Monday, May 23, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
marquis de lafayette
the boy puts his left hand around the right boot of the marquis de lafayette. he is careful not to catch his fingers in the spur just above the heel. his right hand grips the man's left boot. the boy leans back a bit, looks the whole situation over and shifts his left hand past the blade of a long sword so he's holding tight to the right ankle of the marquis with both hands. in one smooth 
movement he swings himself up onto the ledge and there he is standing right next to a man who was on the wild side of two revolutions. the boy leans away to look up at the marquis, who stands almost as tall as his horse, even with his hat off. the horse is a jokester, nibbling at the groom holding his reins. they are flatter in the background than the marquis and the boy scoots himself over past the flank of the horse and looks again at the man.
it is impossible to tell what the boy knows. that this man once owned slaves but recognized that a real democracy couldn't abide that sort of ugliness. that he was a pal of our very first president and used that connection to push for abolition of slavery when we were just a baby country. that he was born french but fought here as a general and didn't even ask for money. nobody paid him to help bring this revolution around or think so much about democracy and freedom and all that.
but it is clear the boy knows something. he arranges himself in the tableau a few ways, finally settling on a pose like the marquis himself, hand on hip, sword tipped to the ground. he looks like a little boy watching his daddy shave. he moves his hand twice to get it just right on his hip, hovers his empty sword hand around until something clicks and he knows his imaginary sword tip is resting just in front of his foot.
the bronze is slippery wet from a week of rain but nobody tells him to get down off that statue before he breaks his neck. he would not hear them anyway. he shifts the weight of the sword in his hand and surveys from his vantage point a harbor the rest of us can't even see.
movement he swings himself up onto the ledge and there he is standing right next to a man who was on the wild side of two revolutions. the boy leans away to look up at the marquis, who stands almost as tall as his horse, even with his hat off. the horse is a jokester, nibbling at the groom holding his reins. they are flatter in the background than the marquis and the boy scoots himself over past the flank of the horse and looks again at the man.it is impossible to tell what the boy knows. that this man once owned slaves but recognized that a real democracy couldn't abide that sort of ugliness. that he was a pal of our very first president and used that connection to push for abolition of slavery when we were just a baby country. that he was born french but fought here as a general and didn't even ask for money. nobody paid him to help bring this revolution around or think so much about democracy and freedom and all that.
but it is clear the boy knows something. he arranges himself in the tableau a few ways, finally settling on a pose like the marquis himself, hand on hip, sword tipped to the ground. he looks like a little boy watching his daddy shave. he moves his hand twice to get it just right on his hip, hovers his empty sword hand around until something clicks and he knows his imaginary sword tip is resting just in front of his foot.
the bronze is slippery wet from a week of rain but nobody tells him to get down off that statue before he breaks his neck. he would not hear them anyway. he shifts the weight of the sword in his hand and surveys from his vantage point a harbor the rest of us can't even see.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
fourth floor raccoon
apologies for the poor picture quality. it was 6 am. it was raining. i was confused.
the fourth floor fire escape landing on the building across the courtyard is pretty high up. four floors up, in fact. below it is the third floor fire escape landing and then down below that the second. there are the usual steps connecting each. on the fourth floor landing there's a ladder with rails like the ones you see down into swimming pools. it climbs up the side of the building and over onto the top. then down below it on the second floor, there's that ladder that might be spring loaded, that hangs between the second floor and the third on normal days, but in case of a fire will drop down and allow folks on the second floor landing to climb down to safety. this is not unusual at all. this is how fire escapes work. our own fire escape faces the one across the courtyard and works just the same way. anyone in the building can get out of the building and climb down. marauding evildoers in the courtyard have no good way to climb up without making a racket that would wake the dead.
unless you are the sort of marauding evildoer who lurks in alleyways and behind garbage cans at
night. the sort of evildoer who wears a mask so no one will recognize you. a smaller than person sized evildoer, noiseless on the rungs of that lower ladder. that's right. this morning i open the kitchen window and look across the gray fog and rain to see something moving on the far fire escape and it is not a squirrel or a pigeon. there is a mangy raccoon on the fire escape. right up there on the fourth floor landing, pawing in the ashy remains of a fire escape grill, digging through the pots of dirt i know the folks living in that apartment just put out there with anxious seeds. suddenly the giant holes rooted into my beet seedlings make sense.
