"Flakes should only exist in cereal."
--Julia
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Saturday, July 19, 2008
the magic of memories
The house I lived in until I was 7 had an array of magical qualities. To start with, there were its unique interior areas, two of which belonged exclusively to each of my parents and proved to be places that I would later realize really defined them. For my father, it was his study, where I tended to go only to play Frogger on the tv screen that he had hooked up to his Apple IIe computer. When I entered, he was usually leaning back in a deep-seated, blue-cushioned arm chair on legs that rocked and swiveled, tapping the tips of his fingers together and staring contemplatively at the wall. A pad of lined yellow paper would lie on the desk before him, and in his fine-pointed but jagged handwriting, numbers and occasional roman and greek letters would cover the pages with equations and possible solutions.
This room was special because it was Daddy's, and because it had a stone floor that brought the temperature down a few degrees from the rest of the house (which made it a particularly enticing place to be in the summer). It also had its own aroma, and I never thought anything of that smell, it coming from a place that already seemed to generate within it its own, quiet universe. It wasn't until years after we'd moved out of that house, when I was 15 and out shopping with my mom and brother, that anyone clued me in to the source of that curious odor. I'd been at a concert the night before, and to it I'd worn a hideous army green and gray jacket of my father's from the 1960s, which I liked for its butterfly collar and heavy, warm feel. As we walked through some affluent suburban mall, my brother chuckled and commented, "It's been a long time since that jacket smelled of THAT." Naive, innocent, extremely pure, I balked. He could not be telling me something about my father I had never known. He shook his head, grinning, and asked me if I knew that smell. I shook my head no, looking to my mother for help, but she was looking away, cheeks growing red, not fond of any of this. "Cigarette smoke?" I asked, hoping. And his grin grew devilish, as it does so often, and he challenged me simply: "Don't you remember the study smell?"
Then I could no longer resist putting two and two together; I knew what my jacket smelled of; but my brain had not wanted to make the association. Soon I would reprimand my father, telling him a good parent does not smoke pot around his children, much less at all, and he would be bashful and embarrassed; but a few years later, he would coach me, and we would have found a funny thing to bond over, much like when he taught me to hike the ball to him when we played football in the front yard, or to catch blue crabs and then clean them, or to ride a bicycle, or to catch lizards in the woods, but just a little bit odder.
Mom's space was in the basement. It spread the entire length of the small house, from the stairs that descended from the narrow kitchen to the back wall along which ran our bedrooms. On one of the long sides, a garage door hung from the ceiling, and she would roll it back up and open and sit atop her kick wheel or her electric wheel, just inside from her garden, and there she would throw hundreds (maybe thousands) of carefully crafted pots. She made everything we used, from dinner plates to ice cream bowls to elegant goblets and sugar dishes. She sold many of her creations, sent others to family members, and kept yet others; for her, the beauty was in the act of creating them; her joy was in the act of creating them. She spent hours down there, and sometimes I would tiptoe through, playing with discarded bits of clay or facing off with the kiln, whose knobs glowed red when it was on and this was supposed to be an indicator that I should be far away from it (but how could I be?). I believed it to be living, a monster, and when she wasn't there, I would see how long I could stand to face it before tearing up the stairs to the comfort of the stuffed animals on my bed above.
In that house, we had heating vents in the floors, and sometimes I would sit on the big one outside my bedroom and listen to her. I associated the making of pots with the noises I heard when seated above her: the whirring of the wheel, the slurping of wet clay against her skin as it spun, the thumping of her foot against the surface of the kick wheel to keep it going. When I would sit near her and watch, I focused on her legs, not being tall enough to see her hands, and so I marveled, later in life, when I realized how much I associated her potting with the kicking and not much at all with the strong hands that pulled clay from lumps into curvacious and precise formations.
Outside the house, the magical spaces multiplied. We had three backyards, and they could keep me busy for entire summers, whether I was collecting the black beads of tiger lilies, trying to shimmy my way up a bamboo stalk, gathering sticks and monkey grass for fort-building, or touching the gray tips of pussy willows and wondering how Earth gave bloom to something so rabbity soft. Sometimes, as I tiptoed across the long green wooden board my father had laid across the swampy land of the third yard, I danced a little, daring the board to drop me as I moved less carefully than normal. Sometimes, as I immersed myself in the creek beyond, I daydreamed of lifting my feet and letting the water carry me downstream, over the small rapids past which I was not allowed to go exploring.
