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27 December 2006 : doing, not being.
i am washing my hands in a dark bathroom, the only light coming from a tiny window near the ceiling. it smells institution in here, faintly powdery with a hint of lemon and a strong cleanser that hasn't been used in several months. like old ladies at church. the gray cold of the rainy day outside lets me see myself in faded blue. i am surprised at the detail i can make out in this tiny, cinderblock room: my mascara has started to run, filling the tiny lines under my eyes with enough black to make them stand out.
i look old.
i've just returned from several exhausting hours of errands; the emergency room, the pharmacy, the bank. in contrast to the girl i had spent my afternoon with, i am fading, my paint is chipping, the cat has spent so many years rubbing his sensitive cheekbones against my sharp edges that they are dulled and filmy with residue.
we communicated slowly, loudly, with too many gestures and too little meaning. she catches my drifts very quickly. she's the sharpest so far, two years my junior, shockingly tiny once out of her heavy cloth coat. i dial a million phone numbers, explain things to doctors and translators and nurses and caseworkers. she sits patiently on white paper, examining the contents of the room with one good eye, legs swinging idly and one foot thumpa-thumping against the footrest.
i am not prepared for this, which is not unusual: there is no preparation in this business, only a ready smile (i'm told mine is winning) and a willingness to compromise. i'll get things done somehow, it will just take a little bit of chutzpah and a lot of creativity. i dial the number for the translator again.
this is the costume i wear on thursday afternoons. i am brisk and businesslike, in my dress casual clothes and tasteful heels, i know all the catchwords which will impress the importance of my task upon the people whose help i need. this is about the girl in the tight basketball jersey, the one who won't make eye contact with anyone, but who needs us to understand what she cannot voice.
sitting in my car, she disarms me. squeezed against the passenger side door, making herself as small as possible, she says nothing. stares out the window as 86th street passes by, more slowly than it should. her skin hums, i can hear it. she is electric underneath her timidity, taking everything in for evaluation before dismissing it as unimportant or storing it away for future use.
in the pharmacy, i wait with my legs crossed making pleasant conversation with the attractive man in his 50s who wears a blue boot on his broken foot. i lose sight of her again and again as she walks the aisles, picking up anything that catches her interest and examining all the words on the packaging.
when she comes to sit down beside me, i gesture and smile what is essentially, "isn't this a pain in the ass? wouldn't you rather be at home where it's warm, watching mtv?" she nods, rocking back and for in her chair, unable to sit still.
her skin hums, i can hear it. she is tiny, shy, and the toughest i've encountered so far. nothing has phased her, she has giggled at the translator and rolled her eyes at my inept questioning, known everything about her surroundings through the entire time i've been with her. i wonder if this quality is innate, or if something happened to make her so conscious. what it could have been.
her hair, cropped clumsily short, belies the sharp of her jaw and the smooth of her face - in that heavy cloth jacket, i would have guessed her for a boy if i weren't carrying her casefile under my arm.
back at the office, i say, "i like her. she's feisty." i can't explain it, i still can't. but those words are the truest yet. i am drawn to dynamism like the dog to her frisbee; i can't seem to get enough. everyone agrees with me. she's the office favorite.
in the bathroom, i consider my still-young face in the twilit mirror. i am so tired, my back hurts, and all i have done is sit for the day. the soap foams and bubbles over my wrists, leaving behind a softness and a scent i will smell for hours. something gentle and pink, like old ladies at church, with a papery grit to it that reminds me that my skin won't be this smooth forever. an odor vaguely pallid, greasy, worn smooth from use.
how overwhelmingly appropriate.
posted by lindsay at 22:57 :: 2 comments
13 December 2006 : conflict.
i don't mind admitting that i don't live in the nicest area of town. all that stuff you hear on the news about indianapolis having one of its highest homicide rates in years, that's true. that rash of homicides late in the summer, pretty much every murder that's occured since july, most of that happened within a few blocks of my house. i can't walk alone down washington street without someone trying to buy me for sex. so, yeah, it's not the best part of indy. but i can say that with a sort of pride about the neighborhood - it's a pretty good place to be. demographically fascinating, and i rarely feel unsafe. i choose to be here.
