Do you have any pictures in the paper this week? No, not this week. I had a couple in there last week. How'd they turn out? Fine, except they actually added sky to the picture, and it looks pretty bad; but they remembered to give me credit this time. They added sky to your picture? Yes, that's right. Kind of like when I added the blue charcoal to your artwork? What's that? Don't you remember? You'd made this charcoal drawing of flowers in a vase, and when I was framing it [years later], I went behind you and drew a blue line along the edge of the vase. Ha. I'd totally forgotten about that. Yeah, that vase was supposed to be clear, Mom. I can't believe you did that. That's funny. Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking. ...Maybe I shouldn't have reminded you.
Today got an email with the subject line: "Hi,lisa,let's be friends." It was from my resume (resumeATlisawhiteman.com) to me (lisaATlisawhiteman.com). It was 126K, but there was nothing in it. What do you think my resume was trying to tell me?
Breakfast. I finally went to the proper dentist, the quick appointment helped along by a girl in high school who's now a dental hygenist. It was entirely uneventful, except for the fact that the dentist (whom I never saw) had nearly the same name as my cat, and that the form I was asked to fill out included the question: Do you plan to keep your teeth? Circle YES or NO.
Lunch. I took pictures of the political opponent of this man. Politicians are funny creatures to observe, always so careful and unnatural, so stiff and "sincere." They remember your name and shake your hand and give you red, white, and blue stickers bearing their name, and they always like you. It was fun, though, escaping the flourescent grid of office and standing in the sun while it was still directly overhead.
Dinner. I put some vegetables and pasta in an old grocery bag and chopped it all on a foreign cutting board with foreign knife. I cooked, for one, using unusual pots and pans on an alarmingly hot stove, without any cat claws piercing my thigh.
Trying on eyeglasses at lunch, by yourself, taking the word of a stranger working on commission. Careful not to offend him when he hands you a pair you hate, not really trusting him when you slide on a pair he says he likes. You think to yourself, the light seems awfully bad; are you sure you're this pale? Try putting your hair up, but that has little effect on the shape of your face. Perhaps you should've worn something neutral, black, anything but lime green. He hands you something that matches the two colors in your hair. Um, no.
Later, at the end of the day, you run into a store twice the size of the first store ten minutes before it closes and announce: I know you're closing, but do you mind if I quickly try on a few pair of frames on my own? and proceed to make your way through the rows and rows of supplemental eyes—scanning, unfolding arms, balancing lenses on your nose, refolding arms—at the speed that the Griswolds visit the Louvre. By the time you leave, you've only digested a small portion of what you'd tried to take in.
***
Food, sleep, music, and talking have not helped my incurable-mystery-unusual-bad mood today. I am prescribing myself more sleep.
Last night was split in half and was therefore unusually long. After getting home from a cookout that survived past midnight, I collapsed on the bed, promising myself only two minutes of sleep before getting up so that I could lie back down again, half-blind and with fresh breath. I don't know why I still believe the two-minute lie; perhaps I just want to believe it. I imagine that when I go to sleep for "two minutes," the hands on the clock circle hurriedly, like they do in the movies to indicate elapsed time. The clock said 4:50 when I woke up, and my eyes were angry and red.
After three hours of procrastination, it only took five minutes before the room was dark and I was under the covers. A minute later I was up again, grabbing the empty glass by my head and feeling my way through the dark to fill it up with water in the bathroom sink. Light on with my right hand, glass in my left, I saw a blurry roach making its way over the rim of my glass. Without thinking, I threw the glass into the porcelain basin and watched as it broke apart, as the little brown body climbed over the newly jagged shape, unharmed. I finished him off with water.
I would've believed it had been a dream, had I not seen the evidence this morning, the sink filled with the clear peaks and shards of my irrational accomplishment.
Hot. The air, the metal strip along my car window that brands my arm with a stripe, the back of my neck underneath a curtain of hair. Running errands, I open my car door and watch the heat scramble over the seat and diffuse into the cooler heat; strange, actually being able to see heat.
Store number 1. Belatedly using up a gift certificate in a store that's going out of business, near-empty shelves scattered with rejects.
