Spring. Why did the crafters of the English language bless this season with a name implying some sort of speedy green explosion? It sounds like a sudden jailbreak from the brown and gray staleness of winter. No such luck
Spring isn't very springy. It's downright fickle. One day we get teased with fifty degrees and sunshine and everyone pours out of the office buildings in downtown Chicago at lunchtime. Their faces turn upwards like daisies catching the sun. The next day we get slapped upside the head with thunder-snow. Another day may look wonderful out the window but heading out without enough wool about the shoulders could yield a cold surprise. Today was one of those days. Brr!
I struggle to reconcile the seasons amidst all this concrete. One day it thaws a bit and I wander out to one of the few places where I know I can find large patches dirt. Green sprouting from the branches is a nice visual but I know spring is on it's way by the smell of the dirt and the aroma of thawing earth unadorned by floral scents or pollens.
I am the youngest of 5 children. As I reached the age of 3 I began watching all of my older siblings get taken off to school every day while I got to stay at home. I figured they were being carted off to the jailing which, by my estimation, they richly deserved. I got to pretend that I was an only child. I was happy. Without those other brats around to get me into trouble, my mom seemed to like me better.
During the long Upstate New York winters Mom & I would be cooped up inside together. I played house between the table legs while she vacuumed or swept. I pretended I was helping cook dinner by standing in the kitchen and licking bowls. I'm sure I was underfoot and as soon as it was a bit warm enough I was bundled up and plopped out on the porch to get some fresh air. In the rural area where we lived the breeze travelled for miles over open fields and the first scent of spring to hit my nose was the musky scent of the earth waking up. After the sterile winter, this dark, moody smell was potent with information and promise. I'm there again, just three years old, sitting on the back porch looking up at the morning sun, hearing my mom doing dishes and singing softly in the kitchen, whenever that aroma hits my nose.
I hesitate to let go of that place when it's time to end this break and head back to my stale office. I fidget at my desk for the afternoon thinking of the art I should be making or the fun I should be having. Spring is pretty slow, but it only takes a moment of that smell for that fever to explode.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
The flow.
Trees looking like thick, black nerve endings silhouetted against the sunrise. They seem to spin and dance to show off how they've grown to compensate for wind, wires and sunlight. But I'm the one in motion. I'm not really moving, just staring at each new thing that comes up while we speed down the road.
I could do this all day. Just ride around and watch the world react to itself for hour after hour.
I could watch that grumpy old woman, who consistently muscles her way forward to get onto the bus first, as she begins to crack a smile at the bouncing baby in the opposite seat.
A girl of about 7 looks up and gives someone a beautiful smile. From person to person the smile spreads at least 10 people deep.
The bus driver stops and gets off the bus. Through the soiled window I see him run to a paper box and reach in. He comes back with an arm load of "Red -Eye" papers and hands them out to passengers to read.
Outside trees spin before us. Other buses hide at underpasses waiting for their schedule to start. People with weathered looking faces run and bike along the lake. It's March, amateur hour hasn't started yet so there's minimal competition for the walkways. The city rises up before us like a jagged set of grey teeth. In that city will be windows filled with very well dressed plastic bodies that have no heads. Construction cranes everywhere promise that soon the view one paid a few extra grand to have will be gone. Women march along in heels. A Staples shares a building with a dermatologist. Their signs mush together on the facade and somehow Botox comes off as an office supply.
I have to get off this bus and go to that job. FUCK! Not the job again! I shouldn't be there, not again, not today. I should be at home finishing that painting. Yeah, the one inspired by my day job, that one. Like it or not the rhythm which takes me away from the real work feeds the real work. "go with the flow!" one of my co-workers tells me. Yeah, the cash flow.
I could do this all day. Just ride around and watch the world react to itself for hour after hour.
I could watch that grumpy old woman, who consistently muscles her way forward to get onto the bus first, as she begins to crack a smile at the bouncing baby in the opposite seat.
A girl of about 7 looks up and gives someone a beautiful smile. From person to person the smile spreads at least 10 people deep.
The bus driver stops and gets off the bus. Through the soiled window I see him run to a paper box and reach in. He comes back with an arm load of "Red -Eye" papers and hands them out to passengers to read.
Outside trees spin before us. Other buses hide at underpasses waiting for their schedule to start. People with weathered looking faces run and bike along the lake. It's March, amateur hour hasn't started yet so there's minimal competition for the walkways. The city rises up before us like a jagged set of grey teeth. In that city will be windows filled with very well dressed plastic bodies that have no heads. Construction cranes everywhere promise that soon the view one paid a few extra grand to have will be gone. Women march along in heels. A Staples shares a building with a dermatologist. Their signs mush together on the facade and somehow Botox comes off as an office supply.
I have to get off this bus and go to that job. FUCK! Not the job again! I shouldn't be there, not again, not today. I should be at home finishing that painting. Yeah, the one inspired by my day job, that one. Like it or not the rhythm which takes me away from the real work feeds the real work. "go with the flow!" one of my co-workers tells me. Yeah, the cash flow.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
overload
They look pretty tiny from up here, those toy like cars zipping up and down Lake Shore Drive. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever witness a crash while I sit dazing out the window. Mostly I look at each car passing the gap between the buildings and wonder about the people inside of them. Are they listening to music? Talking? Is there one person in the car or multiple? Is it two people fighting or are they laughing? Where are they going to? What is it like to be them?
What would it be like to be in a car zipping down the highway right now - heading off on the start of some adventure? What would it be like to not be looking at the sunshine go by from inside of a cubicle wall? I could take a hand glider and jump out the window, navigating the thermals and swishing between the buildings like a bird riding through an urban canyon. I could swoop by windows and peek in. In peeking maybe I'd see some momentary glimpse of an interior life that explains the strangeness I see acted out by people.
Someone explains in the elevator that driving and riding the bus take the same amount of time, 15 minutes. I hear a good reason to not drive in that statement. But he uses it to justify spurning public transit. One day, one more car on the highway and a bit more crap in the air for the sake of 15 minutes of transportation whoopee. I don't understand that. I don't understand the refrigerator full of stomach and teeth rotting soda and the vending machine full of junk food in the break room. The free water goes untouched. Do my coworkers realize that soda pop gives them rancid smelling body odor?
So many actions I witness I don't comprehend. If I could peek in, if I could see something in those inside moments when they think no one watches, maybe then I could see the splinter under the skin which leads to such behavior. Maybe then some magic words would pop out of my mouth and extricate that splinter from the place that it hurts. "There is nothing that you need...you don't have to prove anything...nothing belongs to you so stop worrying about losing it."
A shadow passes over my desk. It looks like the wings of a predatory bird circling down on me. Its just the construction crane next door as it works busily to block my view. Soon a shiny glass and concrete slab structure will be just 30 feet away and when I go to my window I will see my own reflection.
Like a thick, black blanket pulling itself up over the Atlantic, night comes. It will cover us soon under its chilly shield. We kick under the covers with our electric lights and poke holes in the darkness that reach into outer space. Out past the space station, past the garbage ring, past the asteroids and fat planets, they may see our lights. Maybe they'll be impressed by the glimmer and figure we'll make great pets.
