The Living
July 20th, 2006: When I first met Paul, I told my friends that when he died I would not go on without him, that I would rather become a nun than remarry. Now he is gone and I, still living, sit here like a hard nail secure in the wall. I have not yet remarried and have long since changed my mind about the value of becoming a nun. I would be unhappy as a nun, and Paul taught me better than to seek unhappiness.
I remember when I first told Paul that I loved him. Sitting on the old wooden bench in a small park, the trees above us covered much of the sky with their leaves, so the sky looked like exquisite blue lace. His hand firmly held mine, but the firmness turned our bones soft as silk as if to signal the luxurious texture of the moment. Our kiss, too, was rich as velvet, and all our other gestures became like garments to clothe our interwoven minds and souls.
We returned to that bench in the park many times during college; each kiss we had there reminded me of why I loved him (not that I ever really forgot). We always moved slowly on our walks, indifferent to time or the false necessity of conversation. Our communion with each other was based on the idea that the gesture (our smiling eyes when they’d meet) was pure and perfect. The talking between us came from me. I often tried at first to talk about things: my day, my view on this or that issue, something I had heard about another person. All the while, Paul stayed quite and looked at me with a smile on his face that said that he knew the futility of my efforts and that someday I would know it, too.
His hand held mine all through these walks, his arm gently swinging with mine as if our bodies had the purposeful motion of a grand father clock ticking evenly. I came to know all his gestures: if he stopped walking and pulled on my hand like a rider slowing down his horse, I knew to stop walking and to kiss him. At first, I was confused by the forcefulness of this command. He would stop me while I was talking, and it offended me that he didn’t want to listen. But it didn’t take me long to realize that he had cut me off not just for a kiss, but to show me that this was the meaning of it all, of life and thought and action: this, to express the human ability for happiness, guiltless, unbridled happiness, and not just the happiness of one person alone, but happiness that is multiplied when it is shared between two people.
I am now old and know the art of silent confidence, the art of fearless understanding. My love is long gone, and I continue my life without him still exercising my ability to use my mind. But I will say that I miss him immensely.
Lewis Cline sat in a blue leather armchair in the study of his mother’s home. The sun reluctantly peeked through the partially open dark green curtains, and many fuzzy particles of dusk hung to the angular light. The sunlight dust made the shape of a triangle, which contrasted with the round fold of the forgiving curtains. Cline, having just read proof of just how bad his mother’s Alzheimer’s had become, began to shake, but he did not notice his reaction until a big drop of sweat dripped down his chin and splattered on the paper which he held with a pulsing hand.
A tall, sturdy man entered the room. He had the look of hard-earned confidence, the kind of confidence that comes only from having your values and strengths tested many times. This look of self-assurance made his eyes bright and wide open, but somehow gentle in a kind of quiet indifference. He looked to Cline and expressed his greeting by silently nodding his head. At first, Cline opened his mouth to conduct the typical spoken greeting of “hello”, but then, remembering that he did not need to put on airs with his father, went silent. It was his father who spoke first after sitting down in the blue arm chair beside Cline.
“It has been this way for a long time.” He expressed these words with no fear, no sadness, no regret, in the same tone that he would have used in introducing himself.
The enormity of his mother’s condition swept over Cline, as if his father’s words were a flashlight illuminating something hidden but there all along.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Friday, May 04, 2007
Here is a start of a short story I am working on. I am having some trouble working on it in Virgina, because it is set in rural Pennsylvania. I need to study the accents a little bit. Maybe I'll hang out at the Buck with my lap top to record some country talk! Just kidding.
At any given time, each of Edward’s activities reminded whoever happened to see him of a sort of chaos or kind of disorder, but, with the help of his cunning attitude, the boy could distract his audience with his disgusting charm. In this way, he often got through school with excellent grades not because he knew the material, but because he would walk up to the teacher’s desk with his head low and his chest caving in to his stomach during a test. He took up this posture not to fool the teacher, but to just git some help in school. He would pose a question, maybe “Ma’am, I don’t get what you mean. I just don’t see what you’re sayin’,” or maybe “did we do this in class? Cause I just am not rememberin’ this, ma’am.” Which ever, he made a point to draw out the “ma’am” in a smooth, buttery way. The teacher could not resist. It was not his cuteness or his charm that worked, but his pure ugliness and ignorance. Still, the teacher always explained the question in a new way until he lifted his head up and down like a pendulum, showing that oh, now he got it. The bones in his face stuck out in a mature way, like he was an old man rather than a nine year old boy, and he always wore untied sneakers, muddy jeans, and his favorite cowboy shirt.
“You ain’t just sitting on that couch there doin’ nothing, now boy,” shouted his mother. His mother, who most people called Jude but who formally went by Mrs. Neiderstal though she never had been married and Neiderstal was her last name all her life, said this to him often, and then she went upstairs and slammed her door and didn’t come down the rest of the night. She smelled like cigarettes, ‘cause she smoked ‘em a lot, and they stuck on her clothes like flies stick on the cows in summer. Her breath smelled like it too, kind of dusty and wooden, and not too pleasant.
He hung around more with his grandpa and brother than he did his mom or aunt. They built things by their blood and sweat, big things like fences and chicken coops. They bailed hay in the summer, plowed fields, and did real man’s work. Duty, honor, and America, that’s what they believed in. Paul, Edwards’ brother, was a big dumb guy who never got passed the 8th grade in school. Grandpap was real smart though, one of the smartest in town, but he just stayed his eyes to the land and never wanted any real office power or anything.
Grandpap’s house was a big, white thing. It glowed with a tan gleam in the sun, since it wasn’t warshed down often, but it sure held a lot of people and stood firm through all the winter storms. All the family memories stayed in that house, on the shelves, in the basement, on the chairs, and in the bedrooms. They said the house been in the family for years and years, long as they had the land, too. They kitchen said everything best. You’d walk into the house and immediately you were in the kitchen. Didn’t even need to go through no extra doors or nothing. The kitchen said it best as soon as you entered, with a big, navy blue sign with “Live Well, Love Much, Laugh Often” painted on it in cursive letters. This country type décor been in the Neiderstal house as long as Edward could remember, even since he were a little kid. Edward still a little kid though, but he don’t think so since just this year he started going through bodily changes. Oh, on the left wall over the sink, a sign said “Because of the Brave”. They were real Americans and weren’t afraid to show it. At different times of the year, Paul searched through the brown, card board boxes in the basement and picked out the proper seasonal greeting. Right now, since it was spring and no real national like holidays were around the corner, the country decor above the antique clock was the “Bless This Home” one. They were real good Christians too, and went to church every Sunday morning.
“Don’t you go getting’ redd up now, boy, ‘member there is responsibility after responsibility that come with being a man. I’ll beat your bottom now if you be bad,” warned Grandpap. Grandpap was always saying funny things. Once, when Paul and Edward were out in the woods cutting through briers and jaggers to clear a path, Grandpap just spit out something like “know what you gun be doin when yunz my age if yunz don work now? Gon be sitting in a home like Jude and be doin nothing but smoking your life away, smoking it away like the woods in the summer in a fire, which don’t happen much but you just got to prevent it. Anymore, people don know how to respect people who be smoking and smoking, but in my day they sure did.” He said all this with out looking up from knocking over jaggers on the path, and when he spoke it sounded like he had marbles rolling around between his tongue and his cheeks. But the words were still sharp and stayed with Edward.
Edward lived in his mothers house, which stood right beside his grandpap’s house, and was made of brick. It was much smaller than his grandpap’s house, and didn’t have country signs all through it with saying’s painted on them. Edward thought it a pretty nice house.
Edward was sitting in the yard playing with his dog when he saw the Conway’s car speed by on the narrow back road. He didn’t change his position, but kept sitting in the yard playing with his dog. The dog was a little mutt named Dossy, with brown and white spots all a long her back. She was rather ugly herself. One nasty tooth stuck out of her mouth at all times, so she looked like she was constantly growling. As Edward looked down at Dossy and noticed her ugliness and the brown clumps of dirt stuck in her fur, it occurred to him that he didn’t like her much any more. He didn’t know why this struck him so suddenly, or why it didn’t come to him until now. But she was old, ugly, and dirty. The Conway’s dog, though, she just had a litter of puppies a few weeks ago. They forbid Edward to see the puppies, since last time he pet one he dropped it out of his lap. He said sorry over and over, but it seemed that the Conway’s had no heart for a poor, ugly boy like Edward. They would not be swayed like the teachers at the Elementary school. They knew what was there’s, and how to keep it whole and unbroken by keeping Edward away.
“You stupid piece of shit! You stupid stupid boy!” Jude screamed from inside the little brick house. Edward did not know what she was screaming about, or if he did anything, but he did know that when she sounded like that it was best he left. So he picked up old Dossy and started wobbling down the pot hole covered road towards the Conway’s house. Dossy didn’t like the bumping around that happened when Edward walked quickly, and she started giving him little bites on the fleshy part of his arm. He dropped her and started running down the road, towards the Conway’s. He knew to go to the first room in the barn. The door slid open easily, the mother dog stood up to see who’s there, and the little puppies looked all cute lying in some hay. He sat down on the ground with them, and fingered their soft fir gently, selfishly. He picked one up, choosing randomly, and held its face to his so he could smell the sweet puppy breath. Pulling it to his chest, he lifted up his oversized t-shirt and stuffed the little animal between the shirt and his body. It felt warm and good, and he felt alive when the animal breathed in and out against him.
Mrs. Conway took care of the puppies. At this stage in their development, taking care of them meant playing with them and making sure they were still alive. Their mother did the feeding still with her milk, so they had not yet moved on to eating dog food.
At any given time, each of Edward’s activities reminded whoever happened to see him of a sort of chaos or kind of disorder, but, with the help of his cunning attitude, the boy could distract his audience with his disgusting charm. In this way, he often got through school with excellent grades not because he knew the material, but because he would walk up to the teacher’s desk with his head low and his chest caving in to his stomach during a test. He took up this posture not to fool the teacher, but to just git some help in school. He would pose a question, maybe “Ma’am, I don’t get what you mean. I just don’t see what you’re sayin’,” or maybe “did we do this in class? Cause I just am not rememberin’ this, ma’am.” Which ever, he made a point to draw out the “ma’am” in a smooth, buttery way. The teacher could not resist. It was not his cuteness or his charm that worked, but his pure ugliness and ignorance. Still, the teacher always explained the question in a new way until he lifted his head up and down like a pendulum, showing that oh, now he got it. The bones in his face stuck out in a mature way, like he was an old man rather than a nine year old boy, and he always wore untied sneakers, muddy jeans, and his favorite cowboy shirt.
“You ain’t just sitting on that couch there doin’ nothing, now boy,” shouted his mother. His mother, who most people called Jude but who formally went by Mrs. Neiderstal though she never had been married and Neiderstal was her last name all her life, said this to him often, and then she went upstairs and slammed her door and didn’t come down the rest of the night. She smelled like cigarettes, ‘cause she smoked ‘em a lot, and they stuck on her clothes like flies stick on the cows in summer. Her breath smelled like it too, kind of dusty and wooden, and not too pleasant.
He hung around more with his grandpa and brother than he did his mom or aunt. They built things by their blood and sweat, big things like fences and chicken coops. They bailed hay in the summer, plowed fields, and did real man’s work. Duty, honor, and America, that’s what they believed in. Paul, Edwards’ brother, was a big dumb guy who never got passed the 8th grade in school. Grandpap was real smart though, one of the smartest in town, but he just stayed his eyes to the land and never wanted any real office power or anything.
Grandpap’s house was a big, white thing. It glowed with a tan gleam in the sun, since it wasn’t warshed down often, but it sure held a lot of people and stood firm through all the winter storms. All the family memories stayed in that house, on the shelves, in the basement, on the chairs, and in the bedrooms. They said the house been in the family for years and years, long as they had the land, too. They kitchen said everything best. You’d walk into the house and immediately you were in the kitchen. Didn’t even need to go through no extra doors or nothing. The kitchen said it best as soon as you entered, with a big, navy blue sign with “Live Well, Love Much, Laugh Often” painted on it in cursive letters. This country type décor been in the Neiderstal house as long as Edward could remember, even since he were a little kid. Edward still a little kid though, but he don’t think so since just this year he started going through bodily changes. Oh, on the left wall over the sink, a sign said “Because of the Brave”. They were real Americans and weren’t afraid to show it. At different times of the year, Paul searched through the brown, card board boxes in the basement and picked out the proper seasonal greeting. Right now, since it was spring and no real national like holidays were around the corner, the country decor above the antique clock was the “Bless This Home” one. They were real good Christians too, and went to church every Sunday morning.
“Don’t you go getting’ redd up now, boy, ‘member there is responsibility after responsibility that come with being a man. I’ll beat your bottom now if you be bad,” warned Grandpap. Grandpap was always saying funny things. Once, when Paul and Edward were out in the woods cutting through briers and jaggers to clear a path, Grandpap just spit out something like “know what you gun be doin when yunz my age if yunz don work now? Gon be sitting in a home like Jude and be doin nothing but smoking your life away, smoking it away like the woods in the summer in a fire, which don’t happen much but you just got to prevent it. Anymore, people don know how to respect people who be smoking and smoking, but in my day they sure did.” He said all this with out looking up from knocking over jaggers on the path, and when he spoke it sounded like he had marbles rolling around between his tongue and his cheeks. But the words were still sharp and stayed with Edward.
