The sign says “Please do not feed the birds”. These pigeons are fearless, strutting in-between feet. If my boys were here, they’d be chasing them.
Wonder if the bus to Stansted will have wifi? I am already of the opinion it is a utility, like lights, and heat – maybe like air.
I am currently disconnected in all the ways I can be. The plane landed at 6 into a drizzly indeterminate gray. With the fluorescent lights, I am hard pressed to decide whether it is am or pm. The laptop says 3:00 AM – but that means nothing, I am no longer in that time. I am now in the future. The future looks very much like 1984. Bus terminals are like that. We’re all transients.
The woman next to me asks what the driver said, “I am sorry, I do not speak English.” I am not certain I do either…at least not this variety. I understand half the words and guess at the meaning by the gaps in the string. This is not the glamorous part of the journey. Despite my lack of English, and the alarming way that the roads are flipped and that it’s in a future 1984, it’s still close to homelike.
Peter Frampton is playing tinnily just for the driver. Jeans and tee shirts are timeless. Shag haircuts and overly processed bleach perms are not. It’s okay, I’m not sporting shoulder pads or my fuschia hair. It is a time warp. Without the boys, mom mode disengaged I’m back in my twenties. Do you feel like I do?
The grizzled backpack dude says, “You have pretty hair. Pretty backpack.” As he runs up the down escalator. Backpack tribe. Give me a week, I can match your unkemptitude.
There’s a moment of panic when I see a lanky tall fair loping man. Walk on by. My heart still beats fast. There will come a time when I don’t care. How’s that active forgetting working for you? Not well, apparently. Stupid really. He wasn’t even my type. I favor dark haired long lashed men with strong chins and stubble. “Favor” is a euphemism for yes. One makes my heart race, the other makes my heart race. It’s a lose-win situation.
Buses are faux cocoons only slightly bigger than the emotional breathing space of elevators. Nicety dictates we remain isolated deferential pods.
Metro – bus – time enough to get there and get lost and be found again. Lose – win. Here at the airport. Recharging.
This is the dry run. Netbook on my lap, charging the smart phone. So very techna warrior.
Calibri is just a great font name. It makes me feel cosmopolitan and like I should be sipping a breve as I write. Calibri is a place I may be in the near future. The mental geography is sketchy. On the map Italy is the size of a dime. Can’t be that far away, can it?
I am going to Italy, a land of men with dark hair and long lashes and depending on the hour – stubble. Win.
The window is now open. Time to go on to the next thing.
The grizzled backpack dude says, “You have pretty hair. Pretty backpack.” As he runs up the down escalator. Backpack tribe. Give me a week. I can match your unkemptititude.
There’s a moment of panic when I see a tall fair loping man. Walk on by. My heart still beats fast. There will come a time when I don’t care. How’s that forced forgetting working for ya? Apparently, not well. Stupid really. He wasn’t even my type. I favor dark haired long-lashed men with strong chins and stubble. “Favor” is a euphemism for yes. One makes my heart race; the other makes my heart race. It’s a lose-win situation.
Buses are faux cocoons only slightly bigger than the emotional breathing space of elevators. Nicety dictates we remain isolated deferential pods.
Metro…bus…time enough to get somewhere, get lost and found again. Lose-win.
Here now at the airport. Recharging.
Calibri is a fine font. It makes me feel cosmopolitan and like I should be sipping a breve as I write. Calibri is a place I may be in the near future. The mental geography is sketchy. On the map Italy is the size of a dime. Can’t be that far away, can it?
I am going to Italy, a land of men with dark hair and long-lashes and depending on the hour-stubble. Win.
The window opens. Time to go on to the next thing.
The journey in-between is there to prepare a body to meet the other bodies it will meet. Time to prepare, time for you and me.
Impromptu gathering at the Liberty Tavern spanning three decades of life. BJ posted a comment, “hey! You’re in my neck of the woods!” Magically his digits are in my phone (courtesy of fb), and I give him a call. He meets us there.
How could I have forgotten how stupid Sheils and I are when we are together? I am telling you, Grand Master Flash sounds fantastic when rapped as a munchkin. And Carlo is now a grown up. When did that happen? We figure out that I never was Carlo nor BJ’s prof. They were, as I am, sociable fixtures.