Upriver, my neighbor Louise and I found a stand of bamboo growing out of a sandy shoulder along the creek, and there we built an entire apartment, designating this group of trees as a kitchen and that group as a sitting area. That part of the creek was closer to Louise's house, so we usually returned home through the long, thick woods that ran from it to her yard. This was a more treacherous area, not carefully looked after by a father who thought the outdoors were the best playground imaginable for little ones. We would stumble into briars, fall through thick beds of pine straw padding the area over an open hole, scrape our faces on sharp tree branches that should've been cut down once they had fallen dead. When we got back to the safety of her swingset (not, mind you, more than 100 or 200 yards from the creek, I would guess), we rarely stayed there. Rather, we immediately headed to the best of all places in our magical world, which was Mrs. Topes' yard, the one that lay between the two of ours.
Mrs. Tope was in her 90s, which meant that to me, she seemed as old as a human could ever be. Her used car salesman husband seemed a little younger, though he died much earlier, and he was rarely around. So it was she who welcomed us to come into her yard or her home anytime, she who pampered us, she whom we reminded of grand children and great grand children who lived too far away.
The Topes' backyard was like nowhere you'd ever expect to see in a city. We lived what is now about a half-mile from Lenox Mall and Georgia 400, a massive highway that my mother spent most of my childhood petitioning against the creation of. We lived in the heart of Atlanta, near everything, in a wilderness amidst an ever-growing urban surrounding. Yet Mrs. Tope lived in a backwoods way, her home looking like one you'd encounter in the mountains or in rural southern Georgia, like one most of you have never encountered.
In the front yard, rusted out old cars lay at random angles beneath her magnolias. There was no organization to it; they sat where they fit. In the back yard, long rows of vegetables grew; amidst them stood metal trash bins like bums build fires in, except these were filled with rainwater and seemed to be there for decoration or perhaps, like the cars, just for safe keeping; alongside them lay rubber tires, from the center of which grew the leafy stems of tomato plants.
Dirt paths ran across and through the garden, and one of them passed straight from the door in the fence to my yard to the door in the fence to Louise's. In the middle of this path, facing the vegetables, Louise and I would finish a rendezvous or meet up for the next one. We would sit on a wooden bench—probably just a wooden log dropped there and never gotten back to—and we'd whisper the things little girls have to whisper about. Once we ate cherries there, and I cherished that, for I was eating cherries with Louise Cherry under a cherry tree. Once we fell prisoner to my brother there, for he had laid a trap for us, the kind you'd use if hunting small animals—he'd dug a hole in the dirt, criss-crossed it with fragile branches, and covered it with leaves. We fell directly in, to the delight of him and his friends, and we no doubt arouse from it laughing, if bleeding, and grateful to have our favorite spot so nearby to sit in and recover.
Many magical memories unfolded in the realm of those backyards we lived our young lives in; and one of the strongest is one of the simplest, which may be why it so readily came back to me today.
Mrs. Tope had had a young grandson who had passed away, and for his resemblance to her beloved she particularly prized my brother. When she saw him, she'd beckon him inside, and there she would feed him home-made cookies and the sugar candies she kept on the table in the sitting room. I she had less of a connection to but loved no less, and she gave me free reign of the garden, coming down to join me not to interrupt my play but only to feed me. Though for him she was constantly baking, for me she felt the garden was growing; she knew my fondness for her cucumbers, and I remember time and again she would pick them for me, peel them, and let me stand there and eat them. The freshness of vegetables that come out of the ground is always unrivaled; the way they taste a little of the earth and a little of the air, the way they mean summer and sunshine and wellbeing. Today I ate a cucumber bought at a farmer's market and marveled over how much more flavorful it was than any I've had in a long time—perhaps than any I've had since I stopped being Mrs. Tope's neighbor and stopped having my own private stash of them awaiting me in the dirt.
This room was special because it was Daddy's, and because it had a stone floor that brought the temperature down a few degrees from the rest of the house (which made it a particularly enticing place to be in the summer). It also had its own aroma, and I never thought anything of that smell, it coming from a place that already seemed to generate within it its own, quiet universe. It wasn't until years after we'd moved out of that house, when I was 15 and out shopping with my mom and brother, that anyone clued me in to the source of that curious odor. I'd been at a concert the night before, and to it I'd worn a hideous army green and gray jacket of my father's from the 1960s, which I liked for its butterfly collar and heavy, warm feel. As we walked through some affluent suburban mall, my brother chuckled and commented, "It's been a long time since that jacket smelled of THAT." Naive, innocent, extremely pure, I balked. He could not be telling me something about my father I had never known. He shook his head, grinning, and asked me if I knew that smell. I shook my head no, looking to my mother for help, but she was looking away, cheeks growing red, not fond of any of this. "Cigarette smoke?" I asked, hoping. And his grin grew devilish, as it does so often, and he challenged me simply: "Don't you remember the study smell?"
