Crazy After Wendy Rawlings*

*A response to Wendy Rawlings' essay "Let's Talk About Shredded Romaine Lettuce"

The bar on the Monday night is perfect.

The crowd is sparse like grapes in the bottom of a bowl.

Like the last few pieces of lettuce at the sad end of your Cobb.

I am not the only one who is a alone when I cruise in a few minutes after nine having come from an added-late and much-needed therapy session intended to stop the pendulum from swinging with such polar energies.

I’m so tired.

The bar is a place I go, but not usually where I would find myself in an hour so nigh to sleep, so early in the week, and a drink is not usually what I reach for after an hour of sharing my secrets.

It just seems cheap.

But when you miss your train by moments, you kill an hour.

When you are in your thirties, and single, and alone, and wearing a suit and wingtips, and just coming from therapy where you shared your secrets, you sometimes come to your favorite bar even when it’s just a sports-like bar, but a sports-like bar that has always been very friendly to the gal at the end of the bar so much so that one time the printed tab from the machine said “gal at the end of the bar” because they don’t know my name because I think being a regular is both good and very very bad.

What’s great is that you are feeling crazy – both for being crazy and for feeling crazy. And that just hours before the therapy and the bar, you read a recommended piece of experimental non-fiction. A piece which made your sadness deeper. A piece that made your sadness deeper because it was about how everyone (literally everyone, asshole) has it worse than you because you are not shitting blood, or fearing that your daughter’s body is quitting its job, or working a shift in total darkness; a shift that falls on the outskirts of when the sun rises and sets. A shift that the whole time you are earning your money you are inhaling poison.

Because you are not doing any of those things, but you are still going to therapy.  In a squat office building, in a white neighborhood, you are learning life lessons from a pretty, intelligent, kind woman with multiple degrees who tells you to have compassion for yourself, even though you are not inhaling tiny glittery bits of metal that are chewing up your lungs, or shitting blood.

But the bar knows that you are feeling crazy, and feeling crazy for feeling crazy, so as your wingtips cross the sticky threshold of the nearly empty space, the bar serenades you with Patsy Cline, reminding you (with zero subtlety) about the Crazy.  The Crazy in your mind that you fear is in your heart, or wherever is deeper than that.

Its just the end of the tune though, the last chorus, just enough to make you feel uneasy about your own reality and to remind you that you have never ever written one single fucking song about a woman who broke your heart.

The locally brewed beer, the beer close to your regular beer but different enough to make you feel like you are making choices, is cold, even though the pint glass itself seems smaller than it should be, like it knows that you shouldn’t be drinking this beer on this Monday when you are feeling this crazy.

After Patsy finishes her reminder, but before Hootie and before Blues Traveler, the bar gives you one more gift. A Counting Crows song - one that touches all your crazy - in all the places it is restless and resting, and says to you in the clear and prophetic voice of Adam Duritz, the private therapist of your youth, “This is the you that you have always been.”

The Window-In-Process

We sat on the hardwood floor of her sparsely furnished apartment, sipping chamomile tea, occasionally grazing hands or knees, and talking quietly as the slow-setting June sun darkened the room.

I brought my face close to the edge of the steaming jar of tea in my hands to smell the flowers floating at its surface and raised my eyes to the window-in-process that occupied the entire north wall of the room. Three pieces of glass - woodwork, sealants and fillings left visible. All the bones exposed.  It was beautiful.

She was beautiful, too, and I was anxious. I thought about the window. I thought about her. I thought about writing.

The details collected. The smell of the tea, the exposed woodwork of the window, the angle of the sun, the energy of our close proximity. Her. She sighed heavily, ran her fingers along the ridge of her hairline where her hair was pulled away from her face, looked at the window and looked back at me.

Seated on the floor, in her workout clothes and inquisitive eyes, she told the story of the window. The landlord had knocked it out, letting the glass fall to the ground three stories below. He covered the gaping hole with a tarp the week that it was 40 degrees in the Chicago that refused to warm. The beautifully vulnerable skeleton of the window became much more complex as she spoke.