Store number 2. The hardest one, looking for new eyeglasses. Seeing my flush face framed and reframed; no, too round, too much like my current pair, too thick, too shiny, too dark. A pair that I want, but why are they purple? Later, trying to find other available colors on an impossible website, almost giving up.
Store number 3. Told that if I spend $30 today, I will get this free average-looking straw bag to take home. Make mental note to spend less than $30.
Store number 4. Visual assault in a building breathing on electricity, rows and rows of TVs all showing the same face silently talking, but with nuances in color, brightness, and contrast. Video cameras that put customers onscreen. If you look at the screen to see yourself, you see yourself looking away. I slip in, buy some blank CDs, and slip out again, smacked again by the heat on my way out the door.
Store number 5. Arrive on my bicycle, carrying stuff I don't need to carry but like to carry anyway. Find a remarkable little bag that attaches to my bike and carries my stuff for me. Remarkable because of its plainness. No label anywhere, no tag or washing instructions, no advertisement. No price tag, even. Perfect.
The grad student dental exam went smoothly, except that I misunderstood what they were going to be doing; instead of cleaning my teeth and assessing whether anything was wrong with them, they just assessed. They gave me x-rays and clinked around my mouth with metal chopsticks, noticed my remaining baby tooth, and showed me how to detect it on my copy of the x-rays.
I cannot be their patient for their final exam, though, because nothing's wrong, other than the fact that I have made my teeth even smaller than they already are by grinding them together like sandpaper during my sleep. I'm a little surprised I don't wake up every morning with a mouth full of white sand, from the way they made it sound.
Getting there was fun, actually. It was nice, for once, to not have a clue where I was going, to follow a scrap of paper with my handwriting on it and experience moments of recognition upon seeing a landmark I heard described, or finding my way back a different route. I miss getting to know a city, that point between when you know barely anything about it and when it's so familiar you don't even see it anymore. I feel like I've slowly taken Raleigh apart like giant toy, one piece at a time, and now it's just sitting there in front of me, completely exposed.
His name is Lawrence, I found out yesterday. Lawrence stole my bag, met my dad, took pictures with my camera, and then sold it to a pawn shop. And, then, apparently, Lawrence was arrested. I wonder how that went—whether he was surprised, slammed up against a shiny white car or quietly handcuffed. Maybe he even turned himself in, though I doubt it. I wonder if he was mad at himself for his missteps, or whether he was mad at me for canceling my debit card and turning in my camera's serial number, making it easier for him to get caught.
Rat.
I know it doesn't make much sense, but I'm not mad at him anymore, though I'm sure I'd feel differently had I not gotten most of my things back. I've always been more of a mercy person than a justice person, though admittedly not across the board. (I can't see myself taking the same forgiving approach to the people behind the Enron scandal, for example.) Right, and it's difficult for me to hold a grudge for very long, especially when the offending party convinces me it's sorry. Not that Lawrence has apologized. Sometimes that's not even necessary.
Sucker.
A form I need to fill out, sitting here beside me, asking about the property loss (does that apply, now that I have it back?), personal injury, and the emotional effect. Hm. I learned something about my parents; where do I indicate that? The enclosed envelope doesn't include postage, which reminds me, Lawrence stole my stamps. If I don't mail it off today, I'm expected to appear in court on Friday, which would be bad for everyone. I don't want to know what I would really think of him, whether I'd hate him or like him, and I don't want to be the enemy. Victim's Name: Lisa Whiteman. Would you like to be present for the final outcome of this case if your testimony is not necessary? No. Would you like to be notified of the final outcome of this case? I don't know.
Victim.
In cheerier news, it looks like I won't have to take a vacation day and a four-hour round trip to get my teeth cleaned, because I'm going to let some new grad student do that for free.
Guinea pig.