What would it be like to be in a car zipping down the highway right now - heading off on the start of some adventure? What would it be like to not be looking at the sunshine go by from inside of a cubicle wall? I could take a hand glider and jump out the window, navigating the thermals and swishing between the buildings like a bird riding through an urban canyon. I could swoop by windows and peek in. In peeking maybe I'd see some momentary glimpse of an interior life that explains the strangeness I see acted out by people.
Someone explains in the elevator that driving and riding the bus take the same amount of time, 15 minutes. I hear a good reason to not drive in that statement. But he uses it to justify spurning public transit. One day, one more car on the highway and a bit more crap in the air for the sake of 15 minutes of transportation whoopee. I don't understand that. I don't understand the refrigerator full of stomach and teeth rotting soda and the vending machine full of junk food in the break room. The free water goes untouched. Do my coworkers realize that soda pop gives them rancid smelling body odor?
So many actions I witness I don't comprehend. If I could peek in, if I could see something in those inside moments when they think no one watches, maybe then I could see the splinter under the skin which leads to such behavior. Maybe then some magic words would pop out of my mouth and extricate that splinter from the place that it hurts. "There is nothing that you need...you don't have to prove anything...nothing belongs to you so stop worrying about losing it."
A shadow passes over my desk. It looks like the wings of a predatory bird circling down on me. Its just the construction crane next door as it works busily to block my view. Soon a shiny glass and concrete slab structure will be just 30 feet away and when I go to my window I will see my own reflection.
Like a thick, black blanket pulling itself up over the Atlantic, night comes. It will cover us soon under its chilly shield. We kick under the covers with our electric lights and poke holes in the darkness that reach into outer space. Out past the space station, past the garbage ring, past the asteroids and fat planets, they may see our lights. Maybe they'll be impressed by the glimmer and figure we'll make great pets.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Glove story
It's February, cold and dark, and Glove sits a the cafe with the windows steaming over. It sips a latté and thumbs through a book. Ignoring a funny twist in its center, Glove focuses just on what's before it. "Remember, Glove, you are empty in this moment. There is nothing to worry about." Atop the latte sits a tiny storm of white foam and brown thickness. It leaves a bubbly mustache on Glove's upper lip at each sip.
Hand bounds through the door and grabs up Glove in affectionate reunion. It orders a similar blizzard-topped drink. Hand boasts about what has been happening in its life. Glove listens. Glove shares its pointerless meanderings. Hand guffaws, chuckles and interprets with shock Glove's singing, gardening and yoga escapades. Hand has been exploring the planet and shares shiny stories of Cairo, Iceland, Sydney, London. Glove has been exploring people and pockets and its stories are less glamorous, perhaps more rumply about the edges and softer in their reasoning. But they are both no less happy.
Hand questions Glove. Why it was no where to be found the last time Hand sought it out? Hand looked everywhere! But hands do not need gloves in all seasons and find other things to toy with. And gloves, once carelessly dropped, don't wait quietly in drawers, pockets or closets. Gloves can be picked up by anyone and find other things to keep warm. And so it happened that the last time Hand looked for Glove it was keeping something else warm.
Hand, being a hand, must fiddle with Glove's various extremities; tugging at a finger here and a thumb here. Glove, being a glover, can't help but wrap up the affection.
At some point they've caught up and chuckled over all that a hand and a glove can. The latte mugs are empty of liquid and filled only with tidal rings left by receding foam. A muffled silence fills the air.
Then, Hand grabs Glove; shoving it into a pocket. Now, Hand can warm some place that it did not realize had grown cold. And for a knit in the frigid fabric of eternity they are Hand and Glove.
But hands do not live in gloves and eventually Hand must go do hand things and Glove quietly puts itself away in a drawer. Glove convinces itself that, for a short bit at least, it likes the drawer. It's cozy and glove can snuggle its fading warmth inside.
Hands are meant to keep reaching out and grabbing things. There is no fault to being a hand. Sometimes Glove wishes it were more like a hand. A glove can get lost from it's hand and find itself warming any foreigner who finds it. A glove can't help it. And when you're a glover the world is only your mirror and shows you what you are by being the thing that you are not. The world is full of hands always telling gloves that they are empty and nothing without them.
Glove picks itself up out of the drawer and drags itself into the bathroom. It looks into the mirror and remarks with only a little surprise the over stretched and sagging body it sees in there.
Hand had come by with that well groomed charm and clean manners and didn't Glove just find itself wrapping that up. Again. Glove thought it loved Hand. It liked the way being around Hand provided a warmth and direction. But too soon Glove realized that it had once again been put away. The horrible boiling that rose from the pit of the stomach, broke a sweat on the back and moistened its eyes was the realization that Glove had deceived itself once again. Hands are simply not born to live in gloves.
"Stupid Glove!" It mutters at itself, still rumpled and still covered with Hand's fingerprints. It had just loved being picked up, touched and adored for a change. But hands do hand things and gloves are discarded with only their memories of warmth and shape as comfort.
"Stupid Glove!" It shouts to the reflection. "How could you have been so stupid! How could you have dared to hope again? You know you sat there and probably said all of the wrong things! You know your jokes are corney! YOU KNOW DAMNED WELL that no Hand ever comes back!"
And in the mirror Glove saw, finally, just how selfish it had been, expecting to be filled up. Hand always let Glove imagine life could be different. With Hand, Glove had a taste of a life that it never felt on its own. Glove wished it had been born a hand, not a glove. That way it could have bones to hold itself up and muscles with which to grab what it wanted.
Just then Glove wondered with every fiber of being if it was really meant to be a glove at all? It had built these seams, knotted them off and divided itself into all these fingers and then hoped that someday just the right hand to fit these contortions would come along. Glove had merely succeeded in twisting itself up into all sorts of weird shapes and spent a lot of effort on making it all look natural.
So Glove, a bit reluctantly at first, gave up on ever fitting over another perfect hand. With a tug here and a letting go there it started to come apart at the seams. Stitches that had been years in the making found themselves being easily torn open. And one day it discovered happily that what had always been inside of it was not empty at all. It had been blocked out by hopes for hands, but it was still there. Only now, it was free.
Hand bounds through the door and grabs up Glove in affectionate reunion. It orders a similar blizzard-topped drink. Hand boasts about what has been happening in its life. Glove listens. Glove shares its pointerless meanderings. Hand guffaws, chuckles and interprets with shock Glove's singing, gardening and yoga escapades. Hand has been exploring the planet and shares shiny stories of Cairo, Iceland, Sydney, London. Glove has been exploring people and pockets and its stories are less glamorous, perhaps more rumply about the edges and softer in their reasoning. But they are both no less happy.
Hand questions Glove. Why it was no where to be found the last time Hand sought it out? Hand looked everywhere! But hands do not need gloves in all seasons and find other things to toy with. And gloves, once carelessly dropped, don't wait quietly in drawers, pockets or closets. Gloves can be picked up by anyone and find other things to keep warm. And so it happened that the last time Hand looked for Glove it was keeping something else warm.
Hand, being a hand, must fiddle with Glove's various extremities; tugging at a finger here and a thumb here. Glove, being a glover, can't help but wrap up the affection.
At some point they've caught up and chuckled over all that a hand and a glove can. The latte mugs are empty of liquid and filled only with tidal rings left by receding foam. A muffled silence fills the air.