Before she and I came back to the apartment for tea and to stare at the window, we walked the length of her neighborhood city park. We enjoyed a perfect picnic of green foods and red wine in our skimpy summer clothes. We got close, but not too close. I was trying to be vulnerable. This is who I am. This is what I think. These are my hands and feet and legs. I wanted to write about vulnerability.

When the sun had finally set, we stood in the dark apartment and I packed my things to leave. We held each other tightly - briefly - at the door, and I said nothing of her pulled back hair, or her eyes, or the way our hands and knees grazed. On the way home, I wanted to write about the picnic, the tea, the girl. 

Instead, I wrote about the window. 

2014 Great Lakes Snail Race

There’s a lot you can do with a white board.  You don’t have to throw them away and start over like with poster boards, and they keep their shape and don’t need any tape.  I used to write everything out and my block writing was pretty good, but mom said to cool it on the killed trees.  She gave me a white board, an eraser, and a rainbow pack of markers last Christmas and said to go nuts.

I’m known for my signs more than the games.  Last year the town newspaper took a picture of the 2014 Great Lakes Snail Race!! sign Dad and I designed.  That was a great sign and even though it was on paper mom let me keep it - but only if I didn’t let the fame go to my head.  

There are signs everywhere if you take the time to look for them.  Lemonade stands and tag sales and even some kids collecting for charity - though I’m not sure I’d trust their poster.  But ours was the first famous sign.  

We weren’t expecting it.  A lady pulled a small black car with a smashed passenger door half way into our driveway and hurried over to the lawn where Dad stood.  She wore black shoes with a tall spike in the back and walked crooked across the wet grass.  I was hunting snails nearer the street when I first saw her.  She shook Dad’s hand and looked closely at the poster.

My dad’s a designer.  He must be a good one because he is always busy with a design project.  When I first thought up some games he told me that a man must have a passion.  I asked him about his passion and he said without thinking that he liked to design.

He isn’t good at designing games.  I tried to get his help with a wild bird scavenger hunt, but said that no one had that kind of time.  But he did help with the sign.  For the bird watch he helped me to center my letters so that the poster was balanced.  He told me that sometimes less is more and that white space (even though the poster was yellow) wasn’t always a bad thing.  That I only needed to draw a few birds instead of ten.  He was careful and slow with the ruler, marking start and stop spaces with quiet breaths, leaning in so close I could feel the soft fur of his arms as he dragged a thick marker across a pencil sketch.  

I had already found some snails but I told Dad I hadn’t because the sign was finished and I didn’t want him to leave for work.  He suggested ants or squirrels, saying we could get some cheese and lure them out of the tree.  

“That’ll be fun.  And they’re fast.  It’ll be fun to watch them run.”

But I didn’t want to run.  I wanted him to stay, and snails seemed a good way to buy some time.  

The lady stayed with my Dad for awhile - pointing at me with a sharp, pink finger - laughing at something my dad was saying.  I wanted her to leave, but the sticks on her shoes dug deeper into the ground and she wouldn’t stop laughing. 

I ran over to them both - my dad’s face red and eyes wide.  

“Hey bud, this is a reporter.  She wants to do a story on your little game.”

“It’s my passion,” I said.

“What’s your passion?” she asked in voice that sounded more like a whistle.

“Design.”

“Oh?  That’s impressive!  How old are you?”

I didn’t like that she was still there and I asked her what she wanted.

“Don’t be rude,” Dad said laying a hand on my shoulder.  His hand was heavy and I knew he’d have to go to work.

“Not many kids your age have a passion!” 

She was going to make me famous.  She had a camera and worked for a newspaper and said I was special but I wanted her gone.  Because of her I had left the real snails back on the other side of the lawn and wasn’t sure they would still be there.  

She asked for a picture of dad and I and after we took it gave Dad a card.  He shook her hand and they kept talking, even as I walked away.  I needed snails for the race because without them I would never be famous.  But it wasn’t about that.  It took awhile, but I found the snails, and even with them we never raced.  Dad was called to work and the reporter still ran the story.  