I was going to tell you all about the Bright Eyes show I went to tonight, about the girl who stood directly in front of me, hair, shoulders, striped shirt, tattooed arm wrapped around her, the girl who knew all the words and sang softly along behind me, almost in my ear, the girl who played the flute on stage with a burning cigarette tucked under one of the keys of her instrument, the perfect-faced nineteen-year-olds wearing worn-in clothing and metal here and there, the songs I liked and the ones that made my mind wander, and how I didn't really feel part of it but rarely ever do, but it's late. Ich muß jetzt schlafen.
Kronos Quartet, Philip Glass, and Dracula in the ring fighting Lawrence Welk and the Tonight Show band. While Kronos is on the offensive, I can't hear Welk & team wailing, though I can make out the deep sounds of their footwork on the hollow floor. But sometimes Kronos has to take a breather, you know, sit in their corner and get the wet sponge squeezed over their heads and wash the blood off their gloves, and that's when Welk takes over, demanding the attention of everyone in the arena, squealing in its upbeat tempo, paced and senior-friendly, and unbearably loud. The announcer tries to get Welk to take a seat, to quiet down, but he is obstinate. I was sadly mistaken when I thought my downstairs neighbors had moved out. Apparently that is not the case, and they are armed with new, unexpected ammunition.
***
Ever since I bought my mom a bike in February, my dad has been interested in getting one for himself. Sometimes he rides her bike around town (which is small and flat and without much traffic, ideal for a-to-b sort of bike riding), but they can't ride together, and therefore they don't ride much. Two weeks ago, my dad finally asked me if I could find a bike for him to buy, and yesterday I found one.
I went to the same pawn shop where I bought my bike, to the same salesman with the slicked-back hair and the too-short tie and the suspicious moustache. This time he was less serious, actually openly mocking himself, the stereotypical pawn shop clerk. "You know a new one of these costs $220, and it comes with a year of free tune-ups," I told him. "Oh, we do that. She comes over to your house and fixes your bike for you, whenever you need it," he said smiling, gesturing to an employee standing beside him.
He went down to 170. I said 150. "I'll meet you halfway. I'll go 160," he conceded. "You know, the water bottle holder is also missing, so I'll have to get one of those." "Oh, yeah, that's why I went down ten bucks," he responded, still grinning. After test-driving the bike around the parking lot and being secretly encouraged by the "repair-woman" employee that I talk him down, I convinced him to sell it to me for $150.
Moments later, busy stuffing the bike in the back seat of my car, I didn't notice that less than ten feet away a man ran out of the pawn shop with his arms full of merchandise, and that the salesman and another man ran out after him, chasing him behind the strip mall. The only reason I know about it at all is because I stepped back inside for a moment and witnessed the reconstruction by the customers and the remaining employee: was he wearing a red shirt? I think it was orange.
***
I know it's gone downhill, but I'm sad anyway that tonight is the last night for the X-Files. It's the only show I watch with any regularity and has been for years. In Berlin, even, where it was a season behind, and Scully and Mulder knew how to speak German but used the wrong voices.
I have a tape of a tape of Depeche Mode's Music for the Masses, half of which plays backward. Apparently I recorded it like that, a twisted tape onto a healthy tape, though I don't think it was intentional. I've heard it enough times that I can anticipate exactly where on the tape it happens, when the synthesizers and voices turn satanic and get sucked out of the speakers like a soprano vacuum cleaner, over and over again, sweep, sweep, sweep. Today in the car, on my way home from work, I left it playing after the transition, as I sometimes do, wondering where I could go besides home. I didn't think of any place. Sucked out of the speakers and out of my open windows, along with my hair.
I discovered why that cop wished me luck. It's because the ticket he gave me has turned into a giant hassle, one that will require me to take a day off work and drive to the capital of nowhere (obeying the speed limit, of course) and plead guilty to "faulty equipment" before the judge. According to a lawyer in that area, that's how things work. It's a strange concept to me, that the judge would assume that my speedometer works perfectly fine (and it does), but that we would both pretend for a moment that it didn't, and then s/he would slam down a gavel and proclaim that I am free from the insurance burden that would otherwise haunt me for years. Then I would write a check, climb back into my car in my uncomfortable clothing, and it would be over.
Naturally, my court date is the same week as my visit to the dentist, which will also require a vacation day.
