the sunday farm market spends winters in the old anerican can factory but now is back outside on fifth avenue over by the old stone house, a three hundred year old dutch farmhouse that figured prominently in brooklyn's contributions to the revolution. that revolution, yes. i have learned my lesson trying to wrangle a stubborn dog while navigating a farm market and so i go out into sunday morning free and dogless. the weather is cool but it is spring and i am determined to act like it. i stroll out with sandals and a big straw basket even though the rest of the world is swaddled in thick scarves and wooly hats and puffy coats. i am looking for a cotton half slip and because you can't find such a thing in this day and age i stop by a thrift store i like. there are no slips but there's a sassy red cotton bag that looks like a teacher ought to sport it. it is only a matter of time before this straw basket i'm carrying comes apart from the books and produce i pile in it. the bag, with bright flowers embroidered on the two front pockets, goes into the straw basket and out the door with me.
some days there is music at the market and today is one of those good days. there is a lovely old upright bass. this is always a good sign. pair it with a piano and you've got a decent chance at some thick, smoky jazz. put it with an old jug and a banjo and you've got the music of my homeland. my eyes scan the trio and fall on the banjo just as the player begins to pick. it is not like strumming a guitar or a bass. it is more like tickling a small child. and i know right away what it is, their song. buck owens. my very own buck owens. there are men and women and children standing all around the musicians and each one is stock still, watching maybe and listening, but not letting the song wash over them, get into their skeletons and move them around. that isn't even possible. i stand back far enough the band won't hear me and i open up my mouth and sing every word they know, head back like a howling dog, tapping my toes and rocking like a madwoman. i am a hillbilly in the big city.
we finish the song and i wander on down to the produce, still shaking my head at all those folks unmoved by that music. idiots. but the pickle man is just in front of me and my heart picks right back up from its worry over those fools. one of the pickle guys turns up his radio and says, "this is my jam!" people should not say this. ever. it sounds stupid. but he says it again and grins like a cheshire cat as the guy with him shrugs. i smile because i want pickles and he tells me i must know the song. i hear nothing but a fat thump like a heartbeat and shake my head.
i don't know your stupid jam i am thinking, but he laughs and says i'll know it in a minute. i ask for a quart of quarter sour pickles as much because i love the vivid green of them as because i love their just-this-side of cucumber sassiness. he crams five million fat pickles into the quart tub as new york, new york, is everything they say and noplace that i'd rather be howls out of the box behind the counter. and he is right. i do know his jam. and he is so into this song that nobody else will admit to knowing that i can't help but laugh and tell him he's right. i loved huey lewis in tenth grade. he nods, smiles, sings along. he knew he was right. he hands over the five million pickles with a flourish. there is nothing you can't get in brooklyn.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
peach tree switch
the saturday farm market is at grand army plaza. it is large and overwhelming and full of stroller-pushing maniacs with an undue sense of entitlement. they will run you down with a thousand dollar stroller designed to roll smoothly over the body of any victim the parent flattens with it. my desire to get green things overwhelms my stroller hatred so i take the dog. he carries his eel and the world collapses into wide eyes and cooing noises around him. he is my weapon, keeping these otherwise snooty folks weak and malleable with his terrible cuteness, allowing me to meander among tables full of bedding plants and cheese and cider.
i buy bacon from a stand where pigs with wings fly overhead. from childhood i've known that buying food animals from small farms generally means tastier food. my bacon is made out of old breed pigs. rare and quirky like heirloom tomatoes. if i want to go stay at the farm sometime, there's a little apartment in an old barn right there. if i want to drop by some time just to see a pig or two, the farmers encourage that as well. the pigs, they say, love company. i like an animal that is tasty and gregarious.
there is cheese from flop-eared nubian goats. a log with lavender flowers and honey rolled up in the soft cheese. a tub with orange, honey and walnuts stirred around. the dog stands rigid with his eel while i give the woman money and take the cheese. other dogs try to visit with him but he doesn't even see them. there is only the eel. we have our focus, each of us.
i head over to a table full of lavender. pillows and sachets and little dried bundles. a long line of plants of all sizes is over to the side. i ask for a plant and the man wants to know if i need indoor or outdoor. i have never heard of such a thing and i ask. this seems fair to me but he takes offense somehow and in a condescending tone explains that plants grown outside will die if they are kept inside and vice versa. i know this is not true because i've owned lavender plants in the past that have wintered indoors and then spent the glorious summer days basking on the porch or fire escape. i ask another question about a plant in a south facing window (even though i don't have one) and the man's voice gets so tense i decide to ignore his stupidity. i get an indoor plant and an outdoor plant. all bases covered.
