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Wednesday, 31 July 2002
This evening I've been chewing on the end of a pen, pressing
soft calculator buttons that are too close together, jumping from
room to room with the tape measure, cursing my country for not going
metric, and cutting out tiny rectangles from brown construction
paper. I cut the brown paper exactly proportional (I hope) to my
furniture, and I've been pushing it around on a blueprint of my
new place.
The reason why I use the word "blueprint" is that, while
the walls are already there, the pending loft has yet to be built;
it is still a ghost image on a piece of paper, still just a stack
of wood on the floor of my future apartment.
The reason why I use the word "apartment" is out of habit
more than anything. It's actually a loft space in an old mortuary,
and I guess it's something like a studio, but with house(?)mates,
whose rooms spider off of a shared kitchen.
The reason I need to plan for my furniture at all is so that I can
determine what I should take and what I should donate; I've already
concluded that much of it is staying behind. At one time that would've
bothered me, but I think I'm actually starting to like the idea
of losing material weight. Most of it was free anyway; I used to
say yes to free furniture like I had a mansion to fill.
The reason I will be glad to see it go is because I find the amount
of stuff I'm having to deal with overwhelming. Checking an item
off my to-do list barely gives me a nudge of satisfaction these
days; if I had to cut out a brown rectangle exactly proportional
to one item on my to-do list, it would barely be visible.
I am going to dream about brown construction paper tonight.
Tuesday, 30 July 2002
Part II. We went to see David Bowie in concert at an outdoor
pavilion, at a place that looks strikingly like the outdoor pavilion
in Raleigh, so much so that it played tricks with my head and made
me believe I was there again and again, rather than in D.C. Nine
of us took three cars to the show, but we dispersed into two and
three and four soon after walking through the gate, reconvening
occasionally as we criss-crossed between the seats, concessions,
bathrooms, and the DJ tent.
The show wasn't sold out, but it was crowded; sweaty people created
lines and consumed overpriced greasy food and filled the dark spaces
of the few shaded areas. The crowd was really inconsistent, ranging
from the raver kids who twirled glow sticks in the DJ tent to the
middle-aged woman who swayed awkwardly to "I'm Afraid of Americans"
in the row in front of me. I suppose the consistency could be found
in the common desire to be in that spot, listening to music that
was important enough to them to see live.
As it turned out, I was disappointed in every , including that of the guest of honor himself. Steve had
told me that when he'd seen Bowie (years ago), Bowie had descended
from a spider as a spider in an armchair, or something equally
insane. But for Sunday's performance, Bowie walked on stage wearing
a suit and sang in an unusually churchy voice. In fact, I had trouble
recognizing several of the Bowie songs I'm quite familiar with.
So I didn't like the headliner or the , I spent too much money, it was unpleasantly
hot, and I consumed some weird crap. I had a great time, though,
wandering around the giant commercial structure with Stef and Martin,
talking and laughing and migrating.
While I was away, a friend of mine (whom I see often but who rarely
visits my house) agreed to feed and water my cats, keep Jane in,
let Leeches out—a brief note outlined the instructions and
told her where their respective bowls are. What it didn't tell her
is what the cats actually look like. She ended up locking the in my house and leaving Leeches outside all night.
My friend didn't realize what she had done until the next morning,
when she read the tag of a black cat who was rubbing up against
her legs. Leeches. So, if you're Leeches, who is that I locked
in the house...?
Monday, 29 July 2002
Martin and I had driven only about 30 minutes beyond Raleigh
(still 4 hours from D.C.) when we started looking for a place to
eat dinner. It was almost midnight and we were creeping through
towns that had collectively gone to sleep. We found a small pizzeria
in a darkened strip mall that had a glowing red OPEN sign hanging
in the window, and we fell in line behind the other patrons, among
them a round man with a long, triangluar beard, and a 17-year-old
guy wearing shorts and cowboy boots. We got the younger guy's attention
when we ordered tomatoes on our pizza. "Y'all put tomatoes
on pizza?" A man behind the counter, who was probably the owner,
nodded solemnly in response.
While we waited for our pizza, we sat in chairs facing a mounted
TV showing a program about embalming mummies. At different times,
both of us glanced back to discover that the people standing at
the counter were watching us as we watched TV. Martin caught Cowboy
Boots laughing and pointing at us from outside of the restaurant.
When a 12-year-old boy working behind the counter asked if we'd
like a take-out menu, the owner replied, while looking directly
at us, "They're not from here."
A couple hours later, we spotted what appeared to be a couple 80s
big-hair bands congregating near an exit ramp in a small Virginia
town, and I watched an old man operate a cash register at an alarmingly
slow pace. His movements were almost imperceptible; I had to bite
my lip to keep from smiling at my sudden anxiety.
***
I'll have to tell you about the rest of the trip after I've gotten
some sleep.
Saturday, 27 July 2002
Out of town, again. I'll be back on Monday.
Thursday, 25 July 2002
My room is filled with piles, and, sadly, they aren't piles
that have anything to do with the move. In
fact, apart from getting a job and a place to live, I have done
exactly nothing in the way of packing or changing my address or
getting print-outs of my medical history or assembling boxes or
throwing things away. Well, I suppose I've spent time with a couple
of people whom I'm going to miss...does that count?
