(unexpected uplift)

These are familiar noises—the soft clinking of glass or ceramic against metal, the slurping howl of the air as it rushes away from the mouth of the vacuum tube. These are not sounds you expect to hear so close to your head, much less virtually in your head—in your ear canal. You squirm at first, you twitch at the occasional feeling of needles flying against your tender skin. But soon it is over, and you can hear again. And as you exhale the pent up breath of your own air and roll your head to the side to face the apologizing doctor, you cannot help but think that all these months of ear aches and infections may have been worth it. Because here before you, doing his best to make you laugh as he injects a cream deep into your ear, all the way to the ear drum, blocking your hearing for a week; here before you, smiling as you sigh with relief at the procedure's completion; here, promising that you will not have to look like a zombie for your barbecue this weekend, as the cotton ball he is now gently stuffing into your outer ear can be removed tomorrow, and the cream should not ooze down your neck; commenting bashfully that he wished he had 40 friends at all, much less all coming over; grinning as he hands you your bag and then his business card and says he'll see you in a week—it may be fleeting, but for this moment, after all this ridiculous pain and trouble, here it seems you may have laid back in a doctor's chair in a dreary room in a quiet building lacking in any life and looked up to find, waiting to take care of you, a man you think you could quite easily fall for if you met him in another setting—in any other setting but this. For an instant you consider inviting him to that barbecue, but you know better; even when he wakes up his computer to type something up for you—even then, when you see the screen saver of his dog wearing bat ears and a batman t-shirt and he tells you that the pup really likes Halloween—even then, when you think he has just that lightness of heart that you sometimes find hard to dig up in a man—even then, you know better than to think you can just lie down in a doctor's chair and find love.

But you are tired, and the prospect of serendipity lifts your spirit.

flicker of panic

Years ago, a friend commented that I should be a cab driver, I knew the back roads of Boston so well. At the time, I was living in Arlington, and with friends in Belmont, Watertown, Allston, Brookline, the North End, Boston proper, Roxbury, and Somerville, I tended to drive around a lot. I hated getting stuck in traffic, and I really enjoyed knowing sneaky ways to get past it. I also, after four years of hardly leaving Cambridge during college, enjoyed knowing where I was, in a bigger picture sense. So I would often just aim my car in the right direction and get lost in the middle until I made my way out on the other end. By the end of the trip, I’d have learned a new route somewhere, and I’d be delighted when I found a reason to use it again.

San Francisco is more straightforward than the Boston area, with gridded roads and heights that provide frequent aerial views of your destination. But that hasn’t kept me from finding some pretty interesting streets tucked away in places I don’t have any good reason to be but find my way to anyhow. Tonight I drove a route that I may love best, for it winds between houses set high atop the city, wrapping around from Ashbury Heights to Corona Heights and then cutting across the side of Twin Peaks. The architecture covers the whole gamut—including the ubiquitous Victorians for which the city is known and the modern rectangular houses that strike me as very Californian but also what looks like an English country house and a Mediterranean villa and even a truly godawful little mansion, which has spikes lining its roof where there should be eaves and which is one room wide and can’t be much more than the same in depth, as the plummet from its back porch looks terrifying.

As I swerved along this route I adore in the waning evening sun, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad. Yesterday I looked at an apartment in Palo Alto that may be as good as it gets when it comes to affording living alone while paying grad school tuition; I might be nuts not to take it. It’s not the size of the place—half that of my current studio, at best—nor the lack of laundry machines on site nor even the rent that makes me hesitate. It’s the move-in date of July 1—just over a month from now—that sets my heart into a little panic as I think about making up my mind in two days, by which time the little old landlady I liked so much will give the place away to another applicant.

I have long understood a truth about myself, and it’s that when it comes to knowing where I should be—physically, in terms of what sort of place will make me happy in the long run—I am a commitment-phobe. It would be different if I had a real reason to be somewhere—if I worked in an industry that only existed in certain cities or if I were in a relationship with someone who needed to be in a particular place for a particular purpose. But I am free to be wherever I choose, and so I’ve often felt it to be a personal challenge to figure out which place I should choose.