Then, Hand grabs Glove; shoving it into a pocket. Now, Hand can warm some place that it did not realize had grown cold. And for a knit in the frigid fabric of eternity they are Hand and Glove.
But hands do not live in gloves and eventually Hand must go do hand things and Glove quietly puts itself away in a drawer. Glove convinces itself that, for a short bit at least, it likes the drawer. It's cozy and glove can snuggle its fading warmth inside.
Hands are meant to keep reaching out and grabbing things. There is no fault to being a hand. Sometimes Glove wishes it were more like a hand. A glove can get lost from it's hand and find itself warming any foreigner who finds it. A glove can't help it. And when you're a glover the world is only your mirror and shows you what you are by being the thing that you are not. The world is full of hands always telling gloves that they are empty and nothing without them.
Glove picks itself up out of the drawer and drags itself into the bathroom. It looks into the mirror and remarks with only a little surprise the over stretched and sagging body it sees in there.
Hand had come by with that well groomed charm and clean manners and didn't Glove just find itself wrapping that up. Again. Glove thought it loved Hand. It liked the way being around Hand provided a warmth and direction. But too soon Glove realized that it had once again been put away. The horrible boiling that rose from the pit of the stomach, broke a sweat on the back and moistened its eyes was the realization that Glove had deceived itself once again. Hands are simply not born to live in gloves.
"Stupid Glove!" It mutters at itself, still rumpled and still covered with Hand's fingerprints. It had just loved being picked up, touched and adored for a change. But hands do hand things and gloves are discarded with only their memories of warmth and shape as comfort.
"Stupid Glove!" It shouts to the reflection. "How could you have been so stupid! How could you have dared to hope again? You know you sat there and probably said all of the wrong things! You know your jokes are corney! YOU KNOW DAMNED WELL that no Hand ever comes back!"
And in the mirror Glove saw, finally, just how selfish it had been, expecting to be filled up. Hand always let Glove imagine life could be different. With Hand, Glove had a taste of a life that it never felt on its own. Glove wished it had been born a hand, not a glove. That way it could have bones to hold itself up and muscles with which to grab what it wanted.
Just then Glove wondered with every fiber of being if it was really meant to be a glove at all? It had built these seams, knotted them off and divided itself into all these fingers and then hoped that someday just the right hand to fit these contortions would come along. Glove had merely succeeded in twisting itself up into all sorts of weird shapes and spent a lot of effort on making it all look natural.
So Glove, a bit reluctantly at first, gave up on ever fitting over another perfect hand. With a tug here and a letting go there it started to come apart at the seams. Stitches that had been years in the making found themselves being easily torn open. And one day it discovered happily that what had always been inside of it was not empty at all. It had been blocked out by hopes for hands, but it was still there. Only now, it was free.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Crimes of thirst
We waste water. We waste water growing grain and then using that grain to produce "food" which barely substitutes for anything edible or nutritious. I walked into the kitchenette this morning and saw the usual Friday box of doughnuts. All that sunshine and energy and it becomes a doughnut? A doughnut that some fool will eat (especially that guy 3 cubicles down who likes to make protein shakes and talk about loosing weight) and it will make them heavier. It will take more gas to propel that heavier body around the planet. Why do we do this? Why do we spend our money and our time and energy making things to eat that don't really feed us? Why? I really want to know. Why do we put food into our body which hurts us? Why is there not a law saying that it is illegal to waste water and resources on making food that is not healthy? Why is there not a warning label, just like we have on cigarettes, saying that a food is bad for both the environment you live in and the one under your skin?
We waste water making soda pop. Thousands of liters of water go into making just a few liters of soda pop. Soda pop companies bought up their shelf space in major supermarket chains right after those chains took over all means of distribution and crowded all of the little guys out. So now we had big buildings claiming to sell "food" and those big buildings sold major parts of their interior off to the highest bidder. The bidder packaged various liquids and solids up and labeled them as "food". We buy that shit, stick it in our bodies and wonder why we are so tired all of the time. We wonder why cancer is on the rise. We wonder why we are becoming an obese nation.
We waste water making water. It takes 5 liters of water to make one liter of bottled water. And then there's the carbon emissions wasted on making the bottle and shipping those containers (think how heavy that is... and how much it must take to ship that stuff) full of tap water from other part of the globe to a grocery store. Never mind the pollution caused by printing label which claims that water from some non industrial nation rampant with water born diseases is somehow cleaner and purer than what comes out of my tap. Please. This is Chicago. We figured out clean water over 100 years ago. Just send the dirty bits down river to St. Louis!
It would be easier on our planet and its water if we just ... went to the tap and drank water.
We waste water making soda pop. Thousands of liters of water go into making just a few liters of soda pop. Soda pop companies bought up their shelf space in major supermarket chains right after those chains took over all means of distribution and crowded all of the little guys out. So now we had big buildings claiming to sell "food" and those big buildings sold major parts of their interior off to the highest bidder. The bidder packaged various liquids and solids up and labeled them as "food". We buy that shit, stick it in our bodies and wonder why we are so tired all of the time. We wonder why cancer is on the rise. We wonder why we are becoming an obese nation.
We waste water making water. It takes 5 liters of water to make one liter of bottled water. And then there's the carbon emissions wasted on making the bottle and shipping those containers (think how heavy that is... and how much it must take to ship that stuff) full of tap water from other part of the globe to a grocery store. Never mind the pollution caused by printing label which claims that water from some non industrial nation rampant with water born diseases is somehow cleaner and purer than what comes out of my tap. Please. This is Chicago. We figured out clean water over 100 years ago. Just send the dirty bits down river to St. Louis!
It would be easier on our planet and its water if we just ... went to the tap and drank water.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
#948 on the #147
Another bus ride. It could be so plain, so blazé, such a perfect time to tune out. I don't. I watch, knowing that sooner or later I will be rewarded.
The driver lurches the vehicle ahead just as an elderly woman is turning to take her seat. A young black man in the next seat over reaches his long arm out around her quickly so she doesn't loose balance. The reach, the way his hand went around her side, it's not how one usually touches a stranger. But the look on his face is only concern. With the aid she recovers. They smile at one another as if to say "isn't it funny?"
People cling to poles and straps waiting for seats to open up. A man with nails rippled from poor nutrition and smooth hands holds onto the bar in front of me. A woman whose hair is dyed the color mine used to be sits two seats ahead. By the sight of her roots, her natural hair color is the same as mine, as well. Her dye job looks fake under the flourescent lights. Did I look like that? Hair splashes over the fur collar of her coat and the strawberry blonde mixes with thick black.
At Bryn Mawr we reach the usual snag thanks to a deep hole that prevents usage of the right lane. An older man gets on. He's tall and skinny and lopes up the aisle. His clothes aren't tattered but they droop a bit on his frame. His chin hasn't seen a shaver in about a week and the silver stubble seems to fatten his cheeks out a bit. He's lifting his shopping bag to make sure not to hit anyone with it. His lips are covered with magenta lipstick. Covered like he tried to eat the lipstick covered. Magenta like a pure printing ink. Some sort of extreme treatment for chapped lips? Did he make the mistake of grabbing something in the bathroom that he thought was chapstick and his wife got a good joke instead? What IS in that shopping bag?