i also don't mind admitting that my limbs are often thick with white guilt. a lot of my ambitions are informed by my sense of injustice; i know very well that my life has been relatively easy at least in part because i was born middle class and white in the united states.
tonight, i got pulled over, driving on 10th street. it was utterly surreal. i knew i hadn't done anything wrong. full stop at the stop sign, the speedometer carefully set at 30. normally getting pulled over would have me in full panic mode, but i honestly could not think of a single thing for which i could be in trouble.
the flashlight in my eyes, he asked how i was doing and asked for my driver's license. once i handed it over, he said, "did you know you have a license plate light out?"
"no, sir," i told him, my hands glued to 10 and 2.
"did you even know you had license plate lights?"
i laughed involuntarily. "not necessarily."
he trained the light on my driver's license. "you still live at this address?"
"no."
"what's your current address?"
i told him. he chewed on his lip. "that's just a few blocks from here, huh?"
i nodded.
then he said, "honestly, ma'am, this is just one of those things. try to get your light fixed as soon as you can. you know this dirtbag neighborhood. we'll pull anyone over for pretty much anything we can, just to check them out, make sure things are safe. that's the way it is around here."
i nodded again, dumbly this time, unsure how to react to this.
"you're legit," he told me. "drive safe, have a good night."
as i drove off, i considered all the ways in which i was offended. basically, i'd been pulled over for driving on 10th street. and basically, i'd been let go for being a cute, friendly white girl.
my relief was balanced by my outrage. i'm legit? i'm freaking legit? can you tell that from my driver's license? or was it my nice coat, the laptop on the front seat, my not being black, or hispanic, in a neighborhood known for violence?
i felt like i'd been unwillingly involved in a conspiracy. obviously, i was not going to say, "please go ahead and give me a ticket in the name of justice, officer." but there was a sense of assumed complacency that has driven me consistently crazier in the three hours since.
this is part of the problem, you know. i pass flashing sedans nearly every day in this neighborhood. the person cuffed on the curb is invariably male and invariably black. circumstance drives neccessity. neccessity drives crime. complacency, it drives circumstance. i'm (not)proud to say i've become an implicit part of the cycle.
i know he was just doing his job. i know that the area is under heavy patrol, and i know that every routine traffic stop has to be nerve wracking. that walk up to the car, not knowing what face you'll see once the window is rolled down. i'm sure my pink cheeks and kid bangs were a relief in the beam from that maglite. i appreciate that they're doing everything they can to keep the neighborhood safe.
still, if i were moving to ky tomorrow, tonight i would welcome the anticipation of a scenery change.
posted by lindsay at 22:39 :: 3 comments
11 December 2006 : uhm...truth.
i've been neglecting you lately, and i'm sorry. the truth is that i'm very busy, in demand, and highly selective. which means this: it's finals week, heroes has gotten really good, i've learned how to crochet, and i'm officially in a band (a real one this time).
what i had planned was a post of decent length in which i described all the reasons that i'm greatful to be single. and the major one right now is that i'm deciding where i want to go next year and the direction my life is taking, and i don't want to have to take into account anyone's needs but my own. so, that's a plus.
but the real reason for that post was just to share the following things with all of you, which could be considered reasons why it's probably good that i'm single, or could be considered reasons why i should probably find a boyfriend very quickly, before it's too late.
1. three days ago, i woke up early, was lying in bed thinking, and realized something was digging uncomfortably into my thigh. i reached down, thinking it was just a feather from the mattress, which happens quite frequently. was it a feather?
no.
three days ago, i woke up with my retainer stuck to my thigh.
2. i still wear a retainer. far from sexy.