but wait, you say. how could a stubby raccoon reach up and grab a rung on that fire escape if it's
so far up a regular human can't do it? how can a waddly beast glide up the brick face of a four story apartment? well, i don't know, but i can tell you city raccoons aren't like their rural kin. they are wily like squirrels and rats and pigeons. they know things other raccoons don't know. there's a good chance the across the way neighbors on the first floor weren't thinking of raccoons when they hung that pretty red hammock, one side attached to a tree, the other to the bottom rung of the fire escape ladder. but raccoons are thinking of everything. they are thinking all the time. they are city animals. it is only a matter of time before they learn to use laptops and iphones. and then they will be in line in front of you ordering venti decaf double iced macchiatos with extra whipped cream and a shot of caramel.
the fourth floor fire escape landing on the building across the courtyard is pretty high up. four floors up, in fact. below it is the third floor fire escape landing and then down below that the second. there are the usual steps connecting each. on the fourth floor landing there's a ladder with rails like the ones you see down into swimming pools. it climbs up the side of the building and over onto the top. then down below it on the second floor, there's that ladder that might be spring loaded, that hangs between the second floor and the third on normal days, but in case of a fire will drop down and allow folks on the second floor landing to climb down to safety. this is not unusual at all. this is how fire escapes work. our own fire escape faces the one across the courtyard and works just the same way. anyone in the building can get out of the building and climb down. marauding evildoers in the courtyard have no good way to climb up without making a racket that would wake the dead.
unless you are the sort of marauding evildoer who lurks in alleyways and behind garbage cans at
night. the sort of evildoer who wears a mask so no one will recognize you. a smaller than person sized evildoer, noiseless on the rungs of that lower ladder. that's right. this morning i open the kitchen window and look across the gray fog and rain to see something moving on the far fire escape and it is not a squirrel or a pigeon. there is a mangy raccoon on the fire escape. right up there on the fourth floor landing, pawing in the ashy remains of a fire escape grill, digging through the pots of dirt i know the folks living in that apartment just put out there with anxious seeds. suddenly the giant holes rooted into my beet seedlings make sense.but wait, you say. how could a stubby raccoon reach up and grab a rung on that fire escape if it's
so far up a regular human can't do it? how can a waddly beast glide up the brick face of a four story apartment? well, i don't know, but i can tell you city raccoons aren't like their rural kin. they are wily like squirrels and rats and pigeons. they know things other raccoons don't know. there's a good chance the across the way neighbors on the first floor weren't thinking of raccoons when they hung that pretty red hammock, one side attached to a tree, the other to the bottom rung of the fire escape ladder. but raccoons are thinking of everything. they are thinking all the time. they are city animals. it is only a matter of time before they learn to use laptops and iphones. and then they will be in line in front of you ordering venti decaf double iced macchiatos with extra whipped cream and a shot of caramel.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
brooklyn back yard, a children's story
for the small folks i know who make me laugh with their own
wild tales and, on occasion, their stories of traveling dogs.
if you are the sort of person who keeps a dog lying around the house, sooner or later that dog will roll right over on the couch beside where you are sitting and he will look up at you. if he is a low, long dog, there will be a great deal of stretching and yawning and paw waving. but eventually he will get around to saying, while he looks up at you, "let's go
out in the yard and play".
now, if you live in just about most of the united states, what you will do is saunter over to what you've always known to be the back door of your house. it's that one usually pretty near the kitchen and when you open it you will gesture out magnanimously into the yard beyond. you will say to the dog, "help yourself, pal". and you will head back toward the couch and your book or the t.v. or some chips and guacamole, maybe with a little limeade. but the dog will insist that you get out there, too, and you'll drag a tennis ball or a frisbee out there and you'll toss whatever it is in lackluster arcs across the grass your dad makes you mow with the push mower even though he's the one who mowed over your mom's rose bushes or peonies or blue flags or whatever it was this year, reckless and inattentive himself on his fancy riding mower. maybe one of those fat bees over visiting the peach tree will hum by you.