Then I could no longer resist putting two and two together; I knew what my jacket smelled of; but my brain had not wanted to make the association. Soon I would reprimand my father, telling him a good parent does not smoke pot around his children, much less at all, and he would be bashful and embarrassed; but a few years later, he would coach me, and we would have found a funny thing to bond over, much like when he taught me to hike the ball to him when we played football in the front yard, or to catch blue crabs and then clean them, or to ride a bicycle, or to catch lizards in the woods, but just a little bit odder.
Mom's space was in the basement. It spread the entire length of the small house, from the stairs that descended from the narrow kitchen to the back wall along which ran our bedrooms. On one of the long sides, a garage door hung from the ceiling, and she would roll it back up and open and sit atop her kick wheel or her electric wheel, just inside from her garden, and there she would throw hundreds (maybe thousands) of carefully crafted pots. She made everything we used, from dinner plates to ice cream bowls to elegant goblets and sugar dishes. She sold many of her creations, sent others to family members, and kept yet others; for her, the beauty was in the act of creating them; her joy was in the act of creating them. She spent hours down there, and sometimes I would tiptoe through, playing with discarded bits of clay or facing off with the kiln, whose knobs glowed red when it was on and this was supposed to be an indicator that I should be far away from it (but how could I be?). I believed it to be living, a monster, and when she wasn't there, I would see how long I could stand to face it before tearing up the stairs to the comfort of the stuffed animals on my bed above.
In that house, we had heating vents in the floors, and sometimes I would sit on the big one outside my bedroom and listen to her. I associated the making of pots with the noises I heard when seated above her: the whirring of the wheel, the slurping of wet clay against her skin as it spun, the thumping of her foot against the surface of the kick wheel to keep it going. When I would sit near her and watch, I focused on her legs, not being tall enough to see her hands, and so I marveled, later in life, when I realized how much I associated her potting with the kicking and not much at all with the strong hands that pulled clay from lumps into curvacious and precise formations.
Outside the house, the magical spaces multiplied. We had three backyards, and they could keep me busy for entire summers, whether I was collecting the black beads of tiger lilies, trying to shimmy my way up a bamboo stalk, gathering sticks and monkey grass for fort-building, or touching the gray tips of pussy willows and wondering how Earth gave bloom to something so rabbity soft. Sometimes, as I tiptoed across the long green wooden board my father had laid across the swampy land of the third yard, I danced a little, daring the board to drop me as I moved less carefully than normal. Sometimes, as I immersed myself in the creek beyond, I daydreamed of lifting my feet and letting the water carry me downstream, over the small rapids past which I was not allowed to go exploring.
Upriver, my neighbor Louise and I found a stand of bamboo growing out of a sandy shoulder along the creek, and there we built an entire apartment, designating this group of trees as a kitchen and that group as a sitting area. That part of the creek was closer to Louise's house, so we usually returned home through the long, thick woods that ran from it to her yard. This was a more treacherous area, not carefully looked after by a father who thought the outdoors were the best playground imaginable for little ones. We would stumble into briars, fall through thick beds of pine straw padding the area over an open hole, scrape our faces on sharp tree branches that should've been cut down once they had fallen dead. When we got back to the safety of her swingset (not, mind you, more than 100 or 200 yards from the creek, I would guess), we rarely stayed there. Rather, we immediately headed to the best of all places in our magical world, which was Mrs. Topes' yard, the one that lay between the two of ours.
Mrs. Tope was in her 90s, which meant that to me, she seemed as old as a human could ever be. Her used car salesman husband seemed a little younger, though he died much earlier, and he was rarely around. So it was she who welcomed us to come into her yard or her home anytime, she who pampered us, she whom we reminded of grand children and great grand children who lived too far away.
The Topes' backyard was like nowhere you'd ever expect to see in a city. We lived what is now about a half-mile from Lenox Mall and Georgia 400, a massive highway that my mother spent most of my childhood petitioning against the creation of. We lived in the heart of Atlanta, near everything, in a wilderness amidst an ever-growing urban surrounding. Yet Mrs. Tope lived in a backwoods way, her home looking like one you'd encounter in the mountains or in rural southern Georgia, like one most of you have never encountered.
In the front yard, rusted out old cars lay at random angles beneath her magnolias. There was no organization to it; they sat where they fit. In the back yard, long rows of vegetables grew; amidst them stood metal trash bins like bums build fires in, except these were filled with rainwater and seemed to be there for decoration or perhaps, like the cars, just for safe keeping; alongside them lay rubber tires, from the center of which grew the leafy stems of tomato plants.