People look up at him and quickly dart their eyes to the floor. A little girl in the front row wearing pants the same shade as his lipstick gives him a big smile. Magenta lipstick on an old man... that's a pretty good reward for a Thursday.
The driver lurches the vehicle ahead just as an elderly woman is turning to take her seat. A young black man in the next seat over reaches his long arm out around her quickly so she doesn't loose balance. The reach, the way his hand went around her side, it's not how one usually touches a stranger. But the look on his face is only concern. With the aid she recovers. They smile at one another as if to say "isn't it funny?"
People cling to poles and straps waiting for seats to open up. A man with nails rippled from poor nutrition and smooth hands holds onto the bar in front of me. A woman whose hair is dyed the color mine used to be sits two seats ahead. By the sight of her roots, her natural hair color is the same as mine, as well. Her dye job looks fake under the flourescent lights. Did I look like that? Hair splashes over the fur collar of her coat and the strawberry blonde mixes with thick black.
At Bryn Mawr we reach the usual snag thanks to a deep hole that prevents usage of the right lane. An older man gets on. He's tall and skinny and lopes up the aisle. His clothes aren't tattered but they droop a bit on his frame. His chin hasn't seen a shaver in about a week and the silver stubble seems to fatten his cheeks out a bit. He's lifting his shopping bag to make sure not to hit anyone with it. His lips are covered with magenta lipstick. Covered like he tried to eat the lipstick covered. Magenta like a pure printing ink. Some sort of extreme treatment for chapped lips? Did he make the mistake of grabbing something in the bathroom that he thought was chapstick and his wife got a good joke instead? What IS in that shopping bag?
People look up at him and quickly dart their eyes to the floor. A little girl in the front row wearing pants the same shade as his lipstick gives him a big smile. Magenta lipstick on an old man... that's a pretty good reward for a Thursday.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
reflection
I catch sight of her in the glass of store window. Neat black skirt, tall boots, pea coat, gloves in the left hand; umbrella tucked under the right. Well put together, she could be someone important on her way to do do something meaningful. She could be someone successful on her way home after a good day at work. I watch her like I'm curled up and cold in the sheltering niche between 2 buildings. I eye her with a jealousy, feeling my filthy and mismatched clothes and the matted hair on my head. I get so envious because it makes me feel surprisingly dirty when she makes an appearance.
I know who she is; she's an actor. I know because I know under that veneer anyone can buy at Ann Taylor she is me, a dirty, homeless, drunk. And as a drunk I may never get used to colliding with a reflection that looks like someone else. She looks like someone I don't deserve to be living a life I don't deserve to live.
I march past the stores, reminding myself that these boots cannot be worn again without serious attention from a cobbler. Rounding the corner and taking hold of the damp railing that leads down into the subway, a shadow catches my eye. It's just a flit of rags in the wind and a whiff of unwashed personal funk. There she is - who I am. A few bad decisions away, there I sit.
"God bless you" I say over my shoulder and I head down into the train station to go home.
I know who she is; she's an actor. I know because I know under that veneer anyone can buy at Ann Taylor she is me, a dirty, homeless, drunk. And as a drunk I may never get used to colliding with a reflection that looks like someone else. She looks like someone I don't deserve to be living a life I don't deserve to live.
I march past the stores, reminding myself that these boots cannot be worn again without serious attention from a cobbler. Rounding the corner and taking hold of the damp railing that leads down into the subway, a shadow catches my eye. It's just a flit of rags in the wind and a whiff of unwashed personal funk. There she is - who I am. A few bad decisions away, there I sit.
"God bless you" I say over my shoulder and I head down into the train station to go home.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Did the lights just go out?
She looks pretty well put together, neat hair, coat not too dirty. But, for someone near a train station at 8 am she’s walking unusually slowly. People don’t window shop like that. At least not right here, and not now. I pass by her on the left and see the stray bits of her smooth hairdo that are oddly out of place on the back of her head. She just woke up, I can tell. Maybe just crawled out of whatever box she slept in. Maybe she just got put out of doors. But this ain’t normal. The signs of mental illness seem easy to peg after I’ve walked up Granville enough times. The slow walking, the funny sort of wanderer that seems to have a string attached to every passer by and gets turned and dragged a little bit by everyone. They look around in confusion. Sometimes they hold a cup in one hand as they wander and turn. They cold be seeking change or just puzzled as to the location of the dentures they are SURE they left right in there the night before. Sometimes incongruously warm or not enough clothing is the tip off. There’s out of season and then there’s ’no i can’t feel my feet falling off’. Mostly I see it in the eyes. They just look lost like no voice could ever call them home.
I wonder, sometimes, if I’m watching the end of the bubble. Humanity has swelled itself to the proportion of expecting clean drinking water to come from the tap and expecting civic infrastructure to be maintained. We’ve puffed our lives out with appliances and televisions and wardrobes of a size that would make a medieval king turn pea green. It’s only been like this for the narrowest fraction of human history, even though we take it as a given and assume it will continue forever.
Drinkable tap water? Just over 100 years ago, Chicago water held the possibility of cholera and it made folks pretty antsy to ponder consuming it. We had just reversed the flow of the river and sent a wall of filth heading toward St. Louis. And in doing that we started mucking with the largest fresh water reserves on the continent, the Great Lakes. Owning washing machine was pretty novel at the end of WW2. But we quickly did what it took to get them and to put on that sheen of prosperity. We blasted highways across the heartland and drove our automobiles straight to the ozone. And now we sit at the point where to continue at our current pace of assumption could make life very different and very unpleasant on this planet much more quickly than anyone could have imagined. Do we rally to preserve the comfort of future generations?
NO. We don’t. We don’t for the same reason we refused to end slavery or consider the plight of Native Americans. It’s just in our nature to not do what might be bad for business. Financial progress must be had at the expense of any moral integrity.
Is that it? Is that all we’re here for? Did the lights go out for you? Because the lights just went out for me. Maybe this is the beginning of the end. Not a blazing armageddon or brilliant mushroom cloud, but a long, whiney, whimpering plea for more more more until the whole thing just goes pop.
I wonder, sometimes, if I’m watching the end of the bubble. Humanity has swelled itself to the proportion of expecting clean drinking water to come from the tap and expecting civic infrastructure to be maintained. We’ve puffed our lives out with appliances and televisions and wardrobes of a size that would make a medieval king turn pea green. It’s only been like this for the narrowest fraction of human history, even though we take it as a given and assume it will continue forever.
Drinkable tap water? Just over 100 years ago, Chicago water held the possibility of cholera and it made folks pretty antsy to ponder consuming it. We had just reversed the flow of the river and sent a wall of filth heading toward St. Louis. And in doing that we started mucking with the largest fresh water reserves on the continent, the Great Lakes. Owning washing machine was pretty novel at the end of WW2. But we quickly did what it took to get them and to put on that sheen of prosperity. We blasted highways across the heartland and drove our automobiles straight to the ozone. And now we sit at the point where to continue at our current pace of assumption could make life very different and very unpleasant on this planet much more quickly than anyone could have imagined. Do we rally to preserve the comfort of future generations?
NO. We don’t. We don’t for the same reason we refused to end slavery or consider the plight of Native Americans. It’s just in our nature to not do what might be bad for business. Financial progress must be had at the expense of any moral integrity.