we are leaving when i notice peach tree switches. now, the sign says "peach blossom" but what they are is four foot long switches with buds. now, if you are of a certain age and from a certain part of the country, your biggest childhood fear was a peach tree switch. my own parents preferred the psychological warfare: go to your room! you better not even try reading a book while you're in there! so although i have absolutely no recollection of this sort of punishment on my own tender backside i can tell you grown folks made it clear that the horribleness of it was not always so much in the switching, but more in the fact that you had to go out and cut your own switch from the tree. this would give you time to think about your sorry state and it would be clear to you that no matter how clever you thought you might be in your selection of switches, the red welts on the backs of your legs were there because you had brought the miserable branch into the house yourself. peach tree switches were, during my childhood, the punishment of choice of grannies, especially. it takes very little arm strength to deal a stinging blow and you can continue to yell at the child while switching.
they are eight dollars for a bundle of twelve switches and there's really no reason not to get them. i hand over my eight dollars and try to balance the dog, his eel, the bacon, two cheeses, the indoor lavender plant, the outdoor lavender plant and the bundle of switches. there are several attempts at rearranging on the way home and finally i carry the branches over my shoulder, hobo style. we get home and the bacon and cheeses go right in the fridge. the plants go on the windowsill and the fire escape. i have no idea what to do with these switches, though. they are too big for any vase i have ever owned. they are too big for any container we have in this tiny apartment. there is a very distinct possibility that they are too big for this apartment.
they lie in the sink all afternoon, bottom ends submerged in water, bundled tight with two bands of twine. i search the kitchen store, the flea market, the garden store and a few thrift stores. i walk all the way down to the big home improvement store by the canal. i walk six or seven miles just trying to find a container for four foot tall switches. i have given up and flopped myself on the couch when i see the ice cream maker sitting quietly by the bookcase. actually it is the wooden outer bucket of the ice cream maker we used when i was a child. dad would drape a towel over the top and would have one of us sit on it to weigh it down when cranking the handle got to be so difficult the whole bucket would roll around.
it is a little over a foot tall and not quite a foot across and it is made out of vertical staves banded by rusted metal rings, barrelish. the bottom ring is gone but there's a bit of the silvery paper label smack in the middle of the thing. i put a dish of water in the bottom and drop the bundle into the bucket. the whole thing leans to one side and nearly flips over. i hold the bundle up in the center and snip the top band of twine. it is like a flower opening up. the branches ease apart from one another scattering pink buds on the floor. i snip the second band of twine and the whole mass breathes out, relaxes. a cotton candy tree stands in the apartment, worth all eight of those dollars and then some.
i buy bacon from a stand where pigs with wings fly overhead. from childhood i've known that buying food animals from small farms generally means tastier food. my bacon is made out of old breed pigs. rare and quirky like heirloom tomatoes. if i want to go stay at the farm sometime, there's a little apartment in an old barn right there. if i want to drop by some time just to see a pig or two, the farmers encourage that as well. the pigs, they say, love company. i like an animal that is tasty and gregarious.
there is cheese from flop-eared nubian goats. a log with lavender flowers and honey rolled up in the soft cheese. a tub with orange, honey and walnuts stirred around. the dog stands rigid with his eel while i give the woman money and take the cheese. other dogs try to visit with him but he doesn't even see them. there is only the eel. we have our focus, each of us.
i head over to a table full of lavender. pillows and sachets and little dried bundles. a long line of plants of all sizes is over to the side. i ask for a plant and the man wants to know if i need indoor or outdoor. i have never heard of such a thing and i ask. this seems fair to me but he takes offense somehow and in a condescending tone explains that plants grown outside will die if they are kept inside and vice versa. i know this is not true because i've owned lavender plants in the past that have wintered indoors and then spent the glorious summer days basking on the porch or fire escape. i ask another question about a plant in a south facing window (even though i don't have one) and the man's voice gets so tense i decide to ignore his stupidity. i get an indoor plant and an outdoor plant. all bases covered.
we are leaving when i notice peach tree switches. now, the sign says "peach blossom" but what they are is four foot long switches with buds. now, if you are of a certain age and from a certain part of the country, your biggest childhood fear was a peach tree switch. my own parents preferred the psychological warfare: go to your room! you better not even try reading a book while you're in there! so although i have absolutely no recollection of this sort of punishment on my own tender backside i can tell you grown folks made it clear that the horribleness of it was not always so much in the switching, but more in the fact that you had to go out and cut your own switch from the tree. this would give you time to think about your sorry state and it would be clear to you that no matter how clever you thought you might be in your selection of switches, the red welts on the backs of your legs were there because you had brought the miserable branch into the house yourself. peach tree switches were, during my childhood, the punishment of choice of grannies, especially. it takes very little arm strength to deal a stinging blow and you can continue to yell at the child while switching.
