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21 March 2007 : prepare yourselves for ludicrous speed.
those who do not acknowledge their mistakes, they're doomed to repeat themselves.
i guess that's true though it seems like just another characteristically unsage moment of trying too hard. because sometimes words are all you have, so you go for broke. make something up. if it sounds pretty enough, if the meter and the internal rhyme raise the hairs on your arm, maybe that means its true. then you're comforted.
i don't take that comfort anymore. it feels a little too high school, a little too selfish. i don't understand how poets live with themselves. don't they know how cliche they are?
me and you, we've been dancing for far too long. i have your textures burned onto my skin, i pressed too long against the rough edges of who you are. and i'm terrified of making this larger than it needs to be.
which doesn't seem right. it's been so segmented, so separated. time and distance have molded my perception of the situation. the fact that i haven't grown up, even a little, since we met, means i can't see you clearly.
but the fact is, i have something to tell you. and the fact is, i've needed to tell you before.
the fact is, i was too afraid to say it then thus opening the door on the necessity of saying it now.
listen: once there was convienence, and once there was obligation. they didn't coexist lightly, and neither of them had pale skin or brown eyes. neither of them painted their toenails red or leaned against you in the flickering light of the television.
we are not friends.
posted by lindsay at 06:36 :: 2 comments
19 November 2006 : coats and overcoats.
something was flickering on the television, but the evening we'd planned was pushed aside for serious conversation. it happened so rarely between you and i; when it did come about, everything outside the two of us was in my eyes inconsequential.
we sat on the couch, that couch i knew so well. the dirt of my life, of your life, of the lives of everyone who knew you and used you and came to you was piled up in the creases of the gray cushion cover. i slept here some nights, because you were too angry or too tired to deal with me. i slept here some nights, because i was too scared to crawl into bed with you. i might be rejected. i slept here some nights because you were so large, so overwhelming in your sleep - all heavy limbs and slick sweat like some horrifying aftermath - that i would awake pinned to the wall, unable to breathe and unable to wake you.
you were sprawled per usual, the size of you intimidating to the entire house. i was curled as small as possible, per usual, taking up as little space as i could so i wouldn't accidentally brush against you. this way i could be both close and careful, feel your heat without making you startle - sometimes the sensation of skin against your own skin made you angry.
this is what you said: what are you going to do?
i curled my toes tightly against the rough cushion, studied my flat feet and long toes next to yours. you pressed the sole of one foot against the sole of mine and i unfurled a little, aching.
this is what i said: with my life?
your affirmation wasn't really needed; we both knew i was only stalling for time. you waited, breathed, and asked me what it was i wanted.
i smiled, looking under my eyelashes at my belt, at my knobby knees.
this is what i said, and i meant it more than you'll ever know: i want a garden.
your surprise delighted both of us. you huffed out a short laugh, reached out a hand and squeezed my bare ankle. a garden, you said, shaking your head. you rolled us both cigarettes and considered this with smoke curling around your face.
it seemed so obvious at the time. a garden meant stasis, it meant home. it meant i'd be staying for a while. it was everything i'd been wanting since the long drive across the continent, in those four syllables.
after a minute, you put down your cigarette and turned to face me squarely. you can use my backyard, i wouldn't mind. i pictured it, trying not to let you see that i was having trouble breathing. that all i wanted in the world was to jump on you, kiss every part of your face i could reach. that tiny square of grass behind your house, it would be filled entirely with my flowers.
yeah. i'd be staying for a while.
posted by lindsay at 21:55 :: 6 comments
17 October 2006 : it's that time of year again.
[where i start posting obsessively in an attempt to avoid homework as long into the wee hours of the night as possible.]
MY VERY MOST FAVORITE THINGS THAT I'VE LEARNED FROM ANTHROPOLOGY
1. women have a creepy enzyme that releases in the 3rd trimester of pregnancy, and it EATS YOUR CARTILAGE. expectant mothers beware: don't let that bitch push you down those stairs.
2. marxism is still a rather valid field of academic influence.
3. objects are multivalent - that is, every object in the world has more than one meaning dependent on who is using them, looking at them, buying them, selling them. multivalence is, honestly, the spice of life.
4. the first thing that gets delivered to an archaeological dig: the liquor.
5. it is decidedly NOT ETHICAL to give infected blood to a group of people you are studying.
6. a skeleton that hasn't been boiled entirely clean smells kind of bad, but it's not intolerable.
7. if you have a sinus infection, go to the fucking doctor. otherwise your brain's going to get infected and YOU'RE GOING TO DIE.
8. colonial gardens were so much more than just gardens. they were actually an instrument of social control!
9. the cia really tends to fuck things up, especially in the cold war era.
10. pretty much the entire world sucks at life, and there's not really anything you can do about it, but let's watch this movie about this genocide and then you can go home and not sleep.
11. hitler and darth vader? they're really bad guys.
12. scientists have a very distinctive sense of entitlement that's really kind of gross and frustrating.
13. hummel figurines are not just cute. they're in fact so overwhelmingly cute that it's FASCIST.
14. australian cowboys are freaking awesome.
posted by lindsay at 22:37 :: 6 comments
28 September 2006 : a fine philosophical distinction
HERS:
it's the neighborhood. charming and new. she slides barefoot toes over the grit of concrete, feet propped on the porch railing while she smokes.
the people across the street smoke, too. their green house looks sad from the west, sunlight in the windows teary. the children have been taken away again. tonight it's too dark to see the woman sitting on her porch, but the burning tip of her cigarette gives her away. movement is sensed more than seen, and suddenly the cigarette stubbed out on the side of the porch is raining sparks from a cupped hand, the only visible thing for blocks.
she's lived here for two months now and this is what she notices: the women across the street holding desperately to their children while they screw up again and again, and the man who walks.
red pants and white sneakers. over time, she will see his method of audio delivery evolve. boombox, walkman, discman, mp3. every day he hurries past at the same time, she sitting on her porch examining her red toenails and sipping whiskey and sprite from a white coffee cup. it has to be the neighborhood; these people are part of its charm.
today when he walks by, he looks up. hurried as usual, like the only thing that matters is his progress southward and the beat of his blood against the beat of a drum somewhere in his head. but he catches her eye and makes no physical form of acknowledgement.
this one she is not scared of. the streets are full of the intransigent, the downtrodden, the wronged - it is a neighborhood on the verge, this place she ended up. the young families and the artists are beginning to encroach upon the junkies and the gangs.
this man is not one of those who makes her wish the roommate were home more often; his broad bald harshness a comfort in the late hours of the night when the sirens come through and she is not used to living in this place.
eventually he will begin to acknowledge her. he'll walk by and there will be the slightest ghost of a smile. of a nod. maybe she imagines it, but she prefers not. i'm a safe one too, she thinks. we've got the street camaraderie.
he'll keep walking even after she's gone and moved on; she sees him from time to time on the other side of town but he makes no motion of remembering her. she must look different against cement block than red brick.
she'll always wonder where he is going.
HIS:
the day turned out dreary and dry, a break from the rain a relief to his knees, his back.
one foot in front of the other. one foot in front of the other.
he doesn't keep track of how long he's been walking, he doesn't like to think about it. with that comes a mess of anniversaries and remembrances that are too cumbersome to embrace. he knows how old he is, but allows himself the luxury of ignorance.
this way, he can think, i smelled her hair yesterday. i patted fingers across her soft pink cheek yesterday. fifteen years and he knows the smell of love's baby soft like he was wearing it himself.
one foot in front of the other. one foot in front of the other.
he won't be busy, he can't be busy. so he walks. the neighborhood is friendlier at some times than others; in the heat of summer he considers buying a knife.
which would indicate that he were mortal. which could indicate that he needed to care about anything more than just walking. it could remind him that it has not been less than a day since he sat in her lap and played with her necklace, listened as she talked on the phone to a bearded man who made her giggle.
so he turns up the volume and adjusts the headphones, resolutely deciding that it hasn't yet reached a point where he'll be shot for walking. he's not going to get jumped for his dirty white sneakers.
one foot in front of the other. one foot in front of the other.
every step is backwards. a step towards yesterday when she wore an orange blouse and curled her bangs upward, clipped blue stones onto her ears and smiled at him in the mirror.