Is that it? Is that all we’re here for? Did the lights go out for you? Because the lights just went out for me. Maybe this is the beginning of the end. Not a blazing armageddon or brilliant mushroom cloud, but a long, whiney, whimpering plea for more more more until the whole thing just goes pop.
The rock in my attic
She went to see John of God. I remembered when I noticed she had a bit of an incongruous tan. It's only March. Where would this tan have come from? Normally she's so pale, shunning the sun even in the summer. I couldn't help but notice the sunny color on her cheeks and remember, oh yeah...
"How was your trip? How was John of God?"
"he was wonderful!!" People describe John of God with tones of reverence and awe that somehow manages to elude all details that might tie things back to logic. Ahhh logic. Faith in little things that are a bit visible rather than that big invisible pinch hitter.
Then she runs away from me. A few minutes later she's standing behind me with cupped hands. Opening them I see a milky rock the color of peony pink.
"This was with me when I visited John of God, and I had it with me the whole time soaking up energy and Brazilian sun... and it's for you!"
I scoop my jaw off the floor and accept the gift. It's pretty. It tingles when I put it in my hand. I take it home. I rub it against the spot where my back aches. I put it next to my pillow. And then I go to sleep.
When I wake up I've left my body somewhere and I'm climbing a ladder into the attic. The attic is full of people. Some laugh. Some are sexy. There's tons of antique furniture and hangers full of fancy clothes. I'm bumping into people that I haven't seen in years. The attic is a fun party until that tune goes off in the distance which I know is my alarm clock. I waive goodbye and climb back down the ladder.
This could be yet another goofy dream of the attic. I've had those a few times in my life. But then the next night upon dozing off I find myself climbing those same wooden steps. I put on a suit from one of the hangers in order to enter and be properly dressed. This time the people are much tamer, sitting and talking, and I can spend my time rummaging through the antique furniture. I shuffle through papers and old trinkets. I look into antique mirrors and the face reflected back is always a different age. She's older in one mirror and a child in others. Somehow I have this thought that this is so much better than the attic of the place where I used to live. It's not as dusty and run down.
There, in the back of a drawer that I've pulled out of a mahogany chest, I find it. It's glowing through the cloth which covers it. When I reach in and grasp it and bring it out to see I'm surprised at what I find in my hand. It's the John of God rock.
"How was your trip? How was John of God?"
"he was wonderful!!" People describe John of God with tones of reverence and awe that somehow manages to elude all details that might tie things back to logic. Ahhh logic. Faith in little things that are a bit visible rather than that big invisible pinch hitter.
Then she runs away from me. A few minutes later she's standing behind me with cupped hands. Opening them I see a milky rock the color of peony pink.
"This was with me when I visited John of God, and I had it with me the whole time soaking up energy and Brazilian sun... and it's for you!"
I scoop my jaw off the floor and accept the gift. It's pretty. It tingles when I put it in my hand. I take it home. I rub it against the spot where my back aches. I put it next to my pillow. And then I go to sleep.
When I wake up I've left my body somewhere and I'm climbing a ladder into the attic. The attic is full of people. Some laugh. Some are sexy. There's tons of antique furniture and hangers full of fancy clothes. I'm bumping into people that I haven't seen in years. The attic is a fun party until that tune goes off in the distance which I know is my alarm clock. I waive goodbye and climb back down the ladder.
This could be yet another goofy dream of the attic. I've had those a few times in my life. But then the next night upon dozing off I find myself climbing those same wooden steps. I put on a suit from one of the hangers in order to enter and be properly dressed. This time the people are much tamer, sitting and talking, and I can spend my time rummaging through the antique furniture. I shuffle through papers and old trinkets. I look into antique mirrors and the face reflected back is always a different age. She's older in one mirror and a child in others. Somehow I have this thought that this is so much better than the attic of the place where I used to live. It's not as dusty and run down.
There, in the back of a drawer that I've pulled out of a mahogany chest, I find it. It's glowing through the cloth which covers it. When I reach in and grasp it and bring it out to see I'm surprised at what I find in my hand. It's the John of God rock.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Lucid Dad
At the bottom of the stairs, the grey mist parts and I find myself on a moonlit landscape. A wide, open area fenced in by trees that are blackened with night is illuminated by a half moon. The moon I saw over my shoulder just a few hours ago was a waxing crescent. Ah, I must have just woken up.
There's a house. As I approach it, various creatures come toward me from the woods all around. A big orange cat slinks by. Birds flutter around, trying to glean seeds from the cold night ground. Something a bright shade of blue moves towards me. It looks part playful cartoon monster and part dinosaur. I don't feel particularly threatened by it as it approaches clumsily on clawed feet. Quickly, however, a black lab bounds around the house to come between us, preventing the blue monster's advance. It moves to the side, skirting the dog and continuing toward me. But then another dog, and another and another, German shepherds with black coats or black labs, come around from behind me and form a circle that prevents the monster from making any sort of advance. Dogs, I know I should trust their instincts even if mine are easily duped. "Listen to my dogs!" I tell the monster, and it leaves.
It's then, behind the house, that I see her in the advancing light of dawn. I start out running and leap into her arms, and she catches me. But she is Divine Law. While she can catch me, this is not the cuddly side of god and she puts me down on the ground dispassionately before pointing off and to the left. The light is sprouting quickly and the sky advances to bright blue. In the daylight I see him working, still wearing those polyester knit pants and brown nylon coat. It's early spring and the grass is brown. He's picking up fallen branches from the lawn. I shout to him so loud I must have been talking in my sleep:
Daddy!!
In the daylight I recognize this place as the back yard of the house I grew up in. But, it feels much bigger, like it did when I was in a smaller body. He looks up from his work, drops the sticks and comes over toward me.
When he's right in front of me I reach out and hold his face in my hands. He looks young. His skin is much smoother, his hair has more dark than grey in it, and there are none of those funny age spots on his skin. There is no disease to his comportment. Of all the questions I'd like to ask, out comes a corny: "Daddy, I miss you!".
He seems to answer by saying five sentences simultaneously. But only these words emerge from his mouth;
"I remember when you were little. I'd sit down and you would be climbing all over me."
"I do remember. I remember lots ! I've made you part of my art. "
"I know!" He turns a bit red. Perhaps he's none too pleased by having been turned into such a public subject. Then he adds: "I talk to you because no one else can hear me. Tootsie, you have to live your own life. Don't worry about your mother or anyone else. Get up and LIVE."
Faster than I can ask what he means the scene melts and slips away. I find myself lying in my dark apartment with the foot sounds of my upstairs neighbor echoing through the room. The room has clutter and ticking clocks. Street lights paint a funny pattern across the ceiling. This can't be real.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Blackberry jam
On tippy toes I stretch up to retrieve a tiny purple jar from the top shelf of the cupboard over the frig. The lid is labeled "BK". Hm. Blackberry. Not sure how many jars of how many flavors I have left up there. I pop the lid.
My mom still makes homemade jam and seals it into jars with a layer parafin on top. I have to poke at the wax and pick it out. This was the norm for opening jam when we were little. I don't know when it stopped. Maybe some time in the 70's when mom got pressured into going back to work. The jam disappeared. The homemade doughnuts with a funny german name disappeared. The special lunches on the first day of summer vacation, the vegetable garden filling our table with fresh stuff, it all disappeared. Dinner came from boxes that mixed up fast, now. We learned to pop popcorn.