Edward lived in his mothers house, which stood right beside his grandpap’s house, and was made of brick. It was much smaller than his grandpap’s house, and didn’t have country signs all through it with saying’s painted on them. Edward thought it a pretty nice house.
Edward was sitting in the yard playing with his dog when he saw the Conway’s car speed by on the narrow back road. He didn’t change his position, but kept sitting in the yard playing with his dog. The dog was a little mutt named Dossy, with brown and white spots all a long her back. She was rather ugly herself. One nasty tooth stuck out of her mouth at all times, so she looked like she was constantly growling. As Edward looked down at Dossy and noticed her ugliness and the brown clumps of dirt stuck in her fur, it occurred to him that he didn’t like her much any more. He didn’t know why this struck him so suddenly, or why it didn’t come to him until now. But she was old, ugly, and dirty. The Conway’s dog, though, she just had a litter of puppies a few weeks ago. They forbid Edward to see the puppies, since last time he pet one he dropped it out of his lap. He said sorry over and over, but it seemed that the Conway’s had no heart for a poor, ugly boy like Edward. They would not be swayed like the teachers at the Elementary school. They knew what was there’s, and how to keep it whole and unbroken by keeping Edward away.
“You stupid piece of shit! You stupid stupid boy!” Jude screamed from inside the little brick house. Edward did not know what she was screaming about, or if he did anything, but he did know that when she sounded like that it was best he left. So he picked up old Dossy and started wobbling down the pot hole covered road towards the Conway’s house. Dossy didn’t like the bumping around that happened when Edward walked quickly, and she started giving him little bites on the fleshy part of his arm. He dropped her and started running down the road, towards the Conway’s. He knew to go to the first room in the barn. The door slid open easily, the mother dog stood up to see who’s there, and the little puppies looked all cute lying in some hay. He sat down on the ground with them, and fingered their soft fir gently, selfishly. He picked one up, choosing randomly, and held its face to his so he could smell the sweet puppy breath. Pulling it to his chest, he lifted up his oversized t-shirt and stuffed the little animal between the shirt and his body. It felt warm and good, and he felt alive when the animal breathed in and out against him.
Mrs. Conway took care of the puppies. At this stage in their development, taking care of them meant playing with them and making sure they were still alive. Their mother did the feeding still with her milk, so they had not yet moved on to eating dog food.
I updated this again!
She opens the plastic pantry door, finds the box of Go Lean cereal, measures a portion into an orange measuring cup, and then transfers it into a blue and white bowl. Cameron must have just left for the office and the children must have just caught the bus for school. The house stands still in the same sort of silence that happens each morning after most of the family goes off. And of course they hadn’t cleaned up anything from their breakfasts. She can trace the exact trail of each person’s breakfast. A few kernels of Rice Krispies scatter the kitchen counter and a greasy pan sits emerged in the kitchen sink along with a bowl of half eaten Lucky Charms. She settles herself comfortably at the breakfast table as she pours a cup of hot coffee. She is still wearing her purple cotton morning robe and fluffy slippers, but changes her thoughts to her outfit for the day. Oh, for sure some jeans. Maybe her red turtleneck.
In another house a few blocks down, a woman pushes the snooze button on her alarm clock. She turns over to her husband, but, as usual, finds that he already left for the day. After feeling around for her glasses on the bed stand, she wobbles downstairs to the kitchen. Her daughter, Taylor, sits cross legged on a high stool at the counter, taking big gulps of coffee. Between gulps, she runs her fingers through her hair and adjusts her scoop neck shirt. There is no exchange here of soft pleasant words. No, they talk in low huffs and looks of criticism. She’s the bigger person; she’s the adult.
“Honey, I haven’t changed my mind ‘bout what I said last night.”
“What?” Taylor says without looking up and after letting a few seconds pass.
“You heard me. I just, it’s gonna be sewed up by the time you get back from school and I don’t want a fuss about it. Girls like you shouldn’t be wearing things like that.”
Typical. The girl swooshes her long dark blonde hair over her shoulder as she cockily rotates her body to face her mother.
“And what exactly is a girl like me supposed to wear?”
“Something nice,” the mother offers. Then, “no, I’m not talking about this. You just don’t be surprised. Girls like you should look like you were raised good, and well you were.”
Usually, Taylor would start lecturing back to her mother about how what you wear is a matter of style and self-expression, not upbringing or manners, and gosh Mom can’t you just let me be for once? Today she just turns back towards the counter and takes another big gulp of her coffee.
“And you’re too young to be drinking coffee!” The mother adds. She stomps upstairs and quickly dresses in her favorite blue jeans and shirt, pulls her hair up in a pony tail, grabs her purse, and drives away.
“Mooooomm!” She hears the words pierce through the shower water as it pounds down on her head.
“Whhhhatttt,” she yells back. The bathroom door creaks open and her daughters face peeks in.
“Can you take me to school? I missed the bus.”
“I can’t, I have a meeting.”
“For what?”
“Just ask your Dad. I have a meeting.” She stays in the shower for another 10 minutes. The water turns her body red as a lobster, but she doesn’t care. When she gets out of the shower, she looks at the flashing red time on her alarm clock.
“I’m late,” she says to herself in surprise. Dressing quickly, she pulls on a sweater that sat rumpled on her daughter’s floor, and she rushes off to her appointment.
In another house, a lady with graying hair finishes her morning gardening and leaves the house still wearing her black garden clogs.
The last lady arrives first to the meeting. She left the house after insisting on a kiss from each of her children. The day started out fine, until her oldest daughter announced that she would be going home with her friend Sarah that evening before the school dance. The mother and daughter argued back and forth. They directly faced each other and both of their strong jaws open and shut, open and shut to spit out their argument.
Two square, wooden tables line the right side of the tan walled coffee shop. The women sit in spindly brown chairs at one of the tables. The tan and white speckled floor spreads beneath the chairs, each positioned slightly towards the far right of the table. At the head, the spot that the chairs angle towards, sits a woman with brownish red hair cut into a soccer mom bob. Her red ribbed turtle neck peaks out and tightly holds up her neck, her black rain coat hides her body, and its yellow and white checker trim perks up on both side like the ears of an attentive dog. To her right sits a woman with blonde hair, cut in that same style. She wears black clogs and a brown jacket. Beside her, a slender woman with tight blue jeans, a cream, long sleeved t-shirt, and blonde hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head, throws her hands forward, side to side, and glances in with dark eyes towards the lady at the head of the table.
Their talk cracks as thickly as cawing geese, but between the cracks forms some English.
“He lives across the street from me, and when he was over seas this time, he had one going down his chin, and he was like well, you see doctors and lawyers or need to become one or you’re nothing. But the doctors and lawyers don have that. It’s this long, and he looks like a tool, you know! And just have to go over seas and this is what’s stopping him from going to Richmond at school. That’s what I told him. Yep.”
“Yeah, yeah,” reassuring voices say from the side, above, and below.
“Yeah, I mean even the way your bodies gonna change, and everything, and they’re going to fade in the midst of them,” the woman at the head of the table said to the other women. When she speaks, they all listen and stop their side chatter, looking up at her with hopeful expressions.
“Well my friend got one on the shoulder.”
“Not a pretty picture,” another lady with wispy strawberry blonde hair, short and framing her face in little chunks, half questions and half confirms the quality of the thing on the shoulder, shaking her head. Her hot pink t-shirt wrinkles up to her neck in horizontal lines when she leans back into the wooden chair.
“No it’s not!”
”And she said to me, well, I’ll just wear a t-shirt.”
“And you know how your style will change. One year one outfit will be your favorite and then it changes and you say how did I ever wear that?” says the main woman with the red turtle neck, the head goose. Then, “Well, it’s like at my sisters 50th. They asked, you know, how many piercing does your daughter have, and do you have a tattoo. And, of course, she does, or they wouldn’t ask. And, you know, she’s announcing it, and I’m like why did you get it and did mommy knowwww?” Everyone laughs loudly. “50 years old, and she got it years ago when she was 26. And I’m thinking why she even told me now. It was a secret the whole time. And I know that she told our other sister. She has a tattoo! You know, but no one else. My dad wasn’t shocked, but she’s 50 and it’s like what are you doing. And my mom was like that was a wild time in her life. She was probably drinking, you know.”
“I know. Just how many of them were drinking at that time, right?” says the lady sittin to the right of red turtleneck. Outside, the rain streams the window in thick lines.
“Yea, when I was growing up my friend wanted one, and I said I’ll drink the beer with you and I’ll go with you.”
“But that’s where I draw the line, right!” All the women laugh in unison. Their laughter starts small and grows loud and high real quick.
“Well, my son has one. It’s this wide, just huge black, but this is at least outlined dark and then it’s shaded. Well, I don’t know, the part that comes out from it is black and its an intricate design.”.
“He said the only part that comes up, I think the shirt covers it, but the only part that comes up is on the shoulder and the neck.
“And what about the dresses? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“My daughter, she goes now ‘Mom let me pick my owwwwn dress’, I have to stitch it a little, because it was a little low. She said oh yeah, that she has a brooch on the side, there’s like a brooch holding it on the side. It’s only going to fit on one leg some day.” Laughter that clinks like dishes getting washed in the sink.
“When is their prom?”
“It’s next weekend, the 5th.”
“And yours?”
“The week after that.”
“I’m sure it will be pretty. But it sure is something, that dress. It’s tiny.”
“Where does she go tanning?”
“This one up there over by rite aid?”
“Is it the one up by star bucks?”
“Yeah, yeah. Taylor carried it around in her purse though, in a can, and I asked her, how much is this? And it was thirty some dollars!”
“It’s like, what do you need that for. She goes to the bed and uses the can, what’s the purpose?” She cocks her head back and forth like a wobbling hen.
“Yeah, but still, 40 dollars for a lotion.”
“Well, she’s got to have a big can too cause she has to put it all over her body.”
“And what are they doing after the prom?”
“Well, she told me one groups going here, and one here, and she just might go with one first and the other one second.”
“Like what does that even meeeean?”
“They just expect that to be okay.”
“Mommmm, we’ll be fine, they say.”
“Oh there is no way, one boy will be driving a suburban, and she’ll come home smelling like cigars, and you’ll just know what happened.”
“It’s gonna be something.”
“I’ll take pictures.”
“Yeah, take pictures.”
“Bring the pictures next time.”
“Well they don’t even get dressed at their own house. Now they all go over in a group to one friend’s house and get ready there.”
“Jessie said, I can’t do my hair. I need a salon. And I said no, get a friend.”
“And they get these wild hair styles up on their head, like something no one real wears.”
“And what do you do with that, how is that hard.”
“You just take a bunch of hair and put it on their head.”
“Well they want a little braid, and a little weave, and come on.”
“How much does that cost?”
“Oh come on, it’s like 40.”
“Oh, that’s just the coffee makin’ you chatter. It int that much.”
“I just don’t understand,” says the lady with the hot pink t-shirt, her bold jaw-line turned toward the woman to her right.
Tan, with buttons and a flat band that ties around the stomach, one woman’s coat relaxes on the chair as it waits for its owner, who wears a baby pink sweater that cuts low around the shoulders. Some extra padding covers her shoulders and her back, like she’s proving that, when she was young, her bones showed gracefully. Now they fought to show through the fat of the woman’s back. After she got in the car earlier that morning, she realized that the sweater she put on in such a rush belonged to her 18 year old daughter. Luckily, her daughter needed to loose some weight and the sweater fit them both perfectly.
“And you know what else, why do they all have braces now?”
“No one had braces before.”
“Well, if you want perfect teeth, like the stars, then you gotta get braces.”
“That’s true, that’s true. Because some of these girls have just fine teeth, but they’re not straight enough, not white enough, whatever.”
“My daughter gets the whitening strips and puts them on her teeth every night. And I wonder why she’s doing that. People supposed to have different colored teeth. Not everyone’s born with teeth as white as egg shell.”
“Egg shell isn’t even good enough now. They want glowing, like white light, or a white fence. You know?”
“That’s never good”
“Ugh, to be sixteen.”
“And that’s so young, and they think they’re so old.”
“I though I was old then.”
“And all the boys do now is play the video games.”
“Last year, my son would stay in for the weekend. It was like someone was always there. And I miss my kids and the family time.”
“Cause now it’s like they’re all gone.”
“Even though they’re still there.”
“And in the summer we have to get used to it again, ‘cause now there’s family time.”
“And everyone needs to be apart still.”
“It is weird, you know it’s not like you walk around asking them to be with you, you know.”
“My daughter said last weekend, what Mom? You want me too?”
“Like she has too many people to please.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s not like we just disappear.”
“But they do.”
“They’re just gone all the time. Go to this friend’s house, then this one.”
“My daughter said to me, Mom, I could be away from home for months and months and I’d be fine. You might see me on holidays and I’ll be fine. And I said well I’d just die.”
“Does she want to go to Tech too? Well that’s a long time from now, let’s not talk about that.”
“It is a BIG deal.”
“It is a big deal.”
“Yeahhhh.”
“Now has she had a boyfriend before? No, this is the first one for her too?”
“Uuugh”, one of them screeches forming her hands like she’s strangling her neck, “and when they fall, they fall hard.”