I raced them myself and it took a long time, but that’s because snails have no passion.  They have no where to be or things to prove.  They just have to move and wear their shell and sometimes have a famous sign written about them.  But I swear the more you look at them, the more they change.  So it’s better to have a board you can erase.  It helps get Dad when he’s around.  It keeps from cutting down another tree.

Waiting

When Creative Nonfiction magazine posted the theme and call for submissions for its summer issue I was inspired.

“Waiting”

I knew so much about Waiting.

There is a detailed and ever-growing chart in my mind that captures the things that I’m willing to wait for (public transportation) and the things that I am not (pasta to boil).

I have measured my weeks in New Music Tuesdays (now New Music Fridays) waiting for new records to drop so I can wrap myself in that new album for days, let it sink into my skin, find the line or lyric that changes me a little bit. Lose myself in it.

I’ve thought so much about how long we waited for fossils to become fuel, Redwoods to grow, for us to become us - even if we didn’t know that we were waiting.

I know about waiting for summer in a wintery Midwestern city, for a beer to get exactly the right amount of cold, for the truncated cherry of a cigarette to burn the soft edge of a finger. For the sun to rise signifying the long end of a sleepless night. 

About waiting for extinction – that of rare birds, magnificent whales, and of our own people.

About waiting futilely.  For plastic bottles to deteriorate somewhere in a Nevada landfill. Or for your dad to get better.

I told my partner that I was going to write a piece to submit for the issue.

“Why?” She asked sadly. “Because you are always waiting for me?”

I thought about the almost five years I had been waiting for her to be good to me. I almost thought about the lies that I had not yet learned.

“Yes. For that reason, too.” I thought.

Endless Winter

As February draws to a truncated close, temperatures drop and the final days of January begin. I rotate my coat rack so the denim and fleece move toward the back, wrap a scarf around my neck and zip the double layers of my ski-coat. The night to make my resolutions is around the corner. I assess my level of success and disappointment and promise to avoid the same mistakes next year. 

Beyond that proclamation of a better year lies Christmas.  Snowflake and tinsel decor frame the doorways of my favorite bookstores, unavoidable holiday tunes dance a fine line of entertaining and depressing.  I gift my loved ones inexpensive sentiments of presents. Symbols of love or friendship or co-workerness. Soon after, when I shop for those trinkets of my affection, I find some joy in finding just the right gifts.  I stress about my limited funds and do endless math to figure out where my money goes. I decide to start saving more aggressively after the holidays. 

When Thanksgiving comes around, I savor the extra days off work, but find myself bored with all the free time – so accustomed to my jam-packed days. I take Metra home to the suburbs, but forget the pie I won at pub trivia in my refrigerator. I prepare to be challenged by my brother.   

On the Metra back home on Sunday night, my bags full of clean laundry and leftovers, I plan for a vast array of Halloween costumes that I won’t wear because Halloween will fall on a weekday, and I just go to work as usual, but I wear socks with black cats and buy some candy for my team. That night, I try to find something Halloween themed on TV, and feel shock and surprise that tomorrow is already November 1^st. 

I wonder what happened to summer and why I feel like its been winter forever already.

Let's Not Rush This

My mom gives me a dog for my ninth birthday. She says, “There needs to be some father figure in this household” as she fits as collar around his neck. He’s a Bernese Mountain breed with a lame hind leg and fur that sticks to your hands if its was hot. Mom says he needs an ID ‘straight away’ and asks me his name.
“I don’t have a name yet,” I say.
She rolls her eyes and stops working the collar. “It’s just a name Andrew,” she says.

Mom gets like this. Exasperated is the word Dad uses. She breathes loudly through her nose and starts tapping one foot.

“Don’t be so exasperated mom,” I say, but that just makes her more. Now she’s pulling on the collar and the dog lets out a small whine.

“Can I think about it? I need time,” I say. She nods but it doesn’t seem enough so I add, “I need to see what kind of dog he is.”

I know what she’ll say. She’ll say, “He’s a Bernese Mountain dog!” but that’s not the point. I need to know what name will fit. Dad says I’m such an Andrew and Mom says she gave me the name so I hope she’ll understand how important this is.