There was so much about growing up in Atlanta that seemed perfect to me, and yet only a year ago did I feel the first-ever (and fleeting) twinge of thinking it might be a place I could live in my adulthood. And for all the years I stayed in the Boston area after college, I adored my life in many ways, yet I felt restless most of the time. Still, while I got job offers in Austin, Washington, DC, and even Ecaudor, I took none of them because, who knows why, they just didn’t feel right. Finally I uprooted myself; I knew it was time to stop the itching and just go somewhere else. I settled on San Francisco because it had a great reputation but I myself didn’t know it. I figured I’d get a real kick out of being here for two or three years—and I also assumed I’d get that urge to move on at some point. But something lovely happened once I got here: early on, I realized that this is a place I’d love to make my home. And from that thought I have only wavered in summer (when the cold fog sets in).

So just when I’ve resolved that I truly can find a place to settle myself down, whether or not I have a reason to be here, I’ve up and opted to remove myself. But what causes that flicker of panic to subside rather quickly is that I know why I’m doing that, and I know it’s good. Now there is something I want to do and it is only in one or two places. Sure, there are many other avenues toward my end goal, but after all these years working in the same career, I know with no hesitation that I am ready to pursue another, and I think this master’s program will be a superb way to get into it. So where I live for a year will be irrelevant. Yes, it will be in a life that involves strip malls and sleepy, one-story houses and driving at 25 miles an hour through town. Yes, it is a quiet town and yes, it will feel tiny. But I will be there knowing that as a result of my next bit of schooling, I may start that non-profit that builds those excellent after-school program I’ve been envisioning for years; I may find a way to impact the lives of not just the precious few kids I’ve grown so close to over the years (David about to apply to college, Byron settled in to his new school, Gaelle still dreaming of medical school, Benjamin oblivious to what I will tell him next week, which is that I won’t be back to tutor him next year, which will break both of our hearts) but of many more like them, who want so much and often go to schools that offer them so little. I do have a dream, and I am going after it; and no matter what comes of that, I know it’s worthy of leaving San Francisco for a little while.

I realized today that while I do have to settle my mind to this change—to letting go of last-minute get-togethers with my friends and strolls through my beautiful, hilly neighborhood and afternoons wasted deliciously in Dolores Park and all those other incredible memories I’ve been creating—I feel really good about it. It is a blessing to know what you love to do with your time and find a way to do it; and it is just as important to know the battles you fight within yourself and find that you have won one.

ode to karaoke

The room is half dark and half light, with no overhead lighting but candles on the tables and a backlit bar lending a warm glow. A disco ball casts stars along the walls and floor at the far end of the long room. The DJ sits alone, plexiglass walls separating him from anyone else.

As the place fills up, the singers begin, responding one by one to the their names being called out as though at a middle school talent show. The first one is plump and frumpy, long hair begging to be pulled into a pony tail. He sings with a high-pitched voice and I don't like it, but Liz smiles at him, liking his energy. Next up is an older man with a crooner's voice; after him another aged one, gray hair toussled, jeans baggy over his hiking shoes; he doesn't have a show tunes look but he's sure got the voice. He stirs the place up a bit, and toes are tapping by the time the if-William. H Macy-were-a-country-singer barkeep takes the mic and then takes karaoke to its heights, leaving Liz and me to puzzle over what he's doing here rather than on tour somewhere in Texas or Tennessee.