Inside is that wonderful purple paste of seeds and pulp and sugar that mom still makes every year. I put some on my buttered toast.
mmmmmmm - thanks mom.
I have a mom that still makes jam and homemade pies. She still calls on birthdays to sing. She used to mail boxed baskets full of home made chocolate treats every Easter - even putting in Easter grass as packaging. She did this until we were all safely into our 30's and expressing concerns about contracting the family diabetes.
As the knife laden with dark jam comes out of the jar, a thought flashes through my mind. Someday there will be a last jar of jam with no hope for getting more. Will I open that jar and taste, for the last time, the flavor of sunshine, of fingers picking blackberries in a secluded woods with coyotes and deer nearby and of mom boiling fruits in her special kettle? Or will I leave it on the shelf?
What's more important? The sentiment of memories trapped in a jar or the taste of sunshine and love?
My mom still makes homemade jam and seals it into jars with a layer parafin on top. I have to poke at the wax and pick it out. This was the norm for opening jam when we were little. I don't know when it stopped. Maybe some time in the 70's when mom got pressured into going back to work. The jam disappeared. The homemade doughnuts with a funny german name disappeared. The special lunches on the first day of summer vacation, the vegetable garden filling our table with fresh stuff, it all disappeared. Dinner came from boxes that mixed up fast, now. We learned to pop popcorn.
Inside is that wonderful purple paste of seeds and pulp and sugar that mom still makes every year. I put some on my buttered toast.
mmmmmmm - thanks mom.
I have a mom that still makes jam and homemade pies. She still calls on birthdays to sing. She used to mail boxed baskets full of home made chocolate treats every Easter - even putting in Easter grass as packaging. She did this until we were all safely into our 30's and expressing concerns about contracting the family diabetes.
As the knife laden with dark jam comes out of the jar, a thought flashes through my mind. Someday there will be a last jar of jam with no hope for getting more. Will I open that jar and taste, for the last time, the flavor of sunshine, of fingers picking blackberries in a secluded woods with coyotes and deer nearby and of mom boiling fruits in her special kettle? Or will I leave it on the shelf?
What's more important? The sentiment of memories trapped in a jar or the taste of sunshine and love?
Friday, March 7, 2008
7 dis-[function] sets
[
The train has its delays one the one day I’ve planned things a little too tightly to tolerate such dawdling. What happens to all these Red trains that I always see leaving the station religiously every five minutes when I’m stuck at Howard waiting for a Purple one? How is it that by the time one gets to Belmont and is trying to catch a Red train they only seem to come every fifteen minutes? What happens? Does some monster eat half of the trains?
Don’t forget to get off at the next stop. I get up to wait by the door as we glide past a local station. People stand about in coats and hats under the rusty red “Wellington” sign. Too bad that no one at the Wellington platform actually wears Wellingtons.
]
[
Somehow, with my somewhat clumsy but sensible and comfy shoes, I manage to take this woman’s pump off her left foot. I’m part of the rush of people getting off the train, flooding down the stairs and draining out into the street. She’s one of those bodies trying to push upward to wait in the frigid air for transportation. We pass each other and somehow my shoe catches her little pump, sending it flying. I apologize profusely and bend down to pick up the cheap little black shoe and put it back onto her foot. She does not turn into a princess.
]
[
I’m walking up the street, just meeting someone for the first time over coffee (even though I don’t drink coffee) at a little place that caught my eye 3 years ago. Hard to forget a place with “pig” in the title. Everyone else is walking the other direction. Their faces are so young! They look terribly tidy and terribly ready to face the world. Young men. As I pass them some turn their heads to look at me. Fast, though, so they don’t get caught. There’s something funny in the air today – as if suddenly people will halt their march into the job machine, turn, open their jackets to reveal saffron robes, and break into unison singing. “Cha’i guru deva – OHMMMMM - Nothing's gonna change my world...”
]
[
Everyone is at a table by themselves when I get there. I play pick-the-single for a second or two. But, he’s easy to spot. Profile just like the picture that I’ve been looking at as I typed out emails for the past week. He’s hunched over the Wall Street Journal in the same way he slumps over a dog in one of the online photos. But this isn’t online. This is the real person who will have a real inflection to discern when he says words that he, until now, he would have typed. Here sits the mind and the meat suit. Hello person named after a sharp object, nice to meat you.
When someone who reads the Journal hands you his business card, it means he wants to talk again. I realize that 40 minutes after we part ways on a traffic island to head off to respective jobs.
]
[
P~ the computer addict sneaks around the corner of my cubicle, with a barely concealed glee.
“There’s a new baby Mac in my house!”
“Really?” I roll around my chair dramatically and make a flourish with my arm. “How many does this make?
“Five!” He’s beaming like a new dad.
“Five? What, are you guys, Catholic?”
]
[
I’m walking down the street toward the annual anal raping I take at the accountant. How does one profession manage to magnetize the most bland, monotone, individuals on earth? What happened to people like that before there was a need for accountants? Did they hang out in barns counting sheaves?
Preacher man is on his same corner where he has stood as long as I’ve lived in this city and walked past this corner. He rants into his karaoke machine in front of the Old Navy telling all of the teenagers eager to exercise the credit cards they shouldn’t have about how they ‘Canna go to heaven if they drinkin' liquor! You can’t get to heaven with a cigarette in your hand!’ The lecture goes on to talk about Jesus. Jesus this Jesus that. I look up a bit. One block down is the brownstone with bay windows where I lived for two summers. I count up 12 floors and spot the window that used to be mine. That room, that solitude, was heaven. I had a lot of great sex in that room while preacher man ranted below under the hot sun on a concrete griddle. I pass him, his pointing finger and cheap loudspeaker, with a big ole’ grin on my face.
]
[
Don’t forget, never forget, to see something good in every person you pass. Imagine them as a good secretary, a kind voice on someone’s phone, something good to someone somewhere. That black girl with the high leather boots that are a bit too industrial to be sexy and the face that’s too round and teenage pimply to be pretty, she’s doing the best she can even though she looks so cold and tired. I see her. I see her trying to be someone, not just another nothing person disregarded for her skin color or thick lips. She’s just beautiful, really. I smile at that beauty I see in her and when she looks at me the coldness and tiredness, the youthful frustration, melts from her face for a second and she smiles back.
]
The train has its delays one the one day I’ve planned things a little too tightly to tolerate such dawdling. What happens to all these Red trains that I always see leaving the station religiously every five minutes when I’m stuck at Howard waiting for a Purple one? How is it that by the time one gets to Belmont and is trying to catch a Red train they only seem to come every fifteen minutes? What happens? Does some monster eat half of the trains?
Don’t forget to get off at the next stop. I get up to wait by the door as we glide past a local station. People stand about in coats and hats under the rusty red “Wellington” sign. Too bad that no one at the Wellington platform actually wears Wellingtons.
