Re-Reading Childhood Books

I never found my original copy of Little House on the Prairie. I'll admit that this bothered me for years. I just assumed that all such missing items from childhood were 'somewhere at my Dad's house' and, it turns out, years later (perplexingly) that none of those things were at my Dad's house. So, my boyfriend, who picked up on my distress, came home with a used copy of Little House in the Big Woods the other day. This was so thoughtful and such a surprise that I broke down and cried! Seeing this book (the copy he found was even roughly from the same era as what was my old copy) led me to finally, bravely go searching for my copy of Up a Road Slowly. I had been afraid that this book wasn't where I thought it was and I just didn't want to know for sure that it wasn't. But there it was, on the top shelf of the hallway closet along with Jacob Have I Loved, Tex and The Outsiders. Oddly, Up a Road Slowly has been on my mind a lot lately. I read it the summer before my freshman year in high school–which is confusing as a memory because I also recall being a 'child' when I read it. Something about the way the story is organized, the way the main character respects herself and slowly achieves things meant a great deal to me at fourteen. I recall that I read Up a Road Slowly, which won the Newberry Award and is definitely YA fiction, concurrently with The World According to Garp. It made perfect sense at the time. In honor of this–or due to some sentimental forces beyond my control, I am now re-reading Little House in the Big Woods, Up a Road Slowly and Garp all at once. I highly recommend doing this.   

The Library is Ok

I get a lot done at the library. It's cool and quiet and clean and the floors are made of a special noise absorbing material that also doubles as a kind of pillow for your feet. In my experience, people adjust to the pillow-floor pretty quickly. It causes one to slow down a bit. And, though I don't think it was intended to be a 'feature', the pillow-floor does make everyone that much sneakier. No one ever really knows when someone else is approaching. It's always a surprise. And the sound of the air conditioning, which is just barely audible, is constant–which is key. It's a nice white noise where pure silence might be less effective. Needless to say, people fall asleep at the library all the time. I personally have yet to do so, but I'm not against falling asleep at the library, if and when it does happen. That would be ok.  

The Irony of the Whole Thing

It's the same every time: I'm gliding along calmly not worrying about anything when suddenly I'm swimming desperately to the surface struggling for air. Then I sit up in bed in a panic and can't explain the dream I just had. It's happening right now. Only I'm wide awake. And the distant voice is yelling 'wake up' but I can barely hear it. 


Sometimes I walk around thinking about how happy I am and I forget everything else. Actually, I don't forget anything so much as I don't become involved in the first place. I just focus on whatever I'm doing. I can actually feel my brain learning things. Sometimes I'll start to worry but then I just stop myself. I mean, why worry? There's no reason to worry. 


Other times I'll wake up and realize that there is nothing but sunshine. Not anything else. Not nausea, not panic. Just the sun coming though the curtains. As you can imagine, this leaves room for lots of other things. And that's the irony of the whole thing, right there, if you asked me.

Childhood Kitchen

There was nearly a year spent sorting out my Dad's affairs after he died. For the duration we kept his house more or less operational. We had heat, air, groceries, dishes, utilities, toilet paper, mice, mouse traps. Sometimes I'd get there an hour or more before my brother. I liked the peace and quiet. I liked the moving-vehicles-in-the-sun type reflections that would suddenly appear then sort of stretch out across the one wall. I liked never knowing exactly where these reflections were coming from–or even, for that matter, from which window. Just as when I was little. That had not changed. That would never change. 

Options

You know, I could live in this glass of soda water. I could. I'd live in one of the bubbles. I'd sit cross legged and float in the nothing-nowhere. It would be cool and quiet. It would be like rolling through the hills in a brand new car on a brand new road. And life would be good. Too good, maybe. Sometimes I'd watch the other bubbles. But mostly I wouldn't bother. I'd just sort of un-focus my eyes and space out. I'd be able to really think in there, too. Not right away. But after a couple days the clear thinking would start and I'd be off finally solving mathematical mysteries or writing novels in my head. And the world outside the glass would dissolve away and, ultimately, lose all context and meaning for me. Which would be fine. Like an insect, I would no longer care nor actually be able to fathom the human-scale world. I would be small. Very, very small. And living in a bubble. 