they are eight dollars for a bundle of twelve switches and there's really no reason not to get them. i hand over my eight dollars and try to balance the dog, his eel, the bacon, two cheeses, the indoor lavender plant, the outdoor lavender plant and the bundle of switches. there are several attempts at rearranging on the way home and finally i carry the branches over my shoulder, hobo style. we get home and the bacon and cheeses go right in the fridge. the plants go on the windowsill and the fire escape. i have no idea what to do with these switches, though. they are too big for any vase i have ever owned. they are too big for any container we have in this tiny apartment. there is a very distinct possibility that they are too big for this apartment.
they lie in the sink all afternoon, bottom ends submerged in water, bundled tight with two bands of twine. i search the kitchen store, the flea market, the garden store and a few thrift stores. i walk all the way down to the big home improvement store by the canal. i walk six or seven miles just trying to find a container for four foot tall switches. i have given up and flopped myself on the couch when i see the ice cream maker sitting quietly by the bookcase. actually it is the wooden outer bucket of the ice cream maker we used when i was a child. dad would drape a towel over the top and would have one of us sit on it to weigh it down when cranking the handle got to be so difficult the whole bucket would roll around.
it is a little over a foot tall and not quite a foot across and it is made out of vertical staves banded by rusted metal rings, barrelish. the bottom ring is gone but there's a bit of the silvery paper label smack in the middle of the thing. i put a dish of water in the bottom and drop the bundle into the bucket. the whole thing leans to one side and nearly flips over. i hold the bundle up in the center and snip the top band of twine. it is like a flower opening up. the branches ease apart from one another scattering pink buds on the floor. i snip the second band of twine and the whole mass breathes out, relaxes. a cotton candy tree stands in the apartment, worth all eight of those dollars and then some.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
egg
thanks to the middle sister for the eagles: http://www.raptorresource.org/falcon_cams/index.html
the egg looks like one of those grayish white river stones, smoothed by the water but not at all soft. it looks heavy, looks like it would hurt if you tossed it at someone. it is difficult to see this last egg because the two small eagles crowded up with it are that same dirty-snow color and they are not still even for a minute. everything about them is focused on food. they are open beaks and squirming fuzz. the nest is massive and is littered with carcasses- a rabbit, mice, indecipherable small furry things and just this afternoon, a slick speckled fish.
it is the egg, though, that draws the eye. there are two absolutely shocking adult eagles hovering around and the two howling babies but this tiny egg has everyone in the nest riled up. the egg splits like an earthquake. the halves tear and there is movement in the space behind the jagged edges. there is something absolutely living in there. but crawling out of an egg takes a great deal of work and a big eagle settles down on the two bits of fluff and the egg and glares out at the world, daring anything but food to come near.
there is the sound of the road behind the nest and the songs of small birds. there is a horse somewhere. but then the nest is riled up again and when the grown bird stands up, the halves of the egg are pulled apart. there is something that looks like a wad of gum inside. there is a black thorn sticking out of the wad. the whole thing pulses, thumps from inside. it is almost too ugly to see. the image is blurred by a wing and then there are five eagles there in that nest. five. that is the most eagles you can put in a nest at once. the big wing moves and there are the two white heads nodding.
one flies off and the other begins to root around, rearranging, fluffing, settling things in at the soft middle of the nest. the rest of the nest keeps the food. there is room to put a deer up there if the birds could carry it. the fish lies on its back, tail snuggled up against a rabbit or woodchuck maybe. most of the black bird is gone except a few long tailfeathers. more fish stacked like logs and something tawny are piled at the edge. there are mice on the other side of the nest, too small to see.
the newest bird, a small disaster of a thing, faces the back of the nest while the other birds open beaks under their mother, waiting for food. it squirms around, flops across the nest, manages, somehow, to land under the oldest baby, nothing but beak sticking out. it looks so tired. the older baby's belly rests on its neck and it squeezes itself like toothpaste out from under. it is not as likely to survive as the others. it is not so loud and not so forceful and there is a chance the firstborn may murder it. but it does not stop moving. when the grown bird leans down and carefully holds a bit of the inside of a fish over the tiny bird's beak the small bird misses the food twice. there is no way to help. the grown bird offers another bit of fish and the tiny beak below it opens. the fish falls in.