tomorrow can't exist, because tomorrow has the world and the blue water. fifteen years ago, it didn't really mean anything that she was swallowed by that wave. he laughed at the big sister goofing in her red bikini for him. his insteps punish the sidewalks for taking her away, he breathes steady steady up and down each street.
at some point, he'll come home and she'll be waiting. there is nothing in this world but his throat raw with breathing and tiny hope dancing with delusion.
posted by lindsay at 20:44 :: 0 comments
05 September 2006 : which road to el dorado; part 5 of 6
her name was carolina and she was the prettiest girl in the sixth grade.
i don't think anyone but me ever noticed - because her clothes were shabby and outdated, everyone looked right over her. i was grateful that this was what they cared about, patent leather and brand names, because it meant that i would have less competition. she would be my friend, i would make certain of it. i just didn't know how.
i first saw her in the cafeteria. it took me a long time to figure out that her dark skin and wide eyes and broad cheekbones meant that she was the child of migrant workers, in school only during the fall and gone after christmas, never to be seen again. she wasn't like the rest of the girls who talked loudly to one another in spanish and laughed when you walked by and couldn't understand what they said.
i knew why they stuck together; you can walk the entirety of tipton county and never encounter a person of color. that's probably for the best - i'm always tempted to warn away those i do see. "trust me, you don't want to be here. someone's going to be ignorant and mean in your direction before the hour's out." and sixth grade, well, i don't have to tell you how vicious sixth grade is. factor out an unusual skin color, a migrant background and citizenship. you're still left crying in the bathroom during free period.
but carolina, she wasn't like the rest of the girls. she sat alone at lunch reading books and didn't flirt with the boys, she didn't go to the basketball games or hang cheerful posters in the cafeteria. she was like me. but i was afraid of her, like i was afraid of everyone in 1994.
it was a miracle when we changed from art class to music class in the middle of october. i was waiting for class to start having arrived minutes before the bell, not caring to linger in the halls where the boys would make fun of my weight. when carolina came in, she stood looking around the room while everyone ignored her and then headed for the empty seat at my table. i was sharing it with the stack of ms. fredericks' books and papers, and andrew brown (who was the janitor's son and a smartass but not in a funny way, so nobody liked him).
i sat and jiggled my leg and bit at my nails and tried to look cool, sneaking peeks at her over the top of my geography workbook. she was completely calm and unaware of everyone else, a quality i admired (and still do). i wanted to be nonchalant. andrew brown babbled through class like he always did and always would, annoying because i thought he was supposed to be. i hated him, and i hated that he talked to carolina and she talked back to him like it was the easiest thing in the world. she understood that he was a outcast though, and kept her answers to a minimum.
but andrew brown, he rattled on and on over his workbook, talking about mexico as though he knew all about it. i pretended to fill out the blanks on the page in front of me, while dreaming of ways to shut him up. if i was clever enough, carolina and i would be giggling over our paperbacks in a corner of the lunch room before the end of the week. her skin was so beautiful. i wanted to know what it was like in mexico, and if she had to work with her parents on the weekends. i wanted to know if she went to school all the time, or just sometimes. i wanted sleepovers and summer trips to chiapas, i wanted it all.
finally, i couldn't take it anymore. andrew brown was talking too much, and it was offensive the way he kept talking about mexico as though carolina weren't sitting right next to him, knowing more than he would ever know (even at age 11 my sense of justice and empathy was overwhelming to a fault). and he was pronouncing mexico all wrong, like he was making fun of her. i was furious with him for being so insensitive.
"shut up!" i said. "stop saying 'mexico' like that, it sounds stupid!" i slapped both hands down on the table, righteously. i would defend her honor, her foreignness.
andrew stared at me. ms. fredericks stared at me. carolina stared at me, with fire in her eyes. i was avenging her, she would love me forever, write me letters with exotic stamps i could cut out and paste in my photo album. the moment lasted forever, and then it happened.
carolina opened her mouth and spoke to me for the very first time.
"that's how you're supposed to say it," she told me calmly. "it's not stupid." andrew brown bent whistling over his notebook. ms. fredericks hid a smile behind her hand and tried hard to look like she hadn't overhead. carolina glared at me like i was the one who was being rude.
i blushed furiously through the bus ride home, burning with humiliation over my mistake. how could i explain to her that i was protecting her? that i wanted her to ride home on the bus with me, and we could play computer games together and check each other's homework. there were no words. she sat at a different table the next day.
carolina didn't come back after christmas break, and i never saw her again. that year, i used a swear word for the first time and started asking my mom for brand name clothes and expensive shampoos, but i never forgot about carolina and how badly i wanted to be her best friend forever. and how much it hurt that my intentions were misconstrued.
sometimes i can't help but wonder if that rainy fall day in the music room isn't the reason i am becoming an anthropologist.
posted by lindsay at 22:08 :: 2 comments
26 August 2006 : sighted; part 4 of 6
her abdomen proceeds her as she makes her way down the sidewalk, stepping carefully past cracks and shoots of green. from a distance, though you can tell she is a large woman, the bowl of her belly does not conform to ideas of obesity. instead, to the eye of an interested amateur (my eye, see), it looks as though perhaps she's suffering from malnutrion, from kwashiorkor. you've seen them, the children with the swollen bellies, a skinny little boy looking like nothing more than pregnant in the circle of sally struthers' arms.
this protrusion is given many explanations, among them swollen liver due to cirrhosis or simple fluid retention for any number of nasty reasons. i can't help but wonder if it's not about more than anatomy, more than disease.
the bones that form the pelvic girdle are thick and strong, fitted perfectly to form a cup with wings that extend up the back. they shifted and swayed this way and that as we stood upright. their mass is intended for strength, to stand up under the impossible responsibility of cradling human organs. the muscles that attach them, too, are thick and broad - muscles that will not easily tear. some mornings, surely, you've stopped to consider what keeps you upright with no thought to physiology, the miracle that is your body.
i don't question this anymore, because i know the bones and their perfection. i know what works with what, and why each movement is a choreographed ballet of sinew and socket. i could fall to my knees before such perfect machinery, fall to worship at the altar of human flesh. this is nothing about love, romantic love or sex, nothing about desire.
it is about abstractions and waking up every morning knowing this: i have two feet, and a heart that beats.
i would only be able to express my feeling for a perfectly created machine in a language normally reserved for words on god. how easy it is to take for granted existence and how easy to abuse what is given you, how the assurance of youth is to be immortal.
i have heard theorized that man's machines are a sort of proof of god, of a flawless designer whose time is best spent building blueprints - hiding them subtly - so that man could reproduce them in plastic, in machines. i see no such connection.
the click of a shutter. the blink of an eye. the perfect designs of our bodies reflected as it should be in the material world. the existence of a camera does not give me faith in anything but that maybe once existed someone else who felt as i do. humanness is a gift not bestowed benign among the bushes of a humble beginning, but a gift of discovery, something we gave ourselves in a triumphant emergence from the forest.
congratulations men. you see blue sky and the ripple of muscle.
the ilium, the ischium, the pubis. a holy trinity i can get behind.
and i wonder if this distension of abdomen isn't about giving up. maybe the muscles of her stomach could no longer handle the strain of being upright. maybe they let go the strain of holding themselves together. maybe getting out of bed will soon no longer be worth the trouble.
it is a day of perfections. the woman walks with a white stick, tapping tapping her way down washington street. she smiles, and i smile at the grandeur of my assumed knowledge. normally my first instinct would be sadness, that she would not see the distinction of vivid blue sky and vibrant green grass, black asphalt and white cloud, the greens and oranges of corroded buildings, all the beautiful things of this world we made.
but i among all people should know that something does not cease to be beautiful when you close your eyes, nor does it begin to be beautiful only because they're open. the wind blows softly down johnson avenue, and her belly proceeds her as she makes her way down the sidewalk, feeling on her face the light of perfect day.
posted by lindsay at 15:36 :: 2 comments
21 August 2006 : the imagined hazard of watching; part 2 of 6
she was not a young woman, but she carried the baby on her hip as though it belonged to her. she carried the baby on her hip as though it had once lived and fed among the soft pink tissues of her body. i studied it as well as i could from this distance, wrapped in a blue cloth whose intensity fought for dominance with the sky, and wondered if she lived well inside of it, or if it were a losing battle against time. the details were fuzzy at this distance, but age - hers and the baby's - she carried well.