but this is not what happens at all if you live in brooklyn. first of all, if you live in brooklyn you probably don't even have a back door. maybe you have a fire escape off your kitchen and you can sit there summer evenings slurping the cool out of the sky while the guy a few buildings down sits in his back window or maybe on his fire escape trying to sound, with a second-hand trumpet, like miles davis. you might even have a tray of tomatoes growing out there but you can't just open up the window and tell the dog to help himself to the fire escape. not in brooklyn.
in brooklyn you have to get ready. you get the harness and the leash and you get the little baggies for carrying poop (the dog's, not your own) and the toy for the dog. maybe you put on a nice hat for yourself or some sun glasses. then you go sixteen steps down, around the landing, another sixteen steps, then out onto the stoop. you are not yet there, but you can smell the green of your back 
yard from where you are and you can see it if you look just left, up the hopscotched sidewalk. you walk eight, nine, ten small buildings with their stoops lolling like dog tongues and then one big corner building down. you cross the street. there are old ladies selling helados from freezers on wheels. there are men in straw hats selling cold drinks and warm pretzels.
there are horses on the horse path. there are ducks in the duck pond. actually, the ducks are
everywhere, waddling and paddling and quacking, sometimes in a 
big hurry but mostly not. your back yard is so big, if you live in brooklyn, that you can stand in the middle and see just your yard. your back yard is so big it may be raining over on one side while sun shines down on folks barbecuing on the other side.
if you live in brooklyn your back yard has at least two waterfalls, although they will stop falling temporarily if you have a citywide blackout. you can get a pedal
boat and swanpaddle your way across glassy water with fat fish all under your waves. you can stare at turtles loaded onto logs, piled up on top of each other like acrobatic hamburgers toasting in the sun.
if you live in brooklyn you can walk your dog over bridges and then back under them again, through arched tunnels made of ancient brick and weathered wood and oxidized metal. if you're walking under there with someone who likes to howl, maybe that person will howl over at your dog and your dog will howl right back, echoing all watery and blue under the arched roof. maybe not. there's no way to know in advance.
your back yard will have a little cottage or two in it if you live in brooklyn. depending on the time
of year there will be tall blue irises standing around outside. there will be sweet williams, violets, 
lilacs, purple insinuating itself into everything. there will be at least one mansion in your back yard, a decent sized brick one, probably. it will be slathered in tulips during springtime and will be decorated with icicles in winter like the kind you see on 
buildings on dinner plates.
there is a carousel in your back yard, a famous one from 1912 that lived in coney island a while. there's a zoo with real live sea lions and kangaroos, but only if you live in brooklyn. how many other people do you know with sea lions and kangaroos in their own back yards? because i will tell you now most folks' back yards are nowhere near zoned for that. did i mention the peacocks and
peahens? well, they're there, too, howling like mad cats, shimmering like mirages at noon.
if you live in brooklyn walking through your back yard means walking across a revolutionary war battlefield. there were hessians in your back yard once and george washington was there, but that was a long time ago. yes, i do mean that george washington. your back yard will be full of architecture that somebody was thinking about during the civil war. that far back. back when streetlamps had feet with claws at the bottom.
if you live in brooklyn there is no way to explain how lucky you are to have the kind of back yard you have, and if you have a certain kind of parents they will tell you it is unkind to gloat about your good fortune when there are so 
many out there who do not have what you have. but you probably already know you can't help it.
the best you can do is try to remember where you keep half the stuff you have in your yard so when the folks you love stop by, you can share a little of that good fortune with them.
wild tales and, on occasion, their stories of traveling dogs.
