What’s an emotion that you never feel?

Despair. Even after my first big break-up, when I was lying in my bedroom at 8 o’clock at night in the dark, feeling like I couldn’t move to turn on the light, I was kind of enjoying myself. Even when I graduated from the school on the bluffs and felt sad to enter the working world, I didn’t feel like things were beyond hope. 

Keep the lights out long enough

One happy couple, about ten years older than Blondie and I, come to the drive through regularly. They glow, but they are not trying to glow. They are kind, but they’re not trying to be kind in a human way, as in “I’m trying to be kind because I’m a good person.” We have a dear relationship, smiling at each other dearly every time they come. According to bank policy, I have to address customers by name. I have never called this couple by name. It would be like turning the light on too soon after a great theatre performance. It would bring things down to a human level. When I was at a career conference, my friends laughed at me because I kept saying, “I just want to do something magic.” I said “magic” 18 times. Well, in this case, I am keeping things magic.

Dough keeping it magic outside my bank. March 2012.

"The streets were wet
and the gate was locked so I jumped it,
and I let you in."

E.L. James: Not For Now

When I was growing up, I often wished that, when we died, we could go to a giant library. I remember when I’d just gone on the England Abroad and I was rooming with Ripe, I realized that, for the first time ever, I could see clearly in every moment the one thing I was supposed to be doing. For once, I wasn’t vacillating between many options, thousands of books. I could see, “Now is when I learn the terms and concepts of Shintoism” or “Now is when I blast Coldplay and stare out the window at the School of Government” or “Now is when Ripe and I go to lunch.” 

The other day I was in the library, and as I stood in line, I saw E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey on display. I thought, “I am never going to read that series. Or, rather, I know that right now I should not read it.” My creative writing professor taught me the difference between popular and literary fiction. That doesn’t mean I turn my nose up to popular fiction. She also taught me that everything is art; art is life. I consume plenty of pop. It’s nice to know what people are talking about, and we can study our cultural consciousness by examining what is most loved right now. For that reason, I often listen to pop music in my car, thinking things like, “These lyrics sound like calls to riot and rebellion.” 

However, I can’t spend my life consuming only the popular stuff. Also, I can’t be a priss and claim that every book can be filed into one of two categories. 

But I can listen to my impulses. There’s only so much we can read. That’s why I wanted heaven to be a library. We have to listen closely for what we need to be doing right now. And right now it feels necessary to listen to Sia belting out, “I am titanium!” and unnecessary to pick up E.L. James. For some reason. I don’t know. I’m just listening. 

Funny to Me

1. This morning, my dad and I were passing over a bridge on the way to church, and he asked, “Do you hear the honking?” When I thought back to the sound I had just made, I realized it could have been mistaken for a car horn. I had been softly humming the West Side Story ending credits. I told him I was singing. He said, “It sounded like distant honking. I thought there were two south-bound cars passing each other.” I thought back to the sound again and recalled the change in pitch as I led into “Somewhere.” Yes, two cars honking. 

2. At the grocery store last week, my mom rolled the cart through the paper products aisle and stopped at the Puffs section. The tissue boxes were covered with cyclopses and toothy monsters. She said, with real exasperation, “It’s like they’re trying to create as ugly a design as they can. Do they realize women put these in their homes?” It’s true. Why the monster boxes, Puffs? 

             Yesterday, she went back to the paper aisle and found a box on which the eyes had multiplied, and she cried, “The other box is starting to look cute to me.” 

I looked online and found out the boxes are for the classroom. "Still. OTHER OPTIONS PLEASE," cries my mom. 

3. My dad was scrolling through this blog a couple days ago. He inspected the picture in "Block in Space" and asked how each of the people in it were doing, starting with Sans, then Aiko, then Sleek. He got to the person on the far right and asked, "Who is the blonde girl?" "Dad, that's me," I said. 

It is so good to live with these two people + Blondie. 

"I still live with my high school friends." 