“Can you believe it?”
“Well, I think my husband is clueless, because I said something to him about our daughter having a boyfriend. And he said what? And she wants to go jogging with her boyfriend, and my husband says, no, with us. He is going to DIE when she graduates.”
“Yeah, I see, I see.”
“It’s almost like they’re cool, and we’re just the mother. And the guys like to talk to Cameron, but they don’t even know who I am. But that’s fine, I’m just the mother, you know.”
“Well it will change.”
“Does he know you?”
“I mean I’m sure he does, but he doesn’t say anything”, her hand push forward with straight fingers like she’s saying stop.
“What I think is so shocking is that everything is so up front, and poof its just gone, and it’s just that person.”
“Well you were really close to Dan, are you still?”
“Well, no. Well, not really. It’s like he’s still the same kid, he’s still sweet. But it’s just the time. He’s always off doing other things. And what do you do with that? I do all the talking. I have to go find him in his room, he doesn’t find me.”
“And there’s no reason.”
“None!”
“What do you say, you know? They’re getting good grades, how do you stop them from leaving?”
“And she just says, you know, in college I’m gonna have more independence, you know. Especially in the summer, when they just keep going. And, last year the girls were on track together and they were just fine, and this year this is the first that the three of the girls aren’t going to be together.”
“Like Cameron, he’s the Dad, but you do the drop off, and you have to stay and watch them. You know they are our kids, but you don’t interact, you just do the drop off.”
“We went to Baltimore, because of the aquarium. I get a call at 8:10, and my son wasn’t feeling well and he had AP history, but I was kinda relieved because he was gonna have to get his sister on the bus and get her home, but now when he stays home there he’s fine. But anyways, he calls and says is there any other way to get in the house without a key.”
“Ohhhh no.”
“No!”
“And I said well, try grandma cause she’s got a key. He calls, he calls me back, she must be at the Y. Well, I say go to the Y. He said I can’t I’m in a T-shirt and boxers. So he calls Dad and Dad said I can’t come home I have a meeting in 10 minutes. But he ran home anyways. And he got the key and he was all right, but it’s just like you know, all this drama and I don’t need it.”
The coffee makes them talk.
“Ugh, but college. That Lauren girl got a full ride somewhere, ‘cause she was dating Dan. And Dan said he was going to try and maintain their long distance relationship. And they’re going to try to behave, you know.”
“Well Taylor’s boyfriend stayed at school back home, and they tried to maintain it again too. “
“This is the time to figure it out though.”
“This is the time, and you, you just have to figure it out, you know, and just try to find a relationship. I don’t know, I just told her to be careful. She just doesn’t worry about a thing.”
“Does she love him?”
“Well, that’s what she feels. But she’s in it, and she can’t see anything, and we can see everything.” “Well, that’s just learning the hard way. There’s just some things you have to do. You can’t pull them out of everything.”
The women throw their talk back in forth, leaning into the table, leaning out, opening their wide eyes and their mouths to talk. And making their words long to say that this really means something, and shortening their speech to show surprise. Their hands push forward in stop signs, and they shake their short hair back and forth, and they throw their chests in the air in surprise.
“These girls will just wear anything!’
“Or nothing!”
She opens the plastic pantry door, finds the box of Go Lean cereal, measures a portion into an orange measuring cup, and then transfers it into a blue and white bowl. Cameron must have just left for the office and the children must have just caught the bus for school. The house stands still in the same sort of silence that happens each morning after most of the family goes off. And of course they hadn’t cleaned up anything from their breakfasts. She can trace the exact trail of each person’s breakfast. A few kernels of Rice Krispies scatter the kitchen counter and a greasy pan sits emerged in the kitchen sink along with a bowl of half eaten Lucky Charms. She settles herself comfortably at the breakfast table as she pours a cup of hot coffee. She is still wearing her purple cotton morning robe and fluffy slippers, but changes her thoughts to her outfit for the day. Oh, for sure some jeans. Maybe her red turtleneck.
In another house a few blocks down, a woman pushes the snooze button on her alarm clock. She turns over to her husband, but, as usual, finds that he already left for the day. After feeling around for her glasses on the bed stand, she wobbles downstairs to the kitchen. Her daughter, Taylor, sits cross legged on a high stool at the counter, taking big gulps of coffee. Between gulps, she runs her fingers through her hair and adjusts her scoop neck shirt. There is no exchange here of soft pleasant words. No, they talk in low huffs and looks of criticism. She’s the bigger person; she’s the adult.
“Honey, I haven’t changed my mind ‘bout what I said last night.”
“What?” Taylor says without looking up and after letting a few seconds pass.
“You heard me. I just, it’s gonna be sewed up by the time you get back from school and I don’t want a fuss about it. Girls like you shouldn’t be wearing things like that.”
Typical. The girl swooshes her long dark blonde hair over her shoulder as she cockily rotates her body to face her mother.
“And what exactly is a girl like me supposed to wear?”
“Something nice,” the mother offers. Then, “no, I’m not talking about this. You just don’t be surprised. Girls like you should look like you were raised good, and well you were.”
Usually, Taylor would start lecturing back to her mother about how what you wear is a matter of style and self-expression, not upbringing or manners, and gosh Mom can’t you just let me be for once? Today she just turns back towards the counter and takes another big gulp of her coffee.
“And you’re too young to be drinking coffee!” The mother adds. She stomps upstairs and quickly dresses in her favorite blue jeans and shirt, pulls her hair up in a pony tail, grabs her purse, and drives away.
“Mooooomm!” She hears the words pierce through the shower water as it pounds down on her head.
“Whhhhatttt,” she yells back. The bathroom door creaks open and her daughters face peeks in.
“Can you take me to school? I missed the bus.”
“I can’t, I have a meeting.”
“For what?”
“Just ask your Dad. I have a meeting.” She stays in the shower for another 10 minutes. The water turns her body red as a lobster, but she doesn’t care. When she gets out of the shower, she looks at the flashing red time on her alarm clock.
“I’m late,” she says to herself in surprise. Dressing quickly, she pulls on a sweater that sat rumpled on her daughter’s floor, and she rushes off to her appointment.
In another house, a lady with graying hair finishes her morning gardening and leaves the house still wearing her black garden clogs.
The last lady arrives first to the meeting. She left the house after insisting on a kiss from each of her children. The day started out fine, until her oldest daughter announced that she would be going home with her friend Sarah that evening before the school dance. The mother and daughter argued back and forth. They directly faced each other and both of their strong jaws open and shut, open and shut to spit out their argument.
Two square, wooden tables line the right side of the tan walled coffee shop. The women sit in spindly brown chairs at one of the tables. The tan and white speckled floor spreads beneath the chairs, each positioned slightly towards the far right of the table. At the head, the spot that the chairs angle towards, sits a woman with brownish red hair cut into a soccer mom bob. Her red ribbed turtle neck peaks out and tightly holds up her neck, her black rain coat hides her body, and its yellow and white checker trim perks up on both side like the ears of an attentive dog. To her right sits a woman with blonde hair, cut in that same style. She wears black clogs and a brown jacket. Beside her, a slender woman with tight blue jeans, a cream, long sleeved t-shirt, and blonde hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head, throws her hands forward, side to side, and glances in with dark eyes towards the lady at the head of the table.
Their talk cracks as thickly as cawing geese, but between the cracks forms some English.
“He lives across the street from me, and when he was over seas this time, he had one going down his chin, and he was like well, you see doctors and lawyers or need to become one or you’re nothing. But the doctors and lawyers don have that. It’s this long, and he looks like a tool, you know! And just have to go over seas and this is what’s stopping him from going to Richmond at school. That’s what I told him. Yep.”
“Yeah, yeah,” reassuring voices say from the side, above, and below.
“Yeah, I mean even the way your bodies gonna change, and everything, and they’re going to fade in the midst of them,” the woman at the head of the table said to the other women. When she speaks, they all listen and stop their side chatter, looking up at her with hopeful expressions.
“Well my friend got one on the shoulder.”
“Not a pretty picture,” another lady with wispy strawberry blonde hair, short and framing her face in little chunks, half questions and half confirms the quality of the thing on the shoulder, shaking her head. Her hot pink t-shirt wrinkles up to her neck in horizontal lines when she leans back into the wooden chair.
“No it’s not!”
”And she said to me, well, I’ll just wear a t-shirt.”
“And you know how your style will change. One year one outfit will be your favorite and then it changes and you say how did I ever wear that?” says the main woman with the red turtle neck, the head goose. Then, “Well, it’s like at my sisters 50th. They asked, you know, how many piercing does your daughter have, and do you have a tattoo. And, of course, she does, or they wouldn’t ask. And, you know, she’s announcing it, and I’m like why did you get it and did mommy knowwww?” Everyone laughs loudly. “50 years old, and she got it years ago when she was 26. And I’m thinking why she even told me now. It was a secret the whole time. And I know that she told our other sister. She has a tattoo! You know, but no one else. My dad wasn’t shocked, but she’s 50 and it’s like what are you doing. And my mom was like that was a wild time in her life. She was probably drinking, you know.”
“I know. Just how many of them were drinking at that time, right?” says the lady sittin to the right of red turtleneck. Outside, the rain streams the window in thick lines.
“Yea, when I was growing up my friend wanted one, and I said I’ll drink the beer with you and I’ll go with you.”
“But that’s where I draw the line, right!” All the women laugh in unison. Their laughter starts small and grows loud and high real quick.
“Well, my son has one. It’s this wide, just huge black, but this is at least outlined dark and then it’s shaded. Well, I don’t know, the part that comes out from it is black and its an intricate design.”.
“He said the only part that comes up, I think the shirt covers it, but the only part that comes up is on the shoulder and the neck.
“And what about the dresses? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“My daughter, she goes now ‘Mom let me pick my owwwwn dress’, I have to stitch it a little, because it was a little low. She said oh yeah, that she has a brooch on the side, there’s like a brooch holding it on the side. It’s only going to fit on one leg some day.” Laughter that clinks like dishes getting washed in the sink.
“When is their prom?”
“It’s next weekend, the 5th.”
“And yours?”
“The week after that.”
“I’m sure it will be pretty. But it sure is something, that dress. It’s tiny.”
“Where does she go tanning?”
“This one up there over by rite aid?”
“Is it the one up by star bucks?”
“Yeah, yeah. Taylor carried it around in her purse though, in a can, and I asked her, how much is this? And it was thirty some dollars!”
“It’s like, what do you need that for. She goes to the bed and uses the can, what’s the purpose?” She cocks her head back and forth like a wobbling hen.
“Yeah, but still, 40 dollars for a lotion.”
“Well, she’s got to have a big can too cause she has to put it all over her body.”
“And what are they doing after the prom?”
“Well, she told me one groups going here, and one here, and she just might go with one first and the other one second.”
“Like what does that even meeeean?”
“They just expect that to be okay.”
“Mommmm, we’ll be fine, they say.”
“Oh there is no way, one boy will be driving a suburban, and she’ll come home smelling like cigars, and you’ll just know what happened.”
“It’s gonna be something.”
“I’ll take pictures.”
“Yeah, take pictures.”
“Bring the pictures next time.”
“Well they don’t even get dressed at their own house. Now they all go over in a group to one friend’s house and get ready there.”
“Jessie said, I can’t do my hair. I need a salon. And I said no, get a friend.”
“And they get these wild hair styles up on their head, like something no one real wears.”
“And what do you do with that, how is that hard.”
“You just take a bunch of hair and put it on their head.”
“Well they want a little braid, and a little weave, and come on.”
“How much does that cost?”
“Oh come on, it’s like 40.”
“Oh, that’s just the coffee makin’ you chatter. It int that much.”
“I just don’t understand,” says the lady with the hot pink t-shirt, her bold jaw-line turned toward the woman to her right.
Tan, with buttons and a flat band that ties around the stomach, one woman’s coat relaxes on the chair as it waits for its owner, who wears a baby pink sweater that cuts low around the shoulders. Some extra padding covers her shoulders and her back, like she’s proving that, when she was young, her bones showed gracefully. Now they fought to show through the fat of the woman’s back. After she got in the car earlier that morning, she realized that the sweater she put on in such a rush belonged to her 18 year old daughter. Luckily, her daughter needed to loose some weight and the sweater fit them both perfectly.
“And you know what else, why do they all have braces now?”
“No one had braces before.”
“Well, if you want perfect teeth, like the stars, then you gotta get braces.”
“That’s true, that’s true. Because some of these girls have just fine teeth, but they’re not straight enough, not white enough, whatever.”
“My daughter gets the whitening strips and puts them on her teeth every night. And I wonder why she’s doing that. People supposed to have different colored teeth. Not everyone’s born with teeth as white as egg shell.”
“Egg shell isn’t even good enough now. They want glowing, like white light, or a white fence. You know?”
“That’s never good”
“Ugh, to be sixteen.”
“And that’s so young, and they think they’re so old.”
“I though I was old then.”
“And all the boys do now is play the video games.”
“Last year, my son would stay in for the weekend. It was like someone was always there. And I miss my kids and the family time.”
“Cause now it’s like they’re all gone.”
“Even though they’re still there.”
“And in the summer we have to get used to it again, ‘cause now there’s family time.”
“And everyone needs to be apart still.”
“It is weird, you know it’s not like you walk around asking them to be with you, you know.”