i smiled at her furtive, quizzical glances from where i sat in a soft scrabble of sand, holding my book and sipping precious bottled water too warm for home but delicious in the necessity created by the incessant heat of being here. my feet would dangle of the edge of the cliff, too far from the ocean to feel its spray, for several hours but she would never respond to my advances.
it could have been my skin, so white in the light of day except where it was burnt pink from the same. or it could have been my clothes, shabby and secondhand though they were, bursting with songs about the world i came from which we both knew was about as far from hers as intangible distance allows. my tshirt with its holes and my jeans with their frayed seams were still different, nicer somehow, than anything she could have laid hands on. i doubted she would want to, envying the way the wind ruffled up underneath her skirts and must even as i watched be laying soft hands against the smooth skin of her thighs.
maybe it was the men nearby.
her men, they had to be. men rough and drunken and possibly disapproving of any contact with me. i watched disappointed but never found the courage to stand and bridge the gap between where i sat with one foot looped in my bag strap for safety and the child beat awkward searching hands against the sand. the men - long grass, they would be called - were behind us several hundred yards in the shade of a picnic shelter but their presence, like i'd come to realize about most strange men, was electrifying in its pervasion.
i sat in my disappointment for what felt like hours, craving the feeling of that little girl's eyes on me, the smooth skin as yet unscarred by whatever hard work her life would be. plane rides and gambling, relinquished paychecks, liquor, petrol, the racism she would take for granted by grace of birth. i wanted that baby, wanted to taste her as pure and undiluted, another young possiblity. she could be one who broke the endless cycle of heartbreak, of thievery, of disuse. she could sweep into the streets the dust of empty, disheveled lives.
it was my own heart that was breaking, that day i sat reading on the cliff. where the trees failed to shade me, the sun beat against my back and my legs. i was acutely aware of these things: the crease between thigh and buttock, the bend of a knee, a downed upper lip, the bridge of my nose. cool points to take pleasure in against the heat of my body.
i watched hungrily the woman and the baby without ever swallowing what it was that held me back, two decades of my mother's voice in my ear, telling me never to talk to strangers, her fear when i told her i would span continents alone. the woman and her baby were safe enough, she would suppose, but what about the men?
what about them? did i fear their distinct foreignness, or that they were clearly intoxicated on an early sunday afternoon? why could i not leave my book behind and lay a hand on that little girl's brow? i would never know, because i would never try. the woman continued to glance back at me, but i returned to my book and hoped for the best of possible futures for all of them. my work was to study, not interfere. the trials of an anthropologist in training. somewhere compassion ends and observation begins. my guess is that i could find some etymological link between emperical and imperial, and it would allow for night after sleepless night.
behind us a man walked barefoot in a purple tshirt that hurt my eyes in the contrast to his skin, burnished to the bare shine of a roasted coffee bean. he wandered through the park a little dumbfounded, cupped hands held to his mouth as he shouted the inexplicable, "sean connery!" over and over again. his accent was so thick, so broad that i felt it slide down the back of my throat and thought i would never be able to stretch open my white-girl jaws to accomodate it. i would be forever meek.
i felt nothing but self loathing as i wrapped my foot more tightly in the strap of my bag and turned back to an afternoon of dispassionate reading, black words on a white page describing the plight of the people whose true stories walked all around me.
posted by lindsay at 22:58 :: 0 comments
02 July 2006 : crash, crash, crescendo.
i'm aware of movement, mostly. i have to take in small details and work them out one at a time, otherwise i'd be spun, knuckles to the wall. there's too much going on, too much changing, too much happening to keep my eyes on it all.
culmination is key. i wear black, perhaps, to tie it all together and consider carefully the placement of my commas so you will know exactly what i mean.
because i needed a signature, i walked into a conversation at precisely the right moment and two days later found me once again introduced to the other side of the microphone. i can't explain the nature of such a thing; rediscovery had the same shock of still, cool water that had hooked me in the first place.
for three years, i've been fine without music. i've missed it in quiet moments, on occasion smiled at the sound of myself against Ben Gibbard in the car, but i kept it to myself. brushed away the itinerant pang of longing while my guitars sat dusty in some corner of whatever bedroom i happened to occupy.
it had to work this way; there was no room for wiggling or wanting, only that rush as i hear it over the p.a. - dripping or gushing or folding in a rustle like silk - so many minutes later. there had to be shock, i had to be punched in the stomach with remembering. in the intervening years the sound of me has broadened and deepened, grown past adolescence, started smoking camels and learned how to walk in heels.
what i hear on the monitors is not a product of ego, really. if anything it has to be a symptom. to me it sounds like a door slamming shut with finality, like a man dusting his hands off one another in satisfaction at a job well done. it sounds like the turn of a key in the ignition of the car that drove me home from california.
i have to sweat, shake my hair back, i have to swing what hips i have and step forward on the glide of a finger, mimick finality with the smell of hot metal and working electronics in my nose and the feeling in the back of my throat, wrapping my muscles around something the shape of which is nameless - not to squeeze but to hold, to expel slowly, slowly. sugar, something soft and silky and molten in my mouth.
it pours, and it looks like the sound of every moment of the last decade. it looks like lindsay's face when we crossed the border, it looks like scott's hand on my waist, it looks like the bags under my mother's eyes the week my father died and she was awake for six days straight. it looks like that man who crossed his legs under flourescent light leaning forward and touching my arm when he laughed and it looks like that slick dark parking lot and fingers on my mouth, the taste of blood and the pain of kissing and it looks like life.
a stolen second of pleasure, the flavor of what's to come. this is what i plead with myself about on the nights that i can't sleep - don't let it go, lindsay, don't let it go - wear yourself like a sundress and stay poised to spring forward every time you're scared. nothing specific, just don't let it go. this must have been it.
i guess i just always needed a moment.
posted by lindsay at 23:15 :: 3 comments
07 October 2005 : inheritance
my father worked long, long hours when i was a child. as ranking officer at two different armories, it was up to him to keep things running. he would come home for about two hours every night to have dinner with us, and then he would return to work until long after i was put to bed. i missed him all the time.
when i was very young, he would fix my hair before school. every cold morning he would put on his red bathrobe and come downstairs early. when i finished dressing i would step into the living room to find him sitting in his recliner, the footrest popped out, waiting for me. that was our time - i don't remember mom or my brothers at all during those moments, just me and dad in front of the fireplace. he would ask me questions about my life while he brushed my long hair and braided it. he could always braid better than mom. i have missed those mornings since they ended, fourteen or fifteen years ago.
as i got older, he was away from home more and more. now that he is gone and my mom feels like she can speak candidly, i know that he frequently worked those hours because he didn't want to be at home. all his stresses, his anger, he would take them out on the four of us. and they could all be traced back to one single thing. he hated that he couldn't give us everything that we wanted, and everything that he wanted for us.
i don't recall wanting for anything.
after a few years, i started finding excuses to stay up late. extra homework, drinks of water. anything to get myself out of bed during the half hour before he came home and went upstairs. at night he would sit in the kitchen, because he wasn't allowed to smoke in the rest of the house. i would lean against the counter while he sat at the table, watching the light of the tv reflect off his skin. those nights were always colored a dark dusty blue. those nights, he spoke of my future in absolutes because he never doubted me for a second. he said when - never if.
from my father, i recieved a desire to know everything that is in the world. a love for languages. a desperate aching desire to learn. from my father, i recieved a need to write everything down, find new ways to describe the things that i saw. from my father, i learned to want to help others. i found an endless quest for perfection.
he used to bring me small presents. every few days or so - "i saw this while i was out this afternoon and i thought, wow, my little girl would really like this." and on my fourteenth birthday he took me shopping and bought me a ring. four months later my mother shook me awake at midnight, the lights of the ambulance flashing around inside my bedroom.
after he died, i learned that happiness is something you sometimes have to fight for. i learned that a good life doesn't just happen to you, but you have to go outside and find it.
something about the weather today made me sad. a certain charge in the air made me want another day with my daddy. instead, i'm left with writing this down as a reminder to myself that i had him once and that i was loved.
from my father, i have recieved a calm sense of self assurance, a blank slate of prejudice, a gold necklace, a love of reading, a completely flat ass, and a belief that i am good and strong. i think i found a reason to stop acting like a child today.
posted by lindsay at 23:17 :: 0 comments
01 October 2005 : on the road
Driving on I-65 is a tragedy in the making. Everywhere on the highway is somewhere for you; two miles in any direction and there is somewhere else you would rather be going.