if you are the sort of person who keeps a dog lying around the house, sooner or later that dog will roll right over on the couch beside where you are sitting and he will look up at you. if he is a low, long dog, there will be a great deal of stretching and yawning and paw waving. but eventually he will get around to saying, while he looks up at you, "let's go
out in the yard and play".now, if you live in just about most of the united states, what you will do is saunter over to what you've always known to be the back door of your house. it's that one usually pretty near the kitchen and when you open it you will gesture out magnanimously into the yard beyond. you will say to the dog, "help yourself, pal". and you will head back toward the couch and your book or the t.v. or some chips and guacamole, maybe with a little limeade. but the dog will insist that you get out there, too, and you'll drag a tennis ball or a frisbee out there and you'll toss whatever it is in lackluster arcs across the grass your dad makes you mow with the push mower even though he's the one who mowed over your mom's rose bushes or peonies or blue flags or whatever it was this year, reckless and inattentive himself on his fancy riding mower. maybe one of those fat bees over visiting the peach tree will hum by you.
but this is not what happens at all if you live in brooklyn. first of all, if you live in brooklyn you probably don't even have a back door. maybe you have a fire escape off your kitchen and you can sit there summer evenings slurping the cool out of the sky while the guy a few buildings down sits in his back window or maybe on his fire escape trying to sound, with a second-hand trumpet, like miles davis. you might even have a tray of tomatoes growing out there but you can't just open up the window and tell the dog to help himself to the fire escape. not in brooklyn.
in brooklyn you have to get ready. you get the harness and the leash and you get the little baggies for carrying poop (the dog's, not your own) and the toy for the dog. maybe you put on a nice hat for yourself or some sun glasses. then you go sixteen steps down, around the landing, another sixteen steps, then out onto the stoop. you are not yet there, but you can smell the green of your back 
yard from where you are and you can see it if you look just left, up the hopscotched sidewalk. you walk eight, nine, ten small buildings with their stoops lolling like dog tongues and then one big corner building down. you cross the street. there are old ladies selling helados from freezers on wheels. there are men in straw hats selling cold drinks and warm pretzels.there are horses on the horse path. there are ducks in the duck pond. actually, the ducks are
everywhere, waddling and paddling and quacking, sometimes in a 
big hurry but mostly not. your back yard is so big, if you live in brooklyn, that you can stand in the middle and see just your yard. your back yard is so big it may be raining over on one side while sun shines down on folks barbecuing on the other side.if you live in brooklyn your back yard has at least two waterfalls, although they will stop falling temporarily if you have a citywide blackout. you can get a pedal
boat and swanpaddle your way across glassy water with fat fish all under your waves. you can stare at turtles loaded onto logs, piled up on top of each other like acrobatic hamburgers toasting in the sun.
if you live in brooklyn you can walk your dog over bridges and then back under them again, through arched tunnels made of ancient brick and weathered wood and oxidized metal. if you're walking under there with someone who likes to howl, maybe that person will howl over at your dog and your dog will howl right back, echoing all watery and blue under the arched roof. maybe not. there's no way to know in advance.your back yard will have a little cottage or two in it if you live in brooklyn. depending on the time
of year there will be tall blue irises standing around outside. there will be sweet williams, violets, 
lilacs, purple insinuating itself into everything. there will be at least one mansion in your back yard, a decent sized brick one, probably. it will be slathered in tulips during springtime and will be decorated with icicles in winter like the kind you see on 
buildings on dinner plates.there is a carousel in your back yard, a famous one from 1912 that lived in coney island a while. there's a zoo with real live sea lions and kangaroos, but only if you live in brooklyn. how many other people do you know with sea lions and kangaroos in their own back yards? because i will tell you now most folks' back yards are nowhere near zoned for that. did i mention the peacocks and
peahens? well, they're there, too, howling like mad cats, shimmering like mirages at noon.if you live in brooklyn walking through your back yard means walking across a revolutionary war battlefield. there were hessians in your back yard once and george washington was there, but that was a long time ago. yes, i do mean that george washington. your back yard will be full of architecture that somebody was thinking about during the civil war. that far back. back when streetlamps had feet with claws at the bottom.
if you live in brooklyn there is no way to explain how lucky you are to have the kind of back yard you have, and if you have a certain kind of parents they will tell you it is unkind to gloat about your good fortune when there are so 
many out there who do not have what you have. but you probably already know you can't help it.the best you can do is try to remember where you keep half the stuff you have in your yard so when the folks you love stop by, you can share a little of that good fortune with them.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
p.o. box
our post office box is on the upper row, a small one just big enough for 
letters, the weekly shopper and a few seed catalogs. once in a while there's a yellow card inside that sends me to the front counter for a package. now, there's no telling what might arrive. peeps. taco doritos. bits of electrical things the sweetie will make into a guitar pedal. but a week or so back a steam engine came in the mail.