Dirt paths ran across and through the garden, and one of them passed straight from the door in the fence to my yard to the door in the fence to Louise's. In the middle of this path, facing the vegetables, Louise and I would finish a rendezvous or meet up for the next one. We would sit on a wooden bench—probably just a wooden log dropped there and never gotten back to—and we'd whisper the things little girls have to whisper about. Once we ate cherries there, and I cherished that, for I was eating cherries with Louise Cherry under a cherry tree. Once we fell prisoner to my brother there, for he had laid a trap for us, the kind you'd use if hunting small animals—he'd dug a hole in the dirt, criss-crossed it with fragile branches, and covered it with leaves. We fell directly in, to the delight of him and his friends, and we no doubt arouse from it laughing, if bleeding, and grateful to have our favorite spot so nearby to sit in and recover.
Many magical memories unfolded in the realm of those backyards we lived our young lives in; and one of the strongest is one of the simplest, which may be why it so readily came back to me today.
Mrs. Tope had had a young grandson who had passed away, and for his resemblance to her beloved she particularly prized my brother. When she saw him, she'd beckon him inside, and there she would feed him home-made cookies and the sugar candies she kept on the table in the sitting room. I she had less of a connection to but loved no less, and she gave me free reign of the garden, coming down to join me not to interrupt my play but only to feed me. Though for him she was constantly baking, for me she felt the garden was growing; she knew my fondness for her cucumbers, and I remember time and again she would pick them for me, peel them, and let me stand there and eat them. The freshness of vegetables that come out of the ground is always unrivaled; the way they taste a little of the earth and a little of the air, the way they mean summer and sunshine and wellbeing. Today I ate a cucumber bought at a farmer's market and marveled over how much more flavorful it was than any I've had in a long time—perhaps than any I've had since I stopped being Mrs. Tope's neighbor and stopped having my own private stash of them awaiting me in the dirt.
Friday, July 18, 2008
adjusting
Yesterday I drove past my street twice, neither time being prepared for it to pop up so soon. I also overshot the turn off a major road on my way back from the grocery store, and though I then had to get onto a really trafficky one, I was still able to get home within just a few minutes. This is a small town, no doubt about it. And as it turns out, all the separate places I've been to previously aren't too far apart; on my drive to work, three of them proved to be connected; on my return from shopping, others, too, lined up right in a row. This is a small town, and by the end of the day yesterday, I was feeling like I might jump out of my skin over it.
I had planned, after work, to take a walk down University Ave and see what all downtown has to offer. But when the time came, it struck me: it's your second day here, and you'll have seen the whole town! I was paralyzed with worry that I'd see ALL of the new place in just one walk. So I went out to do errands, saving the leisurely stroll through town for a time when the panic in my heart wouldn't ruin it.
Holding off was a good choice. I was terribly tired, moving having been exhausting, and today proved a better time to get to know my new surroundings. It's true, in one very short (less-than-ten-minute) walk, I was able to stop by the bank, check out the offerings at the classic-movie movie theater, and arrive early to meet friends for drinks. Afterward, it took three or four minutes to find the indie theater, and after I left the show I saw (Gonzo, which I highly recommend), it took maybe six minutes to wind my way through the blocks back home. But it struck me, as I walked on unfamiliar streets but with no hesitation about where to turn, that it may be frightening to have the whole town so completely at my fingertips, but it's also delightful. I can walk or bike to anything I want to do, and that is very freeing. As well, there is so much to look at. The low-lying houses, though mostly of a similar size, range from craftsman style to New England cottage to Nordic A-frame to basic modern Californian. Their yards, though not all that varied, drip with roses and hydrangeas, are lined by the joyful spherical bursts of the lavendar or white flowers of Andean lilies. Some of them, perhaps to avoid watering in the dry climate, have no grass and instead are filled with stones, some the size of the pebbles I like to call wishing stones and throw into the ocean with a kiss, others fist-size and bulging. Though cold and dry in appearance, these rocky yards seem innovative and logical and definitive of this place being of a different sort than I am used to. And that, I know, is something I live for—the experience of being amidst newness, of coming to know new places and ways of life, of really becoming part of surroundings that at first might seem undesirable or even inhospitable to me in some way.
I had planned, after work, to take a walk down University Ave and see what all downtown has to offer. But when the time came, it struck me: it's your second day here, and you'll have seen the whole town! I was paralyzed with worry that I'd see ALL of the new place in just one walk. So I went out to do errands, saving the leisurely stroll through town for a time when the panic in my heart wouldn't ruin it.