“Well what are we going to call him while you make up your mind?”

“Dog?” I say, and she lifts her hands up like the criminals do with cops and says, “whatever you want.”

It doesn’t take long for me to meet Dog. Or maybe I should say all of Dogs. He’s not a ‘straight shooter’ as mom would say. He’s actually everything. He can be sad or mad or quiet. Like yesterday, Mom had me wait in my room when Dad dropped me off. Dog ran into my room - crashing into my legs, licking my ankles. He was really, really happy. Then when the shouting started Dog froze, his eyes look wetter and he pushed his face up against mine as we sat in the corner quietly, listening.

It comes to me that same day. It’s a good name and I am excited to tell Mom. “I’ve got a name for Dog!” I say.

“Oh?” She’s at the computer reading something without her glasses. She doesn’t look up.

“Proteus,” I say.

She scrunches her face in a way that makes her look small and says, “Prometheus?”. From her tone I can tell she doesn’t like it.

“No!” I say, getting exasperated myself. “Proteus.”

“What is that?”

“It’s a Greek sea god,” I say. She spins around and her eyebrows sat high on her face.

“Mom, Proteus changed into anything he wanted. He was a changer,” I say. Still she looks confused. Dad was right when he said Mom just didn’t get it.

“Like a Transformer, mom!”

She speaks slowly and gives me a weird look. “Did your Dad teach you this?”

I watched it on the Transformers DVD extras but I didn’t want to tell her that. Instead I say, “I can read Mom”.

Her mouth is open and she looks as wounded as Proteus, when he was just Dog, that day they were fighting. I bite my lip and looked to Proteus. That was only yesterday.

I think she might say no, give him an easier name and I start thinking up a good backup when she says, “How do you spell it?” and I have to admit I don’t know.

Virginia is For Lovers

We were on fire. 

We touched each other’s elbows and hips fluidly and constantly like we were strung together with silk. Our unrehearsed lines hit every time with bursts of laughter. The kisses between us were offered and sought simultaneously. It had been the best weekend of our relationship, maybe of any relationship that I had ever been a part of.  I’d loved you since the day we re-met, but this weekend I understood what it meant to be loved.

Even though you didn’t know anyone but me at the wedding, you pinned your confidence to your chest and revealed yourself to be everyone’s best friend.  You followed and fed and watered me and made me feel smart and sexy and wanted. You made everyone else want you; if only to be treated the way you treated me.

In the hours we weren’t together I let the maid of honor convince me to drink from a tiny bottle of cake-flavored vodka in the back seat of a limousine. It burned going down, but I felt confident and loved and a part of things.  Eventually, I felt a little drunk. You watched me walk down the aisle from your white folding chair in the grass, the Virginia vineyard spread out behind us, all of us with our fingers crossed that the October sky wouldn’t open up with rain.  It didn’t. The bride was beautiful, and there was no rain, and I fought tears as my friend wed the man of her dreams and I locked eyes with you across the crowd.

That night we danced. Your hand stayed on my hip. You let me drink wine with abandon; you held your own empty glass for hours ensuring you were lucid enough to take care of me.  Late into the night, you guided me to our room before I got sick, and were sweet when I woke up a little embarrassed.  You held me and offered to drive the rental car back to the airport so I could relax.

I’m sure that everything you pointed to on the drive north to DC was beautiful. The old farmhouses, the new sprawling single-family homes, the ways the hills dipped, lush and green, behind the trees.  I didn’t see much of it. My head ached with the memories of the night before, and when I closed my eyes, all I could see was you.

Office Coffee

My lips curled back in a snarl, expressing distaste milliseconds before my brain caught up.


“This coffee is sick,” I whispered.

I was alone in the kitchen on the 16th floor of my office building. Cold water, Reese’s peanut butter cups, and good old-fashioned stress had failed to keep me alert. I stared out the window at a Chicago being buried by a late winter storm.

Office Coffee was my last resort.

I drink coffee every day, like my mom. I worked at a coffee shop for half a decade, and grind my own beans at home. My teeth are not sparking white. I stood perplexed in the kitchen staring at the empty pot. Holding my empty mug. I had never made coffee here before.