“My daughter said last weekend, what Mom? You want me too?”
“Like she has too many people to please.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s not like we just disappear.”
“But they do.”
“They’re just gone all the time. Go to this friend’s house, then this one.”
“My daughter said to me, Mom, I could be away from home for months and months and I’d be fine. You might see me on holidays and I’ll be fine. And I said well I’d just die.”
“Does she want to go to Tech too? Well that’s a long time from now, let’s not talk about that.”
“It is a BIG deal.”
“It is a big deal.”
“Yeahhhh.”
“Now has she had a boyfriend before? No, this is the first one for her too?”
“Uuugh”, one of them screeches forming her hands like she’s strangling her neck, “and when they fall, they fall hard.”
“Can you believe it?”
“Well, I think my husband is clueless, because I said something to him about our daughter having a boyfriend. And he said what? And she wants to go jogging with her boyfriend, and my husband says, no, with us. He is going to DIE when she graduates.”
“Yeah, I see, I see.”
“It’s almost like they’re cool, and we’re just the mother. And the guys like to talk to Cameron, but they don’t even know who I am. But that’s fine, I’m just the mother, you know.”
“Well it will change.”
“Does he know you?”
“I mean I’m sure he does, but he doesn’t say anything”, her hand push forward with straight fingers like she’s saying stop.
“What I think is so shocking is that everything is so up front, and poof its just gone, and it’s just that person.”
“Well you were really close to Dan, are you still?”
“Well, no. Well, not really. It’s like he’s still the same kid, he’s still sweet. But it’s just the time. He’s always off doing other things. And what do you do with that? I do all the talking. I have to go find him in his room, he doesn’t find me.”
“And there’s no reason.”
“None!”
“What do you say, you know? They’re getting good grades, how do you stop them from leaving?”
“And she just says, you know, in college I’m gonna have more independence, you know. Especially in the summer, when they just keep going. And, last year the girls were on track together and they were just fine, and this year this is the first that the three of the girls aren’t going to be together.”
“Like Cameron, he’s the Dad, but you do the drop off, and you have to stay and watch them. You know they are our kids, but you don’t interact, you just do the drop off.”
“We went to Baltimore, because of the aquarium. I get a call at 8:10, and my son wasn’t feeling well and he had AP history, but I was kinda relieved because he was gonna have to get his sister on the bus and get her home, but now when he stays home there he’s fine. But anyways, he calls and says is there any other way to get in the house without a key.”
“Ohhhh no.”
“No!”
“And I said well, try grandma cause she’s got a key. He calls, he calls me back, she must be at the Y. Well, I say go to the Y. He said I can’t I’m in a T-shirt and boxers. So he calls Dad and Dad said I can’t come home I have a meeting in 10 minutes. But he ran home anyways. And he got the key and he was all right, but it’s just like you know, all this drama and I don’t need it.”
The coffee makes them talk.
“Ugh, but college. That Lauren girl got a full ride somewhere, ‘cause she was dating Dan. And Dan said he was going to try and maintain their long distance relationship. And they’re going to try to behave, you know.”
“Well Taylor’s boyfriend stayed at school back home, and they tried to maintain it again too. “
“This is the time to figure it out though.”
“This is the time, and you, you just have to figure it out, you know, and just try to find a relationship. I don’t know, I just told her to be careful. She just doesn’t worry about a thing.”
“Does she love him?”
“Well, that’s what she feels. But she’s in it, and she can’t see anything, and we can see everything.” “Well, that’s just learning the hard way. There’s just some things you have to do. You can’t pull them out of everything.”
The women throw their talk back in forth, leaning into the table, leaning out, opening their wide eyes and their mouths to talk. And making their words long to say that this really means something, and shortening their speech to show surprise. Their hands push forward in stop signs, and they shake their short hair back and forth, and they throw their chests in the air in surprise.
“These girls will just wear anything!’
“Or nothing!”
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Coffee Chatter
April 27, 2007
Updated April 28, 2007
She opens the plastic pantry door, finds the box of Go Lean cereal, measures a portion into an orange measuring cup, and then transfers it into a blue and white bowl. Cameron must have just left for the office and the children must have just caught the bus for school. The house stands still in the same sort of silence that happens each morning after most of the family leaves. And of course they hadn’t cleaned up anything from their breakfasts. She can trace the exact trail of each person’s breakfast. A few kernels of Rice Krispies scatter the kitchen counter and a greasy pan sits emerged in the kitchen sink along with a bowl of half eaten Lucky Charms. She settles herself comfortably at the breakfast table as she pours a cup of hot coffee. She is still wearing her purple cotton morning robe and fluffy slippers, but starts thinking about what to wear today. Maybe her red turtleneck.
In another house a few blocks down, a woman pushes the snooze button on her alarm clock. She turns over to her husband, but, as usual, finds that he already left for the day. After feeling around the bed stand for her glasses, she wobbles downstairs to the kitchen. Her daughter, Taylor, sits cross legged on a high stool at the counter, taking big gulps of coffee. Between gulps, she runs her fingers through her hair and adjusts her shirt.
“Honey, I haven’t changed my mind ‘bout what I said last night.”
“What?” Taylor says without looking up and after a few seconds passed.
“Taylor you heard me. I just, it’s gonna be sewed up by the time you get back from school and I don’t want a fuss about it. Girls like you shouldn’t be wearing things like that.”
The girl swooshes her long dark blonde hair over her shoulder as she cockily rotates her body to face her mother.
“And what exactly is a girl like me supposed to wear?”
“Something nice. No. I’m not talking about this. You just don’t be surprised though. Girls like you should look like you were raised good, and well you were.”
Usually, Taylor would start lecturing back to her mother about how what you wear is a matter of style and self-expression, not upbringing or manners. Today she just turns back towards the counter and takes another big gulp of her coffee.
“And you’re too young to be drinking coffee!” The mother scolds as she stomps upstairs and quickly dresses in her favorite blue jeans and shirt. She pulls her hair up in a pony tail, grabs her purse, and drives away.
“Mooooomm!” She hears the words pierce through the shower water as it pounds down on her head.
“Whhhhatttt,” she yells back. The bathroom door creaks open and her daughters face peeks in.
“Can you take me to school? I missed the bus.”
“I can’t, I have a meeting.”
“For what?”
“Just ask your Dad. I have a meeting.” She stays in the shower for another 10 minutes, so she could be sure that her husband and daughter left. The water turns her body red as a lobster, but she doesn’t care. When she gets out of the shower, she looks at the flashing red time on her alarm clock.
“I’m late,” she says to herself in surprise. She is never late. Dressing quickly, she pulls on the first sweater she finds and rushes off for her appointment.
In another house, a lady with graying hair finishes her morning gardening and leaves the house still wearing her black garden clogs.
The last lady arrives first to the meeting. She left the house after insisting on a kiss from each of her children. The day started out fine, until her oldest daughter announced that she would be going home with her friend Sarah that evening before the school dance. The mother and daughter argued back and forth. They directly faced each other and both of their strong jaws open and shut, open and shut to spit out their argument.
Two square, wooden tables line the right side of the tan walled coffee shop. Five women sit in spindly brown chairs at one of the tables. The tan and white speckled floor spreads beneath the chairs, each positioned slightly towards the far right of the table. At the head, the spot that the chairs angle towards, sits a woman with brownish red hair cut into a soccer mom bob. Her red ribbed turtle neck peaks out and tightly holds up her neck, her black rain coat hides her body, and its yellow and white checker trim perks up on both side like the ears of an attentive dog. To her right sits a woman with blonde hair, cut in that same style. She wears black clogs and a brown jacket. Beside her, a slender woman with tight blue jeans, a cream, long sleeved t-shirt, and blonde hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head, throws her hands forward, side to side, and glances in with dark eyes towards the lady at the head of the table.
Their talk cracks as thickly as cawing geese, but between the cracks forms some English.
“He lives across the street from me, and when he was over seas this time, he had one going down his chin, and he was like well, you see doctors and lawyers or need to become one or you’re nothing. But the doctors and lawyers don have that. It’s this long, and he looks like a tool, you know! And just have to go over seas and this is what’s stopping him from going to Richmond at school. That’s what I told him. Yep.”
“Yeah, yeah,” reassuring voices say from the side, above, and below.
“Yeah, I mean even the way your bodies gonna change, and everything, and they’re going to fade in the midst of them,” the woman at the head of the table said to the other women. When she speaks, they all listen and stop their side chatter, looking up at her with hopeful expressions.
“Well my friend got one on the shoulder.”
“Not a pretty picture,” another lady with wispy strawberry blonde hair, short and framing her face in little chunks, half questions and half confirms the quality of the thing on the shoulder, shaking her head. Her hot pink t-shirt wrinkles up to her neck in horizontal lines when she leans back into the wooden chair.
“No it’s not!”
”And she said to me, well, I’ll just wear a t-shirt.”
“And you know how your style will change. One year one outfit will be your favorite and then it changes and you say how did I ever wear that?” says the main woman with the red turtle neck, the head goose. Then, “Well, it’s like at my sisters 50th. They asked, you know, how many piercing does your daughter have, and do you have a tattoo. And, of course, she does, or they wouldn’t ask. And, you know, she’s announcing it, and I’m like why did you get it and did mommy knowwww?” Everyone laughs loudly. “50 years old, and she got it years ago when she was 26. And I’m thinking why she even told me now. It was a secret the whole time. And I know that she told our other sister. She has a tattoo! You know, but no one else. My dad wasn’t shocked, but she’s 50 and it’s like what are you doing. And my mom was like that was a wild time in her life. She was probably drinking, you know.”
“I know. Just how many of them were drinking at that time, right?” says the lady sittin to the right of red turtleneck. Outside, the rain streams the window in thick lines.
“Yea, when I was growing up my friend wanted one, and I said I’ll drink the beer with you and I’ll go with you.”
“But that’s where I draw the line, right!” All the women laugh in unison. Their laughter starts small and grows loud and high real quick.
“Well, my son has one. It’s this wide, just huge black, but this is at least outlined dark and then it’s shaded. Well, I don’t know, the part that comes out from it is black and its an intricate design.”
“He’s got a lot of muscle on his back,” one says, managing to catch her breath through her red turtle neck peeping up out of her checkered coat collar.
“He said the only part that comes up, I think the shirt covers it, but the only part that comes up is on the shoulder and the neck.
“And what about the dresses? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“My daughter, she goes now ‘Mom let me pick my owwwwn dress’, I have to stitch it a little, because it was a little low. She said oh yeah, that she has a brooch on the side, there’s like a brooch holding it on the side. It’s only going to fit on one leg some day.” Laughter that clinks like dishes getting washed in the sink.
“When is their prom?”
“It’s next weekend, the 5th.”
“And yours?”
“The week after that.”
“I’m sure it will be pretty. But it sure is something, that dress. It’s tiny.”
“Where does she go tanning?”
“This one up there over by rite aid?”
“Is it the one up by star bucks?”
“Yeah, yeah. Taylor carried it around in her purse though, in a can, and I asked her, how much is this? And it was thirty some dollars!”
“It’s like, what do you need that for. She goes to the bed and uses the can, what’s the purpose?” She cocks her head back and forth like a wobbling hen.
“Yeah, but still, 40 dollars for a lotion.”
“Well, she’s got to have a big can too cause she has to put it all over her body.”
“What’s that?” asks the one with the pony tail.
“A 36 dollar can of tanning lotion,” her friend proudly fills her in, stretching her torso up taller and nodding as she passes the information around the table.
“And what are they doing after the prom?”
“Well, she told me one groups going here, and one here, and she just might go with one first and the other one second.”
“Like what does that even meeeean?”
“They just expect that to be okay.”
“Mommmm, we’ll be fine, they say.”
“Oh there is no way, one boy will be driving a suburban, and she’ll come home smelling like cigars, and you’ll just know what happened.”
“It’s gonna be something, I cayn imagine.”
“I’ll take pictures.”
“Yeah, take pictures.”
“Bring the pictures next time.”
“Well they don’t even get dressed at their own house. Now they all go over in a group to one friend’s house and get ready there.”
“Well then how are you gonna get pictures?”
“Jessie said, I can’t do my hair. I need a salon. And I said no, get a friend.”
“And they get these wild hair styles up on their head, like something no one real wears.”
“And what do you do with that, how is that hard.”
“You just take a bunch of hair and put it on their head.”
“Well they want a little braid, and a little weave, and come on.”
“How much does that cost?”
“Oh come on, it’s like 40.”
“Oh, that’s just the coffee makin’ you chatter. It int that much.”
“I just don’t understand,” says the lady with the hot pink t-shirt, her bold jaw-line turned toward the woman to her right.
Tan, with buttons and a flat band that ties around the stomach, one woman’s coat relaxes on the chair as it waits for its owner, who wears a baby pink sweater that cuts low around the shoulders. Some extra padding covers her shoulders and her back, like she’s proving that, when she was young, her bones showed gracefully. Now they fought to show through the fat of the woman’s back. After she got in the car earlier that morning, she realized that the sweater she put on in such a rush belonged to her 18 year old daughter. Luckily, her daughter needed to loose some weight and the sweater fit them both perfectly.
“And you know what else, why do they all have braces now?”
“No one had braces before.”
“Well, if you want perfect teeth, like the stars, then you gotta get braces.”