Holding off was a good choice. I was terribly tired, moving having been exhausting, and today proved a better time to get to know my new surroundings. It's true, in one very short (less-than-ten-minute) walk, I was able to stop by the bank, check out the offerings at the classic-movie movie theater, and arrive early to meet friends for drinks. Afterward, it took three or four minutes to find the indie theater, and after I left the show I saw (Gonzo, which I highly recommend), it took maybe six minutes to wind my way through the blocks back home. But it struck me, as I walked on unfamiliar streets but with no hesitation about where to turn, that it may be frightening to have the whole town so completely at my fingertips, but it's also delightful. I can walk or bike to anything I want to do, and that is very freeing. As well, there is so much to look at. The low-lying houses, though mostly of a similar size, range from craftsman style to New England cottage to Nordic A-frame to basic modern Californian. Their yards, though not all that varied, drip with roses and hydrangeas, are lined by the joyful spherical bursts of the lavendar or white flowers of Andean lilies. Some of them, perhaps to avoid watering in the dry climate, have no grass and instead are filled with stones, some the size of the pebbles I like to call wishing stones and throw into the ocean with a kiss, others fist-size and bulging. Though cold and dry in appearance, these rocky yards seem innovative and logical and definitive of this place being of a different sort than I am used to. And that, I know, is something I live for—the experience of being amidst newness, of coming to know new places and ways of life, of really becoming part of surroundings that at first might seem undesirable or even inhospitable to me in some way.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
resettlement
The knuckle on my first finger is purple; it only bends halfway. The side of my pinky is swollen. My wrist has finally started rotating again, reviving after a day of not wanting to move at all. My feet ache when I'm not on them. My back is so tight it hurt to bend over to shave in the shower. I have been packing and loading and unpacking and unloading for five days in a row; and though it took a serious act of will, today I did not stop until 99% of my stuff was out of its packaging.
I have too many belongings for this small space. I am a master of stacking and stuffing items into any possible space, but in this little apartment I will have to get creative to make it all fit. Being so surrounded by boxes, having to shift and re-shift everything I own to make pathways because there is not enough space to just clear one and leave it, finding that the terrible movers did indeed break a few things, it has been a stressful experience. But many hours into my day today, I started to feel a calm growing. Out of one box came the large yellow and orange old-timey Fiesta Ware serving plates I collect from antique dealers. Out of another came my velvet iguanas. Out of a small one came my movie collection, and then boxes and boxes of my photos. Out of many came my books: Neruda, Octavia Paz, Rilke, and so many other poets; Danticat, Allende, Marquez, Gordimer, Husseini, Ishiguro, and so many other novelists; Nelson Mandela, Congressman John Robert Lewis, Rigoberta Menchu, George Orwell, John McPhee, Thoreau, and many other beloved books of autobiography and nonfiction; my art books; my writing books; my Mesoamerica and archaeology books. Out of these boxes came books that I have carried with me for years, in some cases multiple decades. They add color to my room; they add stories; they add camaraderie.
Later in the week I will hang things. Eventually I will go to Ikea and find receptacles for the remaining items that currently lie tucked under tables or stacked neatly on my desk. Eventually I might even throw some things out. But in the meantime, after 36 tiring hours of existing apart from the real world, focusing entirely on my little bubble, I live in a new place, and it feels like home. It already does; I whittled away at the mess and swept away the debris, and out of it all came home—my home, the one I always craft anywhere I go. So I've done enough work on it for now; before I polish it off, I'll let it sit a day or two, and in the meantime, as I ruminate on how to rectify a few small concerns, I'll do what I really came here for: go exploring.
I have too many belongings for this small space. I am a master of stacking and stuffing items into any possible space, but in this little apartment I will have to get creative to make it all fit. Being so surrounded by boxes, having to shift and re-shift everything I own to make pathways because there is not enough space to just clear one and leave it, finding that the terrible movers did indeed break a few things, it has been a stressful experience. But many hours into my day today, I started to feel a calm growing. Out of one box came the large yellow and orange old-timey Fiesta Ware serving plates I collect from antique dealers. Out of another came my velvet iguanas. Out of a small one came my movie collection, and then boxes and boxes of my photos. Out of many came my books: Neruda, Octavia Paz, Rilke, and so many other poets; Danticat, Allende, Marquez, Gordimer, Husseini, Ishiguro, and so many other novelists; Nelson Mandela, Congressman John Robert Lewis, Rigoberta Menchu, George Orwell, John McPhee, Thoreau, and many other beloved books of autobiography and nonfiction; my art books; my writing books; my Mesoamerica and archaeology books. Out of these boxes came books that I have carried with me for years, in some cases multiple decades. They add color to my room; they add stories; they add camaraderie.