My temp Elena taught me how to use the machine in the office kitchen, even though I've been here for more than 3 years. Elena moved about the kitchen with ease; she had often made the coffee on the 3rd floor she said, where she temped previously. I was supposed to know how to make it too, so I paid attention while she emptied the brew basket, poured the water, tore the small red bag and emptied the grounds.

"I like to buy my coffee," she said. "I like the flavors. Hazelnut." She hit the button and left the kitchen.

I took another sip and waited for my body to register the bitter, burning energy source. Down on the street below, people ran.  Sloshing through gray puddles, heads covered, like they would if they were caught, terrified, in an actual snow globe.

It was really coming down outside. Snow like this reminds me of college in Wisconsin, even though I wore boots to school all winter as a small Chicagoan. I remembered my first semester when four weeks had passed before my new found best friends and I (all running short on clean clothes) acknowledged that we didn't know how to do laundry. Another freshman that we met in the laundry room showed us how. It was the first of many lessons.

The pull to stand in the kitchen, look into the storm, and sip my freshly made coffee was strong. With a packet of fake sugar and a bit of milk, the coffee wasn't that bad at all.

There's a Word For That

In high school my dad, then living, would scream ‘be the ball!’ from the iron forged bleachers of the gymnasium whenever one was passed to me. And my mother, post-diagnosis, would for over a year think herself Ghandi and will me to ‘be the change I wish to see in the world’. My grandmother insisted I be a ‘good girl’, while my first boyfriend a ‘good girl’ and the words, the collective archive of beings and becomings sat sharply on my tongue. It may be that I was with the boyfriend and am not with the grandmother. I could say, ‘to be is not I am, is not I will, is not I was’. I could speak from the belly. I could give a sideline roar.

But there are no loud carry overs in my household. My mother would ask that I be the change. My father would roll over in his grave and my grandmother would spat something incoherent - some aggregation of words in air that would overstate without being understood.

There’s a word for that. There’s a dictionary of english words. There are 171,476 put to use, 47,156 obsolete- only if you discount the colloquialisms, inflections, TBA, and undeveloped technical vocabulary. And then there’s the Armenian alphabet, the Japanese, the Icelandic. There are the quick utterings of whatever he I chose to be with - a Danish professor, a Guadalajaran line cook. I may say ‘I am in love; I will marry you; I was wrong’. More likely, ‘I am angry; I am sorry; I was wrong’. But to just be - to become the architect of my own alphabet is never so simple. ‘I was wrong, I am trying, please forgive me.’

How To Become a Japanese Wife

If anything, don’t show your hands. Keep them clean and hidden. Oversized pockets are lazy when your back curves in such a way as to hold them in place, provided you assume good posture.

Stand tall. Nod, correct, and erect when your husband says, “model posture!”. Mirrors are vain - puddles mundane. Understand the efforts of the sun while seeking shade. Remember that a spider in daylight is welcome - in evening, an intruder.

Fear nothing smaller than yourself, but if so pray your face be white as the moon. Bleach under the auspices of aloe. Never mistake balm for beauty, but do heed its duty. Trust your neighbors, but not their neighbors. Bow in accordance to rank, never need.

Do so from the diaphragm. Release like a leaden plank, careful to remove any hardware that welcomes recoil. Dip with the weight of a pirates bounty on your back. Lower yourself to the ocean waters of an opt-in baptism. Find a fish of substantial size and emulate its spine.

Always be wary of nets.

What We Were

My mother called on a Tuesday night to tell me my dad was dead.

I can't say with certainty it was a Tuesday. It may have been a Thursday. At any rate it was a night I'd made quick plans with friends. I made them before the announcement and kept them even after. In fact, I was on the elevated platform at Damen, waiting on a Blue Line to take me into Logan Square - to the California stop. A squalid area of town, over trodden by gear-less bicycles and remnants of scattered street gangs.