“That’s true, that’s true. Because some of these girls have just fine teeth, but they’re not straight enough, not white enough, whatever.”
“My daughter gets the whitening strips and puts them on her teeth every night. And I wonder why she’s doing that. People supposed to have different colored teeth. Not everyone’s born with teeth as white as egg shell.”
“Egg shell isn’t even good enough now. They want glowing, like white light, or a white fence. You know?”
“That’s never good”
“Is Anna going to the dance today?”
“I dun know,” her shoulders shrug up out of her cut off pink shirt.
“Andy didn’t have a clue about it”
“Yea, Anne sed the only one goin is Ryan.”
“Ugh, to be sixteen.”
“And that’s so young, and they think they’re so old.”
“I though I was old then.”
“Yeesss!”
“And all the boys do now is play the video games.”
“Last year, my son would stay in for the weekend. It was like someone was always there. And I miss my kids and the family time.”
“Cause now it’s like they’re all gone.”
“Even though they’re still there.”
“And in the summer we have to get used to it again, ‘cause now there’s family time.”
“And everyone needs to be apart still.”
“It is weird, you know it’s not like you walk around asking them to be with you, you know.”
“My daughter said last weekend, what Mom? You want me too?”
“Like she has too many people to please.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s not like we just disappear.”
“But they do.”
“They’re just gone all the time. Go to this friend’s house, then this one.”
“My daughter said to me, Mom, I could be away from home for months and months and I’d be fine. You might see me on holidays and I’ll be fine. And I said well I’d just die.”
“Does she want to go to Tech too? Well that’s a long time from now, let’s not talk about that.”
“It is a BIG deal.”
“It is a big deal.”
“Yeahhhh.”
“Now has she had a boyfriend before? No, this is the first one for her too?”
“Uuugh”, one of them screeches forming her hands like she’s strangling her neck, “and when they fall, they fall hard.”
“Can you believe it?”
“Well, I think my husband is clueless, because I said something to him about our daughter having a boyfriend. And he said what? And she wants to go jogging with her boyfriend, and my husband says, no, with us. He is going to DIE when she graduates.”
“Yeah, I see, I see.”
“It’s almost like they’re cool, and we’re just the mother. And the guys like to talk to Cameron, but they don’t even know who I am. But that’s fine, I’m just the mother, you know.”
“Well it will change.”
“Does he know you?”
“I mean I’m sure he does, but he doesn’t say anything”, her hand push forward with straight fingers like she’s saying stop.
“What I think is so shocking is that everything is so up front, and poof its just gone, and it’s just that person.”
“Well you were really close to Dan, are you still?”
“Well, no. Well, not really. It’s like he’s still the same kid, he’s still sweet. But it’s just the time. He’s always off doing other things. And what do you do with that? I do all the talking. I have to go find him in his room, he doesn’t find me.”
“With my daughter, she’s on the go a lot. But she’s always on the move. And I have to pull her in and say you know this is our house, and you need to be here. She’s always out somewhere.”
“And there’s no reason.”
“None!”
“What do you say, you know? They’re getting good grades, how do you stop them from leaving?”
“And she just says, you know, in college I’m gonna have more independence, you know. Especially in the summer, when they just keep going. And, last year the girls were on track together and they were just fine, and this year this is the first that the three of the girls aren’t going to be together.”
“Like Cameron, he’s the Dad, but you do the drop off, and you have to stay and watch them. You know they are our kids, but you don’t interact, you just do the drop off.”
“We went to Baltimore, because of the aquarium. I get a call at 8:10, and my son wasn’t feeling well and he had AP history, but I was kinda relieved because he was gonna have to get his sister on the bus and get her home, but now when he stays home there he’s fine. But anyways, he calls and says is there any other way to get in the house without a key.”
“Ohhhh no.”
“No!”
“And I said well, try grandma cause she’s got a key. He calls, he calls me back, she must be at the Y. Well, I say go to the Y. He said I can’t I’m in a T-shirt and boxers. So he calls Dad and Dad said I can’t come home I have a meeting in 10 minutes. But he ran home anyways. And he got the key and he was all right, but it’s just like you know, all this drama and I don’t need it.”
The coffee makes them talk.
“Ugh, but college. That Lauren girl got a full ride somewhere, ‘cause she was dating Dan. And Dan said he was going to try and maintain their long distance relationship. And they’re going to try to behave, you know.”
“Well Taylor’s boyfriend stayed at school back home, and they tried to maintain it again too. “
“This is the time to figure it out though.”
“This is the time, and you, you just have to figure it out, you know, and just try to find a relationship. I don’t know, I just told her to be careful. She just doesn’t worry about a thing.”
“Does she love him?”
“Well, that’s what she feels. But she’s in it, and she can’t see anything, and we can see everything.” “Well, that’s just learning the hard way. There’s just some things you have to do. You can’t pull them out of everything.”
The women throw their talk back in forth, leaning into the table, leaning out, opening their wide eyes and their mouths to talk. And making their words long to say that this really means something, and shortening their speech to show surprise. Their hands push forward in stop signs, and they shake their short hair back and forth, and they throw their chests in the air in surprise.
“These girls will just wear anything!’
“Or nothing!”
April 27, 2007
Updated April 28, 2007
She opens the plastic pantry door, finds the box of Go Lean cereal, measures a portion into an orange measuring cup, and then transfers it into a blue and white bowl. Cameron must have just left for the office and the children must have just caught the bus for school. The house stands still in the same sort of silence that happens each morning after most of the family leaves. And of course they hadn’t cleaned up anything from their breakfasts. She can trace the exact trail of each person’s breakfast. A few kernels of Rice Krispies scatter the kitchen counter and a greasy pan sits emerged in the kitchen sink along with a bowl of half eaten Lucky Charms. She settles herself comfortably at the breakfast table as she pours a cup of hot coffee. She is still wearing her purple cotton morning robe and fluffy slippers, but starts thinking about what to wear today. Maybe her red turtleneck.
In another house a few blocks down, a woman pushes the snooze button on her alarm clock. She turns over to her husband, but, as usual, finds that he already left for the day. After feeling around the bed stand for her glasses, she wobbles downstairs to the kitchen. Her daughter, Taylor, sits cross legged on a high stool at the counter, taking big gulps of coffee. Between gulps, she runs her fingers through her hair and adjusts her shirt.
“Honey, I haven’t changed my mind ‘bout what I said last night.”
“What?” Taylor says without looking up and after a few seconds passed.
“Taylor you heard me. I just, it’s gonna be sewed up by the time you get back from school and I don’t want a fuss about it. Girls like you shouldn’t be wearing things like that.”
The girl swooshes her long dark blonde hair over her shoulder as she cockily rotates her body to face her mother.
“And what exactly is a girl like me supposed to wear?”
“Something nice. No. I’m not talking about this. You just don’t be surprised though. Girls like you should look like you were raised good, and well you were.”
Usually, Taylor would start lecturing back to her mother about how what you wear is a matter of style and self-expression, not upbringing or manners. Today she just turns back towards the counter and takes another big gulp of her coffee.
“And you’re too young to be drinking coffee!” The mother scolds as she stomps upstairs and quickly dresses in her favorite blue jeans and shirt. She pulls her hair up in a pony tail, grabs her purse, and drives away.
“Mooooomm!” She hears the words pierce through the shower water as it pounds down on her head.
“Whhhhatttt,” she yells back. The bathroom door creaks open and her daughters face peeks in.
“Can you take me to school? I missed the bus.”
“I can’t, I have a meeting.”
“For what?”
“Just ask your Dad. I have a meeting.” She stays in the shower for another 10 minutes, so she could be sure that her husband and daughter left. The water turns her body red as a lobster, but she doesn’t care. When she gets out of the shower, she looks at the flashing red time on her alarm clock.
“I’m late,” she says to herself in surprise. She is never late. Dressing quickly, she pulls on the first sweater she finds and rushes off for her appointment.
In another house, a lady with graying hair finishes her morning gardening and leaves the house still wearing her black garden clogs.
The last lady arrives first to the meeting. She left the house after insisting on a kiss from each of her children. The day started out fine, until her oldest daughter announced that she would be going home with her friend Sarah that evening before the school dance. The mother and daughter argued back and forth. They directly faced each other and both of their strong jaws open and shut, open and shut to spit out their argument.
Two square, wooden tables line the right side of the tan walled coffee shop. Five women sit in spindly brown chairs at one of the tables. The tan and white speckled floor spreads beneath the chairs, each positioned slightly towards the far right of the table. At the head, the spot that the chairs angle towards, sits a woman with brownish red hair cut into a soccer mom bob. Her red ribbed turtle neck peaks out and tightly holds up her neck, her black rain coat hides her body, and its yellow and white checker trim perks up on both side like the ears of an attentive dog. To her right sits a woman with blonde hair, cut in that same style. She wears black clogs and a brown jacket. Beside her, a slender woman with tight blue jeans, a cream, long sleeved t-shirt, and blonde hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head, throws her hands forward, side to side, and glances in with dark eyes towards the lady at the head of the table.
Their talk cracks as thickly as cawing geese, but between the cracks forms some English.
“He lives across the street from me, and when he was over seas this time, he had one going down his chin, and he was like well, you see doctors and lawyers or need to become one or you’re nothing. But the doctors and lawyers don have that. It’s this long, and he looks like a tool, you know! And just have to go over seas and this is what’s stopping him from going to Richmond at school. That’s what I told him. Yep.”
“Yeah, yeah,” reassuring voices say from the side, above, and below.
“Yeah, I mean even the way your bodies gonna change, and everything, and they’re going to fade in the midst of them,” the woman at the head of the table said to the other women. When she speaks, they all listen and stop their side chatter, looking up at her with hopeful expressions.
“Well my friend got one on the shoulder.”
“Not a pretty picture,” another lady with wispy strawberry blonde hair, short and framing her face in little chunks, half questions and half confirms the quality of the thing on the shoulder, shaking her head. Her hot pink t-shirt wrinkles up to her neck in horizontal lines when she leans back into the wooden chair.
“No it’s not!”
”And she said to me, well, I’ll just wear a t-shirt.”
“And you know how your style will change. One year one outfit will be your favorite and then it changes and you say how did I ever wear that?” says the main woman with the red turtle neck, the head goose. Then, “Well, it’s like at my sisters 50th. They asked, you know, how many piercing does your daughter have, and do you have a tattoo. And, of course, she does, or they wouldn’t ask. And, you know, she’s announcing it, and I’m like why did you get it and did mommy knowwww?” Everyone laughs loudly. “50 years old, and she got it years ago when she was 26. And I’m thinking why she even told me now. It was a secret the whole time. And I know that she told our other sister. She has a tattoo! You know, but no one else. My dad wasn’t shocked, but she’s 50 and it’s like what are you doing. And my mom was like that was a wild time in her life. She was probably drinking, you know.”
“I know. Just how many of them were drinking at that time, right?” says the lady sittin to the right of red turtleneck. Outside, the rain streams the window in thick lines.
“Yea, when I was growing up my friend wanted one, and I said I’ll drink the beer with you and I’ll go with you.”
“But that’s where I draw the line, right!” All the women laugh in unison. Their laughter starts small and grows loud and high real quick.
“Well, my son has one. It’s this wide, just huge black, but this is at least outlined dark and then it’s shaded. Well, I don’t know, the part that comes out from it is black and its an intricate design.”
“He’s got a lot of muscle on his back,” one says, managing to catch her breath through her red turtle neck peeping up out of her checkered coat collar.
“He said the only part that comes up, I think the shirt covers it, but the only part that comes up is on the shoulder and the neck.
“And what about the dresses? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“My daughter, she goes now ‘Mom let me pick my owwwwn dress’, I have to stitch it a little, because it was a little low. She said oh yeah, that she has a brooch on the side, there’s like a brooch holding it on the side. It’s only going to fit on one leg some day.” Laughter that clinks like dishes getting washed in the sink.
“When is their prom?”
“It’s next weekend, the 5th.”
“And yours?”
“The week after that.”
“I’m sure it will be pretty. But it sure is something, that dress. It’s tiny.”
“Where does she go tanning?”
“This one up there over by rite aid?”
“Is it the one up by star bucks?”
“Yeah, yeah. Taylor carried it around in her purse though, in a can, and I asked her, how much is this? And it was thirty some dollars!”
“It’s like, what do you need that for. She goes to the bed and uses the can, what’s the purpose?” She cocks her head back and forth like a wobbling hen.
“Yeah, but still, 40 dollars for a lotion.”
“Well, she’s got to have a big can too cause she has to put it all over her body.”
“What’s that?” asks the one with the pony tail.
“A 36 dollar can of tanning lotion,” her friend proudly fills her in, stretching her torso up taller and nodding as she passes the information around the table.
“And what are they doing after the prom?”
“Well, she told me one groups going here, and one here, and she just might go with one first and the other one second.”
“Like what does that even meeeean?”
“They just expect that to be okay.”
“Mommmm, we’ll be fine, they say.”
“Oh there is no way, one boy will be driving a suburban, and she’ll come home smelling like cigars, and you’ll just know what happened.”
“It’s gonna be something, I cayn imagine.”
“I’ll take pictures.”
“Yeah, take pictures.”
“Bring the pictures next time.”
“Well they don’t even get dressed at their own house. Now they all go over in a group to one friend’s house and get ready there.”