Later in the week I will hang things. Eventually I will go to Ikea and find receptacles for the remaining items that currently lie tucked under tables or stacked neatly on my desk. Eventually I might even throw some things out. But in the meantime, after 36 tiring hours of existing apart from the real world, focusing entirely on my little bubble, I live in a new place, and it feels like home. It already does; I whittled away at the mess and swept away the debris, and out of it all came home—my home, the one I always craft anywhere I go. So I've done enough work on it for now; before I polish it off, I'll let it sit a day or two, and in the meantime, as I ruminate on how to rectify a few small concerns, I'll do what I really came here for: go exploring.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
mornings
It was always a prize to be the first one into the living room in the morning and get to claim the cushy green armchair that the sun warmed as it rose over the ocean. I was never the first one awake—that was always Grandpa, who by 7 a.m. might have on his hardhat or a pair of work gloves, might be peddling his bicycle up to Wilbur's to get the paper, might be doing a crossword puzzle at the dining room table. But I liked to be the first one into that chair and with a book, so I could spread my knees into the soft armrests and sink down into the cushion as I read. Eventually a parent might come into the room and stake out a spot on the sofa; a sibling or cousin might sprawl across the carpet; and by the time Grandma was in the kitchen fussing over breakfast at 8:30 or 9, we'd all be reading something, easing ourselves into the day in peaceful quiet.
Mornings elsewhere haven't always been quite the bliss of that. At home, we got up for school before sunrise and often drove there in the growing light. Once a week I had to make morning basketball practice, which meant I was in the gym and on the court before I'd normally even be out of bed. And on weekends at home, I usually slept in. Once I got to college, my weekday waking hour got significantly later, so it was something I took note of when I had a rare occasion to be out and about on the early side.
I distinctly remember an odd morning when I trekked through Harvard Square wearing hiking boots and a backpacking backpack, leading a group of freshmen to a bus we'd take to New Hampshire for their orientation trip. It was strange, for sure, to be carrying all that camping equipment through the middle of the city; but more so, what struck me as so notable at the time was the life that existed in the square at that hour—about 7 a.m. Unlike the afternoons and evenings, the streets weren't bustling; only here or there did a car drive past; only one or two at a time did pedestrians go by. But there were people out. And most moved slowly, carrying coffee or a brief case and seeming to be enjoying the bright sun and warm air. Was it just my imagination, I wondered, or was this the happiest time of day in the square?
A year later, I spent a month of summer in Honduras at archaeology field school. Unlike other archaeology students, we didn't have to sleep in tents out in the desert; instead, we stayed at a very basic but four-star hotel called La Madrugada (the dawn). When I was in the hotel and not busy having face-offs with rhinoceros beetles in the hallway or competing with geckos for use of the shower, I'd often be found hanging in a hammock near the patio that positively dripped with plants. I'd be listening to the brook that ran below the patio, or the old man who sang to the plants as he touched each leaf with wet fingers, or just daydreaming. I never did get to hang there long, as we were out in the ruins, digging or learning the world of the ancient Maya, pretty early. But it was a pleasure to grab even five minutes in one of the hammocks on that patio that faced the sunrise. It was quite the good way to start a day.
In my adult life, mornings have largely been dictated by commuting to work. I used to love having 30 minutes to myself in the car, listening to, possibly singing along to, certain music that I deemed either good for driving or good for morning uplift. It was a transitional 30 minutes, getting me comfortably from the world of sleep to the fast-paced world of work, and I enjoyed not having to do any thinking during that time. I'd just enjoy the fields and woods I drove alongside, later the winding path of the Charles River. I'd watch the sky, look for birds, take stimulation from the unfolding surroundings in order to fully awaken myself.
Having that time in the morning is something I've greatly missed while working at home for the last three years. Here I roll out of bed and into the shower; then I find myself somehow transported the very short distance to the kitchen all too quickly. Before I know it, I'm eating my cereal and opening my work email. I haven't been anywhere, done anything else. I have arisen to go directly to work. And yesterday, when instead the first thing I did in the day was drop my car off at the mechanic and then walk home on what would prove to be one of the warmest days of the year here, you can imagine that I really enjoyed the 10 minutes of transit.
As with Harvard Square, there is a different life to Noe Valley in the morning than the one I usually see. The park around the corner is quiet; maybe a dog plays, maybe a baby swings, but there aren't 50 of each yet; there aren't 50 sets of parents and owners filling the place with chatter. At the corner, the bus stop is full, rather than empty. And at the top of the hill, as I turn back to look at the east bay in the clear light that we've been missing with all the fires going on, there is a breeze and a richness of daylight that coincide to feel like the blustery wind of a morning at my favorite beach back east. That that temperature and that bit of moisture in the air are always here in San Francisco is not the point; that I don't very often get outside to experience them when the sun is at just that angle is what really struck me. Mornings, I have always thought, are a time for slowly coming forth, slowly brightening; perhaps in the new life I will settle into next week, I'll remember to enjoy them more; to let them, before I rush through them, just become.
Mornings elsewhere haven't always been quite the bliss of that. At home, we got up for school before sunrise and often drove there in the growing light. Once a week I had to make morning basketball practice, which meant I was in the gym and on the court before I'd normally even be out of bed. And on weekends at home, I usually slept in. Once I got to college, my weekday waking hour got significantly later, so it was something I took note of when I had a rare occasion to be out and about on the early side.