North, past highway 30 you can find the exit to 80/94. If you follow this through Chicago, it will take you to Wisconsin, where you can sit on a dock in the dark, smoking cigarettes on the water and remember that once you were brave and daring and knew how to make things happen.
South of highway 30, you could take exit 205 or exit 215, drive down country roads remembering how it felt to be young and fierce, loved and in love.
The exit for 70 west goes all the way to San Francisco, where waits a green ashtray and a windswept balcony from which you can almost see the ocean. 70 west could take you into the city where you could find your way to highway 1, highway 101, highway 280, because any of them would do to drive south. The serpentine curves of highway 17 lead to Santa Cruz and the love that almost broke you.
70 east, 80 east, 95 north and you are in Providence, on a dark humid evening with the smell of your shampoo filling the air, wishing everything had not been broken, wishing you had all just stayed together, just this once.
74 east and you could head for Cincinnati, where someone would hold your hand on the sidewalk downtown and rub your back while you slept huddled together, comfortable knowing that you'd always at least have each other even though the distance continues to grow.
Going south, you can find highway 46, highway 7 - two hours exactly to find yourself covered by the security of the strongest friendship you've ever known.
We could explore even further south - take on the oldest memories. At some point in Tennessee or Alabama 65 south meets up with 20 west meets up with 55 meets up with 12 so you can find Baton Rouge, the remnants of your childhood and the first passions of kids trying to grow up too quickly.
Does it ever end? Can you drive any direction and not feel a tug? Will there be a miraculous day that allows you to pass an exit without turning off the stereo, without catching your breath?
You hate this highway. You hate the way it tells you that you're a different girl now. You hate the way it tells you that you are too old, too tired, too afraid to move on or move forward. You hate the way it tells you, sometimes, that you've settled.
You hate that it's all over. All you have left is the drive to work.
posted by lindsay at 23:21 :: 0 comments
02 March 2005 : ritual, routine and unconditional love (saved for shari)
i like to read a book before i go to bed. if it's late, or i'm particularly tired, or both, i do it anyway. 20 pages, give or take, on those nights. it puts me to sleep.
i like to turn off the light, lie in the dark, and smoke a cigarette at night. it's the last thing i do before i go to sleep - think about today, think about tomorrow. tomorrow is always fun and exciting, never realistic. tomorrow never really happens. but i keep thinking about it.
in the morning, i like to wake up 20 minutes early, so i can spend some quality time with the cat, who's only affectionate when i first wake up.
i like friday afternoons. friday afternoon is the only time all week i'm guaranteed at least five hours alone. i like to buy something nicer than usual to eat, and watch a sad movie in my pajamas.
i wish i had time in the mornings for a cup of tea (soy milk, soy milk, sugar) on the porch. this i don't.
i like mondays and wednesdays between 12 and 1. i like to watch everyone i see then, i like to relax and hope i'll meet someone worth talking to.
i like to spend monday evenings at the coffeeshop, smoking cigarettes and talking to shari.
i like everything to happen in the same order as it always happens. get in the shower; wash hair, rinse hair, condition hair, wash self, rinse self, shave, rinse hair, wash face. get out of the shower; dry off hair, moisturize face, clean ears, brush teeth, comb hair, dry self, get dressed, dry hair, put on makeup, straighten.
i get really cranky if for some reason i can't shower and get ready in that exact order
i think i'm getting old; lately i'm wondering how it might feel to live alone. i know i'd get lonely, at least right now, but i'm not sure that after this lease runs out next winter, i won't want to try it. we'll see. i like living with shari and the boys more than i've liked living anywhere else, even without windows. and i think a lot of the desire of living alone is the desire to be able to reduce all my activities to routines like that of my shower, or my before bed ritual, uninterrupted and always safe.
as for unconditional love, let's just say that my cat loves windows. at the old house, he could lay on my bed and stare out the window, and he used to spend hours doing that exact thing. at the new house, i have four more windows in my bedroom, but none of them reach low enough to be looked out of from my bed. and kitter doesn't really understand that he won't fit into a windowsill if the window is unopened. so at 8 on monday morning, when he tried, he failed. failed right onto my face, claws out.
for a while, i looked like this:
now i look like this:
i love that little bastard, all fishbelly white. he's part of my routine.
posted by lindsay at 23:32 :: 0 comments
16 October 2003 : lesson one, california (or, what i learned from leaving)
if you consider the word 'recently' (as i do) to be decently relative and for the most part negligable, then i think i can safely say that a lot of things big things have occured in my life, recently. i got a new tattoo, i moved to indiana, i wrecked my car, i made out with someone.
lets discuss them in chronological order.
i find that i get a lot of flack from people, in general, for leaving the 'sunny' san francisco bay area to seek generally colder climes. my closest friends and my family have nothing but support for me in everything i do (proven so well in the last two years, thank you) but i often find myself angry at the wrong end of 'but why on earth would you leave california for indiana?'
so let me explain something to you. california is not the mythical place of visions and dragons that hollywood loves to make it. northern california is dry and cool in the summer, and cold and rainy in the winter. yes, flowers do bloom by the freeway near thanksgiving, and yes the ocean is four blocks from your doorstep, and yes there is a beautifully appointed museum of modern art, not to mention a collection of sea lions like none other.
but how does this make california a good place to live?
this is how i see it: gasoline is always at least 1.70 a gallon, and everything at denny's costs 2$ more. you cant sit in a greasy diner until 4 in the morning and smoke an entire pack of cigarettes with your best friend while crying about that stupid boy (or sandwich) that didnt call you the morning after. it is difficult to make friends because while in the midwest, you are considered daring and forward and clever, in california you are considered passe. this is because nothing lasts there. the kind of people you love to be around are the kind of people who have been chased north by blond women and blue eyed men in ford expeditions who are determined that no-one play music outside on a sunny day for the sheer joy of it and that tattoo parlors are to be requisitioned to the ghetto where they will not have to see them and be reminded that one day, their children run the risk of growing up and making their own decisions (however unwise).
i lived in california for 15 months. june to december in foster city, january to august in daly city. i took two friends with me, i had three friends already there. after three months, two of them were gone. after six months, a third one left. most of the time, one of them was only there as a physical presence. and most of the time, the only one left of five and i were too busy, too fettered, and too far away to find time for one another. in my entire time in the sunshine state, i made one new friend. and she and i never managed to get really close.
so tell me about loneliness, please, tell me about Why California is Better than Indiana (tm). Tell me about the fact that i come home every night and sit down on my mothers bed and i ask her about her day. she asks me about mine. tell me about how i can get in a car and drive three hours south and find my heart and soul sitting on a couch and smoking a cigarette. tell me about how her eyes and my heart light up in unison every time i see her.
and let me tell you about the boy who drove five hours south to pick me up and take me back to where he came from, just because i wrecked my car and i had no way to come. let me tell about the girl with the long blonde hair who danced around like a child when we arrived and it was like the sun came out at 10:30 pm (wisconsin time). let me tell you about the other girl, the one with the long dark hair who knows what i am thinking without my having to say it, who says 'i already know' when i try to explain that look i gave her, forty minutes after the fact.
there are so many stories and they are all rooted here, in the flatlands, out somewhere in the newly harvested fields, under the leaves that i have not seen fall in two years.
and yes, i have loved california. i have amazing memories of a perfect summer and a perfect first kiss and a perfect night on the perfect beach with the perfect combination of people (plus one guitar).
i guess all i want to say is that beauty is not necessarily rooted in sensation, in ostentation. it doesnt have to be about high tide or mountains or palm trees.
it shows up just about anywhere.
posted by lindsay at 01:21 :: 0 comments
those who do not acknowledge their mistakes, they're doomed to repeat themselves.
i guess that's true though it seems like just another characteristically unsage moment of trying too hard. because sometimes words are all you have, so you go for broke. make something up. if it sounds pretty enough, if the meter and the internal rhyme raise the hairs on your arm, maybe that means its true. then you're comforted.
i don't take that comfort anymore. it feels a little too high school, a little too selfish. i don't understand how poets live with themselves. don't they know how cliche they are?
me and you, we've been dancing for far too long. i have your textures burned onto my skin, i pressed too long against the rough edges of who you are. and i'm terrified of making this larger than it needs to be.
which doesn't seem right. it's been so segmented, so separated. time and distance have molded my perception of the situation. the fact that i haven't grown up, even a little, since we met, means i can't see you clearly.
but the fact is, i have something to tell you. and the fact is, i've needed to tell you before.
the fact is, i was too afraid to say it then thus opening the door on the necessity of saying it now.
listen: once there was convienence, and once there was obligation. they didn't coexist lightly, and neither of them had pale skin or brown eyes. neither of them painted their toenails red or leaned against you in the flickering light of the television.
we are not friends.