Liz gets called up next, and we are sharing a grin as she sings the song I requested for her, Skid Row's "I Remember You," which brought her a standing ovation the first time I saw her sing it. We were at a dive bar in Somerville; it was a Friday night and she had compelled a handful of friends to go to her newest karaoke find, unsuspecting as it was. To one side stretched a long bar and a narrow room around it, with space for people to sit at the bar stools but no standing room. Through a doorway opened up what must have once been a restaurant: two rows of booths beside a pool table, a set of speakers, a DJ's table, and a few mics. No food was served, and I'm not sure the room was used other than on Friday and Sunday nights, when a random array of people came for karaoke, occasionally riling up the more local crowd who frequented the bar. (In Boston parlance, it was a townie bar, and there sometimes developed a little bit of tension between the townies and the very odd array of karaoke regulars.)

That first time I went out for karaoke, the night unfolded as though it had been scripted by Christopher Guest; the unlikeliest of people are good at karaoke. An overweight, unkempt, somewhat unappealing woman of at least 40 could pull off quite the Pat Benetar. A pretty, reserved woman in office clothes could sing Van Halen's "Dreams" so movingly that the DJ slipped around the room arranging people in couples and then setting us up to slow dance. An older man, looking fragile and tired, could have been Frank Sinatra if I'd closed my eyes. Two stereotypically Boston type of guys—donning Red Sox jerseys, speaking in thick accents, looking very Irish and very burly—sang Phil Collins and Air Supply so perfectly that I may have felt a tear surface in my eye. Later one of them would sing Prince's "Kiss"—a terrifically hard song to emulate—so exactly that I would think it was a recording before turning around to see his mouth wide and the onlookers cheering.

If the characters who were singing and the completely bizarre song list they were creating were fascinating, then the DJ topped it off. She was an Angelina Jolie look-alike with black hair and jeans with a too-high waist. At one point, she lept onto the separating wall between booths and did a virtual strip tease (clothes staying on), then presented the sweetest little old lady to sing the last song of the night—a mellow 1940s tune that sounded a bit like a lullaby—only afterward announcing, "That was my mommy." As all that unfolded, I laughed and clapped and wished I'd had a video camera with me because I knew I'd never see anything quite like it again.

The highlight of the night came when my sweet, preppy friend Liz got up to the mic and belted out one of my favorite songs from my teenage years. It already felt rare enough that Liz existed—that there had been two smart, straight-laced girls at Harvard who knew every glam rock heavy metal tune, from power ballad on up; who had once plastered their bedroom walls with posters of the bands; who had read magazines like Metal Edge and Circus to learn the band members' names and predilections. I adored that music in my early teen years, and having had only two friends who were into it at the time, I marveled over finding one more who knew about Danger Danger; who didn't laugh at my liking Trixster (briefly, I promise) or Warrant; who loved to sit back and re-listen to those old Poison and Skid Row and Guns N Roses tapes that I still haven't thrown out.

It already felt rare enough that Liz and I both existed and had discovered, after knowing each other a year or two, this shared former passion. But that she could sing it—blond curls, pearls, and all—really blew my mind. You don't know how many times I've sung along to those songs in my bedroom or in my car; but I can't carry a tune and can only hit about three notes, so the prospect of singing those songs in public was not one I had considered. It was joyous to hear someone else do it.

Soon enough Liz had everyone in the room on their feet. And as she sang it again last week, I felt like they were all still there, admiring not just her voice but her presence, her absolute knowledge of how Sebastian Bach (Skid Row's lead singer) would've performed it. As the people sitting around me clapped for Liz and smiled at me, I realized what a joyful place a karaoke bar is. Everyone there loves to sing, and most of the talented ones have probably dreamed at some point of fronting a band or being a performer of some other kind. All I ever wanted to do was hit the right notes. But when you go to the right kind of place, everyone cheers for you even when you don't get the notes right. Everyone cheers for you and makes it feel ok that you gave "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" a try and failed. They don't mind. They understand your love of music. They understand your urge to sing along. They let you live out a dream a little bit, and that makes it all the better when your friend also lets you live vicariously; when your friend sings just what you would sing, just the way you wish you could sing it.

six-word memoirs

Last night at a writing workshop I help run, our students started the session out responding to a prompt that called for them to write a complete story in as few words as possible. Ernest Hemingway's evocative six-word novel ("For sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn.") was the inspiration. Though the prompt was not intended to illicit only stories six words in length, it mostly did. And as another tutor commented, they were mostly six-word memoirs. The concept intrigues me.