Love it when friends (noun) friend (verb) one another. Looks like BJ and Sheils will be doing some crazy music collaboration of danceable hip hop inspired odd time signatured slightly off tune work.
Whose couch I end at is determined by who can let me sleep in latest.
Carlo’s place is a pristine homage to every game console ever created. EVER. If it existed, he has it. No time to play. We bullshit until 4 in the morning, and are up at 8. He drops me off at an iHop. My traffic superpower gives us clear roads on the short trek to Ballston.
I’m here at Ballston Commons slurping Panera wifi killing time before heading to Dulles. Appreciating that I get to deal with mass transit in English for another 24 hours. Invoking my superpower for the rest of the trip. Thinking of my boys and the dog, as I will in in-between times. That’s another thing that happens in-between.
Winding back roads in Virginia. Fog and twilight. I am wary of the moors.
I hit the curves at a zippy pace with a few oh-shit-shit-shit moments. The Prius is not the Quattro. There is a space of a breath and I stop the car before the deer and it make contact. It has a confused moment before it decides not to finish crossing the road. Like dad says, they always travel in pairs - unless you hit one. I hit neither. It’s mate follows a second later. I am relieved. Start the car again and hit a teacup-sized moth.
Oh well…circle of life.
Pandora and gps justifies the smart phone. Rocked the 8 hour drive listening to it, with an hour break to listen to the Stereo Bomb. What? You haven’t checked it out yet? This shit it da bomb. Srsly.
Anyway, mom and dad are off to Corinne’s wedding. Pat and Larry greeted me like good surrogate parents - with food, and stories. Now just waiting for Sheils. We’ll go and hook up with Carlo.
Tomorrow, I fly. In the meantime, a last bit of home.
There’s no hiding at the pool. These are our mostly naked forms. There’s a man who used to be one of those athletes. I can see it in his arms and chest. There’s that beer belly.
And I am not the same as I was in high school. I am the shape that the habits of my every day have made me. I am what genes, and gender and age urge me to be.
The twenty-somethings are on their way to becoming who they will be. Most of them don’t even know they are beautiful. Most of them do not know how very malleable they are right now.
Age. Youth. Vibrancy. Risk. Body. Future. Past.
Malleable. All of it.
The stuff I have to get done will be done…not there really is a choice in the matter, but it’s under control.
Do I really need to bring a rain jacket?
Three tanks, a shirt, a dress, pants, a skirt…netbook. Yes. Camera, yes. Under 15 pounds? Doable.
Laundry. Leave a clean house for the Badger. Oh! Can someone watch Teo this Thursday and Friday until the Badger flies in Saturday morning?
Stuff for the boys and the road trip when we meet in Virginia. And Elice and Ibrahim are coming! And we get to go to Atlanta and do the seesterly thing, and Bootzer won’t know what to do when he isn’t the youngest nephew/grandkid.
************************************************
All that? Lather, rinse, repeat.
Not sure why that particular one lingers in consciousness.
I thought we were done with whatever it is we were supposed to do. Maybe there is some further lesson that I don’t get?
Throw him in back in the sea; he’s a boomerang.
On deck, not even gasping for air, he picks himself up, finds a deck chair and gets back to doing whatever it is that occupies him nowadays. Not aware or even caring I just tried to dump him. We ain’t even but a thang. But he’d be ready to make some time should I decide to come over. Maybe that’s the appeal.
Not the first
not the last
not even the one who loved me the best…
Two lines from Benny:
“You show up with an all male entourage! Bad ass.”
and
“you officially partied like a f’n rock star!”
NYC friends…c’mon.
Benny ‘s dance troupe is hosting a fundraiser and here is my stupid plan: I am dropping off the boys with their dad at 2, heading for Utica to pick up Troy and one of his friends, then we drive the 4 and a half hours to Brooklyn. There, we will meet up with the Free Verse gang at Barcade, and whomever wishes to follow us-can- to BUGGIN’ OUT to dance until 3 in the morning (4 if they are resilient and don’t care that…), we leave back for Utica so Troy and friend can continue their motorcycle lessons.
Was that a run on sentence?
BUGGIN’ OUT !!! - A benefit for GROUNDED AERIAL Dance Theatre
~~~JULY 24th~~~ come out of your chrysalis and support
“INSECTINSIDE” for the Philadelphia FRINGE Festival.