3. this morning at work, i went to the bathroom, and i found cat hair in my undies.
like, a clump of it.
like, if i didn't know better, i'd think the cat was sleeping in the top drawer of my dresser.
but he isn't.
but please, don't let this turn you away from asking me out, because really, it's kind of endearing.
posted by lindsay at 00:57 :: 3 comments
02 December 2006 : it's my vanity
feel free to ignore this entry if you're not lisa, fyi. or if you are easily annoyed by bad quality webcam photos from the late 1990s. or if you plan on mocking me for all the unflattering ways i let myself look over the past eight years.
the tagline of this blog refers very specifically to a conversation i had with frank several months ago, in which i informed him of the fact that my hair was my vanity. and then paused. and then said, "and i mean that in a totally jane austen kind of way."
proof and proverbial pudding aside, i just spent the last several hours cleaning hard drives and transferring files between desktop and laptop, in an attempt to organize my life.
in this process, i found many, many photos. and pursuant to a conversation lisa and i had yesterday, i've decided to post them for her (and your) enjoyment. this is by no means exhaustive, so don't go thinking that i wasn't particularly creative in my youth - my resources are just limited, what with scratchy data cds and years worth of file reallocation.
anyway, i give you the timeline of the hair that graces my head, and many of the transformations it survived on its way to becoming the long, gloriously shiny curtain that it is today (irrespective of the fact that i got an overly-zealous bang trimmin' the other day and look slightly like betty page). believe it.
01. this is the most awkward of all my awkward growing out phases, a throwback to the fall of my junior year of high school (1999, man). how freaking young do i look in this photo, seriously?
02. fateful summer of 2000 found me experimenting with varying shades of blonde, especially in the summer. the first is what cera referred to as my "bertha the trucker puff," and i must admit that upon viewing this photo, she wasn't totally wrong. the second one is the blondest i ever managed to get, and i'm sad to say that this is the largest and best photo i have of those days.
03. i began experimenting with color in the fall of 2000, and i have loved this hair more than any hair has ever been loved before (and still kind of do).
04. eventually, my hair started screaming in protest every time i even looked at it, so i returned to something more natural. and i mostly just posted the first one so everyone would know that i was actually kind of cool and hardcore at one point in my life.
05. then, more awkward growing out happened. it would take about five years for me to realize that if i just went through with it completely one time, i wouldn't have to keep going through it over and over.
06. i thought orange highlights might help. then, cera and i got drunk at her brother's house, found some scissors in my glovebox, and decided i needed a haircut (the actual wonder of which is not really demonstrated by the second photo).
07. i let it get decently long when i was in california, but maintained some pretty hideous bang action that shall never be repeated.
08. about a year after that photo, i decided i wanted that haircut again. the woman i went to at supercuts didn't speak english, cut her finger and bled on my head, and then proceeded to give me a bob that hit just the tips of my ears, a blight so horrifying that it lasted less than 24 hours - a 24 hours i spent wearing a hat, crying on scott's bed, and searching for the man who would turn out to be the best stylist i ever had - oh, eddie. if only you weren't in san francisco. what i ended up with was this (look how shiny!). this is the best photo i have, so know that it's about a half-inch long and very spiky in the back.
09. and this terrifying photo is from the winter of 2003, but marks the beginnings of the delight i carry on my head today - the least awkward growing out stage ever, god love that eddie.
and that's the official end, with the exception of the prom pictures (read: burgundy with orange and pink highlights, crimped) i'll show you some other time, when i'm not too lazy to go upstairs and find them.
i'm so sorry about this post.
posted by lindsay at 23:13 :: 7 comments
01 December 2006 : the decided lack of grace
note to self:
if a) both of your feet are asleep and b) you're wearing stiff knee high boots with a heel that can only be described as "chunky," please do not assume that you can walk.
thanks, self.