No doubt you are cheering at the thought that I too might take up the six-word memoir. I've certainly written with brevity in mind in the past, but the product has mostly been poetry. To write a complete personal story in six words seems, to me, a bold challenge to my editing abilities. I plan to spend the next few days attempting to take it on. I promise to share the results if I have any success.

Note that I've given this a brief try already and find it really hard. (No laughing at that, please.) Here are my first stabs at it, with a little leeway on word count (but still keeping it in the single digits!):

Words on the page: like heartbeats.


A book of poems: like wings.


A book of poems: my scripture.


Alone but not lonely: source of my joy.


Raul: Now, a foreign name. Soon, my first nephew.


We'll see if I can come up with anything more interesting/creative/poignant than those first attempts. I also invite some of you to try your hand at it; it's a fun, if frustrating, challenge. And to get us all in the right mindset, I'll close out with a poem I've long loved for its achievement of saying a tremendous amount in just a few words. From Rainer Maria Rilke:

But if you'd try this: to be hand in my hand
as in the wineglass the wine is wine.
If you'd try this.

a list (because lists are popular forms of litetary expression these days)

Childhood Essentials That You Never Get Too Old To Enjoy:

1. PB&J
2. splashing in the water
3. firefly hunting
4. ice cream cones
5. daydreams
6. hammocks
7. barefeet in grass
8. constellations
9. naptime
10. board games

(Can you guess who wants to be on summer vacation right about now?)

Pacific Ocean virgin no more

Before moving to California, you picture that once you get here, you'll spend all your weekends at the beach, swimming and tanning and generally living an outside-oriented life. Then you get to San Francisco, and you realize you'll need a sweater and long pants at all times and most definitely a wet suit to get in the water. So after 2.5 years here, I know better than to expect to get in the ocean when I go to it. Instead, my beach visits involve a lot of walking, a lot of lying out of the wind and reading, and whatever tanning the weather that day affords. Thus today was a real treat for a girl who grew up in a hot climate and loved it.

Today it supposedly hit 98 in San Francisco. I would not argue with it having been 90. It was so hot when I walked outside in a bathing suit and shorts that I knew I was doing the right thing in playing hooky for a few hours and heading to Fort Funston. I knew I was doing the right thing in lathering on the sunscreen, packing a book and a towel, and heading to the sauna that was the sea. Normally the wind blows cool off that water even when the air is warmish; but today, as I settled into the sand, I started to sweat immediately, with the air barely stirring, and when it did, it feeling like a hot breath blown all the way up from the equator. I can't say it was the most pleasant sitting-in-the-sun weather, but it felt great to be hot—that's a rare sensation to feel here.

Eventually I got so hot that I knew I had no choice but to enter the water to cool down. If you've ever swum in New England in summer, you know what chilly water feels like. If you've ever swum in New England in spring, you know what frigid water feels like. I once jumped into 45 degree water in Maine, and every muscle in my body clinched up; my breathing halted. Thankfully, after a second or two I regained control of myself and bolted out of the water; but clearly I didn't learn my lesson, as a few weeks later I found myself diving into water just 5 degrees warmer—and swimming my heart out to get to the next dock and get out. I would guess that the ocean here today was no warmer than 50 degrees. When you first step into water that temperature, it feels refreshing, especially on a day like today. But within seconds, your feet start to ache from the cold, and the smart thing to do would be to exit immediately.

