone like I was. He was an impish looking fellow, older than most grad students, but probably younger than 40, with glasses, a goatee, ponytail and receding hairline. He noticed me eyeing him and came over. "Are you the other model?" Say what?? Right around the time I was figuring out that this guy was not in fact the art professor, a tall older gentleman with distinguished white hair and glasses came in with some books under his arm. I turned back to the man who had just addressed me, suddenly unnerved by that, "other model."
I started having terrifying visions of me and this slick dude posing together. What if we had to pose as though we were part of some scene, gazing into each others eyes? No. That would have been way too much for me to handle, especially at that hour of the day. Fortunately, I didn't have too long to wonder. The professor spotted us right away, and set us on a daïs in the center of a circle of easels, on two chairs, back to back, separated by a red sheet hung from the ceiling.
Things started out well enough. I had made sure to wear glasses that day, which I took off when it was time to get to work; visually, the classroom was extremely stimulating, and I would let my fixed gaze wander ever so slightly--when I could tell all the students were behind their easels--enjoying the artwork hung on the walls or specialty papers rolled up on shelves on the back wall (even if I couldn't see too well); the teacher did wonders for my self esteem, paying me glowing compliments on the undertones in my skin (as if I had any part in that), which my pink shirt "really brought out." The gig was good. By about 8:30, though, my butt hurt and my eyelids were getting heavy. I vowed that the next day would be different.
On Friday I added a cup of black coffee to my usual dining hall breakfast, whispering fervent requests over the steam, imploring it to make it easier to sit in a chair and stare at the wall for three hours (minus breaks). OK, I wasn't really talking to my coffee, but I gulped it down feverishly, relying on its abilities. And, well, that morning at breakfast, my life was forever changed.
The same could not be said for my modeling buddy on the other side of the curtain. (His name was Neal, by the way, and I saw him once, with his hippie wife and their baby, getting ice cream at Sparky's, and it felt like I was running into an old friend. I use that word not because we were super chummy but because, when you know intimate details about someone, referring to him as "friend" makes it feel more normal to be in possession of said details. Anyway, we acknowledged each other warmly, just like old friends.)
Things were going well. I was fully caffeinated, and I was really feeling it, mostly in my eyelids. I was still sleepy as hell, but like magic, my eyes were wide open. I could've stared a hole in the back wall if I'd wanted to! Fantastic, I thought. But somewhere between admiring the artwork displayed around the room and making awkward eye-contact with the students as they emerged from behind their easels to take a look at me while I was taking a look at them, I felt something hard and solid hitting the back of my head. Sometimes it was just a gentle tap, at others it was an aggressive smack. When the solid, round object rested itself at the back of my head and even pushed me forward slightly, I realized it was Neal behind me, falling asleep on my head. No fucking way.
When the professor gave us a break so he could lecture, Neal and I went out into the hall, unlike the class before when I at least had stayed by the door, reading and rereading the flyers pinned to the bulletin board, pretending to be thoroughly engrossed and not wanting to be bothered. Neal took off right away, looking for a Coke-induced fix. I whipped out a book right away--Ivanhoe--hoping it might serve as a polite repellent. It didn't. It was actually a conversation starter.
"So you a big reader? Yeah, I never was into books much. My wife is, though. What are you studying here?"
"Journalism."
"Oh nice. Yeah, see, you're smart and you like to read and write. That's good, that's really good. I have a niece that's kind of like you. ...So how'd you get into art modeling?"
"Oh, I was a classroom assistant for a girl in a drawing class that always had a lot of models. It seemed like a pretty easy way to make some money. You know."
"Yeah, yeah. I started modeling when my wife was in grad school 'cuz it was the only job I could do on heavy drugs. You know, just sit there and zone out. Now I just do it 'cuz I like it. But you know where the real money is, is the weekend modeling. Yeah, they pay cash. The teacher just passes around a hat at the end of class and that's your pay. It's great. All nude modeling, though. I can give you the guy's number if you're interested. It's not set up through the office downstairs."