the egg looks like one of those grayish white river stones, smoothed by the water but not at all soft. it looks heavy, looks like it would hurt if you tossed it at someone. it is difficult to see this last egg because the two small eagles crowded up with it are that same dirty-snow color and they are not still even for a minute. everything about them is focused on food. they are open beaks and squirming fuzz. the nest is massive and is littered with carcasses- a rabbit, mice, indecipherable small furry things and just this afternoon, a slick speckled fish.
it is the egg, though, that draws the eye. there are two absolutely shocking adult eagles hovering around and the two howling babies but this tiny egg has everyone in the nest riled up. the egg splits like an earthquake. the halves tear and there is movement in the space behind the jagged edges. there is something absolutely living in there. but crawling out of an egg takes a great deal of work and a big eagle settles down on the two bits of fluff and the egg and glares out at the world, daring anything but food to come near.
there is the sound of the road behind the nest and the songs of small birds. there is a horse somewhere. but then the nest is riled up again and when the grown bird stands up, the halves of the egg are pulled apart. there is something that looks like a wad of gum inside. there is a black thorn sticking out of the wad. the whole thing pulses, thumps from inside. it is almost too ugly to see. the image is blurred by a wing and then there are five eagles there in that nest. five. that is the most eagles you can put in a nest at once. the big wing moves and there are the two white heads nodding.
one flies off and the other begins to root around, rearranging, fluffing, settling things in at the soft middle of the nest. the rest of the nest keeps the food. there is room to put a deer up there if the birds could carry it. the fish lies on its back, tail snuggled up against a rabbit or woodchuck maybe. most of the black bird is gone except a few long tailfeathers. more fish stacked like logs and something tawny are piled at the edge. there are mice on the other side of the nest, too small to see.
the newest bird, a small disaster of a thing, faces the back of the nest while the other birds open beaks under their mother, waiting for food. it squirms around, flops across the nest, manages, somehow, to land under the oldest baby, nothing but beak sticking out. it looks so tired. the older baby's belly rests on its neck and it squeezes itself like toothpaste out from under. it is not as likely to survive as the others. it is not so loud and not so forceful and there is a chance the firstborn may murder it. but it does not stop moving. when the grown bird leans down and carefully holds a bit of the inside of a fish over the tiny bird's beak the small bird misses the food twice. there is no way to help. the grown bird offers another bit of fish and the tiny beak below it opens. the fish falls in.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
halloween with the klan
you need to call your mother insists the voice on the answering machine. it is the middle sister, the one earliest identified as being "vocal" about things. the one whose first nickname had an actual expletive in it. you need to tell her you remember that they made us trick or treat... and i know before i hear the rest of the message what she is talking about. forced trick or treating. while it was not the trail of tears and not the bataan death march, to a small child it had a similar flavor.
we did not want to go to a particular house to trick or treat. it wasn't an old ramshackle house we figured might be haunted nor did the folks inside seem like the type to fill candy with poisons or razor blades. we never envisioned the homeowner flying off nights on a broom. but the man who lived behind those walls and windows just like ours was horrifying to us. he was worse than all the scary monsters because he was real. he was everything our parents had raised us to steer clear of, a man so full of hate he needed to join up with an organization dedicated solely to the practice of focusing that hate. he was a proud and powerful member of the klan. yes, that klan.
but our parents, who in their own calm way had raised us to be unafraid of the gifts and opportunities available in a world filled with so much that was not us, stood firm in their insistence that we go trick or treating at the house of a man who some evenings dressed up in his own awful costume to terrorize others. maybe they hoped that we would connect with this man so lost to the world. maybe they knew, even then, that the ugliness in him would ruin him soon enough. i suspect they just felt sorry for him, knew he was so sick from his hate that there was not much they could do to help but send over children dressed as wildness begging for candy.
and so we went. i could not tell you what the man looked like. this is not because of failing memory but because i don't believe i ever looked him full in the face in all the time i knew him. he isn't important. he was never important. what i remember from that halloween is that they wanted us to go, the parents. it didn't matter who he was or what he had done. it mattered who we were and what we would do. this is how we figure out who we are. so we took our dressed up selves and our plastic jack-o-lanterns and we rang his bell and waited.