let me explain. the sweetie has family he doesn't get to see often enough. folks in texas, some way down near the border and others over around san antonio. a few times we've gone on whirlwind tours of both versions of texas and we stay a night with one family member, then another. two of these are an uncle and aunt of the sweetie. on my first visit i could tell these were folks i wanted to get to know.
it turns out this uncle has quite a few things in common with my own dad, which means he has quite a few things in common with me. he showed us a tiny steam engine and then a few other
little contraptions. it took me a bit of time to really get that he'd made them. beautiful things with pipes and wheels and magical bits of motion. and you know me. i drooled. now, the sweetie drooled, too, but i'm a little more dramatic about things. i can fall right smack in love with something like a tiny working steam engine in a second. not everyone sees things the way i do, but the sweetie's uncle, as i've said, has a few things in common with me.
then a while back this same uncle mentions he'd like to send this engine on up to us. can you imagine anyone ever saying no to something like that? those are the folks who say no to extra hot fudge on a sundae. not me. i say send that thing right on up, thank you. and he does. and now i am at the counter, knowing full well the box the postal woman is incredibly slow in handing over is full of steam engine. i take the box out to the car and rip open the tape as the sweetie turns us around and toward breakfast. i pull it out of the box as we pull into the parking lot. it is beautiful. it is perfect. there is a little pipe taped down to the base with a valve handle
in the middle. the smallest wrench i've ever seen is attached with a twist tie to the wheel.
i am so captivated by this wrench i forget a minute about the engine. it has to be handmade. i know the sweetie's uncle well enough by now to figure he might have made it himself just for this engine (turns out he did) and i am thinking about what size jump ring i'll need to fit through the tiny hole at the end so i can string it on a cord and wear it as a necklace. because nobody else in the world will have a necklace that is a tiny wrench that also really works on a steam engine. and that's how i like things. but the sweetie wants to see the engine. i untape the pipe with the valve and fit it onto the machine. the sweetie starts talking about what to do to get it running. he talks about a steam compressor. we will get ourselves a steam compressor. i have no idea what a steam compressor looks like but i am glad we will have one. i think about what i can run off this little machine. a train. a music box. the dog.
we go in for breakfast and the engine stays in the car. i think about how it looks like a john deere tractor had a baby. i think about the tiny faucet knob on the pipe that controls the steam. i think about the yellow wheel spinning and about all those steam engines at the mill we visit. i wonder what it will sound like with the steam pouring through it.
letters, the weekly shopper and a few seed catalogs. once in a while there's a yellow card inside that sends me to the front counter for a package. now, there's no telling what might arrive. peeps. taco doritos. bits of electrical things the sweetie will make into a guitar pedal. but a week or so back a steam engine came in the mail.let me explain. the sweetie has family he doesn't get to see often enough. folks in texas, some way down near the border and others over around san antonio. a few times we've gone on whirlwind tours of both versions of texas and we stay a night with one family member, then another. two of these are an uncle and aunt of the sweetie. on my first visit i could tell these were folks i wanted to get to know.