Courtney had called. She was broke and thought to order chinese. She asked me three times what I wanted to order and discerned the exact amount due, down to the prorated delivery tip. She'd be there with Tyler and Jason, additional friends who had become my friends by default. Their gang of three was how I'd spend most weekends.

We drank a lot, most weekends. Sometimes I lost track of entire evenings. I'd often awake, on their sofa, too-early for notice and would leave amusing notes on their refrigerator door. I never really had much to say to them, nor they me, but we kept each other company, for what felt like half a year, the year I returned to Chicago, following my college graduation and the impending death of my father.

I suppose I should speak of my anger. Not the anger that surfaced then, but the bottom-heavy, spit-fire rage that surfaces now. It’s now six years since that night, and I'd all but forgotten the set-up. And I can't attribute some bad memory to this instant recall. Rather, Jeff, a friend of late, made mention of how he was leaving for the weekend to attend a friends' father's funeral.

“That's a good thing to do,” I said.

“I don't know what to do. I hope being there will help.”

“That's a good thing to do,” I repeated. “You are a good friend.”

This was recorded on online chat during the early working hours of a Tuesday. They say memory is what you make of it, but I refuse to believe it, because if I could make what I would of it, I'd make it lovely. I'd surround myself with comfort. I'd charm with witticisms and seek condolences from thoughtful friends.

But instead I arrived, swollen eyed and lost. No one knew what to do. Jason and Tyler were entertaining further guests. Courtney tried to talk, but found little to say and only succeeded in apologizing for asking this, “but could I pay her for the chinese?”.

I ate nothing and left every grain of rice in its box at their house.

Paying for the chinese I left, with little fanfare.

Jeff really got to me. Being so present. Being attentive. But he also reflects the we of five years later. I don't know that he would think to act as he did, were he in that dingy Chicago apartment with a forlorn friend who poked at her fried rice aimlessly in silence. What would he have said, to the father-less me? Could he have comforted me? I'm not so sure.

The gang of four quickly dissipated, but only in my exit. The three still commune, attend one another's weddings and probably, if need-be sit in on respective family funerals. The notion is consoling.

But then, what of this anger? I could compartmentalize, make sense of this flood of feelings, but really, what's the point? I miss my dad, yes, just as I miss the nights I drank to forget his illness. I don't know if that changes with age. Perhaps Jeff is just wise. Or maybe I've soured. Still yet we can consider this an inconvenient recall, and reinvent the narrative. Which might also bring some joy.

The Poetry of Guilt

Guilt is a poetic emotion.

As poetry is about balance, about light and dark, about giving and taking

As is guilt.

Guilt

From action
From inaction

For not providing someone an opportunity
For stealing another’s opportunity

For not being good enough
For being better

For hurting another
For hurting yourself
For not being hurt at all.

Guilt is directly connected to empathy. If we cannot put ourselves into another’s shoes, if we cannot understand their pain – we cannot feel guilty about causing said pain, or failing to relieve it. Guilt makes us human.

Holding on to guilt beyond a natural cycle of intellectual analysis and stages of emotional change, will make us sick. Rot us from the inside. Make us anxious, depress us. It weighs us down, it causes sleepnessness – guilt itself becomes dangerous.

But a lack of guilt is also dangerous. The lack of guilt is an identifiable characteristic of a psychopath.

If time travel were an option we could return to the moment of action (or inaction) and start over. Make a different decision. Be not in that place at that time. Or be there, but let it be someone else who walks away with guilt.

But we cannot look back. We cannot take back past actions.

There is only one direction in which to move.

We learn in yoga to let go of anything that does not serve us.

Letting go does not mean forgetting, but it does mean moving forward.

Poetry is complex, difficult to understand and slow to process.

As is guilt.

The Books

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.

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.

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.

Measuring Pain

After six days of lying immobile on the living room floor, watching Tyra Banks, getting sicker and sicker from a mysterious flu-like illness, I was dragged to the ER against my will. In triage, the nurse was kind as I explained my ailments. Looking down she gestured small slips of paper taped to the side of a filing cabinet.

"Can you tell me, using this scale, how much pain you are feeling right now?"