“Well then how are you gonna get pictures?”
“Jessie said, I can’t do my hair. I need a salon. And I said no, get a friend.”
“And they get these wild hair styles up on their head, like something no one real wears.”
“And what do you do with that, how is that hard.”
“You just take a bunch of hair and put it on their head.”
“Well they want a little braid, and a little weave, and come on.”
“How much does that cost?”
“Oh come on, it’s like 40.”
“Oh, that’s just the coffee makin’ you chatter. It int that much.”
“I just don’t understand,” says the lady with the hot pink t-shirt, her bold jaw-line turned toward the woman to her right.
Tan, with buttons and a flat band that ties around the stomach, one woman’s coat relaxes on the chair as it waits for its owner, who wears a baby pink sweater that cuts low around the shoulders. Some extra padding covers her shoulders and her back, like she’s proving that, when she was young, her bones showed gracefully. Now they fought to show through the fat of the woman’s back. After she got in the car earlier that morning, she realized that the sweater she put on in such a rush belonged to her 18 year old daughter. Luckily, her daughter needed to loose some weight and the sweater fit them both perfectly.
“And you know what else, why do they all have braces now?”
“No one had braces before.”
“Well, if you want perfect teeth, like the stars, then you gotta get braces.”
“That’s true, that’s true. Because some of these girls have just fine teeth, but they’re not straight enough, not white enough, whatever.”
“My daughter gets the whitening strips and puts them on her teeth every night. And I wonder why she’s doing that. People supposed to have different colored teeth. Not everyone’s born with teeth as white as egg shell.”
“Egg shell isn’t even good enough now. They want glowing, like white light, or a white fence. You know?”
“That’s never good”
“Is Anna going to the dance today?”
“I dun know,” her shoulders shrug up out of her cut off pink shirt.
“Andy didn’t have a clue about it”
“Yea, Anne sed the only one goin is Ryan.”
“Ugh, to be sixteen.”
“And that’s so young, and they think they’re so old.”
“I though I was old then.”
“Yeesss!”
“And all the boys do now is play the video games.”
“Last year, my son would stay in for the weekend. It was like someone was always there. And I miss my kids and the family time.”
“Cause now it’s like they’re all gone.”
“Even though they’re still there.”
“And in the summer we have to get used to it again, ‘cause now there’s family time.”
“And everyone needs to be apart still.”
“It is weird, you know it’s not like you walk around asking them to be with you, you know.”
“My daughter said last weekend, what Mom? You want me too?”
“Like she has too many people to please.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s not like we just disappear.”
“But they do.”
“They’re just gone all the time. Go to this friend’s house, then this one.”
“My daughter said to me, Mom, I could be away from home for months and months and I’d be fine. You might see me on holidays and I’ll be fine. And I said well I’d just die.”
“Does she want to go to Tech too? Well that’s a long time from now, let’s not talk about that.”
“It is a BIG deal.”
“It is a big deal.”
“Yeahhhh.”
“Now has she had a boyfriend before? No, this is the first one for her too?”
“Uuugh”, one of them screeches forming her hands like she’s strangling her neck, “and when they fall, they fall hard.”
“Can you believe it?”
“Well, I think my husband is clueless, because I said something to him about our daughter having a boyfriend. And he said what? And she wants to go jogging with her boyfriend, and my husband says, no, with us. He is going to DIE when she graduates.”
“Yeah, I see, I see.”
“It’s almost like they’re cool, and we’re just the mother. And the guys like to talk to Cameron, but they don’t even know who I am. But that’s fine, I’m just the mother, you know.”
“Well it will change.”
“Does he know you?”
“I mean I’m sure he does, but he doesn’t say anything”, her hand push forward with straight fingers like she’s saying stop.
“What I think is so shocking is that everything is so up front, and poof its just gone, and it’s just that person.”
“Well you were really close to Dan, are you still?”
“Well, no. Well, not really. It’s like he’s still the same kid, he’s still sweet. But it’s just the time. He’s always off doing other things. And what do you do with that? I do all the talking. I have to go find him in his room, he doesn’t find me.”
“With my daughter, she’s on the go a lot. But she’s always on the move. And I have to pull her in and say you know this is our house, and you need to be here. She’s always out somewhere.”
“And there’s no reason.”
“None!”
“What do you say, you know? They’re getting good grades, how do you stop them from leaving?”
“And she just says, you know, in college I’m gonna have more independence, you know. Especially in the summer, when they just keep going. And, last year the girls were on track together and they were just fine, and this year this is the first that the three of the girls aren’t going to be together.”
“Like Cameron, he’s the Dad, but you do the drop off, and you have to stay and watch them. You know they are our kids, but you don’t interact, you just do the drop off.”
“We went to Baltimore, because of the aquarium. I get a call at 8:10, and my son wasn’t feeling well and he had AP history, but I was kinda relieved because he was gonna have to get his sister on the bus and get her home, but now when he stays home there he’s fine. But anyways, he calls and says is there any other way to get in the house without a key.”
“Ohhhh no.”
“No!”
“And I said well, try grandma cause she’s got a key. He calls, he calls me back, she must be at the Y. Well, I say go to the Y. He said I can’t I’m in a T-shirt and boxers. So he calls Dad and Dad said I can’t come home I have a meeting in 10 minutes. But he ran home anyways. And he got the key and he was all right, but it’s just like you know, all this drama and I don’t need it.”
The coffee makes them talk.
“Ugh, but college. That Lauren girl got a full ride somewhere, ‘cause she was dating Dan. And Dan said he was going to try and maintain their long distance relationship. And they’re going to try to behave, you know.”
“Well Taylor’s boyfriend stayed at school back home, and they tried to maintain it again too. “
“This is the time to figure it out though.”
“This is the time, and you, you just have to figure it out, you know, and just try to find a relationship. I don’t know, I just told her to be careful. She just doesn’t worry about a thing.”
“Does she love him?”
“Well, that’s what she feels. But she’s in it, and she can’t see anything, and we can see everything.” “Well, that’s just learning the hard way. There’s just some things you have to do. You can’t pull them out of everything.”
The women throw their talk back in forth, leaning into the table, leaning out, opening their wide eyes and their mouths to talk. And making their words long to say that this really means something, and shortening their speech to show surprise. Their hands push forward in stop signs, and they shake their short hair back and forth, and they throw their chests in the air in surprise.
“These girls will just wear anything!’
“Or nothing!”
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Updated April 25, 2007
Note: My goal with this piece is to pay attention to minute detail. I hope to describe textural definition and shed light on the ability of the eye to focus in on the extraordinary.
The stone slate, broken in uneven slabs,
Cemented to form a courtyard floor,
By the town hall, in Ashland,
Is laid on by lime green needles
That fell from the shady trees whose
Leaves look like miniature, green, unpainted
Oriental fans. Or like giant algae,
The size of a baby’s hand.
Scaly chips of flowers
Who have passed from their youth at the end
Of a stem to this iridescent slate
Touch the stone delicately, like an old woman’s hand
Illuminated in the moonlight, touched to
Her lovers face.
In some cracks, brown green piles
Of the needles, and some mulch chips gather.
An ant zig zags.
He carries something: A bite of a fallen flower
(Oversized fly wings, but white and pink)
All crisp and flaky like paper, and dead.
He marches off with his prize.
And another one goes, frantically.
The ants move, more than before, the longer
The gaze holds, focusing in as binoculars, the more ants appear.
They skim the stone as uncontrolled
As Children driving bumper cars.
Note: My goal with this piece is to pay attention to minute detail. I hope to describe textural definition and shed light on the ability of the eye to focus in on the extraordinary.
The stone slate, broken in uneven slabs,
Cemented to form a courtyard floor,
By the town hall, in Ashland,
Is laid on by lime green needles
That fell from the shady trees whose
Leaves look like miniature, green, unpainted
Oriental fans. Or like giant algae,
The size of a baby’s hand.
Scaly chips of flowers
Who have passed from their youth at the end
Of a stem to this iridescent slate
Touch the stone delicately, like an old woman’s hand
Illuminated in the moonlight, touched to
Her lovers face.
In some cracks, brown green piles
Of the needles, and some mulch chips gather.
An ant zig zags.
He carries something: A bite of a fallen flower
(Oversized fly wings, but white and pink)
All crisp and flaky like paper, and dead.
He marches off with his prize.
And another one goes, frantically.
The ants move, more than before, the longer
The gaze holds, focusing in as binoculars, the more ants appear.
They skim the stone as uncontrolled
As Children driving bumper cars.
I wrote this a year and a half ago:
To feel pain. To feel love. To feel warmth. Summer rain beating against a dewy window. Crying until your eyes turn blue. The sizzle of walking on hot pavement. Diving into a freezingpool of water. Running in the crisp autumn air until your breath hurts. Turning over the silkycloth of a pillow in the deep night, feeling the underlying side’s cool refreshment. A meal. Waterstreaming off your body after standing up in the bath tub. Naked feet pressing into a richcarpet. Listening. Silence.
To feel pain. To feel love. To feel warmth. Summer rain beating against a dewy window. Crying until your eyes turn blue. The sizzle of walking on hot pavement. Diving into a freezingpool of water. Running in the crisp autumn air until your breath hurts. Turning over the silkycloth of a pillow in the deep night, feeling the underlying side’s cool refreshment. A meal. Waterstreaming off your body after standing up in the bath tub. Naked feet pressing into a richcarpet. Listening. Silence.
The Ants
(Draft 1)
The stone slate, broken in uneven slabs,
Cemented to form a courtyard floor,
By the town hall, in Ashland,
Is laid on by lime green needles
That fell from the shady trees whose
Leaves look like miniature, green, unpainted
Oriental fans. Or like giant algae,
The size of a baby’s hand.
Scaly, feather like chips of flowers
Who have passed from their youth
At the end of a stem to this iridescent slate
Touch the stone delicately, like a woman’s hand
Illuminated in the moonlight, touched to
Her lovers face.
In some cracks, brown green piles
Of the needles, and some mulch chips gather.
An ant zig zags.
He carries something, white and pink:
A bite of the pod like feather flowers
All crisp and flaky like paper, and dead.
He marches off with his prize.
And another one goes, frantically.
The ants move, more than before, the longer
The gaze holds, the more ants appear.
They skim the stone like uncontrolled
Children driving bumper cars, or like ice skaters.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Star Stories #2
Tall trees, tall like giants, stand in clusters. Their trunks are naked from winter, and their branches bend in curves and curl like corkscrews. They are willows and oaks. A ballerina stands beneath the open sky. The world is just the girl and the trees. Her skin is pale and she looks to the stars that dot the sky like sprinkles on an ice-cream cone. The stars glow brightly. Her skin glows as the stars, and when she dances her dress of iridescent blue and grey seashells shakes. The shells are cracked and just little chunks of clamshells, and they click like heavy rain beating against a glass window in a summer storm. The ballerina dances a smooth dance with many twirls and reaches to the stars. She shakes her seashell tutu, and, like hard rain, the stars drop slowly out of the sky into her hands and speed up like popcorn popping in the microwave. The stars then blend into her hands. The lights of her skin and of the stars blend together like a thumb smeared finger painting. She becomes one with the stars, dancing into the sky. Her sea-shell skirt still can be seen twinkling in the sky since she has taught the other stars her dance.
Tall trees, tall like giants, stand in clusters. Their trunks are naked from winter, and their branches bend in curves and curl like corkscrews. They are willows and oaks. A ballerina stands beneath the open sky. The world is just the girl and the trees. Her skin is pale and she looks to the stars that dot the sky like sprinkles on an ice-cream cone. The stars glow brightly. Her skin glows as the stars, and when she dances her dress of iridescent blue and grey seashells shakes. The shells are cracked and just little chunks of clamshells, and they click like heavy rain beating against a glass window in a summer storm. The ballerina dances a smooth dance with many twirls and reaches to the stars. She shakes her seashell tutu, and, like hard rain, the stars drop slowly out of the sky into her hands and speed up like popcorn popping in the microwave. The stars then blend into her hands. The lights of her skin and of the stars blend together like a thumb smeared finger painting. She becomes one with the stars, dancing into the sky. Her sea-shell skirt still can be seen twinkling in the sky since she has taught the other stars her dance.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Here is a poem I wrote in August, but that I just updated a few weeks ago. I tried to add in more textural definition and pay attention to detail.
Watching Water from the Bath and the Sky from the Porch
8/31/06
I sit in my bathtub
(It is white, smooth, and porcelain like)
Squishing bubbles through my fingers
(They are white, smooth, and porcelain like)
Watching one drop of water drip
(drip, then silence, drip, then silence, just like that)
Every few seconds from the faucet lip.
Before me
They sat here and wondered too
At all the mysteries
Behind time and water.
I sit on my porch
(We painted the wood green. White columns and white railings, too)
Dipping bread into steaming soup,
(The bread tasted sturdy, and the soup burnt my tongue)
Watching pale clouds on heavens floor
While beads of rain steadily pour
(Not night time yet)
And now night takes over
And I watch moon flowers open their faces.
The clouds move
(Have you seen clouds move too?)
And they’re dark with nights approach.
But I sit and watch.
Maybe if I do not move
(I stop)
I can stop the clouds.