Did you know that getting an appointment with a new dentist takes six months? Right, if I want to get my teeth cleaned in this town I won't be able to do it until November. Both receptionists I spoke with acted as if that were completely normal. Okay, so I'll put you down for 10 a.m. on November 28th. Does that work for you?
So instead I'm going back to my childhood dentist in the town where I haven't lived since I was 12, which is only a slightly longer drive (2 hours) than the one I'll have to make for my court appearance. Actually, that's the only dentist I've ever been to, mainly because I rarely ever go. My last visit was in January 1998, and the one before that, 1993. I don't need any work done, but it's probably a good idea to check in at least as often as I do.
The reason I go so seldom is that I've never had a cavity or wisdom teeth pulled or braces or anything but teeth cleanings. The most abnormal thing about my teeth is that I have at least one baby tooth that was never kicked out, as I was missing the permanent tooth that would've come behind it. (All of the above is also true for my brother.)
Of course I didn't appreciate any of that when I was younger. In fifth grade I actually wore a bent paper clip in my mouth because I was so desperate to wear a retainer. It tasted like (surprise!) metal and rattled around in front of my teeth, only a mildly convincing testament to my faux-jumbled mouth. I can't tell you why I did that, because I don't know. I think it has something to do with wanting experience.
Without being told, I could tell he was a politician. He insisted on wearing his suit jacket for the photographs, he sat bolt upright in his chair, his expressions and gestures were controlled and predetermined, and every hair was in place. Sometimes when I look at people, I try to imagine what they looked like when they were younger. But this man had no younger. He has always been in his early 40s, he has never scraped his knee from falling off his bicycle, he's never worn a shirt that hasn't been starched and pressed.
***
I got a ticket yesterday, on the way back from my parents' house, on a stretch between a pair of dots on the map, the part colored in with tobacco fields. I wasn't aware of my speed. The cop was nice enough, aside from giving me a ticket, and even wished me luck, though I wasn't sure what I needed the luck for. Not getting pulled again? Five minutes after I got back on the road, just after I'd finished playing the event over in my head, I watched him pull another one, hidden in his stealthy, undercover car.
We had only driven twenty miles or so before it felt like we were in another state. Down Hwy 1, past tiny churches with enormous electric signs, past Confederate graffiti, past old, well-kept wooden houses with fixed shutters, porches, and green, shaded lawns, through tightly strung downtowns, filled with brick sidewalks and buildings, built before architecture favored thriftiness.
On the way to Hamlet, our first stop, Todd drove, Martin sat in the passenger's seat in Todd's peanut debris, CD player on his knee, and I sat in the back, reading excerpts from books and papers out loud and passing CDs to the front. Whenever someone spotted something potentially worth photographing, we'd point it out, make a split-second decision, and Todd would pull over, maybe slowly driving backward down the breakdown lane or making a quick U-turn in the road.
We didn't see the chicken plant, though I was half-hoping we would. Our mission was to visit and photograph John Coltrane's birthplace, part interest-motivated, park work. Hamlet was run-down, the money long sucked out of it. But it was easy to imagine—looking at the shop windows, the train station, an abandoned gas station—how it used to be alive once, and quite pretty.
An old black barber with a white beard stepped out of his building, underneath the swirling white-red-and-blue signature pole. "If ya'll lookin for John Coltrane's, it's right there," he said, gesturing across the street. We must've been obvious. A young guy on a four-wheeler, riding through the heart of downtown, stopped and asked a few questions, and gave us information we needed, as well as some we didn't.
We walked along the tracks and peered in vacant store windows, shot out by BBs, whose roofs had been plunged in by time. An old man in a stiff baseball cap sat on the bank of the train tracks, chain smoking, next to a homemade aluminum ashtray filled with butts.
We continued onto Cheraw, South Carolina, to see where Dizzy Gillespie was born. There was a substantial seam marking the degredation of the road at the NC-SC border, and a fireworks shop just over the line. Cheraw was kept in better shape than Hamlet. Dizzy's house was no longer standing, and we could see little evidence that this was his hometown until we were let into a small museum crowded with tributes. It was getting late; after walking through the museum and visiting a graveyard, we got some dinner and turned around, making the 3-hour drive back. This time we were more subdued; no more leaps from the car to get pictures, and the music was almost inaudible. (See the pictures.)