"Oh, OK. Sure, that'd be great." That's what I said, but what I was really thinking was something more like, I'm sure it's great money, Neal, but no amount of money is worth having you fall asleep on my head while both of us are naked and being ogled at by old hippies...
He never did give me the number of "the guy," nor did the topic of his hammering on the back of my head ever come up. But it kept happening, and I could almost tell what time it was by how soon I felt the blow to the back of my head.
During another modeling break, during another modeling assignment, I was wandering the halls of the art building, admiring the student work. In one of the stairwells, a floor to ceiling sketch caught my eye. It was a drawing of two nude models, but their images had been drawn many times over, in different poses, overlapping themselves in some places. I thought the composition was fantastic. But then I looked a little closer. My eyes about popped out of my head when I noticed that the male model had a goatee, ponytail and a receding hairline. I suddenly felt really dirty for looking at naked Neal and scampered off to wash out my eyes.
A couple years after my foray into art modeling, I considered getting in on the weekend community art class, the one Neal had so highly recommended. I had grown more adventurous in the intermittent semesters, and I thought it would be a fun challenge to stand in the middle of a classroom and toss off my robe as though no one were there to witness it, just to see if I could do it. But one Saturday morning, I spotted an older gent with a portfolio under his arm walking behind the art building and decided that maybe I didn't want a bunch of senior citizens immortalizing the curves of my thighs on a canvas their grandchildren might find stashed in the basement...
(Fun fact: I wrote this while high on coffee. It was the only way.)
Friday, February 25, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Pain to Live
Sometimes I think I don't want to be a writer, that maybe it's time to give up on passion and illumination and that indescribable gnawing hunger inside me. That it would be so much easier to be complacent, indifferent. Then, I see pictures of Santorini and start thinking about the theme of volcanoes and volcanic ash, life from under the ash and fertility out of death...and jump up to get my thoughts down on paper (even though I'm already running late for work). And I realize, giving it up isn't really a possibility.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Open & Closed
I'm not sure what was most at fault that night: the booze, the dress or the culmination of everything that had already happened that summer, with those people, in similar locales but at different times and different angles of light. Presumably, all of these factors were the product of a recent rupture in the reservoir of self-confidence inside me, showering me with an overabundance of assertiveness.
My Troubadour-ing summer had kicked off early, in May, with Goldschlager toasts and hikes atop Missouri's tallest mountain. Shortly thereafter, schnapps shared on mountaintops became Jack Daniels swilled neat in a parking lot off Delmar, and when we all stepped out of my car, I followed behind my bandmates with the bravado swagger of a cowboy in a spaghetti western, my hips leading and my body following.
I was fearless that summer, and my life finally felt like something that belonged to me and only me. For the first time in my "music career" I was in charge of myself. If my gear needed to get somewhere, I took care of it, and so on. If I had something to say, I said it, and everyone listened. I felt validated, knowing that my opinion had the power to influence the form a new song might take, that when I played, they were taking cues from me. My voice had been hiding somewhere in the guitar fuzz and acid food lyrics that became the soundtrack to those few months, and it didn't take long before I was singing along.
The day before the night in question, I had moved into my first apartment. Tidying up my dusty corner room with my mom in the midday heat of that August day, I had no idea what awaited me there. All I could think about was the view from the top of the wave I was riding. I had already told my bandmates that I wasn't going to be able to keep playing with them once school started back up, which was fine. My position had always felt temporary, and maybe that explains the all or nothing attitude I had when I was with them. Or maybe it was just the effect of the vibes I picked up when I was with them. I'm guessing it was the latter. If you know them you'd probably agree.
That night I drove myself to the venue. I'd been driving myself all over St. Louis for the past few months without my parents being aware of it, and they were better off for it. I was wearing a recently-purchased dress that I was pretty proud of and a necklace that clinked against my belly with each step I took, slowing my pace to a soft, slinking stalk. I walked in to Off Broadway and did what I had to do, getting my guitar and amp ready in the wings as I had been doing at all the shows of the past few months, without having to ask someone else, What am I doing?