The moon comes out
And I want to reach my hand to it
And grab onto it,
But, I know I’d be disappointed
That its closeness is an illusion.
In the morning, I know I will step out of my bed
And look into the mirror
And that I will look older than the night before
And that before me, they sat here and wondered too.
The Old Man Who Sang
3/22/07
I passed the old man. I ran the track and he walked. We ran or walked in opposite directions. I want to get this right. His face was like a hold. I did not notice it at first, or perhaps it had not started, not his face like a hole, but his song. I heard it after my fifth or sixth lap. Maybe my thoughts had quieted after five laps and I now could hear sounds outside myself, or maybe he started at this moment. I don’t know. I want to get this right. I ran the laps and passed him each time. The white shirt on his back clung to his neck, brown chest hairs stuck out beneath his throat, and folded into wrinkles where his stomach caved. The back hunched. His brown shoes peeked out and covered his ankles. But his face. The light and the dark folded into the creases and lines. He sang louder and louder and walked. He sang louder and walked and his song was vague but he held the hue of a monk’s chant. I remember the jealousy I felt in the gut of my stomach and that I ran faster to prove myself. He could express himself, but I use clichés in my conversations and in my expression. I recognized one song, “I’ve been working on the Rail Road.” It fell heavily and smoothly from the depth of his face that was the lines, the hole, the creases. I could be so old that I could sing and not look up, I made this my wish. He did not see me, or if he did he knew that he had to sing at that moment. He had to sing at that moment so the noise crept out of the hole of his mouth and into the world of the red track and the gym. I was in that world but he did not know. I want to get this right, I want to get this right, please please. I ran faster to release that thing that sat heavy in the gut of my stomach. My way and his way differed since mine was hidden in the gut of my stomach, but his way heard when he sang to the world. I knew I ran faster. He sang and sang and I ran and ran. My speed was my own, no? I decided to run, no? Like he decided to sing. Yes, we were the same; the old man and I were the same. Such is life anyhow. At least I tried. I do try, I do try. At least I tried.
3/22/07
I passed the old man. I ran the track and he walked. We ran or walked in opposite directions. I want to get this right. His face was like a hold. I did not notice it at first, or perhaps it had not started, not his face like a hole, but his song. I heard it after my fifth or sixth lap. Maybe my thoughts had quieted after five laps and I now could hear sounds outside myself, or maybe he started at this moment. I don’t know. I want to get this right. I ran the laps and passed him each time. The white shirt on his back clung to his neck, brown chest hairs stuck out beneath his throat, and folded into wrinkles where his stomach caved. The back hunched. His brown shoes peeked out and covered his ankles. But his face. The light and the dark folded into the creases and lines. He sang louder and louder and walked. He sang louder and walked and his song was vague but he held the hue of a monk’s chant. I remember the jealousy I felt in the gut of my stomach and that I ran faster to prove myself. He could express himself, but I use clichés in my conversations and in my expression. I recognized one song, “I’ve been working on the Rail Road.” It fell heavily and smoothly from the depth of his face that was the lines, the hole, the creases. I could be so old that I could sing and not look up, I made this my wish. He did not see me, or if he did he knew that he had to sing at that moment. He had to sing at that moment so the noise crept out of the hole of his mouth and into the world of the red track and the gym. I was in that world but he did not know. I want to get this right, I want to get this right, please please. I ran faster to release that thing that sat heavy in the gut of my stomach. My way and his way differed since mine was hidden in the gut of my stomach, but his way heard when he sang to the world. I knew I ran faster. He sang and sang and I ran and ran. My speed was my own, no? I decided to run, no? Like he decided to sing. Yes, we were the same; the old man and I were the same. Such is life anyhow. At least I tried. I do try, I do try. At least I tried.
Memories Like Film Clips
3/19/07
It was early spring. The snow barely glazed the ground. The snow glazed the ground thinly, like if a child smeared the icing of a cake with the finger. The snow that remained on the ground had the thinness of the spot where the child smeared the icing of a cake with the finger. Each horse grazed on the grass, crunching loudly. My Daddy grasped my hand the whole time. I looked at the grass, brown from winter and slowly becoming green again from the Spring time. All the world became green again in the Spring, and I knew it was good. In front of us, the horses grew bigger. If I kept walking , my head would just lightly scrape the fuzzy belly of a horse. I was short. We stopped in front of each horse, petting their soft nuzzles. My favorite horse was Zanzibar. He was the most beautiful and graceful. His head was as fine boned as the feet of a ballerina, and his nose curved like an archers bow. My Daddy lifted me onto Zanzibars back. His coat smelled of sweet hay and dust. My Daddy lifted my sister first, actually, and I sat behind her and held on to her waste. The horse stood, breathing, without a halter. My sister and I were then flying. Zanzibar saw a monster in the grass, we like to say. So he ran and ran so quickly. We held on. We could have fallen and hit the ground. We could have fallen and hit the ground and been killed by booming hooves. My sister gathered the silky, brown mane into her hands, and she squeezed her fingers to her palms to create a firm grip. My Daddy ran towards us worried as ever. And we laughed and laughed. The laughter bounces off this paper. The laughter seeps from this pen; it is breathed in and out. We could have fallen.
Anointing Prince With Oil
3/24/07
The pony was very sick and I thought he might die. His sickness is called colic, and it means he ate something and it hurt his stomach. Our horse doctor traveled to Prince to give him shots and to tell me about caring for my sick pony. Prince looked the same as he did in healthy, but I saw sorrow creep from his brown, round eyes. His brow furrowed, his head drooped; it was real bad. The sickness was real bad. The doctor said to walk Prince, to walk and walk and walk and walk him. I could even choose where I walked him, but I could not choose how often or when. This was because I must walk him very often and walk him and do this very often. For four days Prince and I went on quiet walks. He was small. He had a light chestnut coat. His hooves were dark. He had a dark, almost black, stripe sailing from the bottom of his mane to the top of his tail. This was called a dorsal stripe. I comforted him by explaining that he would be okay. I knew he would, I knew he would. Fat must have wanted to curl her long fingers aroung him. Fate must have wanted him, to taste him as she may savor a chewy cookie. So I prayed to God that he might save my pony. I put both of my hangs on Prince’s shoulders and prayed. I prayed and prayed and prayed. And then I prayed. And then, the next morning, I prayed, but he felt better. When I prayed in the morning, I then walked to the house. I found a bottle of olive oil in the cupboard. Its smooth, yellow surface felt firm and true in my hands. My hands knew the seriousness of this business. I looked at them. The hands were a creamy yellow like the olive oil. They were also glossy like oil. I was very young. My walk quickened. My hands received the oil and marked a cross on the chestnut head of Prince. I then marked a cross on each window of the house. The oil smeared and left marks on the windows that still can not be scrubbed away. This cured him. It was true that it would cure him. I did this, I really did. I marked every window of the house because God could save my pony.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
3/12/07
The Sister
The sister is a part of me
I can open a closet and she is the box
Of scraps: ticket stubs and letters and zooming memories
(Always the clear green and blue of an idealic day
And the motions and distant events of a childhood.
What a mystery memory is).
My days are recorded in her face
The laughter echoes
Rapidly as rocks being thrown at a window
When the child looks down at a hopeful face.
The soul is quiet with the sister
It is the quiet earth throughout time,
With shatters and sand,
Eroded into a formation
Of sisterhood.
I saw the sister just recently
And we were the same reflection in the mirror
And the same pattern of rippling sand
Of crimped hair and plaid skirts
And hacking jackets.
We are quite beautiful together,
And peaceful,
The sisters.
3/13/07
Last night I had a dream that you and I were in a field at night. I was teaching you how to fly. We only could fly for a few seconds at a time and then our bodies would smoothly bounce back to the ground. I felt close to the ground but must have been high up because I gathered stars into my hands, thousands of stars like buttons or seashells or petals, do you see it? We ran quickly. And we glanced at each other with gleeful smiles as we ran. I took your hand and told you to crouch and then to jump. “You will fly”, I told you. We ran quickly through a field of green grass, green grass glowing turquoise in the night. I saw no other landscape, but I saw the green grass glowing turquoise in the night and I saw the sky that shined like the back of a whale moving through the cold ocean. But the stars shined in a true way. The stars shined like tin foil. We really did fly. In the night, in my dream, we really did fly, but it felt more like gliding. I could feel us gliding because the wind tickled my body. I showed you to crouch, to then use your legs for the muscle to push you into the sky. When we flew we were the backs of whales moving through the ocean. As we moved we hit the tin foil stars that went cling clang as they shattered against our sides. The stars dipped into my hands. They dipped like silver coins dropping into an offering plate and making that same generous noise. They held their form; they did not dissolve. The sun did not come upon us but rather we were in continual night and kept flying and landing.
The Sister
The sister is a part of me
I can open a closet and she is the box
Of scraps: ticket stubs and letters and zooming memories
(Always the clear green and blue of an idealic day
And the motions and distant events of a childhood.
What a mystery memory is).
My days are recorded in her face
The laughter echoes
Rapidly as rocks being thrown at a window
When the child looks down at a hopeful face.
The soul is quiet with the sister
It is the quiet earth throughout time,
With shatters and sand,
Eroded into a formation
Of sisterhood.
I saw the sister just recently
And we were the same reflection in the mirror
And the same pattern of rippling sand
Of crimped hair and plaid skirts
And hacking jackets.
We are quite beautiful together,
And peaceful,
The sisters.
3/13/07
Last night I had a dream that you and I were in a field at night. I was teaching you how to fly. We only could fly for a few seconds at a time and then our bodies would smoothly bounce back to the ground. I felt close to the ground but must have been high up because I gathered stars into my hands, thousands of stars like buttons or seashells or petals, do you see it? We ran quickly. And we glanced at each other with gleeful smiles as we ran. I took your hand and told you to crouch and then to jump. “You will fly”, I told you. We ran quickly through a field of green grass, green grass glowing turquoise in the night. I saw no other landscape, but I saw the green grass glowing turquoise in the night and I saw the sky that shined like the back of a whale moving through the cold ocean. But the stars shined in a true way. The stars shined like tin foil. We really did fly. In the night, in my dream, we really did fly, but it felt more like gliding. I could feel us gliding because the wind tickled my body. I showed you to crouch, to then use your legs for the muscle to push you into the sky. When we flew we were the backs of whales moving through the ocean. As we moved we hit the tin foil stars that went cling clang as they shattered against our sides. The stars dipped into my hands. They dipped like silver coins dropping into an offering plate and making that same generous noise. They held their form; they did not dissolve. The sun did not come upon us but rather we were in continual night and kept flying and landing.
I listen to the dancing of sounds
Spinning each other with wispy tulle
And shaking, shaking their skirts of leaves
Clicking their heels, the earth rewords
Quickly to the heart- the autumn wind blows
To tell the tale of the land below
Where each life falls with a breeze
Swiftly caressing the silky fool
From the heights to the dirt floor.
To walk outside through the changing woods;
To feel a part of the earth: the unspoken place
Where all were born.
But looking down to covered feet with synthetic
Forms and cushioned beats, separating from the crispy dry leaves which
Lie like gold in a Pirates treasure heap.
And try to think the real thoughts of worth
Of origin, order, or of birth
No thoughts will conjure from the dark stew
Because the soles of synthetic mark
The separation of form from earth.
It does indeed cure the shell
To lie and walk and feel the
Uncontained wild and finally
The heart can roam and
Simply breath, pulsing and
Reaching to the deepest dirt like
Ancient trees with digging roots.
Fallen trees look to the sky
Of bursting stars, licking the night like an inextinguishable fire;
Fallen, fallen to the ground
Where crunching leaves mindlessly surround
And every weather, rain and wind and sun and heat
And cold and dark and shining
Can seep into the veins of wondering men and
Give them life.
But I return to my machine
Which tells me when to breath.
I throw this book of white
Parched paper and find some bark
Where all philosophy is recorded.
The grass sways, the wind shakes it;
The trees bend, upon the mountain
And it moves, slowly consuming.
Does the morning glory, in
Its closure, wish the opening back again?
Does the apples’ heart weep when
A bruise appears on its skin- and ponder
Its youthful days on the branch?
Does the golden rod plan out the day-
And now I glimmer, and now I fade,
And here I’ll go, and there I’ll sway?
Spinning each other with wispy tulle
And shaking, shaking their skirts of leaves
Clicking their heels, the earth rewords
Quickly to the heart- the autumn wind blows
To tell the tale of the land below
Where each life falls with a breeze
Swiftly caressing the silky fool
From the heights to the dirt floor.
To walk outside through the changing woods;
To feel a part of the earth: the unspoken place
Where all were born.
But looking down to covered feet with synthetic
Forms and cushioned beats, separating from the crispy dry leaves which
Lie like gold in a Pirates treasure heap.
And try to think the real thoughts of worth
Of origin, order, or of birth
No thoughts will conjure from the dark stew
Because the soles of synthetic mark
The separation of form from earth.
It does indeed cure the shell
To lie and walk and feel the
Uncontained wild and finally
The heart can roam and
Simply breath, pulsing and
Reaching to the deepest dirt like
Ancient trees with digging roots.
Fallen trees look to the sky
Of bursting stars, licking the night like an inextinguishable fire;
Fallen, fallen to the ground
Where crunching leaves mindlessly surround
And every weather, rain and wind and sun and heat
And cold and dark and shining
Can seep into the veins of wondering men and
Give them life.