I distinctly remember an odd morning when I trekked through Harvard Square wearing hiking boots and a backpacking backpack, leading a group of freshmen to a bus we'd take to New Hampshire for their orientation trip. It was strange, for sure, to be carrying all that camping equipment through the middle of the city; but more so, what struck me as so notable at the time was the life that existed in the square at that hour—about 7 a.m. Unlike the afternoons and evenings, the streets weren't bustling; only here or there did a car drive past; only one or two at a time did pedestrians go by. But there were people out. And most moved slowly, carrying coffee or a brief case and seeming to be enjoying the bright sun and warm air. Was it just my imagination, I wondered, or was this the happiest time of day in the square?
A year later, I spent a month of summer in Honduras at archaeology field school. Unlike other archaeology students, we didn't have to sleep in tents out in the desert; instead, we stayed at a very basic but four-star hotel called La Madrugada (the dawn). When I was in the hotel and not busy having face-offs with rhinoceros beetles in the hallway or competing with geckos for use of the shower, I'd often be found hanging in a hammock near the patio that positively dripped with plants. I'd be listening to the brook that ran below the patio, or the old man who sang to the plants as he touched each leaf with wet fingers, or just daydreaming. I never did get to hang there long, as we were out in the ruins, digging or learning the world of the ancient Maya, pretty early. But it was a pleasure to grab even five minutes in one of the hammocks on that patio that faced the sunrise. It was quite the good way to start a day.
In my adult life, mornings have largely been dictated by commuting to work. I used to love having 30 minutes to myself in the car, listening to, possibly singing along to, certain music that I deemed either good for driving or good for morning uplift. It was a transitional 30 minutes, getting me comfortably from the world of sleep to the fast-paced world of work, and I enjoyed not having to do any thinking during that time. I'd just enjoy the fields and woods I drove alongside, later the winding path of the Charles River. I'd watch the sky, look for birds, take stimulation from the unfolding surroundings in order to fully awaken myself.
Having that time in the morning is something I've greatly missed while working at home for the last three years. Here I roll out of bed and into the shower; then I find myself somehow transported the very short distance to the kitchen all too quickly. Before I know it, I'm eating my cereal and opening my work email. I haven't been anywhere, done anything else. I have arisen to go directly to work. And yesterday, when instead the first thing I did in the day was drop my car off at the mechanic and then walk home on what would prove to be one of the warmest days of the year here, you can imagine that I really enjoyed the 10 minutes of transit.
As with Harvard Square, there is a different life to Noe Valley in the morning than the one I usually see. The park around the corner is quiet; maybe a dog plays, maybe a baby swings, but there aren't 50 of each yet; there aren't 50 sets of parents and owners filling the place with chatter. At the corner, the bus stop is full, rather than empty. And at the top of the hill, as I turn back to look at the east bay in the clear light that we've been missing with all the fires going on, there is a breeze and a richness of daylight that coincide to feel like the blustery wind of a morning at my favorite beach back east. That that temperature and that bit of moisture in the air are always here in San Francisco is not the point; that I don't very often get outside to experience them when the sun is at just that angle is what really struck me. Mornings, I have always thought, are a time for slowly coming forth, slowly brightening; perhaps in the new life I will settle into next week, I'll remember to enjoy them more; to let them, before I rush through them, just become.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
open warm brilliant naked
I walked into the kitchen, headed toward the refrigerator, pulled something out—I didn't bother to remember what, as at this point the action was one I could have taken without any thought. But I had an awed grin on my face by the time I let the door swing shut. Right in front of me, at eye level, hung the magnetic words of a poem—and not one written by me. Later I would deem it a prophecy, and I would reconstruct it on each refrigerator in each apartment I'd move into it, hoping that if I kept it present in my mind and in my life, it might one day prove true. It said:
a man is out there for you
he is open warm brilliant and naked
and will devour you
Sara's grin was just as big as mine when I burst into her room to say thank you. She chuckled at my question of how long the poem had been waiting for me; just a few days, she said, and I kicked myself for not seeing it sooner. I still haven't let go of the delight I felt upon finding it—the delight of knowing that no matter the rejection I had just been through, I had a friend who had faith that my luck with men would change; the delight of knowing, too, the sort of man I should look forward to. She had summed it up so aptly: open warm brilliant and naked. In all the times a friend or a personality test had asked me to pick words to describe what I thought I might want in a man, none had so succinctly hit on the heart of it.