My eyes traced the children's scale first and I thought about the children too young to explain their pain in terms of numbers, pointing to the frowning, crying face in hopes someone could make their pain go away. Feeling sad for sick kids, I moved my eyes to the numbered, adult pain scale asking me to rank my hurt from 1-10.

Looking at the numbered scale, barely able to think through the pain I was terrified I had let progress beyond repair; I couldn’t help but think about Eula Bliss’ non-fiction piece “The Pain Scale". Thinking about “The Pain Scale” reminded me that I was missing class. At that point, the pain of obligation, or the pain of possible failure was greater than the dull cramp in my back or the searing slice through my head when I moved my eyes. I pictured the worlds of "Grey's Anatomy" and "House" and all the death, surprise tumors and incurable illnesses each show featured weekly. Last year the Washington Post reported that between 20 and 25 million Americans tune in each week to watch the sex and drama filled "House". If those 20 to 25 million Americans were also in the ER, waiting to hear the cause of their Tyra Banks filled days of pain, fevers and chills, would they also be thinking about the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital and Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital of TV fame?

I refocus on the scale. I can't think of what kind of pain would cause me to point to the 10. I can’t think about what a “high tolerance” means. Over the course of my illness the pain gradually grew and each day I had accessed the pain by comparing it to other pains: Getting my nose pierced. The tattoo on my hip. Food poisoning. Getting my heart broken. This doesn’t hurt that bad.

Because I was thinking about "The Pain Scale", Grey's Anatomy, my tattoo mile-markers, bad Chinese food and broken hearts, and not solely my current discomfort, I pointed to the 3.

The Mower

Alice had a thing for manicured lawns. Tight cross-hatch patterns to be precise, and she tried everything to emulate the downy green runways of the nearby neighbors. But she couldn’t seem to steer it the same way Christopher’s father could, with his valley of grass six blocks over. She tried a mower of old, with its loud belt and wheel rotations. The one’s that backfire and masticate the green threads until a home’s focal point, the show and tell of an entryway, appeared flat and finished. Roadway paint. That was in part the look she was going for, which she could achieve, but she wanted the coarse, imprinted lines of manual achievement. Mr. Adams’ lawn had lines in perfect symmetry; in and out loops that inspired confidence in invited guests. She was adept at the task. The home was maintained. There were patches of flowers, crude cross-bred bouquets she purchased pre-grown, and tall trees that were sheared some, when necessary. But the blade running lines were never visible, or misaligned or terribly out of focus. So they switched to a modern model, at Christopher’s behest because Alice had too many times since nicked her ankle or shin, enough to warrant worry and once requiring three stitches. Their new make performed much the same way and Alice took to blaming the elements; the mud, sod or soot that was procured to produce the grass. It was an easy argument to make, and one of Christopher’s own coaxing so that the chore itself would be less demanding on her.

There were points of procedure to her mowing. Her mother had lupus, and, as such, was always in hat. Alice learned to thwart the sun at a very early age and grew in the habit of wearing an oversized sun shade, usually loose and drooping in the summer seasons and at most points outdoors. Her hats made her visible, as she pushed the machine across the yard. There was a ketchup stain on the front brim, slightly sticky, from their morning breakfast. Christopher made an omelet. She, hating omelets, and even more their nausea inducing egg scent, shook some frozen potato patties onto a cookie sheet for when she finished mowing. She started early to escape the smell of egg, but in so doing, hurried past Christopher who was just then shaking the ketchup bottle. There was a smear of the viscous paste above her eye. She also hated ketchup.

“It was an accident,” he said, still shaking.

“It smells like shit in here.”

And she started up the mower for the third time that week.

Brooklyn

Overflowing shelves of records where Dylan, Zeppelin, Louis Armstrong and the Beach Boys commune together in quiet. A player of records yearning for a spin. Sturdy and heavy antique furniture. A gathering of guitars hidden in closets, in alcoves, on high shelves, waiting for an impromptu sing-along. The Oxford English Dictionary. The Chicago Manual of Style. Endless cookbooks. Three French presses and a baby crib in the back room. Baby-proofed outlets a well-loved sowing machine. Cabinets full of seasonings and spices. The fullness that comes to a space that does not hold a television or microwave. The claw foot tub and a dingy window casting warm light into the open kitchen.