Labels: old chestnuts
posted by lindsay at 06:36 :: 2 comments
19 November 2006 : coats and overcoats.
something was flickering on the television, but the evening we'd planned was pushed aside for serious conversation. it happened so rarely between you and i; when it did come about, everything outside the two of us was in my eyes inconsequential.
we sat on the couch, that couch i knew so well. the dirt of my life, of your life, of the lives of everyone who knew you and used you and came to you was piled up in the creases of the gray cushion cover. i slept here some nights, because you were too angry or too tired to deal with me. i slept here some nights, because i was too scared to crawl into bed with you. i might be rejected. i slept here some nights because you were so large, so overwhelming in your sleep - all heavy limbs and slick sweat like some horrifying aftermath - that i would awake pinned to the wall, unable to breathe and unable to wake you.
you were sprawled per usual, the size of you intimidating to the entire house. i was curled as small as possible, per usual, taking up as little space as i could so i wouldn't accidentally brush against you. this way i could be both close and careful, feel your heat without making you startle - sometimes the sensation of skin against your own skin made you angry.
this is what you said: what are you going to do?
i curled my toes tightly against the rough cushion, studied my flat feet and long toes next to yours. you pressed the sole of one foot against the sole of mine and i unfurled a little, aching.
this is what i said: with my life?
your affirmation wasn't really needed; we both knew i was only stalling for time. you waited, breathed, and asked me what it was i wanted.
i smiled, looking under my eyelashes at my belt, at my knobby knees.
this is what i said, and i meant it more than you'll ever know: i want a garden.
your surprise delighted both of us. you huffed out a short laugh, reached out a hand and squeezed my bare ankle. a garden, you said, shaking your head. you rolled us both cigarettes and considered this with smoke curling around your face.
it seemed so obvious at the time. a garden meant stasis, it meant home. it meant i'd be staying for a while. it was everything i'd been wanting since the long drive across the continent, in those four syllables.
after a minute, you put down your cigarette and turned to face me squarely. you can use my backyard, i wouldn't mind. i pictured it, trying not to let you see that i was having trouble breathing. that all i wanted in the world was to jump on you, kiss every part of your face i could reach. that tiny square of grass behind your house, it would be filled entirely with my flowers.
yeah. i'd be staying for a while.
Labels: old chestnuts
posted by lindsay at 21:55 :: 6 comments
17 October 2006 : it's that time of year again.
[where i start posting obsessively in an attempt to avoid homework as long into the wee hours of the night as possible.]
MY VERY MOST FAVORITE THINGS THAT I'VE LEARNED FROM ANTHROPOLOGY
1. women have a creepy enzyme that releases in the 3rd trimester of pregnancy, and it EATS YOUR CARTILAGE. expectant mothers beware: don't let that bitch push you down those stairs.
2. marxism is still a rather valid field of academic influence.
3. objects are multivalent - that is, every object in the world has more than one meaning dependent on who is using them, looking at them, buying them, selling them. multivalence is, honestly, the spice of life.
4. the first thing that gets delivered to an archaeological dig: the liquor.
5. it is decidedly NOT ETHICAL to give infected blood to a group of people you are studying.
6. a skeleton that hasn't been boiled entirely clean smells kind of bad, but it's not intolerable.
7. if you have a sinus infection, go to the fucking doctor. otherwise your brain's going to get infected and YOU'RE GOING TO DIE.
8. colonial gardens were so much more than just gardens. they were actually an instrument of social control!
9. the cia really tends to fuck things up, especially in the cold war era.
10. pretty much the entire world sucks at life, and there's not really anything you can do about it, but let's watch this movie about this genocide and then you can go home and not sleep.
11. hitler and darth vader? they're really bad guys.
12. scientists have a very distinctive sense of entitlement that's really kind of gross and frustrating.
13. hummel figurines are not just cute. they're in fact so overwhelmingly cute that it's FASCIST.
14. australian cowboys are freaking awesome.
Labels: old chestnuts
posted by lindsay at 22:37 :: 6 comments
28 September 2006 : a fine philosophical distinction
HERS:
it's the neighborhood. charming and new. she slides barefoot toes over the grit of concrete, feet propped on the porch railing while she smokes.
the people across the street smoke, too. their green house looks sad from the west, sunlight in the windows teary. the children have been taken away again. tonight it's too dark to see the woman sitting on her porch, but the burning tip of her cigarette gives her away. movement is sensed more than seen, and suddenly the cigarette stubbed out on the side of the porch is raining sparks from a cupped hand, the only visible thing for blocks.
she's lived here for two months now and this is what she notices: the women across the street holding desperately to their children while they screw up again and again, and the man who walks.
red pants and white sneakers. over time, she will see his method of audio delivery evolve. boombox, walkman, discman, mp3. every day he hurries past at the same time, she sitting on her porch examining her red toenails and sipping whiskey and sprite from a white coffee cup. it has to be the neighborhood; these people are part of its charm.
today when he walks by, he looks up. hurried as usual, like the only thing that matters is his progress southward and the beat of his blood against the beat of a drum somewhere in his head. but he catches her eye and makes no physical form of acknowledgement.
this one she is not scared of. the streets are full of the intransigent, the downtrodden, the wronged - it is a neighborhood on the verge, this place she ended up. the young families and the artists are beginning to encroach upon the junkies and the gangs.
this man is not one of those who makes her wish the roommate were home more often; his broad bald harshness a comfort in the late hours of the night when the sirens come through and she is not used to living in this place.
eventually he will begin to acknowledge her. he'll walk by and there will be the slightest ghost of a smile. of a nod. maybe she imagines it, but she prefers not. i'm a safe one too, she thinks. we've got the street camaraderie.
he'll keep walking even after she's gone and moved on; she sees him from time to time on the other side of town but he makes no motion of remembering her. she must look different against cement block than red brick.
she'll always wonder where he is going.
HIS:
the day turned out dreary and dry, a break from the rain a relief to his knees, his back.
one foot in front of the other. one foot in front of the other.
he doesn't keep track of how long he's been walking, he doesn't like to think about it. with that comes a mess of anniversaries and remembrances that are too cumbersome to embrace. he knows how old he is, but allows himself the luxury of ignorance.
this way, he can think, i smelled her hair yesterday. i patted fingers across her soft pink cheek yesterday. fifteen years and he knows the smell of love's baby soft like he was wearing it himself.
one foot in front of the other. one foot in front of the other.
he won't be busy, he can't be busy. so he walks. the neighborhood is friendlier at some times than others; in the heat of summer he considers buying a knife.
which would indicate that he were mortal. which could indicate that he needed to care about anything more than just walking. it could remind him that it has not been less than a day since he sat in her lap and played with her necklace, listened as she talked on the phone to a bearded man who made her giggle.
so he turns up the volume and adjusts the headphones, resolutely deciding that it hasn't yet reached a point where he'll be shot for walking. he's not going to get jumped for his dirty white sneakers.
one foot in front of the other. one foot in front of the other.
every step is backwards. a step towards yesterday when she wore an orange blouse and curled her bangs upward, clipped blue stones onto her ears and smiled at him in the mirror.
tomorrow can't exist, because tomorrow has the world and the blue water. fifteen years ago, it didn't really mean anything that she was swallowed by that wave. he laughed at the big sister goofing in her red bikini for him. his insteps punish the sidewalks for taking her away, he breathes steady steady up and down each street.
at some point, he'll come home and she'll be waiting. there is nothing in this world but his throat raw with breathing and tiny hope dancing with delusion.