Openness, such a multifaceted gem: the ability to let others in; the ability to accept new thoughts, ideas, and people; the ability to be truthful. As I have ruminated on the perhaps serendipitous beginning of the list of characterizations with this word for seven or eight years now, I have settled on this being quite the sage starting point; without openness, how else can a relationship develop? Openness is like a doorway; it lets two people enter the same space.
Warmth, for me the founding principle of my interaction with anyone. If there is one thing I think I have to offer, it is this. If there is one thing I find myself drawn to in others, it too is this. This trait reflects not just an ability but a predilection for developing a closeness with other people. If by nature a person is open, it is still by choice that he or she emits warmth. Openness is like a doorway; warmth is what makes the space beyond it communal. Warmth is what adds enchantment.
Brilliance, something that takes a million forms. In a literal sense, it is emanation, radiance, vibrant light. In the more common usage, it is intelligence, or creativity, or wit—it is having a talent for or deep understanding of something. In my mind, that something could be anything. There is no way to weigh one sort of brilliance against another. All that matters to me is that a person know he has some and be able to find it; and delight in finding it. It is that delight that casts a glitter like fairy dust into the space inhabited by two people, that gives them something in the other to learn about or admire and by so doing unite them more securely together.
Nakedness, the state of showing all. It is equally emboldening to be physically and metaphorically naked in another's presence; it too can be equally unnerving. To strip down clothes and walls is a way of giving and of taking; it is a way of making people vulnerable, and a way of making them strong. It, too, is a way of being joyful; of shedding boundaries and shedding thought; of stepping into the realm of feeling rather than thinking. Openness and warmth draw two people together; openness, warmth, and brilliance give them a way to stay there; but it is nakedness that makes the space between them a certain kind of space and not any other.
It's poetic, this prophecy, and prophetic, this poetry, and what I like on top of that is that it's light-hearted, closing with hope of a delicious encounter and/or a vivacious metaphorical appreciation of me. And ambitious as the whole thing is, after all these years of not finding him, I still think Sara has described a real person, or many real persons, and I am tickled to know what I'm watching for as a trail of potential hims go by.
a man is out there for you
he is open warm brilliant and naked
and will devour you
Sara's grin was just as big as mine when I burst into her room to say thank you. She chuckled at my question of how long the poem had been waiting for me; just a few days, she said, and I kicked myself for not seeing it sooner. I still haven't let go of the delight I felt upon finding it—the delight of knowing that no matter the rejection I had just been through, I had a friend who had faith that my luck with men would change; the delight of knowing, too, the sort of man I should look forward to. She had summed it up so aptly: open warm brilliant and naked. In all the times a friend or a personality test had asked me to pick words to describe what I thought I might want in a man, none had so succinctly hit on the heart of it.
Openness, such a multifaceted gem: the ability to let others in; the ability to accept new thoughts, ideas, and people; the ability to be truthful. As I have ruminated on the perhaps serendipitous beginning of the list of characterizations with this word for seven or eight years now, I have settled on this being quite the sage starting point; without openness, how else can a relationship develop? Openness is like a doorway; it lets two people enter the same space.
Warmth, for me the founding principle of my interaction with anyone. If there is one thing I think I have to offer, it is this. If there is one thing I find myself drawn to in others, it too is this. This trait reflects not just an ability but a predilection for developing a closeness with other people. If by nature a person is open, it is still by choice that he or she emits warmth. Openness is like a doorway; warmth is what makes the space beyond it communal. Warmth is what adds enchantment.
Brilliance, something that takes a million forms. In a literal sense, it is emanation, radiance, vibrant light. In the more common usage, it is intelligence, or creativity, or wit—it is having a talent for or deep understanding of something. In my mind, that something could be anything. There is no way to weigh one sort of brilliance against another. All that matters to me is that a person know he has some and be able to find it; and delight in finding it. It is that delight that casts a glitter like fairy dust into the space inhabited by two people, that gives them something in the other to learn about or admire and by so doing unite them more securely together.
Nakedness, the state of showing all. It is equally emboldening to be physically and metaphorically naked in another's presence; it too can be equally unnerving. To strip down clothes and walls is a way of giving and of taking; it is a way of making people vulnerable, and a way of making them strong. It, too, is a way of being joyful; of shedding boundaries and shedding thought; of stepping into the realm of feeling rather than thinking. Openness and warmth draw two people together; openness, warmth, and brilliance give them a way to stay there; but it is nakedness that makes the space between them a certain kind of space and not any other.
It's poetic, this prophecy, and prophetic, this poetry, and what I like on top of that is that it's light-hearted, closing with hope of a delicious encounter and/or a vivacious metaphorical appreciation of me. And ambitious as the whole thing is, after all these years of not finding him, I still think Sara has described a real person, or many real persons, and I am tickled to know what I'm watching for as a trail of potential hims go by.
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