I should confess here that one of the great things about playing gigs is seeing who shows up. It's like being the host of a party that has no guest list because you didn't ask anyone to RSVP. You hope there's a good turnout, but you don't know until just before show time who's made the drive. And even when you are on stage--which is especially the case with the stage at Off Broadway, where the entrance is behind you--friends and fans show up late, which you realize only when you lift your head and make eye contact. I know how superficial and egotistical this sounds, telling you that one perk of being in a band is, in effect, being able to count your friends, but that's just part of it. For me--for someone who enjoys being alone most of the time--concert nights were the major love fests I needed to sustain my relative seclusion. To love and be loved, to find happiness and spread it around, this makes life worthwhile. Playing shows made that easy for me.
But I digress.
As implied above, I showed up to the show filled with anticipation, exuberance and all-out love for my friends and myself, which generally translates into a tight performance, such strong vibes being easily diffused among bandmates. But that night was an exception; something was loose in the mix. For my part, I was probably so overfull of confidence that I muddled through each song like an acid head muddles through life: with a stupid grin and a light touch, but everyone else blamed themselves for a sub-par show.
Of course, as is usually the case, the only ones who felt let down by the performance were the performers. Everyone else lauded us as victors, which was fine by me. Maybe it was that temporary attitude kicking in again, the one that made it so easy to enjoy each moment where it stood at the time without wondering what was up next. Or it could have been that I was feeling sassy in my dress. With the performance out of the way, I accepted drinks from all sides: from a high school friend's ex-girlfriend who had been straight the last time I'd seen her; from my brother's long-time friend who looked like he wanted to throw me over his shoulder and carry me off, who certainly could have some years earlier, with my blessing; and from a bandmate, whose earnest profession of love and wish to take care of me I laughed off in disbelief. He persisted, but I gently evaded the question.
Slinking from one spot to another, I was tracked down by one of the band girlfriends, a fellow Aries lady, an artist, ceramicist, lithe as a willow tree and someone I would trade places with any day. She was sitting at a corner table on the outside patio, surrounded by some people I didn't recognize. "Oh, get Rebecca," she whispered. "I want to know what hers says." She called me over and introduced me to her pilot friend, a diminutive Filipino man who kept pushing his black, plastic-rimmed glasses up with the side of a chubby index finger. She had met him through the airline she attended on, but I couldn't really imagine the guy flying planes.
I inched closer to their table, suddenly pulled in by this quiet little man who carried himself like a prophet or a meditating Buddha. I reached my right hand out to him, and he took it in his, gently rubbing an index finger over my palm as though stirring a pot of potion. I tried willing my hands to stay dry, but worrying that you're so nervous your palms might start to sweat is a surefire way to turn on their heat.
"My aunt in the Philippines who raised me, she taught me all about palm reading," he said in a calm, even tone. I could feel myself relaxing, and he began. "You will live a long life. You will never make a lot of money, but you'll be doing what you love. You will have three major relationships in your life. Two will be short and wishy-washy, and the third one will be for the long-term." Sounds about right, I thought. Especially the one about doing what I love. He looked up at me with a soft, friendly smile, and I felt like we'd reached the end of a quirky commercial for eco-friendly knapsacks.
Another bandmate and his girlfriend showed up at my side then, and J- filled them in on my destiny before volunteering B-'s palm. The Filipino Buddha laughed sagely when he read B-'s lines and pronounced that he is not one to be easily tied down and is no family man, which made me uneasy, as his 30+ girlfriend was standing at his side. Hers revealed that she has the capacity to love deeply, or something like that.
He and I chatted about band stuff for a wee bit until J- asked to see my hand again. She and I always had a mutual admiration for each other, often sympathizing over our similar Arian quirks or talking about Italy, where she'd been and I hadn't yet. She wanted to hear my palm reading again to show off to someone else that had just joined us. She was always exaggerating anything that had to do with me, but I was feeling especially saucy by this point and offered my open hand like a gift.
Rearranging himself in his seat and pushing his glasses back, he took my hand again and fixed a chubby finger at its center. He peered at my palm momentarily, making a comment about my life's three relationships, then stopped. He looked up at me, amazed, confused, worried, but also looking like he wanted to tease me: "What are you afraid of?"