we did not want to go to a particular house to trick or treat. it wasn't an old ramshackle house we figured might be haunted nor did the folks inside seem like the type to fill candy with poisons or razor blades. we never envisioned the homeowner flying off nights on a broom. but the man who lived behind those walls and windows just like ours was horrifying to us. he was worse than all the scary monsters because he was real. he was everything our parents had raised us to steer clear of, a man so full of hate he needed to join up with an organization dedicated solely to the practice of focusing that hate. he was a proud and powerful member of the klan. yes, that klan.
but our parents, who in their own calm way had raised us to be unafraid of the gifts and opportunities available in a world filled with so much that was not us, stood firm in their insistence that we go trick or treating at the house of a man who some evenings dressed up in his own awful costume to terrorize others. maybe they hoped that we would connect with this man so lost to the world. maybe they knew, even then, that the ugliness in him would ruin him soon enough. i suspect they just felt sorry for him, knew he was so sick from his hate that there was not much they could do to help but send over children dressed as wildness begging for candy.
and so we went. i could not tell you what the man looked like. this is not because of failing memory but because i don't believe i ever looked him full in the face in all the time i knew him. he isn't important. he was never important. what i remember from that halloween is that they wanted us to go, the parents. it didn't matter who he was or what he had done. it mattered who we were and what we would do. this is how we figure out who we are. so we took our dressed up selves and our plastic jack-o-lanterns and we rang his bell and waited.
Friday, March 25, 2011
revelation
my first phone was about ten years ago, a thing that looked like a giant cicada. i put a faux wood case on it and carried it around for dialing up numbers. that's what it was for. my next phone, the phone i carried until about nine last night, was a waterproof, shockproof monstrosity larger than the landline phone we have. a cross between a submarine and a football helmet, this phone allowed me to figure out texting and the art of small, blurry photography. but the dog chewed off the antenna two years ago and the waterproofness only goes so far when a phone can't get signal inside a building.
the sweetie says it is time. he has been nudging me toward a new phone for a while now and finally he did what he has done the other two times a phone came my way. he got a phone he thought would be nice. now, i have made a great production of not caring about fancy new technology, about loving and being loyal to a phone that hasn't been in production for at least three years. but the sweetie knows me. he knows i will talk plenty about how i don't want bells and whistles and don't understand fancy but he knows i will figure out a new tool quickly and will be smug about it.
the phone arrives and i do not know where the on button is. it is a dark screen. this is the first time i've had a phone with no actual numbers on it. but it is easy enough to figure out. the sweetie shows me how to put music on the phone. i am resistant. the first and last time in my adult life i used headphones was 1991. i was on a bus trip from syracuse, ny to joplin, mo and my sisters let me sing the better part of a cowboy junkies album aloud before letting me in on the joke that my tone deaf croaking was both agony and entertainment for the whole bus.
but when i start putting songs into the phone i feel giddy. i have never done this. no, really. never. this is how my students live. this is how every single person in new york city over the age of ten lives. with a soundtrack. like john travolta walking down 86th street in bensonhurst, below the train, past lenny's pizza. i have had no soundtrack for my life. i put the little sound knobs in my ears and wince. i don't know how they go. this is not part of my experience. but i try again until they feel okay. i am genuinely nervous. i am worried the sound will hurt. maybe this is because of the constant, high-pitched heartbeat hissing tinnitus in my ears. maybe i think the tiny ear things can't possibly match a big wicker faced speaker. maybe it is because i don't know what i am doing. i find willie nelson's the trouble maker album, scroll down to uncloudy day and hit play. i can feel my whole head floating. i can feel willie's voice behind my eyes. i am singing along soundlessly with all those songs i've heard at baptisms, hand clapping celebration songs. the sweetie glances over, smiles and suggests i practice not mouthing the words while i'm on the bus. i tell him people will surely steer clear of me if i do mouth the words but i make a mental to work on it.
i leave the house for work in pale light. i want to try the music again but am afraid i'll fall down if i attempt to work the thing while walking. i am afraid i will drop it. once safely on the bus, i dial up old willie again and hit that uncloudy day. it just me and the bus driver and willie for a few stops. i am swaying back and forth wildly and my feet- both of them- keep time with that tent revival music. i don't sing along, though, so nobody ought to have anything to say about it.
i change buses. i scroll through the list of names on the smooth screen and come to a friend. i touch her name and her clear voice slides through the little wires and into my ears singing a sad song i wish would never end. i settle back into the seat. the woman behind me is screaming into her phone but i push a tiny button on my phone and she dissolves, the screaming woman, no match for the voice coming out of the wires, no match for my own people. i listen to two songs, three, before my stop. this is a voice that has laughed at my jokes when nobody else got them. this is someone i have drawn cartoons about. it is strange to carry her voice around with me in a pocket.