posted by lindsay at 18:45 :: 0 comments
i am washing my hands in a dark bathroom, the only light coming from a tiny window near the ceiling. it smells institution in here, faintly powdery with a hint of lemon and a strong cleanser that hasn't been used in several months. like old ladies at church. the gray cold of the rainy day outside lets me see myself in faded blue. i am surprised at the detail i can make out in this tiny, cinderblock room: my mascara has started to run, filling the tiny lines under my eyes with enough black to make them stand out.
i look old.
i've just returned from several exhausting hours of errands; the emergency room, the pharmacy, the bank. in contrast to the girl i had spent my afternoon with, i am fading, my paint is chipping, the cat has spent so many years rubbing his sensitive cheekbones against my sharp edges that they are dulled and filmy with residue.
we communicated slowly, loudly, with too many gestures and too little meaning. she catches my drifts very quickly. she's the sharpest so far, two years my junior, shockingly tiny once out of her heavy cloth coat. i dial a million phone numbers, explain things to doctors and translators and nurses and caseworkers. she sits patiently on white paper, examining the contents of the room with one good eye, legs swinging idly and one foot thumpa-thumping against the footrest.
i am not prepared for this, which is not unusual: there is no preparation in this business, only a ready smile (i'm told mine is winning) and a willingness to compromise. i'll get things done somehow, it will just take a little bit of chutzpah and a lot of creativity. i dial the number for the translator again.
this is the costume i wear on thursday afternoons. i am brisk and businesslike, in my dress casual clothes and tasteful heels, i know all the catchwords which will impress the importance of my task upon the people whose help i need. this is about the girl in the tight basketball jersey, the one who won't make eye contact with anyone, but who needs us to understand what she cannot voice.
sitting in my car, she disarms me. squeezed against the passenger side door, making herself as small as possible, she says nothing. stares out the window as 86th street passes by, more slowly than it should. her skin hums, i can hear it. she is electric underneath her timidity, taking everything in for evaluation before dismissing it as unimportant or storing it away for future use.
in the pharmacy, i wait with my legs crossed making pleasant conversation with the attractive man in his 50s who wears a blue boot on his broken foot. i lose sight of her again and again as she walks the aisles, picking up anything that catches her interest and examining all the words on the packaging.
when she comes to sit down beside me, i gesture and smile what is essentially, "isn't this a pain in the ass? wouldn't you rather be at home where it's warm, watching mtv?" she nods, rocking back and for in her chair, unable to sit still.
her skin hums, i can hear it. she is tiny, shy, and the toughest i've encountered so far. nothing has phased her, she has giggled at the translator and rolled her eyes at my inept questioning, known everything about her surroundings through the entire time i've been with her. i wonder if this quality is innate, or if something happened to make her so conscious. what it could have been.
her hair, cropped clumsily short, belies the sharp of her jaw and the smooth of her face - in that heavy cloth jacket, i would have guessed her for a boy if i weren't carrying her casefile under my arm.
back at the office, i say, "i like her. she's feisty." i can't explain it, i still can't. but those words are the truest yet. i am drawn to dynamism like the dog to her frisbee; i can't seem to get enough. everyone agrees with me. she's the office favorite.
in the bathroom, i consider my still-young face in the twilit mirror. i am so tired, my back hurts, and all i have done is sit for the day. the soap foams and bubbles over my wrists, leaving behind a softness and a scent i will smell for hours. something gentle and pink, like old ladies at church, with a papery grit to it that reminds me that my skin won't be this smooth forever. an odor vaguely pallid, greasy, worn smooth from use.
how overwhelmingly appropriate.