They took the brand new baby and toddling son north to Alaska for fishing season, leaving for the summer high ceilings and white woodwork on the ground floor of a Brooklyn Brownstone's neat railroad apartment.

Loitering in their temporarily abandoned home on a pre-rain Saturday morning in July, I imagine myself filling their closets with my dad's old velor sweaters that I love unconditionally but rarely wear and picture myself sitting cross-legged at the low wooden kitchen table. I write honest letters to friends of my youth while my tea smokes steam into the dusty ray of light that shines across my fingertips. With my blue-ink pen, I paint portraits of buying flowers for the party and collecting chipped coffee mugs. I sit up straighter in my grandfathers old wooden desk chair. I let my hair grow longer and pull it back in a low ponytail, which my girlfriend sweeps softly to the side to kiss my neck each evening when she comes through the front door.

Away from the Brownstone, standing on the steps of our new Dupont apartment on Swann, I can already imagine my dad's sweaters hanging in our tiny, shared closet and decide to buy flowers for the kitchen.

Sorry All

For those of you who have been keeping up with your short form bloggers we apologize, as we have both had serious computer troubles and have additionally been traveling. I'm back in the country now and Hula's making her way to the states as I type. We'll be back online soon, and better than ever!

love,

MeanJean and Hula

On Posture

I can tell by his walk. He’ll arrive home late to count steps in his head. One, two, three, one two, one. He smells like Crest and tonic.


I can also tell by the pattern of his feet. He almost shuffles and he’ll be singing rock. Sometimes he says nothing, and sometimes too much. He gets angry when I purse my lips. He’ll scream and I’ll scream and soon he’s saying ‘you don’t know who I am, you made me this way you bitch, you fucking bitch, you stupid fucking bitch!’ I cry, I kick, and I especially yell back. Get away from me! I’m leaving, I’m leaving right now! I’ll pull on sweat pants and run from room to room looking for my shoes.


Sometimes he’ll follow me, stamping his feet. ‘Go! Go! You’ll never go! You’ll never leave!’ And when I leave, he pulls his arms out- big massive arms, gorilla’s hands. I duck and sprint. Most times he’ll push me against the wall so hard that I’ll bruise. He’ll leave me there to run and block the doorway. Sometimes he laughs, a sad, low laugh, and how I scream! ‘I’ll call the police. I’ll call them on you. I’ll tell them to take you away!’ If my roommates hear, and they always hear, they’ll look at the doorway, me on the floor, and return to their room. The next day they’ll tell me how horrible he is, and why am I with him, and there has to be something better for you out there?


Mostly, I don’t know how to quiet him. How to sit him still so that I can take a drive- a long one smoking cigarette after cigarette. He insists he won’t go to bed without me. I decide to wait until he falls asleep so that I can make my escape. I’ll sit upright in bed while he makes spitting noises in his sleep.


Sometimes I’ll fall asleep, curled tight, as far away from him as that small bed will allow. I’ll sleep for three hours, sometimes four. Then I wake to run.


Oh and how I run! There’s a trail that expands 80 miles to St. Louis and I always think I can make the trip. But I’ll run six or eight or ten miles. When I’m out of breath I think, crap… now what?


But then I dress for work and by this time he’s already moving in the bed. He sits up straight and mumbles ‘sorry, sorry, I’m such an idiot. I’m really sorry.’ I’ll bit my lip and look to the floor. Don’t answer him, don’t answer... ‘I’m going to work’, and I always curse myself for saying that. He jumps up and buttons his jeans. ‘I’ll drive you’. He’ll run around the house, picking up my uniform, brushing his teeth, singing some song.


We drive in silence. I ask him for a cigarette and ash, ash, ash without really inhaling. When we stop he’ll breath deeply. ‘I love you. I love you so much.‘. I turn to face him to tell him that I’ll walk home. I wish I hadn’t because I see him blow me a kiss and know I’ll return.