Labels: old chestnuts
posted by lindsay at 20:44 :: 0 comments
05 September 2006 : which road to el dorado; part 5 of 6
her name was carolina and she was the prettiest girl in the sixth grade.
i don't think anyone but me ever noticed - because her clothes were shabby and outdated, everyone looked right over her. i was grateful that this was what they cared about, patent leather and brand names, because it meant that i would have less competition. she would be my friend, i would make certain of it. i just didn't know how.
i first saw her in the cafeteria. it took me a long time to figure out that her dark skin and wide eyes and broad cheekbones meant that she was the child of migrant workers, in school only during the fall and gone after christmas, never to be seen again. she wasn't like the rest of the girls who talked loudly to one another in spanish and laughed when you walked by and couldn't understand what they said.
i knew why they stuck together; you can walk the entirety of tipton county and never encounter a person of color. that's probably for the best - i'm always tempted to warn away those i do see. "trust me, you don't want to be here. someone's going to be ignorant and mean in your direction before the hour's out." and sixth grade, well, i don't have to tell you how vicious sixth grade is. factor out an unusual skin color, a migrant background and citizenship. you're still left crying in the bathroom during free period.
but carolina, she wasn't like the rest of the girls. she sat alone at lunch reading books and didn't flirt with the boys, she didn't go to the basketball games or hang cheerful posters in the cafeteria. she was like me. but i was afraid of her, like i was afraid of everyone in 1994.
it was a miracle when we changed from art class to music class in the middle of october. i was waiting for class to start having arrived minutes before the bell, not caring to linger in the halls where the boys would make fun of my weight. when carolina came in, she stood looking around the room while everyone ignored her and then headed for the empty seat at my table. i was sharing it with the stack of ms. fredericks' books and papers, and andrew brown (who was the janitor's son and a smartass but not in a funny way, so nobody liked him).
i sat and jiggled my leg and bit at my nails and tried to look cool, sneaking peeks at her over the top of my geography workbook. she was completely calm and unaware of everyone else, a quality i admired (and still do). i wanted to be nonchalant. andrew brown babbled through class like he always did and always would, annoying because i thought he was supposed to be. i hated him, and i hated that he talked to carolina and she talked back to him like it was the easiest thing in the world. she understood that he was a outcast though, and kept her answers to a minimum.
but andrew brown, he rattled on and on over his workbook, talking about mexico as though he knew all about it. i pretended to fill out the blanks on the page in front of me, while dreaming of ways to shut him up. if i was clever enough, carolina and i would be giggling over our paperbacks in a corner of the lunch room before the end of the week. her skin was so beautiful. i wanted to know what it was like in mexico, and if she had to work with her parents on the weekends. i wanted to know if she went to school all the time, or just sometimes. i wanted sleepovers and summer trips to chiapas, i wanted it all.
finally, i couldn't take it anymore. andrew brown was talking too much, and it was offensive the way he kept talking about mexico as though carolina weren't sitting right next to him, knowing more than he would ever know (even at age 11 my sense of justice and empathy was overwhelming to a fault). and he was pronouncing mexico all wrong, like he was making fun of her. i was furious with him for being so insensitive.
"shut up!" i said. "stop saying 'mexico' like that, it sounds stupid!" i slapped both hands down on the table, righteously. i would defend her honor, her foreignness.
andrew stared at me. ms. fredericks stared at me. carolina stared at me, with fire in her eyes. i was avenging her, she would love me forever, write me letters with exotic stamps i could cut out and paste in my photo album. the moment lasted forever, and then it happened.
carolina opened her mouth and spoke to me for the very first time.
"that's how you're supposed to say it," she told me calmly. "it's not stupid." andrew brown bent whistling over his notebook. ms. fredericks hid a smile behind her hand and tried hard to look like she hadn't overhead. carolina glared at me like i was the one who was being rude.
i blushed furiously through the bus ride home, burning with humiliation over my mistake. how could i explain to her that i was protecting her? that i wanted her to ride home on the bus with me, and we could play computer games together and check each other's homework. there were no words. she sat at a different table the next day.
carolina didn't come back after christmas break, and i never saw her again. that year, i used a swear word for the first time and started asking my mom for brand name clothes and expensive shampoos, but i never forgot about carolina and how badly i wanted to be her best friend forever. and how much it hurt that my intentions were misconstrued.
sometimes i can't help but wonder if that rainy fall day in the music room isn't the reason i am becoming an anthropologist.
Labels: old chestnuts, pretentiously introspective: a series
posted by lindsay at 22:08 :: 2 comments
26 August 2006 : sighted; part 4 of 6
her abdomen proceeds her as she makes her way down the sidewalk, stepping carefully past cracks and shoots of green. from a distance, though you can tell she is a large woman, the bowl of her belly does not conform to ideas of obesity. instead, to the eye of an interested amateur (my eye, see), it looks as though perhaps she's suffering from malnutrion, from kwashiorkor. you've seen them, the children with the swollen bellies, a skinny little boy looking like nothing more than pregnant in the circle of sally struthers' arms.
this protrusion is given many explanations, among them swollen liver due to cirrhosis or simple fluid retention for any number of nasty reasons. i can't help but wonder if it's not about more than anatomy, more than disease.
the bones that form the pelvic girdle are thick and strong, fitted perfectly to form a cup with wings that extend up the back. they shifted and swayed this way and that as we stood upright. their mass is intended for strength, to stand up under the impossible responsibility of cradling human organs. the muscles that attach them, too, are thick and broad - muscles that will not easily tear. some mornings, surely, you've stopped to consider what keeps you upright with no thought to physiology, the miracle that is your body.
i don't question this anymore, because i know the bones and their perfection. i know what works with what, and why each movement is a choreographed ballet of sinew and socket. i could fall to my knees before such perfect machinery, fall to worship at the altar of human flesh. this is nothing about love, romantic love or sex, nothing about desire.
it is about abstractions and waking up every morning knowing this: i have two feet, and a heart that beats.
i would only be able to express my feeling for a perfectly created machine in a language normally reserved for words on god. how easy it is to take for granted existence and how easy to abuse what is given you, how the assurance of youth is to be immortal.
i have heard theorized that man's machines are a sort of proof of god, of a flawless designer whose time is best spent building blueprints - hiding them subtly - so that man could reproduce them in plastic, in machines. i see no such connection.
the click of a shutter. the blink of an eye. the perfect designs of our bodies reflected as it should be in the material world. the existence of a camera does not give me faith in anything but that maybe once existed someone else who felt as i do. humanness is a gift not bestowed benign among the bushes of a humble beginning, but a gift of discovery, something we gave ourselves in a triumphant emergence from the forest.
congratulations men. you see blue sky and the ripple of muscle.
the ilium, the ischium, the pubis. a holy trinity i can get behind.
and i wonder if this distension of abdomen isn't about giving up. maybe the muscles of her stomach could no longer handle the strain of being upright. maybe they let go the strain of holding themselves together. maybe getting out of bed will soon no longer be worth the trouble.
it is a day of perfections. the woman walks with a white stick, tapping tapping her way down washington street. she smiles, and i smile at the grandeur of my assumed knowledge. normally my first instinct would be sadness, that she would not see the distinction of vivid blue sky and vibrant green grass, black asphalt and white cloud, the greens and oranges of corroded buildings, all the beautiful things of this world we made.
but i among all people should know that something does not cease to be beautiful when you close your eyes, nor does it begin to be beautiful only because they're open. the wind blows softly down johnson avenue, and her belly proceeds her as she makes her way down the sidewalk, feeling on her face the light of perfect day.