it turns out this uncle has quite a few things in common with my own dad, which means he has quite a few things in common with me. he showed us a tiny steam engine and then a few other
little contraptions. it took me a bit of time to really get that he'd made them. beautiful things with pipes and wheels and magical bits of motion. and you know me. i drooled. now, the sweetie drooled, too, but i'm a little more dramatic about things. i can fall right smack in love with something like a tiny working steam engine in a second. not everyone sees things the way i do, but the sweetie's uncle, as i've said, has a few things in common with me.then a while back this same uncle mentions he'd like to send this engine on up to us. can you imagine anyone ever saying no to something like that? those are the folks who say no to extra hot fudge on a sundae. not me. i say send that thing right on up, thank you. and he does. and now i am at the counter, knowing full well the box the postal woman is incredibly slow in handing over is full of steam engine. i take the box out to the car and rip open the tape as the sweetie turns us around and toward breakfast. i pull it out of the box as we pull into the parking lot. it is beautiful. it is perfect. there is a little pipe taped down to the base with a valve handle
in the middle. the smallest wrench i've ever seen is attached with a twist tie to the wheel.i am so captivated by this wrench i forget a minute about the engine. it has to be handmade. i know the sweetie's uncle well enough by now to figure he might have made it himself just for this engine (turns out he did) and i am thinking about what size jump ring i'll need to fit through the tiny hole at the end so i can string it on a cord and wear it as a necklace. because nobody else in the world will have a necklace that is a tiny wrench that also really works on a steam engine. and that's how i like things. but the sweetie wants to see the engine. i untape the pipe with the valve and fit it onto the machine. the sweetie starts talking about what to do to get it running. he talks about a steam compressor. we will get ourselves a steam compressor. i have no idea what a steam compressor looks like but i am glad we will have one. i think about what i can run off this little machine. a train. a music box. the dog.
we go in for breakfast and the engine stays in the car. i think about how it looks like a john deere tractor had a baby. i think about the tiny faucet knob on the pipe that controls the steam. i think about the yellow wheel spinning and about all those steam engines at the mill we visit. i wonder what it will sound like with the steam pouring through it.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
i am a camera
click these to see them up close and personal. not because i'm a good photographer. just because there's pretty stuff out there.
well, it turns out that phone with the stereo in it also has a few cameras 
lying around inside that case. now, i have plenty of cameras for myself, all the way from pinhole to brownie to polaroid to digital. i don't mean to brag but i have an argus c-3. that's right. the brick. but the phone does, too. it has a soviet spy camera and so do i. i do not know what to think about this, about carrying around something in my pocket right now, in this year, 2011, that can take the same sort of photos my dad was taking back in 1974 or that my grandpa took when my mom was a little girl. i am uncomfortable. uneasy. so i walk around determined to show this phone full of cameras that it's no match for me.
the phone full of cameras laughs. at first i think maybe i just have
the headphones on and tom waits is in there singing quietly, but no. it's the phone laughing. it scoots all 493 cameras over to the side effortlessly and laughs a little more. it slides something new right out front. right where anyone with any sense can't possibly ignore it. the phone holds out an 8mm film camera. there is a dial with an arrow just like on the leather covered metal of the one on my bookshelf. i can smell how old the thing is. i can feel the weight of it. the 
phone laughs. the camera whispers. black and white it says. or color. the color of your childhood, liquid, soft. i am a little bit afraid.
i am a strong person but when you can put loretta lynn, a polaroid camera and an 8mm black and white film camera all in one place and that place can be used to call for enchilada delivery, i don't know what to do. i can hear the clicking of the gears in the 8mm camera, like 
playing cards in the spokes of a bike. i can smell the developer from the old polaroids and i can see where the light bleed washes out a tree in a photo i've taken. i know better than to eat the cupcake just because it says to. i know better than to drink the kool-aid. i know not to sell my soul. but the phone knows me already. when i touch the camera image there is the back of the camera all leatherette on cardboard. there are the dials, the shutter. there is the sound of it. click. click. i have the brain fever.
this is the same as what happens when you attempt snorkeling the very first time. you are underwater and you have to breathe in. everything in your body says not to. everything. you will die, you tell yourself. you will
fill your lungs with water like an idiot and your body will sink to the sand and the rocks and the starfish all below you. but you open your lungs and the air rushes in from that ridiculous plastic tube and you are breathing, there underwater with fish above your head and the sky in a 
flat plane your eyes can't reach.
i breathe in, surprised to find air. i shove the soft phones in my ears and tell dave brubeck to play something for prancing on cobblestones. i ratchet the lever over once to advance the film. the shutter clicks. again and again. the air smells like rain. it is fifty years ago. it is tomorrow.
well, it turns out that phone with the stereo in it also has a few cameras 
lying around inside that case. now, i have plenty of cameras for myself, all the way from pinhole to brownie to polaroid to digital. i don't mean to brag but i have an argus c-3. that's right. the brick. but the phone does, too. it has a soviet spy camera and so do i. i do not know what to think about this, about carrying around something in my pocket right now, in this year, 2011, that can take the same sort of photos my dad was taking back in 1974 or that my grandpa took when my mom was a little girl. i am uncomfortable. uneasy. so i walk around determined to show this phone full of cameras that it's no match for me.