Behind Z Screens

I was picking out peaches at the grocery store this afternoon, and I overheard two college-aged men talking intensely as they sped by the salad bar. I picked out the word “zombies.” I tossed the last peach in the bag, walked in their direction, and met them in front of a display of pre-made dinners. “Did you say something about zombies?” I asked. “Yeah,” they said. “I was about to write something about zombies, and I only have a small pool of zombie lovers to talk to. Could I ask you a question about the subject?” They agreed. “Could it be that one reason our generation loves zombies so much is that we are increasingly behind screens? Our desire to be in nature is rising up in us, and we are not acting on it. Many of us are connected with electronics and disconnected from nature. Could we be attracted to these post-apocalyptic shows because they allow us to experience the fight for survival vicariously?” I told them that the zombie lovers I know seem to be more interested in the lifestyle the zombies would bring about than they are in the zombies. The tall guy granted that my theory was sound. He also shared that Vermont, where he and the other guy go to school, will be the first place the epidemic hits.

 I also love Dough’s theory–namely, that our problems are so intense that they could be literally all-consuming. For example, we’re getting to the point where our treatment of the earth might actually have consequences that we see in our lifetimes. Our problems might eat us up.

"You made me forget my dreams

When I woke up to you sleeping

There was blood on the sheets again

And the view outside the window

Of gardens in bloom" 

Block in Space

Aiko, Sans, and I spent a couple days together this week, taking advantage one last time of our proximity–a two and a half hour drive. Aiko gave me a bunch of stuff she couldn’t take with her when she moves–stuff that could leak. I am especially happy about the body wash that smells like my freshman dorm. We had a graduation party for Aiko in a pub that reminds us of Oxford. We visited the university gardens, and as we walked in the heat to the Japanese tea house, I dragged pieces of chocolate from the bottom of my Ben and Jerry's shake. We drove by the iconic chapel, and I wanted to see more of the campus.

Even when the three of us felt out of it, our love was the predominant thing, obviously there, like a big block on the floor that was visible peripherally no matter where we turned. I described it, not very effectively, later in the week, “It’s like a block in space. It's like something solid that takes up space.”

Sans, Aiko, Sleek, and me. 5.17.08 "The shape of happiness overlaps in our pictures. It now became one big love. Let’s live together forever."

Stuff vs. Somewhere

I was on West Side Story cloud nine last night. I saw a high school production that was shockingly good. At home afterwards, I was bounding around the upstairs in a sports bra and a red slip, kicking my legs to Dance at the Gym and belting out A Boy Like That. I was just so sure that life is all bliss and magic, and I am still sure, but I had a much messier day today with half-resolved discussions.

Nov. 2011 "Always the population growing, And the money owing, And the babies crying, And the bullets flying."

One Answer

This past weekend, Gandalf, Joie, and Kit (uncle, aunt, and cousin) came to town and stayed with aunt Ziba. Saturday included a trip to a botanical garden. The highlight, for me, was the Conservatory. Joie and I tried, in the semi-tropical wing, to focus on specific points–an orchid petal with wavy red lines, a splash of yellow on the wall.

Kit stared up at the hanging planter with the label: Begonia Something. She asked, “What are begonias?” We couldn’t really see what was in the planter. “I don’t know,” I said, “Some flower.” She said she’s heard so many references to them.

Later, Kit, and I sat in the central Palm House on the concrete ring around the fountain. I laid down, and my dad and Kit were quick to follow. We stared at flowers piling high toward the glass dome ceiling. Kit said, “Those are Begonias!” There was a plate on a hanging planter, and this time the contents were visible. We acted as if this answer was the end and all, the answer to one of humankind’s great questions: “What are begonias?”

Gandalf took pictures of us laughing and asked if we knew hyacinth and hibiscus. I know them from Pac Sun. He told us Carl Sandberg described poetry as “a synthesis of hibiscus and biscuits.” In a moment of frivolous laughter, I yelled, “Flowers and food!” Gandalf offered, “And the joining together of things that don’t normally go together.”

“My beard grew down to the floor and out through the doors
Of your eyes, begonia skies like a sleepyhead, sleepyhead.”