Labels: old chestnuts, pretentiously introspective: a series
posted by lindsay at 15:36 :: 2 comments
21 August 2006 : the imagined hazard of watching; part 2 of 6
she was not a young woman, but she carried the baby on her hip as though it belonged to her. she carried the baby on her hip as though it had once lived and fed among the soft pink tissues of her body. i studied it as well as i could from this distance, wrapped in a blue cloth whose intensity fought for dominance with the sky, and wondered if she lived well inside of it, or if it were a losing battle against time. the details were fuzzy at this distance, but age - hers and the baby's - she carried well.
i smiled at her furtive, quizzical glances from where i sat in a soft scrabble of sand, holding my book and sipping precious bottled water too warm for home but delicious in the necessity created by the incessant heat of being here. my feet would dangle of the edge of the cliff, too far from the ocean to feel its spray, for several hours but she would never respond to my advances.
it could have been my skin, so white in the light of day except where it was burnt pink from the same. or it could have been my clothes, shabby and secondhand though they were, bursting with songs about the world i came from which we both knew was about as far from hers as intangible distance allows. my tshirt with its holes and my jeans with their frayed seams were still different, nicer somehow, than anything she could have laid hands on. i doubted she would want to, envying the way the wind ruffled up underneath her skirts and must even as i watched be laying soft hands against the smooth skin of her thighs.
maybe it was the men nearby.
her men, they had to be. men rough and drunken and possibly disapproving of any contact with me. i watched disappointed but never found the courage to stand and bridge the gap between where i sat with one foot looped in my bag strap for safety and the child beat awkward searching hands against the sand. the men - long grass, they would be called - were behind us several hundred yards in the shade of a picnic shelter but their presence, like i'd come to realize about most strange men, was electrifying in its pervasion.
i sat in my disappointment for what felt like hours, craving the feeling of that little girl's eyes on me, the smooth skin as yet unscarred by whatever hard work her life would be. plane rides and gambling, relinquished paychecks, liquor, petrol, the racism she would take for granted by grace of birth. i wanted that baby, wanted to taste her as pure and undiluted, another young possiblity. she could be one who broke the endless cycle of heartbreak, of thievery, of disuse. she could sweep into the streets the dust of empty, disheveled lives.
it was my own heart that was breaking, that day i sat reading on the cliff. where the trees failed to shade me, the sun beat against my back and my legs. i was acutely aware of these things: the crease between thigh and buttock, the bend of a knee, a downed upper lip, the bridge of my nose. cool points to take pleasure in against the heat of my body.
i watched hungrily the woman and the baby without ever swallowing what it was that held me back, two decades of my mother's voice in my ear, telling me never to talk to strangers, her fear when i told her i would span continents alone. the woman and her baby were safe enough, she would suppose, but what about the men?
what about them? did i fear their distinct foreignness, or that they were clearly intoxicated on an early sunday afternoon? why could i not leave my book behind and lay a hand on that little girl's brow? i would never know, because i would never try. the woman continued to glance back at me, but i returned to my book and hoped for the best of possible futures for all of them. my work was to study, not interfere. the trials of an anthropologist in training. somewhere compassion ends and observation begins. my guess is that i could find some etymological link between emperical and imperial, and it would allow for night after sleepless night.
behind us a man walked barefoot in a purple tshirt that hurt my eyes in the contrast to his skin, burnished to the bare shine of a roasted coffee bean. he wandered through the park a little dumbfounded, cupped hands held to his mouth as he shouted the inexplicable, "sean connery!" over and over again. his accent was so thick, so broad that i felt it slide down the back of my throat and thought i would never be able to stretch open my white-girl jaws to accomodate it. i would be forever meek.
i felt nothing but self loathing as i wrapped my foot more tightly in the strap of my bag and turned back to an afternoon of dispassionate reading, black words on a white page describing the plight of the people whose true stories walked all around me.
Labels: Australia, old chestnuts, pretentiously introspective: a series
posted by lindsay at 22:58 :: 0 comments
02 July 2006 : crash, crash, crescendo.
i'm aware of movement, mostly. i have to take in small details and work them out one at a time, otherwise i'd be spun, knuckles to the wall. there's too much going on, too much changing, too much happening to keep my eyes on it all.
culmination is key. i wear black, perhaps, to tie it all together and consider carefully the placement of my commas so you will know exactly what i mean.
because i needed a signature, i walked into a conversation at precisely the right moment and two days later found me once again introduced to the other side of the microphone. i can't explain the nature of such a thing; rediscovery had the same shock of still, cool water that had hooked me in the first place.
for three years, i've been fine without music. i've missed it in quiet moments, on occasion smiled at the sound of myself against Ben Gibbard in the car, but i kept it to myself. brushed away the itinerant pang of longing while my guitars sat dusty in some corner of whatever bedroom i happened to occupy.
it had to work this way; there was no room for wiggling or wanting, only that rush as i hear it over the p.a. - dripping or gushing or folding in a rustle like silk - so many minutes later. there had to be shock, i had to be punched in the stomach with remembering. in the intervening years the sound of me has broadened and deepened, grown past adolescence, started smoking camels and learned how to walk in heels.
what i hear on the monitors is not a product of ego, really. if anything it has to be a symptom. to me it sounds like a door slamming shut with finality, like a man dusting his hands off one another in satisfaction at a job well done. it sounds like the turn of a key in the ignition of the car that drove me home from california.
i have to sweat, shake my hair back, i have to swing what hips i have and step forward on the glide of a finger, mimick finality with the smell of hot metal and working electronics in my nose and the feeling in the back of my throat, wrapping my muscles around something the shape of which is nameless - not to squeeze but to hold, to expel slowly, slowly. sugar, something soft and silky and molten in my mouth.
it pours, and it looks like the sound of every moment of the last decade. it looks like lindsay's face when we crossed the border, it looks like scott's hand on my waist, it looks like the bags under my mother's eyes the week my father died and she was awake for six days straight. it looks like that man who crossed his legs under flourescent light leaning forward and touching my arm when he laughed and it looks like that slick dark parking lot and fingers on my mouth, the taste of blood and the pain of kissing and it looks like life.
a stolen second of pleasure, the flavor of what's to come. this is what i plead with myself about on the nights that i can't sleep - don't let it go, lindsay, don't let it go - wear yourself like a sundress and stay poised to spring forward every time you're scared. nothing specific, just don't let it go. this must have been it.
i guess i just always needed a moment.
Labels: old chestnuts
posted by lindsay at 23:15 :: 3 comments
07 October 2005 : inheritance
my father worked long, long hours when i was a child. as ranking officer at two different armories, it was up to him to keep things running. he would come home for about two hours every night to have dinner with us, and then he would return to work until long after i was put to bed. i missed him all the time.
when i was very young, he would fix my hair before school. every cold morning he would put on his red bathrobe and come downstairs early. when i finished dressing i would step into the living room to find him sitting in his recliner, the footrest popped out, waiting for me. that was our time - i don't remember mom or my brothers at all during those moments, just me and dad in front of the fireplace. he would ask me questions about my life while he brushed my long hair and braided it. he could always braid better than mom. i have missed those mornings since they ended, fourteen or fifteen years ago.
as i got older, he was away from home more and more. now that he is gone and my mom feels like she can speak candidly, i know that he frequently worked those hours because he didn't want to be at home. all his stresses, his anger, he would take them out on the four of us. and they could all be traced back to one single thing. he hated that he couldn't give us everything that we wanted, and everything that he wanted for us.
i don't recall wanting for anything.
after a few years, i started finding excuses to stay up late. extra homework, drinks of water. anything to get myself out of bed during the half hour before he came home and went upstairs. at night he would sit in the kitchen, because he wasn't allowed to smoke in the rest of the house. i would lean against the counter while he sat at the table, watching the light of the tv reflect off his skin. those nights were always colored a dark dusty blue. those nights, he spoke of my future in absolutes because he never doubted me for a second. he said when - never if.
from my father, i recieved a desire to know everything that is in the world. a love for languages. a desperate aching desire to learn. from my father, i recieved a need to write everything down, find new ways to describe the things that i saw. from my father, i learned to want to help others. i found an endless quest for perfection.
he used to bring me small presents. every few days or so - "i saw this while i was out this afternoon and i thought, wow, my little girl would really like this." and on my fourteenth birthday he took me shopping and bought me a ring. four months later my mother shook me awake at midnight, the lights of the ambulance flashing around inside my bedroom.
after he died, i learned that happiness is something you sometimes have to fight for. i learned that a good life doesn't just happen to you, but you have to go outside and find it.
something about the weather today made me sad. a certain charge in the air made me want another day with my daddy. instead, i'm left with writing this down as a reminder to myself that i had him once and that i was loved.
from my father, i have recieved a calm sense of self assurance, a blank slate of prejudice, a gold necklace, a love of reading, a completely flat ass, and a belief that i am good and strong. i think i found a reason to stop acting like a child today.