I stared at him wide-eyed, trying to formulate an aloof but decisive excuse for my timidity, but I was saved by some commotion off to the left, using the moment to hear my name being called from the opposite direction. I slipped away, unnerved by the near defacing of the shield I didn't know I'd been wielding, panicked at the thought that I had inadvertently laid my cards out on the table for a stranger to see, just by opening up my hand.
What the hell did he mean anyway? Was I afraid of something? If so, I hadn't been aware of it. I bought myself a beer and quietly rejoined my friends, still warmed by their presence and by the glow of the patio's lights on that still, late summer night. Little by little, they moved on to the second half of their evenings: a romantic frozen pizza for two, shenanigans at a nearby gay-bar, shenanigans at another bar...it didn't matter because I still wasn't legal. The second half of my evening involved a 45-minute drive and then, sleep between two cool sheets. I walked my bandmates to their cars, carrying their guitars, hugging them good-bye as though they were leaving my party.
Three of us, including my eager admirer, loitered around outside the venue for no real reason except that we still had things to say to each other. Who knows what was discussed, except that it had something to do with the band and wanting things to be different, or better. I merely watched them as they argued, feeling slightly detached, since, at this point, their future had no bearing on mine. I watched, thinking, more than a few times, "He wants to be with me?" It was flattering more than anything, only because he had always struck me as someone pretty sought after, at least by the girls who showed up at our gigs and liked buying his drinks. Zoning out a bit, I imagined what it might be like to date him, and it made me squirm. It made me anxious, but it didn't feel like fear.
Abruptly, he announced he had to be at a bar across town, to see a girl who'd been at the show, saying he just needed to "go see about it" but that he wasn't really too into her. I put on my best poker face to hide the surprise I felt by my stung ego, considering that three hours before, his romantic pursuits would have hardly registered with me. It wasn't jealousy that had sparked up in me but something more sinister: doubt. Suddenly, my confidence began to unravel. The jig was up and I'd been found out. I was left holding my mask, looking like little sister, too young and inexperienced to hang with the big kids. I just wasn't good enough.
I realized maybe that's what the pilot had seen in my life lines: fears of being too little for someone, of being discarded and, mostly, of being disappointed. I was already familiar with letting myself down, but I was not prepared to know it from the other side too. I selfishly enjoyed the flirting: the thrill of the indirect chase, wherein, I pursue the pursuer by appearing disinterested, but the thought of all that actually going anywhere made me uneasy. All those girlfriend responsibilities--meeting his family, late-night phone conversations, having to be interesting and desirable all the time...I wasn't ready. I was afraid I wouldn't be enough.
Did it really say all that in the palm of my hand?
My Troubadour-ing summer had kicked off early, in May, with Goldschlager toasts and hikes atop Missouri's tallest mountain. Shortly thereafter, schnapps shared on mountaintops became Jack Daniels swilled neat in a parking lot off Delmar, and when we all stepped out of my car, I followed behind my bandmates with the bravado swagger of a cowboy in a spaghetti western, my hips leading and my body following.
I was fearless that summer, and my life finally felt like something that belonged to me and only me. For the first time in my "music career" I was in charge of myself. If my gear needed to get somewhere, I took care of it, and so on. If I had something to say, I said it, and everyone listened. I felt validated, knowing that my opinion had the power to influence the form a new song might take, that when I played, they were taking cues from me. My voice had been hiding somewhere in the guitar fuzz and acid food lyrics that became the soundtrack to those few months, and it didn't take long before I was singing along.
The day before the night in question, I had moved into my first apartment. Tidying up my dusty corner room with my mom in the midday heat of that August day, I had no idea what awaited me there. All I could think about was the view from the top of the wave I was riding. I had already told my bandmates that I wasn't going to be able to keep playing with them once school started back up, which was fine. My position had always felt temporary, and maybe that explains the all or nothing attitude I had when I was with them. Or maybe it was just the effect of the vibes I picked up when I was with them. I'm guessing it was the latter. If you know them you'd probably agree.