Labels: Refuge to spare
posted by lindsay at 22:57 :: 2 comments
13 December 2006 : conflict.
i don't mind admitting that i don't live in the nicest area of town. all that stuff you hear on the news about indianapolis having one of its highest homicide rates in years, that's true. that rash of homicides late in the summer, pretty much every murder that's occured since july, most of that happened within a few blocks of my house. i can't walk alone down washington street without someone trying to buy me for sex. so, yeah, it's not the best part of indy. but i can say that with a sort of pride about the neighborhood - it's a pretty good place to be. demographically fascinating, and i rarely feel unsafe. i choose to be here.
i also don't mind admitting that my limbs are often thick with white guilt. a lot of my ambitions are informed by my sense of injustice; i know very well that my life has been relatively easy at least in part because i was born middle class and white in the united states.
tonight, i got pulled over, driving on 10th street. it was utterly surreal. i knew i hadn't done anything wrong. full stop at the stop sign, the speedometer carefully set at 30. normally getting pulled over would have me in full panic mode, but i honestly could not think of a single thing for which i could be in trouble.
the flashlight in my eyes, he asked how i was doing and asked for my driver's license. once i handed it over, he said, "did you know you have a license plate light out?"
"no, sir," i told him, my hands glued to 10 and 2.
"did you even know you had license plate lights?"
i laughed involuntarily. "not necessarily."
he trained the light on my driver's license. "you still live at this address?"
"no."
"what's your current address?"
i told him. he chewed on his lip. "that's just a few blocks from here, huh?"
i nodded.
then he said, "honestly, ma'am, this is just one of those things. try to get your light fixed as soon as you can. you know this dirtbag neighborhood. we'll pull anyone over for pretty much anything we can, just to check them out, make sure things are safe. that's the way it is around here."
i nodded again, dumbly this time, unsure how to react to this.
"you're legit," he told me. "drive safe, have a good night."
as i drove off, i considered all the ways in which i was offended. basically, i'd been pulled over for driving on 10th street. and basically, i'd been let go for being a cute, friendly white girl.
my relief was balanced by my outrage. i'm legit? i'm freaking legit? can you tell that from my driver's license? or was it my nice coat, the laptop on the front seat, my not being black, or hispanic, in a neighborhood known for violence?
i felt like i'd been unwillingly involved in a conspiracy. obviously, i was not going to say, "please go ahead and give me a ticket in the name of justice, officer." but there was a sense of assumed complacency that has driven me consistently crazier in the three hours since.
this is part of the problem, you know. i pass flashing sedans nearly every day in this neighborhood. the person cuffed on the curb is invariably male and invariably black. circumstance drives neccessity. neccessity drives crime. complacency, it drives circumstance. i'm (not)proud to say i've become an implicit part of the cycle.
i know he was just doing his job. i know that the area is under heavy patrol, and i know that every routine traffic stop has to be nerve wracking. that walk up to the car, not knowing what face you'll see once the window is rolled down. i'm sure my pink cheeks and kid bangs were a relief in the beam from that maglite. i appreciate that they're doing everything they can to keep the neighborhood safe.
still, if i were moving to ky tomorrow, tonight i would welcome the anticipation of a scenery change.
posted by lindsay at 22:39 :: 3 comments
11 December 2006 : uhm...truth.
i've been neglecting you lately, and i'm sorry. the truth is that i'm very busy, in demand, and highly selective. which means this: it's finals week, heroes has gotten really good, i've learned how to crochet, and i'm officially in a band (a real one this time).
what i had planned was a post of decent length in which i described all the reasons that i'm greatful to be single. and the major one right now is that i'm deciding where i want to go next year and the direction my life is taking, and i don't want to have to take into account anyone's needs but my own. so, that's a plus.
but the real reason for that post was just to share the following things with all of you, which could be considered reasons why it's probably good that i'm single, or could be considered reasons why i should probably find a boyfriend very quickly, before it's too late.
1. three days ago, i woke up early, was lying in bed thinking, and realized something was digging uncomfortably into my thigh. i reached down, thinking it was just a feather from the mattress, which happens quite frequently. was it a feather?
no.
three days ago, i woke up with my retainer stuck to my thigh.
2. i still wear a retainer. far from sexy.