The thing is, you can numb to it. And when it's sweltering out, that doesn't sound like such a bad option. I would take a step and then let my skin settle into the cold; take another one, re-settle. To my amazement, after five minutes I was thigh-deep. I dipped my arms in, splashed them wet. The sweat was evaporating; my skin relaxing. So when a wave came, I did something I would never expect to have tried in the Pacific Ocean—I knelt down to let it overtake me. It crashed against my chest—and then I ran like hell back toward the sand. That is one cold ocean!!!

between the lines

One of the age-old weaknesses of womankind is our proclivity for reading between the lines. Perhaps men do it too, but it’s by my female friends—and myself—that I see the most energy put into this behavior. And I have two conflicting viewpoints about it: on the one hand, I think it’s a pitfall to a healthy mindset; and on the other, I think what’s discerned through it can be very telling and can remind the reader of what she deserves—and what she doesn’t.

Yesterday I had dinner with the boyfriend of one of my closest friends. He has become a good friend of mine, and I adore him most of all for his incredibly rational take on everything. I have never been so sensically advised about my career, my finances, or my love life. In fact, I crave his input, because even when it’s hard to hear or I want to disagree with it, I know it’s based in solid facts, unbiased thinking, and logical expectations.

Last night he listened to my read on a situation with a guy I had some interest in a while ago and just shook his head. As I explained the email I’d sent asking this guy to do something alone with me for the first time (pathetic, of course, that I did that in writing), and as I described the obvious rejection of his response (suggesting instead that we do something with a group), this friend of mine began to grin, getting ready to lay into me with some wise and completely alternate explanation. “He’s not lego-ing it out, Lara.” (Good wording, I thought.) “He’s not over there strategically thinking. He’s just nervous. Maybe he’s not comfortable with being completely alone with you. Maybe that’s because he LIKES YOU.”

Maybe, we both agreed, my friend is wrong about that in that case; but I did admit that the prospect that this dating interest might have been thinking that way had never crossed my mind. I had seen it one way and one way only: if you’re into me, you want to be alone with me. Nuff said.

I hadn’t viewed my take on it as reading between anything—it just seemed obvious. And when I explained that to my friend, he conceded that it was a reasonable line of thinking. But, he suggested, maybe sometimes there was a little more to it. Maybe my own nervousness—the source, after all, of my avoiding asking in person—could indicate that people who are interested in other people don’t always show it just exactly as much as they feel it. Maybe actions aren’t louder than words. Maybe I was reading between imaginary lines.

The latter is a point I’ve become sensitive to as I’ve gotten older. By now I’ve seen it happen too many times. And I think I’ve gotten past it; but there are times when the line between misreading unsaid things and doing what’s best for me is hard to draw.

Consider this example: A few months ago I met another guy of interest to me; for a variety of reasons, it seemed unwise to pursue anything with him, but I liked him and he seemed to like me, so I decided not to think it through too much and just see what happened. And what happened is that we reached a point where things got good, and that may have given us each pause, because those obstacles were still there. And although I felt fully ok with the fact that this might have no real future—although I felt fully ok with just enjoying it for the time it could last—the minute it got good it also got confusing. When someone kisses you and enjoys it, he is supposed to want to do it again. Nuff said, right? So what if you don’t hear from him? What if you suggest doing something again soon and he passes that up? Is it reading between the lines to view that as passing you up—or is it the self-respecting, self-preservational, intelligent thing to admit?

My leaning on the answer to that is heavily shaped by an experience I had a few years ago. At the time, I had a boyfriend who seemed to be perfectly smitten with me turn up on my doorstep three days after taking me on a romantic weekend away to tell me that he couldn’t do “this” anymore. His explanation made little sense, as much of it included praise for our relationship being the best he’d ever had. Normally—probably any other time in my life—I would have asked him to clarify, to please try to make me understand how “seeing this go to marriage” and “being scared” could be reasons to break up. But what made this situation unique for me—and what made it pivotal in my thinking and perhaps in my maturing—is that he didn’t walk into my apartment wanting to discuss his feelings; he walked in wanting to walk back out. No matter what he said, the underlying point was that he did not want to be with me. And if there was one thing I could hear my inner self saying loud and clear, even through the tears that were already flowing, it’s that I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me. Nuff said and no arguing it.