That night I drove myself to the venue. I'd been driving myself all over St. Louis for the past few months without my parents being aware of it, and they were better off for it. I was wearing a recently-purchased dress that I was pretty proud of and a necklace that clinked against my belly with each step I took, slowing my pace to a soft, slinking stalk. I walked in to Off Broadway and did what I had to do, getting my guitar and amp ready in the wings as I had been doing at all the shows of the past few months, without having to ask someone else, What am I doing?
I should confess here that one of the great things about playing gigs is seeing who shows up. It's like being the host of a party that has no guest list because you didn't ask anyone to RSVP. You hope there's a good turnout, but you don't know until just before show time who's made the drive. And even when you are on stage--which is especially the case with the stage at Off Broadway, where the entrance is behind you--friends and fans show up late, which you realize only when you lift your head and make eye contact. I know how superficial and egotistical this sounds, telling you that one perk of being in a band is, in effect, being able to count your friends, but that's just part of it. For me--for someone who enjoys being alone most of the time--concert nights were the major love fests I needed to sustain my relative seclusion. To love and be loved, to find happiness and spread it around, this makes life worthwhile. Playing shows made that easy for me.
But I digress.
As implied above, I showed up to the show filled with anticipation, exuberance and all-out love for my friends and myself, which generally translates into a tight performance, such strong vibes being easily diffused among bandmates. But that night was an exception; something was loose in the mix. For my part, I was probably so overfull of confidence that I muddled through each song like an acid head muddles through life: with a stupid grin and a light touch, but everyone else blamed themselves for a sub-par show.
Of course, as is usually the case, the only ones who felt let down by the performance were the performers. Everyone else lauded us as victors, which was fine by me. Maybe it was that temporary attitude kicking in again, the one that made it so easy to enjoy each moment where it stood at the time without wondering what was up next. Or it could have been that I was feeling sassy in my dress. With the performance out of the way, I accepted drinks from all sides: from a high school friend's ex-girlfriend who had been straight the last time I'd seen her; from my brother's long-time friend who looked like he wanted to throw me over his shoulder and carry me off, who certainly could have some years earlier, with my blessing; and from a bandmate, whose earnest profession of love and wish to take care of me I laughed off in disbelief. He persisted, but I gently evaded the question.
Slinking from one spot to another, I was tracked down by one of the band girlfriends, a fellow Aries lady, an artist, ceramicist, lithe as a willow tree and someone I would trade places with any day. She was sitting at a corner table on the outside patio, surrounded by some people I didn't recognize. "Oh, get Rebecca," she whispered. "I want to know what hers says." She called me over and introduced me to her pilot friend, a diminutive Filipino man who kept pushing his black, plastic-rimmed glasses up with the side of a chubby index finger. She had met him through the airline she attended on, but I couldn't really imagine the guy flying planes.
I inched closer to their table, suddenly pulled in by this quiet little man who carried himself like a prophet or a meditating Buddha. I reached my right hand out to him, and he took it in his, gently rubbing an index finger over my palm as though stirring a pot of potion. I tried willing my hands to stay dry, but worrying that you're so nervous your palms might start to sweat is a surefire way to turn on their heat.
"My aunt in the Philippines who raised me, she taught me all about palm reading," he said in a calm, even tone. I could feel myself relaxing, and he began. "You will live a long life. You will never make a lot of money, but you'll be doing what you love. You will have three major relationships in your life. Two will be short and wishy-washy, and the third one will be for the long-term." Sounds about right, I thought. Especially the one about doing what I love. He looked up at me with a soft, friendly smile, and I felt like we'd reached the end of a quirky commercial for eco-friendly knapsacks.
Another bandmate and his girlfriend showed up at my side then, and J- filled them in on my destiny before volunteering B-'s palm. The Filipino Buddha laughed sagely when he read B-'s lines and pronounced that he is not one to be easily tied down and is no family man, which made me uneasy, as his 30+ girlfriend was standing at his side. Hers revealed that she has the capacity to love deeply, or something like that.