3. this morning at work, i went to the bathroom, and i found cat hair in my undies.
like, a clump of it.
like, if i didn't know better, i'd think the cat was sleeping in the top drawer of my dresser.
but he isn't.
but please, don't let this turn you away from asking me out, because really, it's kind of endearing.
posted by lindsay at 00:57 :: 3 comments
02 December 2006 : it's my vanity
feel free to ignore this entry if you're not lisa, fyi. or if you are easily annoyed by bad quality webcam photos from the late 1990s. or if you plan on mocking me for all the unflattering ways i let myself look over the past eight years.
the tagline of this blog refers very specifically to a conversation i had with frank several months ago, in which i informed him of the fact that my hair was my vanity. and then paused. and then said, "and i mean that in a totally jane austen kind of way."
proof and proverbial pudding aside, i just spent the last several hours cleaning hard drives and transferring files between desktop and laptop, in an attempt to organize my life.
in this process, i found many, many photos. and pursuant to a conversation lisa and i had yesterday, i've decided to post them for her (and your) enjoyment. this is by no means exhaustive, so don't go thinking that i wasn't particularly creative in my youth - my resources are just limited, what with scratchy data cds and years worth of file reallocation.
anyway, i give you the timeline of the hair that graces my head, and many of the transformations it survived on its way to becoming the long, gloriously shiny curtain that it is today (irrespective of the fact that i got an overly-zealous bang trimmin' the other day and look slightly like betty page). believe it.
01. this is the most awkward of all my awkward growing out phases, a throwback to the fall of my junior year of high school (1999, man). how freaking young do i look in this photo, seriously?
02. fateful summer of 2000 found me experimenting with varying shades of blonde, especially in the summer. the first is what cera referred to as my "bertha the trucker puff," and i must admit that upon viewing this photo, she wasn't totally wrong. the second one is the blondest i ever managed to get, and i'm sad to say that this is the largest and best photo i have of those days.
03. i began experimenting with color in the fall of 2000, and i have loved this hair more than any hair has ever been loved before (and still kind of do).
04. eventually, my hair started screaming in protest every time i even looked at it, so i returned to something more natural. and i mostly just posted the first one so everyone would know that i was actually kind of cool and hardcore at one point in my life.
05. then, more awkward growing out happened. it would take about five years for me to realize that if i just went through with it completely one time, i wouldn't have to keep going through it over and over.
06. i thought orange highlights might help. then, cera and i got drunk at her brother's house, found some scissors in my glovebox, and decided i needed a haircut (the actual wonder of which is not really demonstrated by the second photo).
07. i let it get decently long when i was in california, but maintained some pretty hideous bang action that shall never be repeated.
08. about a year after that photo, i decided i wanted that haircut again. the woman i went to at supercuts didn't speak english, cut her finger and bled on my head, and then proceeded to give me a bob that hit just the tips of my ears, a blight so horrifying that it lasted less than 24 hours - a 24 hours i spent wearing a hat, crying on scott's bed, and searching for the man who would turn out to be the best stylist i ever had - oh, eddie. if only you weren't in san francisco. what i ended up with was this (look how shiny!). this is the best photo i have, so know that it's about a half-inch long and very spiky in the back.
09. and this terrifying photo is from the winter of 2003, but marks the beginnings of the delight i carry on my head today - the least awkward growing out stage ever, god love that eddie.
and that's the official end, with the exception of the prom pictures (read: burgundy with orange and pink highlights, crimped) i'll show you some other time, when i'm not too lazy to go upstairs and find them.
i'm so sorry about this post.
posted by lindsay at 23:13 :: 7 comments
01 December 2006 : the decided lack of grace
note to self:
if a) both of your feet are asleep and b) you're wearing stiff knee high boots with a heel that can only be described as "chunky," please do not assume that you can walk.
thanks, self.
posted by lindsay at 18:45 :: 0 comments