The Henrietta division of the department of motor vehicles is a 1960’s fluorescent flooded white speckled linoleum shabby place. It reminds me of all the utilitarian government rooms I have visited. The perimeter has higher than thou banks of countertop. They sit. You stand.
The people working there are pleasant enough with all the superficial friendliness of a hospital waiting room.
The visual exception are rows of dark church pews in the middle of the space. No kneelers. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to be there genuflecting and praying to the bureaucratic hegemony for pardon of traffic sins, forgive us our expired tags, speeding and parking tickets.
It’s a quick visit. I read aloud the third line of an eye chart, stand in front of a gray bit of wall.
“You can smile if you want to.” I wonder how many people decline? I fish a smile out of my purse, and barely have time to put it on before the flash comes. The smile didn’t make it to the eyes, but it’ll do. At least I don’t look twelve or like a terrorist.
I’m out. I’m legal. This is satisfying.
The pieces do not always fit. They often do not.
I used to think that an easy comfort meant something. We would be synchronized spoons - Esther Williams and company on a bed. That is, if we count the cat and dog.
Pressed against his back, for a moment, it feels alright. My eyelashes brush skin. This is a butterfly kiss. But my neck hurts and the arm under the pillow is bent at an awkward angle. It was not awkward for a minute, but numbing for two.
Disentangled sheets, an extrication, a drink.
There is no time to attune myself to his rhythms. He won’t be around that long.
Sometimes, I can’t help but compare, to remember when it was easy and when I knew without thought how my belly fit in the small of a back, or an arm knew at what point to drape along my side so the hand rested on my hip. There was a way to sleep in trust and awaken ready instead of disoriented and drained. In that regard being alone is easier.
This is how I know the experiment is ended - when alone seems the better state.
Can this count?
Games. Simple games. No carbs after 2. Do as many push ups as I can muster in the time it takes to render a heavily filtered 12 second video. Write every day.
Kevin took issue with the notion that life is a game. I argue that the non-explicit rules are governed by social constructs and morality - these provide context, this is what constitutes good sportsmanship.
(This is what happens when thought fodder is shelved for a few days).
There is more to it than this. I forget. I’ll have to start the argument anew with him.
In the meantime, whatever games I can come up with to get me to do the right thing works. The goal? To win, of course.
You read a book. Years go by, and maybe you read it again, and it is a different book…or you see things that you didn’t see; appreciate nuances that were non-existent, find out everything had changed. But it hadn’t. You had. The book is the same, you are the one who is different.
Constant stranger, it comes down to you.
We met at Jeremiah’s. The guys were already there. Thirty years is a long time. We are strangers now, and I think strangers even then.
LuAnne arrives and I feel the connection, even though she too is a stranger now. We used to hang out, our geek squad.
I don’t remember much of back then. Part of that out of sight out of mind leftover. Leave a town, everyone there no longer exists - except family. They remain. There’s no going back or revisiting, the past is outgrown clothes - not some source of comfort or continuity. There is no continuity. These are the coping mechanisms of a 12 year old sustained for decades.
They swap remembrance. I can only comment in the present. But I am there to my surprise. I have a voice now that I didn’t have. There was all kinds of shit going down that LuAnne and I were not a part of. We were innocents. While these guys were drinking and doing the kinds of high school shenanigans that are still being done, we were playing board games and making bread. (That would be you, Peter).
Did I miss something by not being in that crowd? I decide not. It’s okay to bloom late. Shit, still mid-bloom now.
“You were kind of above it all. Like you were so confident, you didn’t need to say anything,” says Berg. “You were intimidating.”
I shake my head. I only realize I am shaking my head after I have been doing it a while.
Mike says, “You were shy. I knew.”
“But that’s because you were one of the few who talked to me.”
At the time I was certain of my invisibility. So unsure of what to say, better to be silent. So uninteresting, that it did not occur to me that there was anything there on which to form an opinion.
Still wondering at the past. It’s far enough away that I can look at it. I don’t have sufficient callousness or strength to look at the recently forgotten, but this I can do.
Pretty much sums it up.
- By weez on rearranging the space
- By An acquaintance on that girl
- By fivecats on extemporaneous
- By slaobautcyg on 16 May 98 - Brain Food
- By amit on in lieu of
- By KateJohn on Alas, poor women
- By you? on Selective hearing
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