You Stand Up

You are a mote-spec 
in a sun ray
an unfathomable mind
ocean-deep
a handwritten note 
tied to the tail of a balloon
you are unbreakable
the king of the jungle gym
jumping higher than anyone 
running faster than anyone
throwing down if it comes to that
and every day 
when you get shoved to the ground 
you stand up.

Just Ordinary Cleaning Today

Whenever I leave this one air conditioned room where I am currently doing everything–sleeping, working, eating, hop-scotching, cats-cradle-ing–I realize I've already forgotten how hot it is in the other, non-air conditioned rooms. It's the kind of heat that requires one's brain to play tricks on one. To make one forget, I guess, because otherwise the memory of this heat might permanently damage one's fragile id or ego or, at minimum, prevent one from ever leaving this, the one air conditioned room. Did I mention that it is actually quite hot here in this, the one air conditioned room? It is. It's just at a more reasonable level of oppression. One where a person's brain continues to maintain memories of the heat (what with the air conditioner on High and everything, I should certainly hope so). It seems that whenever I get the bright idea to have a day of extraordinary deep cleaning followed by calming, restorative organizing, that the weather works against me. It seems that I can only deep clean when it is cool with low humidity. That I can not comfortably nor restoratively organize in broiling heat. And, as this cleaning was meant to be a departure (in lieu of going out of town this weekend) as opposed to the normal, everyday kind of cleaning, it is with sadness that I report that I will just be ordinarily cleaning today.

Acceptance

The background on my cell phone is an accurate representation of the weather as it is happening outside in real time. This has been going on for weeks with zero input from me. While at first I didn't know what to do or how I felt about it (it is difficult to express how this makes me feel), I've grown to accept and even enjoy the weather as it is represented on my cell phone. It, by it's very presence, assumes that I am always wondering about the weather which I've decided is 'funny' (and have added to the list of things I'll laugh about later). On average I look to my cell phone, to this particular screen with it's spot-on, constantly updated, intuitively generated replica of today's weather hundreds of times per day. I do it not to see if it's still sunny or warm outside so much as to be reassured that there still is weather outside. And the blue background (given specific coordinates, time of day, season and relative cloudiness) that is meant to represent the current sky-scape with it's various shades of blue and gray and it's, quite frankly, breathtaking sun icon (which is always right there in the center except after sundown when, without any fanfare, it becomes the moon) not only has the local weather down but, somehow, seems to understand me, too. In summary, my cell phone which renders simple, accurate representations of the weather wherever I am without my permission, any self-aggrandizing humble-brag nonsense or so much as a peep--knows. It just knows. And I've grown to accept and even enjoy the weather as it is rendered on my cell phone without any input from me. 

Unknowable Soup

soup!
this soup is my rainbow
this soup is my sun
this is why I return to the 7-11
soup
I just walk in
go right past the Doritos 
barely nod at the Ajax
and then 
the spicy noodle bowl aisle
so colorful
so plentiful
I take one down from the shelf
turn it over 
searching it
thinking about it 
these spicy noodles 
no, this isn't really soup 
this plastic, shrink wrapped 
$6.00 bowl 
this is a slick vehicle 
to an unknown destination
this soup, if we can even call it 
that, is the future 
as it unfolds in 
the imagination's memory
this soup is a killer 
this soup is jamais vu
and it will be the end of me 
this spicy noodle bowl

Driving Home

Fake grape flavored wax candy melted 
in the back seat window
leftover, diagonally cut tomato sandwiches   
unwrapped and covered in sand 
a bottle of coconut suntan oil shattered  
on wet-foot-print pavement 
we were driving home 
in the great big Kojak car 
the plastic beach ball still warm from the sun
and one deflated vinyl seahorse 
that smelled artificial and so happy.
like a sun-induced headache
like endless blue summer skies.