this afternoon i wait for the second bus home. i stand across the street from the corner of the cemetery and find buck owens on the screen. i'm gonna lay around the shack till the mail train comes back then i'll roll in my sweet baby's arms. the banjo hits my left ear first. the fiddles are screaming a square dance only a few seconds in. i wanted to marry buck owens when i was a little girl. i figured nobody could be sad if they could sit on a hay bale with buck owens and roy clark playing and singing. the song is so wild i lose the hissing heartbeat that has been a constant companion to my brain the last five years. i don't notice its absence at first but when i do it is a large thing to hear nothing but that song, to be free, even for those two minutes, of that miserable noise. i see the bus coming a few blocks away and cue the song up again. i step onto the bus and turn the volume up. there is nothing on the bus but me and buck and a whole crazy hillbilly orchestra.
we turn a corner and aretha franklin comes on. dr. feelgood. now, i was raised in a house where you play aretha franklin as loud as the machine you've got can go. if you can hear the doorbell over her voice you need to rethink your volume knob. so i push the volume button until i am just this side of pain, until aretha's voice has shoved back everything else and there is nothing but her and a honky tonk piano. i step off the bus just as baby, i love you comes on. i can feel the drums in my right ear and the piano in my left. they call to each other back and forth while aretha sings. i am walking down the street but it is not like every other day. the whole world has taken two or three steps back. by the time she gets to natural woman i realize the heaviness, the sharp edges that keep scraping against me when i am out in the world seem to have gotten lost. or softened. even the air slides more easily into my lungs.
i have spent twenty years afraid of headphones. i'm not kidding. genuinely afraid. and mostly i have been without music. i have spent so much time on trains and buses and in lines just waiting, anxious, unable to get away from the rest of the world. but right now willie nelson is singing in the sweet by and by, singing about a land that is fairer than day. and here i am. right here on the shore.
the sweetie says it is time. he has been nudging me toward a new phone for a while now and finally he did what he has done the other two times a phone came my way. he got a phone he thought would be nice. now, i have made a great production of not caring about fancy new technology, about loving and being loyal to a phone that hasn't been in production for at least three years. but the sweetie knows me. he knows i will talk plenty about how i don't want bells and whistles and don't understand fancy but he knows i will figure out a new tool quickly and will be smug about it.
the phone arrives and i do not know where the on button is. it is a dark screen. this is the first time i've had a phone with no actual numbers on it. but it is easy enough to figure out. the sweetie shows me how to put music on the phone. i am resistant. the first and last time in my adult life i used headphones was 1991. i was on a bus trip from syracuse, ny to joplin, mo and my sisters let me sing the better part of a cowboy junkies album aloud before letting me in on the joke that my tone deaf croaking was both agony and entertainment for the whole bus.
but when i start putting songs into the phone i feel giddy. i have never done this. no, really. never. this is how my students live. this is how every single person in new york city over the age of ten lives. with a soundtrack. like john travolta walking down 86th street in bensonhurst, below the train, past lenny's pizza. i have had no soundtrack for my life. i put the little sound knobs in my ears and wince. i don't know how they go. this is not part of my experience. but i try again until they feel okay. i am genuinely nervous. i am worried the sound will hurt. maybe this is because of the constant, high-pitched heartbeat hissing tinnitus in my ears. maybe i think the tiny ear things can't possibly match a big wicker faced speaker. maybe it is because i don't know what i am doing. i find willie nelson's the trouble maker album, scroll down to uncloudy day and hit play. i can feel my whole head floating. i can feel willie's voice behind my eyes. i am singing along soundlessly with all those songs i've heard at baptisms, hand clapping celebration songs. the sweetie glances over, smiles and suggests i practice not mouthing the words while i'm on the bus. i tell him people will surely steer clear of me if i do mouth the words but i make a mental to work on it.
i leave the house for work in pale light. i want to try the music again but am afraid i'll fall down if i attempt to work the thing while walking. i am afraid i will drop it. once safely on the bus, i dial up old willie again and hit that uncloudy day. it just me and the bus driver and willie for a few stops. i am swaying back and forth wildly and my feet- both of them- keep time with that tent revival music. i don't sing along, though, so nobody ought to have anything to say about it.
i change buses. i scroll through the list of names on the smooth screen and come to a friend. i touch her name and her clear voice slides through the little wires and into my ears singing a sad song i wish would never end. i settle back into the seat. the woman behind me is screaming into her phone but i push a tiny button on my phone and she dissolves, the screaming woman, no match for the voice coming out of the wires, no match for my own people. i listen to two songs, three, before my stop. this is a voice that has laughed at my jokes when nobody else got them. this is someone i have drawn cartoons about. it is strange to carry her voice around with me in a pocket.