In light of that, I did something I had never before done, which was decide I needed no closure; after five minutes, I asked him to leave. I never got any answers. I did want them—I thought I might wait a week and then call and ask for an explanation—but when I said that out loud, people kept telling me not to. The clincher was when my dad told me not to. When I said, “I think I’ll wait a week and then call him,” and my father unhesitatingly responded with, “If you talk to him again it’s because he called you”—when my father weighed in on my love life for the first time ever and assured me of what I am worth, I heeded his words, which brought me great clarification. It doesn’t matter how strongly you want to understand something, how much you believe in closing things out in a certain way. If someone else does not show you that respect, it’s either because he is a jackass or, as in this case, he just is not that into you (to steal a popular phrase).

Applying that same logic—accepting that logic—made me feel stronger. I still felt rejected, still felt completely blind-sided, but I felt stronger. I understood that people’s words and actions most certainly can indicate where their wantings lie, and acknowledging that is the most self-loving step I can take.

Lately, however, I’ve faced a quandary over that—wondering how to know when it’s the case. Recently I put a close to this situation in which the good part was followed by little else. I decided to put a close to it because of that acceptance that it’s not good for me to want something that isn’t. But what got me hung up, when I tried to explain this to the person, was his reaction to it. He did apologize for his not being in touch leaving me feeling hurt; but he also said he didn’t intend it to do that, he didn’t intend it to do anything—which is to say, he didn’t think about not being in touch. And he felt that should make it better (because it wasn’t malicious). I thought that made it worse, and when I expressed that, he said that I was “reading” his inaction as something much more than it was.

I’d hate to over-think or misread someone’s actions, especially if I’d be losing something meaningful in the process. But in this case I don’t think I was misreading anything. When someone kisses you and enjoys it, you think you’d stay on his mind, right? Words or lack of words, actions or lack of actions—these are the things that exhibit someone’s leaning. Maybe, accepting the point my friend made last night, I have to remember that in some cases hesitation is not the end all be all. But I can’t understand why I’d stay in a situation where a person thinks it’s fine to show me affection and then not show me anything; to have part of a conversation but not finish it. I’d hate to over-think or misread someone’s actions and lose something meaningful in the process, and I’m the kind of person who could worry about whether that’s what I’ve done for weeks. But I know that’s not healthy. And I know this, too: if he did care about me much at all, then he’d want to make things right. He’d make the effort to show me that I was not misreading anything; to show me that the problem was just that what I was reading was miswritten. When someone doesn’t make that effort, then the thing I’ve learned I have to do is let him go.

(recuperation)

Enjoy the sunshine squirming through the blinds. Ignore the desire to stay in bed; crawl forth.

Shower. Eat. Pull on your favorite jeans and your favorite sneakers. Let the pink of the canvas tickle your fingers as you tie up the laces.

Get in the car. Pick up some beer. Chuckle at the name of it—Skinny Dipping. Drop it off on the picnic table, crack a bottle open, fall into the grass.

Take in the odors of the grill and the soil, the laughter and chatter, the soft woosh of a football flying overhead.

Sit in the full sun. Lie beside your friends. Listen. Relax.

When the time comes, arise with energy. Line up in batting order; give the large ball a solid kick. Run to first base; run from getting tagged out. Laugh and fall into the grass.

Enjoy the rigors of out-fielding. Jog after the ball; grin as you hurl it at an oncoming opponent; avoid getting drenched by his beer.

When the game ends, clap your hands together. Pat your teammates on the back. Keep that smile on your face. Then pick up the frisbee. Toss it. Chase after it. Learn to let it fly from beneath your up-lifted leg. Do a cartwheel, for old time’s sake. Return to the whizzing; to trying to catch the disk under a leg. Fail. Let laughter drop you back into the grass.