Labels: old chestnuts
posted by lindsay at 23:17 :: 0 comments
01 October 2005 : on the road
Driving on I-65 is a tragedy in the making. Everywhere on the highway is somewhere for you; two miles in any direction and there is somewhere else you would rather be going.
North, past highway 30 you can find the exit to 80/94. If you follow this through Chicago, it will take you to Wisconsin, where you can sit on a dock in the dark, smoking cigarettes on the water and remember that once you were brave and daring and knew how to make things happen.
South of highway 30, you could take exit 205 or exit 215, drive down country roads remembering how it felt to be young and fierce, loved and in love.
The exit for 70 west goes all the way to San Francisco, where waits a green ashtray and a windswept balcony from which you can almost see the ocean. 70 west could take you into the city where you could find your way to highway 1, highway 101, highway 280, because any of them would do to drive south. The serpentine curves of highway 17 lead to Santa Cruz and the love that almost broke you.
70 east, 80 east, 95 north and you are in Providence, on a dark humid evening with the smell of your shampoo filling the air, wishing everything had not been broken, wishing you had all just stayed together, just this once.
74 east and you could head for Cincinnati, where someone would hold your hand on the sidewalk downtown and rub your back while you slept huddled together, comfortable knowing that you'd always at least have each other even though the distance continues to grow.
Going south, you can find highway 46, highway 7 - two hours exactly to find yourself covered by the security of the strongest friendship you've ever known.
We could explore even further south - take on the oldest memories. At some point in Tennessee or Alabama 65 south meets up with 20 west meets up with 55 meets up with 12 so you can find Baton Rouge, the remnants of your childhood and the first passions of kids trying to grow up too quickly.
Does it ever end? Can you drive any direction and not feel a tug? Will there be a miraculous day that allows you to pass an exit without turning off the stereo, without catching your breath?
You hate this highway. You hate the way it tells you that you're a different girl now. You hate the way it tells you that you are too old, too tired, too afraid to move on or move forward. You hate the way it tells you, sometimes, that you've settled.
You hate that it's all over. All you have left is the drive to work.
Labels: old chestnuts
posted by lindsay at 23:21 :: 0 comments
02 March 2005 : ritual, routine and unconditional love (saved for shari)
i like to read a book before i go to bed. if it's late, or i'm particularly tired, or both, i do it anyway. 20 pages, give or take, on those nights. it puts me to sleep.
i like to turn off the light, lie in the dark, and smoke a cigarette at night. it's the last thing i do before i go to sleep - think about today, think about tomorrow. tomorrow is always fun and exciting, never realistic. tomorrow never really happens. but i keep thinking about it.
in the morning, i like to wake up 20 minutes early, so i can spend some quality time with the cat, who's only affectionate when i first wake up.
i like friday afternoons. friday afternoon is the only time all week i'm guaranteed at least five hours alone. i like to buy something nicer than usual to eat, and watch a sad movie in my pajamas.
i wish i had time in the mornings for a cup of tea (soy milk, soy milk, sugar) on the porch. this i don't.
i like mondays and wednesdays between 12 and 1. i like to watch everyone i see then, i like to relax and hope i'll meet someone worth talking to.
i like to spend monday evenings at the coffeeshop, smoking cigarettes and talking to shari.
i like everything to happen in the same order as it always happens. get in the shower; wash hair, rinse hair, condition hair, wash self, rinse self, shave, rinse hair, wash face. get out of the shower; dry off hair, moisturize face, clean ears, brush teeth, comb hair, dry self, get dressed, dry hair, put on makeup, straighten.
i get really cranky if for some reason i can't shower and get ready in that exact order
i think i'm getting old; lately i'm wondering how it might feel to live alone. i know i'd get lonely, at least right now, but i'm not sure that after this lease runs out next winter, i won't want to try it. we'll see. i like living with shari and the boys more than i've liked living anywhere else, even without windows. and i think a lot of the desire of living alone is the desire to be able to reduce all my activities to routines like that of my shower, or my before bed ritual, uninterrupted and always safe.
as for unconditional love, let's just say that my cat loves windows. at the old house, he could lay on my bed and stare out the window, and he used to spend hours doing that exact thing. at the new house, i have four more windows in my bedroom, but none of them reach low enough to be looked out of from my bed. and kitter doesn't really understand that he won't fit into a windowsill if the window is unopened. so at 8 on monday morning, when he tried, he failed. failed right onto my face, claws out.
for a while, i looked like this:
now i look like this:
i love that little bastard, all fishbelly white. he's part of my routine.
Labels: old chestnuts
posted by lindsay at 23:32 :: 0 comments
16 October 2003 : lesson one, california (or, what i learned from leaving)
if you consider the word 'recently' (as i do) to be decently relative and for the most part negligable, then i think i can safely say that a lot of things big things have occured in my life, recently. i got a new tattoo, i moved to indiana, i wrecked my car, i made out with someone.
lets discuss them in chronological order.
i find that i get a lot of flack from people, in general, for leaving the 'sunny' san francisco bay area to seek generally colder climes. my closest friends and my family have nothing but support for me in everything i do (proven so well in the last two years, thank you) but i often find myself angry at the wrong end of 'but why on earth would you leave california for indiana?'
so let me explain something to you. california is not the mythical place of visions and dragons that hollywood loves to make it. northern california is dry and cool in the summer, and cold and rainy in the winter. yes, flowers do bloom by the freeway near thanksgiving, and yes the ocean is four blocks from your doorstep, and yes there is a beautifully appointed museum of modern art, not to mention a collection of sea lions like none other.
but how does this make california a good place to live?
this is how i see it: gasoline is always at least 1.70 a gallon, and everything at denny's costs 2$ more. you cant sit in a greasy diner until 4 in the morning and smoke an entire pack of cigarettes with your best friend while crying about that stupid boy (or sandwich) that didnt call you the morning after. it is difficult to make friends because while in the midwest, you are considered daring and forward and clever, in california you are considered passe. this is because nothing lasts there. the kind of people you love to be around are the kind of people who have been chased north by blond women and blue eyed men in ford expeditions who are determined that no-one play music outside on a sunny day for the sheer joy of it and that tattoo parlors are to be requisitioned to the ghetto where they will not have to see them and be reminded that one day, their children run the risk of growing up and making their own decisions (however unwise).
i lived in california for 15 months. june to december in foster city, january to august in daly city. i took two friends with me, i had three friends already there. after three months, two of them were gone. after six months, a third one left. most of the time, one of them was only there as a physical presence. and most of the time, the only one left of five and i were too busy, too fettered, and too far away to find time for one another. in my entire time in the sunshine state, i made one new friend. and she and i never managed to get really close.
so tell me about loneliness, please, tell me about Why California is Better than Indiana (tm). Tell me about the fact that i come home every night and sit down on my mothers bed and i ask her about her day. she asks me about mine. tell me about how i can get in a car and drive three hours south and find my heart and soul sitting on a couch and smoking a cigarette. tell me about how her eyes and my heart light up in unison every time i see her.
and let me tell you about the boy who drove five hours south to pick me up and take me back to where he came from, just because i wrecked my car and i had no way to come. let me tell about the girl with the long blonde hair who danced around like a child when we arrived and it was like the sun came out at 10:30 pm (wisconsin time). let me tell you about the other girl, the one with the long dark hair who knows what i am thinking without my having to say it, who says 'i already know' when i try to explain that look i gave her, forty minutes after the fact.
there are so many stories and they are all rooted here, in the flatlands, out somewhere in the newly harvested fields, under the leaves that i have not seen fall in two years.
and yes, i have loved california. i have amazing memories of a perfect summer and a perfect first kiss and a perfect night on the perfect beach with the perfect combination of people (plus one guitar).
i guess all i want to say is that beauty is not necessarily rooted in sensation, in ostentation. it doesnt have to be about high tide or mountains or palm trees.
it shows up just about anywhere.
Labels: old chestnuts, Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 01:21 :: 0 comments