Ten minutes after I got home, I left again, to take my cat Jane to the emergency room. Stuck in a waiting room with large stacks of People magazine and a moth beating its wings against the floor.
So, to bring you up to date:
1. My bag was stolen, along with my camera.
2. I got my camera back.
Today, I had my pictures developed. Guess what? Sandwiched between pictures I remember taking were four mystery pictures, taken by the thieves who stole my camera. They already stand out, since, of course, I don't recognize anything in them, but on top of that, these four pictures are the only panoramic pictures on the roll, so they quite literally stand out. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), there is nothing interesting about the pictures, other than the fact that the thieves who stole my camera are the photographers. Exhibit A, detective.
A car drives by my open window blaring "Wind Beneath My Wings." It rounds the corner—my house is on the corner—fades in, fades out. A YMCA bus squeaks to a halt and surges as it heaves over the intersection. A car is stalling in the parking lot, turning over and over. Earlier I heard what I thought to be two men yelling, but it was just one man yelling, while beating himself with a stick. I'm not lying about that. The crickets are filling the background, buzzing like a florescent light, making erratic pauses like one that is dying. A train is clacking by, singing in a muffled G. A faraway, throaty dog, barking at noise. Flip flops down the sidewalk. A gentle (polite) tapping of a horn. Engines, brakes, jingling keys, and slamming doors, all of it independently overlapping, forming an unrehearsed concert. I can't count to five.
We used to completely cover our church bulletins with ink, sitting in the back row of the balcony. We'd play hangman, or draw pictures, but mostly we'd write notes. I always liked her handwriting. It was round and just sloppy enough; the letters looped together, forming pretty sentences that would tell me about what was going on three grades above me, which, at that time, was significantly different. We'd assess whether a boy named Troy (who also sat in the balcony) had brought chewing tobacco to church that particular week, inspiring quieting hisses from the row before us.
I remember one note in particular when Nancy had written the lyrics to a song—White Horse?—that went something like this: "If you wanna be rich, you've got to be a bitch!" She wrote it just like that, with the exclamation mark, and underlined the word "bitch" a few times. I didn't want to admit that I didn't know what the word "bitch" meant, so later I tried it out on my brother, reciting the line she'd written earlier that day. I'd set off an alarm. "Mom! Lisa said a bad word!"
One day after church, she told me her brother had gotten a new car and that I should sit in it. She opened the door for me, I climbed in, and she ran away cackling, "That's not really my brother's car!" Our parents are good friends, and in the summers, our families would go camping together. We'd hike and stand under waterfalls and go snipe hunting. Spending the night at her house, we'd lie in her canopy bed with the pink flowered cover and tell jokes until our sides hurt, made funnier by our efforts to be quiet. One evening she convinced me to call Burger King and ask, "Are your buns burning?" When I was eleven, she was the one who sat beside me in the back seat of my parents' car in the parking lot of that pizza place, just after my parents told me we were moving away.
We kept in touch sporadically, mainly through our parents. The last time I saw her was at her wedding...three years ago? We've lived in the same town for two years now, and, finally, tonight, we got together for dinner. We ended up talking for three-and-a-half hours, leaving long after our waitress.
Lately I've been looking around myself, eyeing my location and trying to define it. I'm not looking for my GPS coordinates, or even my place on a political map, though that has always fascinated me. I'm looking at houses, old ones. The one Richard works in was built in 1909, just down the street from mine, and I believe mine must be from the same era, though it isn't as good. I've been looking at how these buildings connect to each other, by grass and gravel and pavement, by slopes in the earth and by other buildings, in an arrangement that becomes familiar and expected.
Yesterday, while riding my bike to the fairgrounds, I noticed a house I'd never seen before, wedged between a gas station and a fast food restaurant on a road I've driven down a thousand times. I like that about walking and biking, that I'm moving just slowly enough to catch the details I miss in a car. I imagine that even if I'd never noticed that house and it was suddenly torn down, I'd suspect something, that there'd be a scratch in that glazed-over familiarity and my eyes would skip over that spot like a needle on an old record.