this afternoon i wait for the second bus home. i stand across the street from the corner of the cemetery and find buck owens on the screen. i'm gonna lay around the shack till the mail train comes back then i'll roll in my sweet baby's arms. the banjo hits my left ear first. the fiddles are screaming a square dance only a few seconds in. i wanted to marry buck owens when i was a little girl. i figured nobody could be sad if they could sit on a hay bale with buck owens and roy clark playing and singing. the song is so wild i lose the hissing heartbeat that has been a constant companion to my brain the last five years. i don't notice its absence at first but when i do it is a large thing to hear nothing but that song, to be free, even for those two minutes, of that miserable noise. i see the bus coming a few blocks away and cue the song up again. i step onto the bus and turn the volume up. there is nothing on the bus but me and buck and a whole crazy hillbilly orchestra.
we turn a corner and aretha franklin comes on. dr. feelgood. now, i was raised in a house where you play aretha franklin as loud as the machine you've got can go. if you can hear the doorbell over her voice you need to rethink your volume knob. so i push the volume button until i am just this side of pain, until aretha's voice has shoved back everything else and there is nothing but her and a honky tonk piano. i step off the bus just as baby, i love you comes on. i can feel the drums in my right ear and the piano in my left. they call to each other back and forth while aretha sings. i am walking down the street but it is not like every other day. the whole world has taken two or three steps back. by the time she gets to natural woman i realize the heaviness, the sharp edges that keep scraping against me when i am out in the world seem to have gotten lost. or softened. even the air slides more easily into my lungs.
i have spent twenty years afraid of headphones. i'm not kidding. genuinely afraid. and mostly i have been without music. i have spent so much time on trains and buses and in lines just waiting, anxious, unable to get away from the rest of the world. but right now willie nelson is singing in the sweet by and by, singing about a land that is fairer than day. and here i am. right here on the shore.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
a dog and his eel
we head outside this first seriously springish day, the small dog, his lizard and i. guthrie focuses immediately on the task at hand and drops his lizard in front of him, close under his chest where he can keep a good eye on it. he cannot pee and carry his lizard at the same time. this is his rule and he does not consider, probably because he is a dog, that the lizard is lying helpless on a slope downhill from his chest and from the part of him that lies back of that. the stream of pee rolls down between his front paws and over the hind feet of the lizard before i can grab it away. because he is an animal who occasionally snacks on his own poo, i figure he will be the one to carry the lizard to the pet store.
we stroll down the street and he does not seem to mind the pee-soaked hindquarters clenched in his jaws. a woman comes up and asks about the lizard. she has folks with two low dogs and thinks they would love lizards of their own. they live in florida, these low dogs, and have been known to snack on real lizards. i tell her where to get them, say we're on our way there. we are a walking advertisement for the lizard making people.
we make our way to the dog toy store and there are no lizards on the lizard rack. the only toy from the lizard's family is is something named neelmo. this is a stupid name. neelmo is an eel. white and orange striped. legless. we are in a desperate place with no time to worry about legs or stupid names. i get the eel and we head out of the store, the low dog with is lizard, me with a ridiculous legless eel. now, guthrie is loyal to his lizard. he loves it like it is family. he is the dog with the lizard in our neighborhood which means if you say those words to anyone around here that person nods and smiles and knows you mean guthrie. but what i know about guthrie is that he will carry around any toy this company makes. he is brand loyal. seriously. i drop the eel on
the sidewalk in front of him and take hold of the lizard tail. he relaxes his jaws and as i slide the lizard away, surely touching a peed on part of the thing, he is already clamped down on the eel. i toss the lizard in a plastic bag. without legs the fat-headed eel is a balance trainwreck but the small dog shifts around and quickly finds that gripping the neck allows him to keep the thing level. he looks like a pirate with a sword in his mouth. he looks like my grandpa george with a cigar.
and it starts all over. a cluster of teenagers sitting in a doorway with trumpets and some unidentifiable brass instruments are playing- high school band style playing- and they squeal between notes about guthrie's unbearable cuteness. we wait at an intersection and a woman asks to take a picture, asks his name. she manages (a miracle, really) to get him to look right at her while she snaps the photo and then congratulates him again on catching such an amazing toy. we walk along and a group of teens behind us chatters about how he's always carrying some great toy. people point and wave.
