At the beginning there were no books.
The books were still in boxes, with most other things.
The books had been torn from their shelves like cotton in summer’s high heat, taped tightly into cardboard containers -- disorganized. In the rush to leave DC, without another tear soaking the burr burr carpet, the books were packed according to size, Tetris’ed into tight spaces for conservative packaging. These books were not used to sharing mixed company.
Hughes and MacLean were in tight quarters, which may have not bothered Hughes, but most certainly would have prompted an adjustment in the pacemaker of MacLean. Conrad and Greene brushed Hearts, but they had done so enough times before that the close proximately provided solace. Heller and O’Toole did not find each other as entertaining as one might think, and DuBois and Hawthorne were equally as unimpressed.
Together they took a long journey, though, secured among dressers and chairs, picture frames and pencil sharpeners, in the back of the orange branded UHaul truck. Before, before they had been in the truck, before they had been in boxes, they had learned to share shelves with strangers. Mostly women, many aggressive, some silent as the night. They were not impressed with the thought of finding new shelves, after they had finally settled into the warping warm curve of the built ins of the basement apartment.
Starting over is not the forte of paper people. It is not the forte of people made of flesh, for that matter.
When the truck had unloaded, when the tape was pulled back, and the books transplanted to new milk-crates and vertical domiciles, they shuffled a little. They shuffled and sighed and settled. They found comfort in being back with their categorical comrades, and looked fondly upon the tiny tears in their pages brought on by the journey they had survived.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Birds once Bees
Eleanor used to say, “Now we're cooking with gas”, and Ray “that'll be the day” again and again in everyday conversation. They would say it in tandem. Ray would speak over El, El over Ray and their propensity to anticipate each other didn't stop with movie catch phrases. If one watched television, the other turned a radio dial. When disciplining one child, another was sure to hear hell. They had a natural buoyancy unsuitable for anything outside the realm of elastic love. So that when El complained, Ray atoned. When El lamented, Ray purchased. When El thumbed through a photo album of Ray making memories and spoke of her happiness for the first time in years, Ray died.
All I ever knew of my grandparents were their differences. Blue and pink, coffee and tap water, brick and linen. We would play a game of conversation tennis. Anyone other than my grandmother and grandfather would lob their head from one side to the other whenever they spoke. Arguments weren't heated, nor were they controlled. They lobbed up and down like strokes of a wave. So it never felt threatening. No one anticipated a divorce or a scandal. We all sat, seasick in our seats, waiting for one or the other to do one thing so we could witness its opposite. Ray would tend to the cherry tomatoes. El would read the diary of her youngest daughter.
I had asked my mother what she considered the opposite of death when I received the news. She opened her mouth and said, “birth”. She said it clearly, using its one syllable naturally and with good ease. She always wore her shoulders high and lifted her chin in ways they teach graduates of Ivy Leagues. And my father, who could lift a chin himself, was known to follow suit. I could ask him, but he'd say “birth” too. My mother would knot my father's tie. My father would pick lint off my mothers blouse.
Hands held they ushered me to the car. But they fought the whole ride in. Less peaks and lulls of tides and more atom collisions. I pushed back on the soft upholstery of the car seat and longed for the wind to tangle my hair. So I turned the radio up, so loud it drowned the very synchronized voices of my parents. And I asked again.
All I ever knew of my grandparents were their differences. Blue and pink, coffee and tap water, brick and linen. We would play a game of conversation tennis. Anyone other than my grandmother and grandfather would lob their head from one side to the other whenever they spoke. Arguments weren't heated, nor were they controlled. They lobbed up and down like strokes of a wave. So it never felt threatening. No one anticipated a divorce or a scandal. We all sat, seasick in our seats, waiting for one or the other to do one thing so we could witness its opposite. Ray would tend to the cherry tomatoes. El would read the diary of her youngest daughter.
I had asked my mother what she considered the opposite of death when I received the news. She opened her mouth and said, “birth”. She said it clearly, using its one syllable naturally and with good ease. She always wore her shoulders high and lifted her chin in ways they teach graduates of Ivy Leagues. And my father, who could lift a chin himself, was known to follow suit. I could ask him, but he'd say “birth” too. My mother would knot my father's tie. My father would pick lint off my mothers blouse.
Hands held they ushered me to the car. But they fought the whole ride in. Less peaks and lulls of tides and more atom collisions. I pushed back on the soft upholstery of the car seat and longed for the wind to tangle my hair. So I turned the radio up, so loud it drowned the very synchronized voices of my parents. And I asked again.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Post Apocalyptic Suburbia
Re-experiencing the places of my youth feels surreal on a crisp afternoon the first week in November. It is far too warm and exceptionally quiet. It feels like I'm in a movie set and not just a visit to my childhood home. The music from my headphones plays too loud for me to hear my footsteps as I cross streets without fear of collision, the way a rising soundtrack erases the cacophony of the characters on screen during the climax of the film. A sky so blue and a sun so bright seem abnormal and fake, and even eerier because I’m alone. I traverse the neighborhood with no company. Like the Truman Show. Like the Rapture Came. Like I was Left Behind.
In this fictional moment of present day, where I am a character alone in suburbia, I experience a montage of emotional images as I approach the pond by which I spent most of my outdoorsy growing up. From my solo standpoint, my possibly post-apocalyptic perspective, I see with different eyes.
I slow.
There used to be a tiny island in the middle of that pond, complete with its own tiny desert-island-style tree. When my pony tail was so long and knotted, when my sneakers were worn paper thin, when my tan lines were of short sleeves and knee length shorts, I used to sit at the edges of that pond and devise plots to reach the pond. It wasn't far from shore, but swimming and boating weren't allowed and rule-breaking wasn't my thing. Maybe I could come at night, maybe I could Huck-Finn myself a raft; maybe the water in this man-made suburban pond was not as deep as I feared. I just needed to get there.
I stare.
If the pond was man-made, than the island was, too, and now, with the intelligence of maturity, I wonder what that developer imagined as he diagrammed the burgeoning town’s future pond complete with a tiny island; inspiring the imaginations of young children already dreaming of their escape from the American flags and basketball hoops of Edward Scissorhands suburbia. All these years later, after the apocalypse, the setting has changed. The pond remains the same, but the island is gone now. At some point it began to tilt and dip, and eventually it disappeared into the dark water.
It was swallowed by the pond.
I escaped into the city.
In this fictional moment of present day, where I am a character alone in suburbia, I experience a montage of emotional images as I approach the pond by which I spent most of my outdoorsy growing up. From my solo standpoint, my possibly post-apocalyptic perspective, I see with different eyes.
I slow.
There used to be a tiny island in the middle of that pond, complete with its own tiny desert-island-style tree. When my pony tail was so long and knotted, when my sneakers were worn paper thin, when my tan lines were of short sleeves and knee length shorts, I used to sit at the edges of that pond and devise plots to reach the pond. It wasn't far from shore, but swimming and boating weren't allowed and rule-breaking wasn't my thing. Maybe I could come at night, maybe I could Huck-Finn myself a raft; maybe the water in this man-made suburban pond was not as deep as I feared. I just needed to get there.
I stare.
If the pond was man-made, than the island was, too, and now, with the intelligence of maturity, I wonder what that developer imagined as he diagrammed the burgeoning town’s future pond complete with a tiny island; inspiring the imaginations of young children already dreaming of their escape from the American flags and basketball hoops of Edward Scissorhands suburbia. All these years later, after the apocalypse, the setting has changed. The pond remains the same, but the island is gone now. At some point it began to tilt and dip, and eventually it disappeared into the dark water.
It was swallowed by the pond.
I escaped into the city.
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