So I've been paying attention to the flat, spaced-out buildings, the ones that have driven us to travel to Europe and marvel at elegant, confined architecture. Scrutinizing the gas stations, the fire escapes, the dusty, failed small businesses. I'm not being critical of it, just observing it, as I do the people who move through it. Sometimes I wonder what it's like to be one of those people and what it's like to live here. Of course I should know, but I don't feel like I do at all. When people ask me to describe the city I currently live in, I feel unqualified. Perhaps it'll be easier once I distance myself from it.
There were folding tables holding stacks of disposable food containers, holding blinking lizards and coiled snakes and furry tarantulas. Fish tanks, holding brightly colored chameleons and moist, leaf-shaped frogs and startled-looking geckos. Cages, holding young head-butting goats and Bengal cats and a desert fox with crazy large ears. Five dollars if you want to get your picture taken by the 14-foot-long python. Two dollars to get your picture taken on the camel. Forty-five dollars to take home an exotic creature that has very specific requirements for survival.
The arena was crowded, bright, and had a large echo. A woman stood in front of a display with an owl perched on her shoulder, answering questions and declining offers to be relieved of the bird. I heard a vendor say, "You know you want one," gesturing toward a tower of snakes in front of him. A man shook his head and replied, "I'm gonna git somethin—I don't know what—but I'm gonna git somethin."
People poked and squealed and released their flash bulbs, and the animals responded by pawing at the glass, by cowering in a corner, by closing their eyes and ignoring the steady commotion. Another vendor spoke directly to me. "I have a camera like that. 'Cept mine's an N90. I can't figure out how to work it. Actually I've got two N90s, and an 8008, and I can't work any of them. I've read all the manuals, but I still can't figure them out."
I spent about two hours there, weaving between cages and tanks, taking pictures, hearing myself say "hello," followed by "poor thing." I had mixed feelings, seeing the fascinating amount of life, seeing it kept in small plastic food containers. I felt a little better about the event and the money that I'd contributed to it when I stepped outside and listened to two women with a microphone and a train of animals explain how some animals do not make good pets. And it was worth it to pay a dollar to climb in a pen with a pig named Jasmine and feed her a grape, a baby carrot, and an animal cracker in the shape of a buffalo. I found out first-hand that when her lower back is scratched, she falls on her side with pleasure, exposing her belly for the same treatment. (See the photos.)
I'm not sick, but this weekend I've been rather reclusive, walking around the house wrapped in a permanent blanket, sleeping, turning vinyl into digital, watching movies, doing some work on my computer, and eating soup. I think I only left the house once, and that was to buy blank CDs and toothpaste. It's just as well, since there's water coming out of the sky and my car is surrounded by a moat of mud puddles.
When I returned from my lone outing, I happened to notice that the downstairs (bass-playing) neighbors have moved out, as have the neighbors next door, the ones who chronically park perpendicular to my driveway, blocking me in and encouraging this kind of reclusive behavior. Now I have no excuse.
Standing in the bathroom getting ready for work this morning, I caught a glimpse of a narrow wood-brown body dart and freeze, its antennae feeling around in the air. First, I grabbed a wad of toilet paper and held it up like I was about to throw a baseball. Delicately moving objects on the shelves with the other hand, quickly jumping back again, hoping to pounce on it with my paper baseball. No good. I armed myself with the can of Raid from underneath the kitchen sink, but, even though the can claims it is "outdoor fresh," I decided not to spray it all over the toothbrushes and toilet paper and into my lungs. Fifteen minutes I danced with that roach, until I looked at the clock, gasped at the time, threw my things together, and ran out the door. As far as I know, it's still in there, clinging to the bottom of a shelf, waving its antennae and procreating.
Hours later, same room, Martin caught a house fly in his bare hands and set it free outside.
Colectivo Dos is now online. I've got some pictures in this collection, including a picture of that deceptive tree.