]
[
Somehow, with my somewhat clumsy but sensible and comfy shoes, I manage to take this woman’s pump off her left foot. I’m part of the rush of people getting off the train, flooding down the stairs and draining out into the street. She’s one of those bodies trying to push upward to wait in the frigid air for transportation. We pass each other and somehow my shoe catches her little pump, sending it flying. I apologize profusely and bend down to pick up the cheap little black shoe and put it back onto her foot. She does not turn into a princess.
]
[
I’m walking up the street, just meeting someone for the first time over coffee (even though I don’t drink coffee) at a little place that caught my eye 3 years ago. Hard to forget a place with “pig” in the title. Everyone else is walking the other direction. Their faces are so young! They look terribly tidy and terribly ready to face the world. Young men. As I pass them some turn their heads to look at me. Fast, though, so they don’t get caught. There’s something funny in the air today – as if suddenly people will halt their march into the job machine, turn, open their jackets to reveal saffron robes, and break into unison singing. “Cha’i guru deva – OHMMMMM - Nothing's gonna change my world...”
]
[
Everyone is at a table by themselves when I get there. I play pick-the-single for a second or two. But, he’s easy to spot. Profile just like the picture that I’ve been looking at as I typed out emails for the past week. He’s hunched over the Wall Street Journal in the same way he slumps over a dog in one of the online photos. But this isn’t online. This is the real person who will have a real inflection to discern when he says words that he, until now, he would have typed. Here sits the mind and the meat suit. Hello person named after a sharp object, nice to meat you.
When someone who reads the Journal hands you his business card, it means he wants to talk again. I realize that 40 minutes after we part ways on a traffic island to head off to respective jobs.
]
[
P~ the computer addict sneaks around the corner of my cubicle, with a barely concealed glee.
“There’s a new baby Mac in my house!”
“Really?” I roll around my chair dramatically and make a flourish with my arm. “How many does this make?
“Five!” He’s beaming like a new dad.
“Five? What, are you guys, Catholic?”
]
[
I’m walking down the street toward the annual anal raping I take at the accountant. How does one profession manage to magnetize the most bland, monotone, individuals on earth? What happened to people like that before there was a need for accountants? Did they hang out in barns counting sheaves?
Preacher man is on his same corner where he has stood as long as I’ve lived in this city and walked past this corner. He rants into his karaoke machine in front of the Old Navy telling all of the teenagers eager to exercise the credit cards they shouldn’t have about how they ‘Canna go to heaven if they drinkin' liquor! You can’t get to heaven with a cigarette in your hand!’ The lecture goes on to talk about Jesus. Jesus this Jesus that. I look up a bit. One block down is the brownstone with bay windows where I lived for two summers. I count up 12 floors and spot the window that used to be mine. That room, that solitude, was heaven. I had a lot of great sex in that room while preacher man ranted below under the hot sun on a concrete griddle. I pass him, his pointing finger and cheap loudspeaker, with a big ole’ grin on my face.
]
[
Don’t forget, never forget, to see something good in every person you pass. Imagine them as a good secretary, a kind voice on someone’s phone, something good to someone somewhere. That black girl with the high leather boots that are a bit too industrial to be sexy and the face that’s too round and teenage pimply to be pretty, she’s doing the best she can even though she looks so cold and tired. I see her. I see her trying to be someone, not just another nothing person disregarded for her skin color or thick lips. She’s just beautiful, really. I smile at that beauty I see in her and when she looks at me the coldness and tiredness, the youthful frustration, melts from her face for a second and she smiles back.
]
The legend of the meat suit
"Who told you that you are naked?"
God must have been puzzled at human's sudden need to cover themselves with bits of shrubbery. Surely that can't be comfortable. Surely it can't be as durable as the skin they're already wearing. The next lines from God's mythic mouth have been lost by poor transcription and eons of muddy translation. But I wonder ~
"You already had clothes on! I made you that nice meat suit to wear. It's a perfect little away-garment for while you are experiencing this sensual world. Now don't tell me that you got the idea into your head that when I made the meat suit I was making YOU? No no...who got that idea? The man did? oh...."
And so went the first of many cascading less-than-perfect ideas. The funny part is how mistakes can be so normal after a while that we forget to question them. They become projected out as part of the reality we imagine for all beings in the universe. Won't we just be surprised when folks show up from Jupiter's moon, all stark staring naked, and ask us to turn up the warmth-consciousness on our planet? Maybe they'll send us all to detox to remedy a rampant addiction to our physical bodies.
It's no simple matter to get over body addiction. After he passed my father lumbered through my dreams for months, confused as to why no one could see or hear him. He responded when we talked but we didn't turn our heads. He felt more spry and healthy than he had in years but no one seemed to care.
"How come you can hear me?" he asked one morning while we walked through some park filled with blue trees and purple sand.
I turned to him and asked "Who told you that you are dead?" He waived an arm at me and shook his head. Me and my crazy ideas.
But, in the coming months he would begin to show up in different forms. I knew him only by imprint as he was realizing that the identity that came with the recently discarded meat suit wasn't necessary. He floated through in all manner of ways, only taking on the face-of-Dad that I remembered when he needed to step in and show urgent disgust for some boy that I had just met.
It all makes perfect sense - until it doesn't. Aliens can get a pass on nudity. Humans? not so much.
Carl yanks me out of dream world again. I stuff my head in the blanket to snooze for as long as i dare before I know I must get up. It's not quite so light at 6 am yet that I can see clearly but not so dark anymore that I feel the need for lights. In this greyscale world I stand in front of the closet, hoping that the garments I pick look ok together and that I don't look like a color copy of Mr. Caffeine again. If that man owns a moss green shirt I'll just...have to take mine off!
God must have been puzzled at human's sudden need to cover themselves with bits of shrubbery. Surely that can't be comfortable. Surely it can't be as durable as the skin they're already wearing. The next lines from God's mythic mouth have been lost by poor transcription and eons of muddy translation. But I wonder ~
"You already had clothes on! I made you that nice meat suit to wear. It's a perfect little away-garment for while you are experiencing this sensual world. Now don't tell me that you got the idea into your head that when I made the meat suit I was making YOU? No no...who got that idea? The man did? oh...."
And so went the first of many cascading less-than-perfect ideas. The funny part is how mistakes can be so normal after a while that we forget to question them. They become projected out as part of the reality we imagine for all beings in the universe. Won't we just be surprised when folks show up from Jupiter's moon, all stark staring naked, and ask us to turn up the warmth-consciousness on our planet? Maybe they'll send us all to detox to remedy a rampant addiction to our physical bodies.
It's no simple matter to get over body addiction. After he passed my father lumbered through my dreams for months, confused as to why no one could see or hear him. He responded when we talked but we didn't turn our heads. He felt more spry and healthy than he had in years but no one seemed to care.
"How come you can hear me?" he asked one morning while we walked through some park filled with blue trees and purple sand.
I turned to him and asked "Who told you that you are dead?" He waived an arm at me and shook his head. Me and my crazy ideas.
But, in the coming months he would begin to show up in different forms. I knew him only by imprint as he was realizing that the identity that came with the recently discarded meat suit wasn't necessary. He floated through in all manner of ways, only taking on the face-of-Dad that I remembered when he needed to step in and show urgent disgust for some boy that I had just met.
It all makes perfect sense - until it doesn't. Aliens can get a pass on nudity. Humans? not so much.