the phone full of cameras laughs. at first i think maybe i just have
the headphones on and tom waits is in there singing quietly, but no. it's the phone laughing. it scoots all 493 cameras over to the side effortlessly and laughs a little more. it slides something new right out front. right where anyone with any sense can't possibly ignore it. the phone holds out an 8mm film camera. there is a dial with an arrow just like on the leather covered metal of the one on my bookshelf. i can smell how old the thing is. i can feel the weight of it. the 
phone laughs. the camera whispers. black and white it says. or color. the color of your childhood, liquid, soft. i am a little bit afraid.
i am a strong person but when you can put loretta lynn, a polaroid camera and an 8mm black and white film camera all in one place and that place can be used to call for enchilada delivery, i don't know what to do. i can hear the clicking of the gears in the 8mm camera, like 
playing cards in the spokes of a bike. i can smell the developer from the old polaroids and i can see where the light bleed washes out a tree in a photo i've taken. i know better than to eat the cupcake just because it says to. i know better than to drink the kool-aid. i know not to sell my soul. but the phone knows me already. when i touch the camera image there is the back of the camera all leatherette on cardboard. there are the dials, the shutter. there is the sound of it. click. click. i have the brain fever.
this is the same as what happens when you attempt snorkeling the very first time. you are underwater and you have to breathe in. everything in your body says not to. everything. you will die, you tell yourself. you will
fill your lungs with water like an idiot and your body will sink to the sand and the rocks and the starfish all below you. but you open your lungs and the air rushes in from that ridiculous plastic tube and you are breathing, there underwater with fish above your head and the sky in a 
flat plane your eyes can't reach.i breathe in, surprised to find air. i shove the soft phones in my ears and tell dave brubeck to play something for prancing on cobblestones. i ratchet the lever over once to advance the film. the shutter clicks. again and again. the air smells like rain. it is fifty years ago. it is tomorrow.
Friday, April 15, 2011
silence
for information on how you can help stop bullying of gay youth (or anyone else you love), go to: http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/antibullying/index.html
today is the national day of silence. because i am the sponsor, more or less, of the gay and non-homophobic children at our school, i decide to try to be silent. remember, i am a teacher. now, i share each class with a second adult but today one of those adults is home and we share two sets of children. i will be teaching two classes entirely alone without saying a word. a first period eleventh grade class of 31 and a fourth period tenth grade class of 32. did i mention today is friday? did i mention it's the friday before a nine day spring break? no get out your book. no sit down. no stop throwing that.
i write on the board why i'm silent, how i'm standing in solidarity with a community often silenced in schools, how i'm remembering with my actions the people who have gone before and who have been forced to be silent, forced to deny who they are because it makes someone else feel uneasy. i put the name of a support group at the bottom of the message. i draw a line. under it i write my suggestion for how to stop bullying against gay folks. "tell kobe bryant if he didn't mean it that way, he shouldn't have said it that way". i sign my name to that one. a boy near the front of the class passes me a sheet of folded paper. it says i feel like i'm in a charlie chaplin movie.
i put instructions on the board. we are to read the first part of class and then reflect in journals on how the characters in our novels have suffered and why. i put their homework on the board and directions for how to approach it. when reading time is over, i rap on the desk and gesture to the board. while they're writing, i gesture and point and communicate in plenty of ways that don't involve words. the kids are amused and uncomfortable. some take my behavior as a challenge and try to get me to talk. i am steadfast. i can't shut up for my own self but i know plenty of folks who have been isolated and shunned for being different. they don't get to choose to walk in and out of their isolation. i write on the board, bang my fist against words to get the attention of these bewildered kids. a few of them are choosing silence, too, but a handful begin to try to translate my gestures and pointing for the rest of the class. they prompt each other to share ideas or read aloud or stop talking. they become my voice. they seem to think i am winning something by being silent and they want to help. we work like this until the bell rings.