and like when he first carried the lizard, parents nearly rip their children's heads right off their fragile necks trying to get them to look at this eel and dog spectacle. they point and say, "look! that doggy has a.... a..... well, it's a thing!" all the articulateness of these well-educated, thousand-dollar-stroller-pushing grown folks crumbles into nothing. words fail. because nobody is going to tell a kid from brooklyn that a dachshund is prancing around with a striped eel. nobody who wants to keep any credibility as a parent.
we stroll down the street and he does not seem to mind the pee-soaked hindquarters clenched in his jaws. a woman comes up and asks about the lizard. she has folks with two low dogs and thinks they would love lizards of their own. they live in florida, these low dogs, and have been known to snack on real lizards. i tell her where to get them, say we're on our way there. we are a walking advertisement for the lizard making people.
we make our way to the dog toy store and there are no lizards on the lizard rack. the only toy from the lizard's family is is something named neelmo. this is a stupid name. neelmo is an eel. white and orange striped. legless. we are in a desperate place with no time to worry about legs or stupid names. i get the eel and we head out of the store, the low dog with is lizard, me with a ridiculous legless eel. now, guthrie is loyal to his lizard. he loves it like it is family. he is the dog with the lizard in our neighborhood which means if you say those words to anyone around here that person nods and smiles and knows you mean guthrie. but what i know about guthrie is that he will carry around any toy this company makes. he is brand loyal. seriously. i drop the eel on
the sidewalk in front of him and take hold of the lizard tail. he relaxes his jaws and as i slide the lizard away, surely touching a peed on part of the thing, he is already clamped down on the eel. i toss the lizard in a plastic bag. without legs the fat-headed eel is a balance trainwreck but the small dog shifts around and quickly finds that gripping the neck allows him to keep the thing level. he looks like a pirate with a sword in his mouth. he looks like my grandpa george with a cigar.and it starts all over. a cluster of teenagers sitting in a doorway with trumpets and some unidentifiable brass instruments are playing- high school band style playing- and they squeal between notes about guthrie's unbearable cuteness. we wait at an intersection and a woman asks to take a picture, asks his name. she manages (a miracle, really) to get him to look right at her while she snaps the photo and then congratulates him again on catching such an amazing toy. we walk along and a group of teens behind us chatters about how he's always carrying some great toy. people point and wave.
and like when he first carried the lizard, parents nearly rip their children's heads right off their fragile necks trying to get them to look at this eel and dog spectacle. they point and say, "look! that doggy has a.... a..... well, it's a thing!" all the articulateness of these well-educated, thousand-dollar-stroller-pushing grown folks crumbles into nothing. words fail. because nobody is going to tell a kid from brooklyn that a dachshund is prancing around with a striped eel. nobody who wants to keep any credibility as a parent.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
moon
helpful info: the first two photos are mine. accidental flash and tiny, tiny moon. the last photo is the sweetie's. blow it up. see a crater or five.the full worm moon is out there. the almanac says so. it is the moon that keeps time with the earthworms and it promises spring. i head out with the camera around ten because it is not just the worm moon. this moon has edged up close to us, closer than it will be for a long while again, showing a face like a flashlight beam.
the night is cool, not quite thirty. the down the street goat is yelling, maybe in answer to that auction on the corner at casey joe's. the goat's voice punctuates the call of the auctioneer from time to time like he is bidding and not being heard. the air smells like woodsmoke and melted snow and dark. there is nothing in the sky but the moon and all those stars. no clouds. i forget them sometimes in winter, the stars, but they don't go far, just dance around in a big circle overhead. like a square dance i'm in the middle of.
there are new constellations and i do not like this at all. triangle. giraffe. i cannot see a giraffe in any of those stars but i do see folks i know. orion is standing on top of the giant pine tree across the street. and over to the south, up above pakatakan, i think is one of those planets. mercury or jupiter maybe. not venus. it is so bright i think it must be yelling from where it is. not a planet, then, not the way it winks and yells. dogstar. loud like that goat, explosive.but the moon is back over in the east,
just above the roof of the old factory. it shoves light through the fat spruce when i stand in the driveway. i take picture after picture but it is so far away in the camera screen. little kids do not ever get how far away the moon is. farther away than kansas city, certainly. farther away than california. but even grown up we still don't know. our brains can calculate the numbers but can make nothing of the space. i hand the camera over to the sweetie and he and the little machine confer a bit under the porchlight. he looks at the moon with the camera and brings it down. as big as it looks in the sky. bigger. i can hold it in my hands. the closest it will be for years.
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