Carl yanks me out of dream world again. I stuff my head in the blanket to snooze for as long as i dare before I know I must get up. It's not quite so light at 6 am yet that I can see clearly but not so dark anymore that I feel the need for lights. In this greyscale world I stand in front of the closet, hoping that the garments I pick look ok together and that I don't look like a color copy of Mr. Caffeine again. If that man owns a moss green shirt I'll just...have to take mine off!
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Hell and wednesday
Coco Chanel thinks it's terribly funny that she put self-tanning creme on my face while I was napping. The brown blotches on my nose and cheek are such an amusement. And here I thought Harry Connick was smiling and laughing at me because he thought I was charming. It's enough to make a girl want to go shove her face deep into the hazelnut whipped creme that the french matron hosting this fete is bragging about. As she places it on the table and I hover over the bowl, spoon in hand, intent on taking it all for myself. Carl Kassel crashes the party, promising word of an upset in the primary elections... "after this news".
Who invited him? Oh yeah, the clock radio,that's who. Waking up to NPR has mixed some odd bedfellows into my morning dreams. Carl I'm more used to seeing. He's become my canary in the coal mine. When he shows up in the dream with his bland cheeriness then I know it's probably time I found my body and woke it up.
Ugh the waking world. The apartment littered with days of mail that i dropped carelessly after opening, clothes not properly retired into the closet and two days of dirty dishes. In front of the closet I hang up yesterday's blue shirt and pull out today's clothes. Cargo pants, black again, also with pockets and zippers all over them. Pullover shirt, this one purple.
For shits I take the train instead of the bus. An old man gets on and sits next to me. His coat is big and bulky and a bit dingy. His face is hidden with a big hat and his possessions are all in a plastic bag. The smell of coffee and Ben Gay wafts toward me. It doesn't look like he's homeless, but it also doesn't look like life on a fixed income is treating him well at all. An alley full of dumpsters might just be his shopping mall.
Shopping mall. Living in Somerville I used to joke that a street on garbage night was like a chinese shopping mall. All night they would go up and down the street with shopping carts and pick through the garbage. "Chinese shopping mall..." I'm such a racist bitch sometimes. When I was moving and filling that curb with 8 years of undesirables I sure didn't mind how they would clear things so I could put out more. I was up all night that night putting out more and more garbage, amazed at what was picked through, collected as treasure or left behind.
An asian woman steps in front of me and starts walking slow. I get instantly impatient and push her out of my way. "What the HELL was that for?" I ask myself. What was I so afraid of not getting in those few extra seconds it cost me to slow my pace and walk behind her? It's not about this woman or her pace. Fact is, I've always been jealous of asian women. Stupid. Racist and stupid.
I'm heading into the break room for a beverage when I collide in the doorway with Mr. Coffee with cream from yesterday. I'm coming in to grab water. He's holding a Mt. Dew in his hands. He's still in crisp pants and an arrow collar shirt. I'm still in pants covered with zippers and pockets and a pullover. We're both wearing black pants again... and today he, too, is wearing a purple shirt. We could be on some weird color wavelength together. Or there could be a cycle of colors that people start to go through together when they work in the same space. I have no doubt that a survey of cubicles would reveal a surplus of purple shirts and black pants. I go back to my desk and instantly shop online for garments in green and robin's-egg blue.
Who invited him? Oh yeah, the clock radio,that's who. Waking up to NPR has mixed some odd bedfellows into my morning dreams. Carl I'm more used to seeing. He's become my canary in the coal mine. When he shows up in the dream with his bland cheeriness then I know it's probably time I found my body and woke it up.
Ugh the waking world. The apartment littered with days of mail that i dropped carelessly after opening, clothes not properly retired into the closet and two days of dirty dishes. In front of the closet I hang up yesterday's blue shirt and pull out today's clothes. Cargo pants, black again, also with pockets and zippers all over them. Pullover shirt, this one purple.
For shits I take the train instead of the bus. An old man gets on and sits next to me. His coat is big and bulky and a bit dingy. His face is hidden with a big hat and his possessions are all in a plastic bag. The smell of coffee and Ben Gay wafts toward me. It doesn't look like he's homeless, but it also doesn't look like life on a fixed income is treating him well at all. An alley full of dumpsters might just be his shopping mall.
Shopping mall. Living in Somerville I used to joke that a street on garbage night was like a chinese shopping mall. All night they would go up and down the street with shopping carts and pick through the garbage. "Chinese shopping mall..." I'm such a racist bitch sometimes. When I was moving and filling that curb with 8 years of undesirables I sure didn't mind how they would clear things so I could put out more. I was up all night that night putting out more and more garbage, amazed at what was picked through, collected as treasure or left behind.
An asian woman steps in front of me and starts walking slow. I get instantly impatient and push her out of my way. "What the HELL was that for?" I ask myself. What was I so afraid of not getting in those few extra seconds it cost me to slow my pace and walk behind her? It's not about this woman or her pace. Fact is, I've always been jealous of asian women. Stupid. Racist and stupid.
I'm heading into the break room for a beverage when I collide in the doorway with Mr. Coffee with cream from yesterday. I'm coming in to grab water. He's holding a Mt. Dew in his hands. He's still in crisp pants and an arrow collar shirt. I'm still in pants covered with zippers and pockets and a pullover. We're both wearing black pants again... and today he, too, is wearing a purple shirt. We could be on some weird color wavelength together. Or there could be a cycle of colors that people start to go through together when they work in the same space. I have no doubt that a survey of cubicles would reveal a surplus of purple shirts and black pants. I go back to my desk and instantly shop online for garments in green and robin's-egg blue.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Tuesday: a word concierto
The lake looks like many rows of grey teeth marching toward the shore to take a bite out of the land. It seems to be enjoying how the weekend thaw removed the icy fence from its margins. The wind is whipping it up into a frenzy. The same wind twirls paper, garbage and leaves into mini tornados through the streets and whips flags around around their poles. The bus driver has had his window open. Maybe he's one of those men who is just always too warm. That March wind reaches in and grabs something out of his pocket, stealing it away into the air. It's just a small, white piece of paper but he stops the bus and runs out into the middle of the busy & crazy intersection of Hollywood, Sheridan and Lakeshore to retrieve the prize. Cars screech to a halt to avoid hitting him. I'd hate to see a bus driver die.
A new display is going up on Michigan Avenue in front of the Hancock tower. It's not quite done and it's difficult to tell what it will ultimately advertise. But for now a rugged looking construction crane parks on the side walk suspending a giant hot dog in the air over the crowd. Is this supposed to make us hungry for hot dogs or frightened? Real hot dogs can kill if you eat too many of them. Giant fake hot dogs might just kill, too. It almost looks as if the machine is hungry and has just stopped off at a roadside stand for an industrial- sized snack.
We're both dressed with blue on the top and black pants with tidy black shoes. We couldn't be more different. The difference goes beyond his brown skin vs. my white. My black on the bottom is cargo pants covered with pockets and zippers. Not like those crisp dress pants that look ready to tackle any client. I don't have that kind of arrow color shirt on. No, I personally could not survive without the pullover. I'm pulling the bag of my own herbal tea out of my pocket while you stir cream into your coffee and mix in sugar. Mr. Black n' blue - we got nothing in common.
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