i eat my lunch in a room full of adults talking all around me. i spill pesto on my skirt and stare down at the oil seeping in. i am so quiet nobody sees me. i do not exist. for five hours i do not speak in a place where my most effective tool has always been my voice. i have nothing except the voice the children give me but i am never silent. there are symbols always, communication endlessly. i send out and they gather up. we share back and forth. i am a pale shadow of what i'm imitating, children for whom the silence is so large it is able to shove them out of windows and off bridges, so deep it swallows them in murky water, so oppressive they will try to claw it out of themselves with shards of glass or knives they don't know how to use.
i am not sure this is working. i do not feel like anything i've done today has made gay teens any safer or happier. but we have a little pizza party afterward. when i walk in there are plenty of kids clumped in little groups chatting easily around slices of pizza and gulps of pop. a mix of boys and girls, middle school through seniors, representative of several languages and cultures in our school. many of them are not gay and that's maybe part of the gift. straight folks and gay folks together in a room eating pizza and drinking pop and talking about nothing, nobody feeling ashamed or ugly inside. just laughing after all that silence and feeling how good it feels to be able to step out of it, all of us together like that.
today is the national day of silence. because i am the sponsor, more or less, of the gay and non-homophobic children at our school, i decide to try to be silent. remember, i am a teacher. now, i share each class with a second adult but today one of those adults is home and we share two sets of children. i will be teaching two classes entirely alone without saying a word. a first period eleventh grade class of 31 and a fourth period tenth grade class of 32. did i mention today is friday? did i mention it's the friday before a nine day spring break? no get out your book. no sit down. no stop throwing that.
i write on the board why i'm silent, how i'm standing in solidarity with a community often silenced in schools, how i'm remembering with my actions the people who have gone before and who have been forced to be silent, forced to deny who they are because it makes someone else feel uneasy. i put the name of a support group at the bottom of the message. i draw a line. under it i write my suggestion for how to stop bullying against gay folks. "tell kobe bryant if he didn't mean it that way, he shouldn't have said it that way". i sign my name to that one. a boy near the front of the class passes me a sheet of folded paper. it says i feel like i'm in a charlie chaplin movie.
i put instructions on the board. we are to read the first part of class and then reflect in journals on how the characters in our novels have suffered and why. i put their homework on the board and directions for how to approach it. when reading time is over, i rap on the desk and gesture to the board. while they're writing, i gesture and point and communicate in plenty of ways that don't involve words. the kids are amused and uncomfortable. some take my behavior as a challenge and try to get me to talk. i am steadfast. i can't shut up for my own self but i know plenty of folks who have been isolated and shunned for being different. they don't get to choose to walk in and out of their isolation. i write on the board, bang my fist against words to get the attention of these bewildered kids. a few of them are choosing silence, too, but a handful begin to try to translate my gestures and pointing for the rest of the class. they prompt each other to share ideas or read aloud or stop talking. they become my voice. they seem to think i am winning something by being silent and they want to help. we work like this until the bell rings.
i eat my lunch in a room full of adults talking all around me. i spill pesto on my skirt and stare down at the oil seeping in. i am so quiet nobody sees me. i do not exist. for five hours i do not speak in a place where my most effective tool has always been my voice. i have nothing except the voice the children give me but i am never silent. there are symbols always, communication endlessly. i send out and they gather up. we share back and forth. i am a pale shadow of what i'm imitating, children for whom the silence is so large it is able to shove them out of windows and off bridges, so deep it swallows them in murky water, so oppressive they will try to claw it out of themselves with shards of glass or knives they don't know how to use.
i am not sure this is working. i do not feel like anything i've done today has made gay teens any safer or happier. but we have a little pizza party afterward. when i walk in there are plenty of kids clumped in little groups chatting easily around slices of pizza and gulps of pop. a mix of boys and girls, middle school through seniors, representative of several languages and cultures in our school. many of them are not gay and that's maybe part of the gift. straight folks and gay folks together in a room eating pizza and drinking pop and talking about nothing, nobody feeling ashamed or ugly inside. just laughing after all that silence and feeling how good it feels to be able to step out of it, all of us together like that.
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