Let the running ease something out of you.

Rest your voice. It is not needed for everything.

quote of the day

Written by a wise friend and greatly appreciated by me:

"Sometimes I think there should be a frequent-flyer program or some other type of credits system for the injuries some of us have had to suffer as single women. As in, when a guy doesn't return a message because he is a complete candyass, you get 10 points towards a facial or something. When a guy stands you up, maybe you would get a bottle of champagne... and when you get dumped by a guy that himself should have been the dumpee, you get a car."

I hope some of you enjoyed that as much as I do every time I read it. :)

ah, childhood

On Omar's birthday he gave me a marble. It was a party favor; at the end of dinner, he pulled out some portion of his marble collection and let each of his guests pick one out. Gleefully he then told us what type we'd each taken. Mine he called a "robin's egg." It's an opaque navy blue with tiny pastel dots. It's the smaller size that marbles come in. It's delightfully unique. I rolled it around on the tips of my fingers, admiring it, amused to find that Omar and I might've been good friends even in childhood. He might've liked the way we played marbles at my house.

My brother and I would stretch out on our bellies in the living room. He'd take the end of the carpet near the sofa; I'd take the end by the fireplace. Propped up on elbows, we'd sort through our respective marbles, making sure they were all there, considering our best starting option. Then we'd get out our metaphorical bowling pins; we'd each arrange our Star Wars figures in a durable configuration, generally blocking Princess Leia with a Storm Trooper or Chewbacca. (We owned the whole collection, from both Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, so we had multiple of each character and divvied them up fairly, balancing out my second Princess Leia with his favorite, some green monstrous fellow whose name I long ago forgot.) We'd get our figures in place and then we'd start—no doubt before anyone said go—maniacally shooting marbles across the oriental rug, trying to be the first to knock down all the opposing stars.

When we tired of that game, we'd collect our friends and throw them in some bag, tote them out back. We had a lot of space at that house—first a proper backyard, with a garden and a swing set, encircled by bamboo and roses and a stand of tiger lilies by the stone stairs. Down those few steps, we had a second yard, a wide opening of nothing but grass—a field to play in, though it mostly went ignored, for beyond it lay the best of all backyards, the third one: the swamp, with the long green board Dad had laid down to help you cross it; with the high pass covered in pussy willows around one side of it; with the pair of magnolia trees at the far end, just beside the creek. Some days my brother would climb one of those magnolias, then drop down its branch-free neighbor as though down a fireman's pole, but not shooting down it quite as fast. Other days we'd head straight for the creek, collecting magnolia leaves as we ran. If you don't know the southern magnolia, you don't know its leaves' waxy exterior, the slight curvature that makes each one like a boat. We'd collect handfuls of those rafts and then lay a Star Wars figures atop each one, kneeling in the moist dirt of the creekside to set them all free. We'd cheer as they raced down the slow rapids and then tumbled over a short falls; we'd argue and delight over the winner; we'd hurry back to the start line to send them off again.

We'd play like that for hours, my brother and I, not knowing we'd ever outgrow it, not thinking we'd ever love anything quite as much.

lost my voice

Do you ever lose your voice—metaphorically, that is?

It's not the being silent that I mind; sometimes I need that; sometimes it helps me catch my breath.

What gets to me is the oscillation, the way the words form, rising up to a crest like a whitecap, but then rather than crashing into sea foam they just wither, because another set of words has arisen, another set of thoughts that defy them, and contort them, and maybe even erase them—as in a dream, when one thing morphs illogically into something else. The oscillation between understanding and still inquiring—the back and forth—the resultant contortion. My mind swings from one place to another and I can't think straight. I can't write straight. I can't string a row of words together without taking them right back.

There are ways of being that I believe in. There are ways of being that I know will leave me hurt. That some of them are one in the same is just as illogical as the dream sequence, but this is real life, not imagination, and I take each step as I want to and know I should not feel disappointment when the path I was walking evaporates.