He and I chatted about band stuff for a wee bit until J- asked to see my hand again. She and I always had a mutual admiration for each other, often sympathizing over our similar Arian quirks or talking about Italy, where she'd been and I hadn't yet. She wanted to hear my palm reading again to show off to someone else that had just joined us. She was always exaggerating anything that had to do with me, but I was feeling especially saucy by this point and offered my open hand like a gift.
Rearranging himself in his seat and pushing his glasses back, he took my hand again and fixed a chubby finger at its center. He peered at my palm momentarily, making a comment about my life's three relationships, then stopped. He looked up at me, amazed, confused, worried, but also looking like he wanted to tease me: "What are you afraid of?"
I stared at him wide-eyed, trying to formulate an aloof but decisive excuse for my timidity, but I was saved by some commotion off to the left, using the moment to hear my name being called from the opposite direction. I slipped away, unnerved by the near defacing of the shield I didn't know I'd been wielding, panicked at the thought that I had inadvertently laid my cards out on the table for a stranger to see, just by opening up my hand.
What the hell did he mean anyway? Was I afraid of something? If so, I hadn't been aware of it. I bought myself a beer and quietly rejoined my friends, still warmed by their presence and by the glow of the patio's lights on that still, late summer night. Little by little, they moved on to the second half of their evenings: a romantic frozen pizza for two, shenanigans at a nearby gay-bar, shenanigans at another bar...it didn't matter because I still wasn't legal. The second half of my evening involved a 45-minute drive and then, sleep between two cool sheets. I walked my bandmates to their cars, carrying their guitars, hugging them good-bye as though they were leaving my party.
Three of us, including my eager admirer, loitered around outside the venue for no real reason except that we still had things to say to each other. Who knows what was discussed, except that it had something to do with the band and wanting things to be different, or better. I merely watched them as they argued, feeling slightly detached, since, at this point, their future had no bearing on mine. I watched, thinking, more than a few times, "He wants to be with me?" It was flattering more than anything, only because he had always struck me as someone pretty sought after, at least by the girls who showed up at our gigs and liked buying his drinks. Zoning out a bit, I imagined what it might be like to date him, and it made me squirm. It made me anxious, but it didn't feel like fear.
Abruptly, he announced he had to be at a bar across town, to see a girl who'd been at the show, saying he just needed to "go see about it" but that he wasn't really too into her. I put on my best poker face to hide the surprise I felt by my stung ego, considering that three hours before, his romantic pursuits would have hardly registered with me. It wasn't jealousy that had sparked up in me but something more sinister: doubt. Suddenly, my confidence began to unravel. The jig was up and I'd been found out. I was left holding my mask, looking like little sister, too young and inexperienced to hang with the big kids. I just wasn't good enough.
I realized maybe that's what the pilot had seen in my life lines: fears of being too little for someone, of being discarded and, mostly, of being disappointed. I was already familiar with letting myself down, but I was not prepared to know it from the other side too. I selfishly enjoyed the flirting: the thrill of the indirect chase, wherein, I pursue the pursuer by appearing disinterested, but the thought of all that actually going anywhere made me uneasy. All those girlfriend responsibilities--meeting his family, late-night phone conversations, having to be interesting and desirable all the time...I wasn't ready. I was afraid I wouldn't be enough.
Did it really say all that in the palm of my hand?
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Ice on the Sheets
I don't miss those icy mornings when we woke up to the impending stillness in the absence of leaky radiators blowing their tops.
I don't miss the dread I felt at knowing I'd eventually have to break out of my cocoon and strip off the hat, gloves and three layers on top and bottom before dragging myself to the shower.
But I definitely miss the creaky floors of that old apartment and bounding from my room to the kitchen at the signal of our whistling teapot, hoping I could get there before it cracked the tired windowpanes.
I miss my room and the way the south sun lit it up like an amber gemstone, waking me up much earlier than my roommates.
For that matter, I miss my roommates--for so many reasons--but especially for the laughter that always spoke where the radiators remained speechless.
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