But I return to my machine
Which tells me when to breath.
I throw this book of white
Parched paper and find some bark
Where all philosophy is recorded.
The grass sways, the wind shakes it;
The trees bend, upon the mountain
And it moves, slowly consuming.
Does the morning glory, in
Its closure, wish the opening back again?
Does the apples’ heart weep when
A bruise appears on its skin- and ponder
Its youthful days on the branch?
Does the golden rod plan out the day-
And now I glimmer, and now I fade,
And here I’ll go, and there I’ll sway?
The Grasshopper
“A Leaf”
A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:
It is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls
On a heap of others, stops, fades. No one
Admired its entrancing struggle with the wind,
Followed its flight, no one will distinguish it now
As it lies among other leaves, no one saw
What I did. I am
The only one.
Bronislaw Maj
I sat down in a fraying beach chair to look at the water and slowly sip my coffee. Rain from a few hours earlier soaked the morning, and the lake blended entirely into the sky in pale grey with hints of blue. I felt a light tickle on the back of my neck and turned to see a small grasshopper perched on the chair. I watched it as quietly as an observing scientist. The grasshoppers long legs stepped slowly and deliberately and I realized I was examining one of nature’s most beautiful dances. It gradually bent its front legs and rubbed the underside of its entirely grass green body against the chair and rubbed its rounded nose against each front leg, dusting the last drops of sleep from its body; the movement reminded me of a just waking cat. Leaning in closer, I saw its green tranquil eyes shaped like little rain drops and as sweet as a child. I watched it’s gracefully movements, the way it swayed ever so slightly in the morning breeze. The rain tap tapped harder then before, and soon a down pour soaked my skin. I ran to the lake and dove swiftly into the water marked by a billion rain drop dimples, swam to a sand bar and sat down in it, pushing my hands through the thick lake bottom. The experience was exquisite. Delicate tones of blues and hardly visible greens swish swashed through water and sky. So God was painting a water color this morning, blending the colors of the world with tender water drops.
Finding the Sea Glass 7/21/06
Bending down in a smooth swoop, I clasp the new treasure in my hand. Unlatching my fingers, I toss the glistening stone from palm to palm, allowing its misty tones to remind my skin of soft loving touch. Holding the stone between my thumb and pointer finger, I try to gaze through its hazy complexion, but what once was a broken piece of glass now lay a stone resembling the polished emerald city. I imagined a sailor throwing a useless bottle over board without a second thought. It splinters against the side of the boat and sinks to the bottom of the lake, grinding against rock and sand. This churning continues for a few weeks or less, speeding the process with the harshness of each storm. Tossing back and forth, back and forth, the glass eventually ends up on the beach. A broken piece of glass with sharp edges. Harsh weather and the hurling of waves. A faultless gem.
The Harmonious Flight 8/17/06
In the morning I saw tiny birds above the whisky waves flying towards the southern horizon. The flock flew in a single file line creating a constant line of flittering wings. Their flight continued for several minutes, thousands of birds in a row caressing the whole stretch of sky. Like Can Can girls, they methodically flapped their wings. Just below them, each bouncing wave danced also, and I saw the world in both poetry and a mathematical equation- with a perfect balance of rhythm and purpose.
The Morning 7/23/06
If in the first moments of looking in some ones eyes you see flickers of how they truly feel, the earth similarly shows its true nature in the earliest moments of sunrise, when the dark sky must stubbornly give way to light. In the early morning the sun breaks through and shatters the darkness, marking the sky with coral slits and fiery slashes. On this particular morning, dark midnight clouds settle like fat lazy men, budging slowly from the horizon. The lake, with waves crashing into foamy egg white, offered colors of steel and silver, bright whites, navy, ballet pinks, and lemon. Despite the soft undertones, the water looked ancient but constant, alluring but distant- like some untouchable and beautiful god. Cold and prehistoric in its steel texture, the water stood victim to the dominant sun. Slow and steady in its course, the sun stamped reds and oranges into a dark world.
A deep breath of air. I take it eagerly. With a crash of white foam the purples mix with the sandy browns and then fade away. Little bubbles sweep swiftly onto my toes, leaving a few to liger, absorb my peachiness, and reflect it in their globe of gleaming curvature. Honey yellows dance on the edges and I think of fireflies tangoing through the leaves of trees. The low set, lazy men clouds start rimming with soft pinks and golds, slowly bursting with the morning. I stand up to stroll over to a heron bird wearing garments as purely milk white as a bridal gown, pick up a piece of only slightly misty sea glass which I throw back into the water for further processing, turn and watch my footsteps imprint the balmy brown sand, and sit down by a hill of tiny seashells. Blinking wildly, I look to see syrup of pure gold reaching for my toes. I follow the gold across the lake to the huge yellow sun, and I am surrounded. By still and timelessness. By swirling colors of browns, pinks, blues, gold’s, all in every hue and texture.
I sit here. A deep breath of air. I am tiny in this scene, a dot of pale ink on the canvas. But I am here, and I am glad to be bathing in gold. And my hands, thankful to be basked in pink light. I imagine my face glowing like a white heron, made radiant in simplicity next to every other color. My toes creep over to the blues and greens, and they welcome me with chilled water and diamond bubbles. The new light is everywhere.
I let is smooth away my bitterness. I let it take my steel grays and push through in red slivers, to seep through my toes and fingertips and melt my cold dark soul. I wanted to be illuminated, to walk as the sun and melt everything in my path.
I stood up, heavily and filled to the brim. As I continued walking the stream of golden sun chased me. I remembered the moon at night, how I thought it followed me by the way it always magically appeared outside the car window no matter which way I’d go. I remember being so bitter at the moon, cursing it for failing me, hating it for watching but not protecting. Looking again at the gold, I felt tempted to return to my bitterness. “Will you protect me?” I asked this sincerely and out loud. I shook my head; sometimes God just needed to turn the volume up and talk to me. Then I heard it, a whisper in my soul- soft as the foamy egg white waves. I heard that I needed to listen to the silence. A deep breath of air. The wave’s crash: they ask me to remember the earth when it was new and untouched. They told me to remember that light always comes.
“A Leaf”
A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:
It is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls
On a heap of others, stops, fades. No one
Admired its entrancing struggle with the wind,
Followed its flight, no one will distinguish it now
As it lies among other leaves, no one saw
What I did. I am
The only one.
Bronislaw Maj
I sat down in a fraying beach chair to look at the water and slowly sip my coffee. Rain from a few hours earlier soaked the morning, and the lake blended entirely into the sky in pale grey with hints of blue. I felt a light tickle on the back of my neck and turned to see a small grasshopper perched on the chair. I watched it as quietly as an observing scientist. The grasshoppers long legs stepped slowly and deliberately and I realized I was examining one of nature’s most beautiful dances. It gradually bent its front legs and rubbed the underside of its entirely grass green body against the chair and rubbed its rounded nose against each front leg, dusting the last drops of sleep from its body; the movement reminded me of a just waking cat. Leaning in closer, I saw its green tranquil eyes shaped like little rain drops and as sweet as a child. I watched it’s gracefully movements, the way it swayed ever so slightly in the morning breeze. The rain tap tapped harder then before, and soon a down pour soaked my skin. I ran to the lake and dove swiftly into the water marked by a billion rain drop dimples, swam to a sand bar and sat down in it, pushing my hands through the thick lake bottom. The experience was exquisite. Delicate tones of blues and hardly visible greens swish swashed through water and sky. So God was painting a water color this morning, blending the colors of the world with tender water drops.
Finding the Sea Glass 7/21/06
Bending down in a smooth swoop, I clasp the new treasure in my hand. Unlatching my fingers, I toss the glistening stone from palm to palm, allowing its misty tones to remind my skin of soft loving touch. Holding the stone between my thumb and pointer finger, I try to gaze through its hazy complexion, but what once was a broken piece of glass now lay a stone resembling the polished emerald city. I imagined a sailor throwing a useless bottle over board without a second thought. It splinters against the side of the boat and sinks to the bottom of the lake, grinding against rock and sand. This churning continues for a few weeks or less, speeding the process with the harshness of each storm. Tossing back and forth, back and forth, the glass eventually ends up on the beach. A broken piece of glass with sharp edges. Harsh weather and the hurling of waves. A faultless gem.
The Harmonious Flight 8/17/06
In the morning I saw tiny birds above the whisky waves flying towards the southern horizon. The flock flew in a single file line creating a constant line of flittering wings. Their flight continued for several minutes, thousands of birds in a row caressing the whole stretch of sky. Like Can Can girls, they methodically flapped their wings. Just below them, each bouncing wave danced also, and I saw the world in both poetry and a mathematical equation- with a perfect balance of rhythm and purpose.
The Morning 7/23/06
If in the first moments of looking in some ones eyes you see flickers of how they truly feel, the earth similarly shows its true nature in the earliest moments of sunrise, when the dark sky must stubbornly give way to light. In the early morning the sun breaks through and shatters the darkness, marking the sky with coral slits and fiery slashes. On this particular morning, dark midnight clouds settle like fat lazy men, budging slowly from the horizon. The lake, with waves crashing into foamy egg white, offered colors of steel and silver, bright whites, navy, ballet pinks, and lemon. Despite the soft undertones, the water looked ancient but constant, alluring but distant- like some untouchable and beautiful god. Cold and prehistoric in its steel texture, the water stood victim to the dominant sun. Slow and steady in its course, the sun stamped reds and oranges into a dark world.
A deep breath of air. I take it eagerly. With a crash of white foam the purples mix with the sandy browns and then fade away. Little bubbles sweep swiftly onto my toes, leaving a few to liger, absorb my peachiness, and reflect it in their globe of gleaming curvature. Honey yellows dance on the edges and I think of fireflies tangoing through the leaves of trees. The low set, lazy men clouds start rimming with soft pinks and golds, slowly bursting with the morning. I stand up to stroll over to a heron bird wearing garments as purely milk white as a bridal gown, pick up a piece of only slightly misty sea glass which I throw back into the water for further processing, turn and watch my footsteps imprint the balmy brown sand, and sit down by a hill of tiny seashells. Blinking wildly, I look to see syrup of pure gold reaching for my toes. I follow the gold across the lake to the huge yellow sun, and I am surrounded. By still and timelessness. By swirling colors of browns, pinks, blues, gold’s, all in every hue and texture.
I sit here. A deep breath of air. I am tiny in this scene, a dot of pale ink on the canvas. But I am here, and I am glad to be bathing in gold. And my hands, thankful to be basked in pink light. I imagine my face glowing like a white heron, made radiant in simplicity next to every other color. My toes creep over to the blues and greens, and they welcome me with chilled water and diamond bubbles. The new light is everywhere.
I let is smooth away my bitterness. I let it take my steel grays and push through in red slivers, to seep through my toes and fingertips and melt my cold dark soul. I wanted to be illuminated, to walk as the sun and melt everything in my path.
I stood up, heavily and filled to the brim. As I continued walking the stream of golden sun chased me. I remembered the moon at night, how I thought it followed me by the way it always magically appeared outside the car window no matter which way I’d go. I remember being so bitter at the moon, cursing it for failing me, hating it for watching but not protecting. Looking again at the gold, I felt tempted to return to my bitterness. “Will you protect me?” I asked this sincerely and out loud. I shook my head; sometimes God just needed to turn the volume up and talk to me. Then I heard it, a whisper in my soul- soft as the foamy egg white waves. I heard that I needed to listen to the silence. A deep breath of air. The wave’s crash: they ask me to remember the earth when it was new and untouched. They told me to remember that light always comes.
The Oz Farm
Today I rode my bike past an old farm. First, I noticed the quintessential red barn. It should be straight, perfectly painted, with box windows and a white picket fence around it. But chipped paint covered this barn, faded to shades of terracotta and pink. The carelessly cut windows tilt in crookedness, and blank slabs of soggy wood support a run down wire fence surrounding the pasture of tanned grass. A few more tilted buildings, slight and rotting, scatter randomly through a broad field. Beside a rusting tractor, countless brilliant flowers situated in perfectly groomed gardens surround the blindingly white house with respectable green shutters. Throughout the garden sit a myriad of strategically placed statues, perching and protruding, hidden in every possible spot like munchkins popping out through layers of gigantic flowers. The garden and house are exaggerated and immaculate and argue the effort of the woman of the house to cope with the habits of her farmer husband. She is splattering beauty, pouring buckets of effort to erase the chaos.
Today I rode my bike past an old farm. First, I noticed the quintessential red barn. It should be straight, perfectly painted, with box windows and a white picket fence around it. But chipped paint covered this barn, faded to shades of terracotta and pink. The carelessly cut windows tilt in crookedness, and blank slabs of soggy wood support a run down wire fence surrounding the pasture of tanned grass. A few more tilted buildings, slight and rotting, scatter randomly through a broad field. Beside a rusting tractor, countless brilliant flowers situated in perfectly groomed gardens surround the blindingly white house with respectable green shutters. Throughout the garden sit a myriad of strategically placed statues, perching and protruding, hidden in every possible spot like munchkins popping out through layers of gigantic flowers. The garden and house are exaggerated and immaculate and argue the effort of the woman of the house to cope with the habits of her farmer husband. She is splattering beauty, pouring buckets of effort to erase the chaos.
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