The thing is, I haven't been lazy or careless or unmotivated at
all; I've just been thoroughly busy with everything else, this Santa's
list of errands to run and people to e-mail, along with this nebulous
cloud of duties never realized in printed form but hanging over
me nonetheless. Last night I even poured myself a glass of my favorite
wine but had to run out the door before I could drink it. Hours
later, it was still sitting on the table, slowly turning sour as
it waited for me. It made me smile when I saw it there, as it made
my chaos seem rather pitiful.
I'm still recovering from last week's wreck.
It's hard not to be suspicious of the chiropractor, but I'm trying
to keep an open mind. Today my muscles feel clumpy and tight, like
an overfull sock drawer. Every few minutes I repeat the following
pattern: I catch myself sitting like an old woman with osteoporosis,
I straighten my back and sit up tall, and then I subconsciously
lapse back into a banana.
I keep thinking of that Brady Bunch episode, when Mike Brady was
being taken advantage of by a guy he'd been in a wreck with. The
guy was fine at the scene of the accident, but when they went to
court, he showed up wearing a neck brace and crutches, I think.
To prove the guy was a poser, Mr. Brady tossed his briefcase on
the floor so that it landed flat and smacked the floor with a short,
sharp sound. Of course the guy whipped around to see what it was,
thereby proving he wasn't injured. What a strange show. That would
never work in real life.
Wednesday, 24 July 2002
It's taken me a few visits to come to this conclusion, but I've
decided that I really don't like my vet. I mean, she's friendly,
and helpful, to an extent, but she talks in circles and it takes
her at least an hour to do anything. Today, for example, I took
my cat Leeches in to get a shot. I knew what I wanted, as we'd discussed
just a week ago, and the same vet agreed with
me then as to what we should do. Regardless, I sat in a room waiting
for 45 minutes, and the vet talked to me for an additional before actually administering the shot, a procedure
that took a total of 5 seconds.
On top of that, she lapses into baby talk whenever she sees . Today she scrunched her nose, flared her lower lip,
and held Leeches' face level with hers, letting her voice rise and
fall like a roller coaster as she said, "I wish I could read
your mind, yes I do. I wish I were a pet psychic, that's right.
Aw, look at that ..." When she finished she turned
to me and said, "I honestly believe some people can literally
communicate with animals." And then she probably started saying
something she'd already said a few minutes before.
Tuesday, 23 July 2002
Monday, 22 July 2002
In less than three weeks, I won't be drinking any more sweet
tea, saying hello to strangers, driving on the interstate to get
to my job, watching palmetto bugs scurry down the sidewalk, or living
in the giant forest that is North Carolina.
I'm moving to New York, to work at the Natural
Resources Defense Council, to do web production, writing, editing,
and research. Instead of commuting from Raleigh to Durham in my
old Honda, I'll be commuting from Brooklyn to Manhattan in an underground
train, standing in packed crowds of people whom I will not automatically
acknowledge or make eye contact with. Instead of selecting a CD
and extending my arm out the window, pushing my palm against the
wind, I will listen to the echo of an amateur guitar player's notes
bouncing off the tiles and drifting through the tunnels.
Sunday, 21 July 2002
1. At the chiropractor's office, they hammered my shoulders
and neck with a drill-like machine while I put my face through a
hole in the table and stared at the floor. They seemed unusually
patient, for doctors. I left with some packets of gel that make
your skin feel like it's simultaneously cold and on fire, a sensation
that preoccupies you to the point that you forget about any pain
you were feeling.
2. Thirty minutes at home, I threw sections of my closet into a
suitcase then sat on a plane next to a man who wouldn't stop talking.
He talked about his SUV, his country club, his church, his political
beliefs, and sports, connecting his sentences without periods; fortunately
he wasn't talking to me but to the man to his right. I think I sensed
the right-hand man getting overwhelmed, but the talker apparently
didn't get the same message.
3. Number three, I will tell you about tomorrow.
4. My flight home on Friday was supposed to leave at 4:15 p.m. By
11:15 p.m., I had stood in seven different lines, eaten in two different
restaurants, read one magazine, sat in eight different chairs, talked
to five different people on the phone, and had seven "adjustments"
to my flight, all while in the same airport. In the end, my flight
was canceled and I returned to start.
5. Saturday, delayed again, this time on the runway. I sat in front
of a row of three howling little boys, one of whom kept kicking
the back of my seat.
6. Thirty minutes at home, I threw different sections of my closet
into the same suitcase and drove to Virginia to a lake house, where
a group of my friends was waiting. I shared a ridiculous raft that
had a built-in floating drink holder in its center. A rope stretched
from my raft to the dock like an umbilical cord; I dangled my feet
in the water, accumulating hydrilla
around my ankles. It was the first that I'd relaxed in days.
Wednesday, 17 July 2002
Strange timing. On my way to work this morning, I was stopped
behind a car in a sudden clot of traffic, and a car from behind
slammed into me. I didn't see her coming; I just felt the impact,
my body and head lurching forward in , the crunch of my gray metal being sandwiched
between their teal and white metal. From the way it sounded, and
from the way it felt, I thought my car had caved in on both ends.
But instead, the only damage I saw was a triangular chip of gray
fiber glass the size of a fingernail missing from the top of the
bumper. My neck felt stiff right away, but I was hoping that would
go away. I didn't mention it to the woman I'd hit or the woman who'd
hit me.
They were both nice, but no one was sharply coherent, just shaken
out of the morning daze. We exchanged numbers, and when I carefully
climbed back in my car, I was surprised to see that the piece around
my dashboard clock had become dislodged; I'd already forgotten that
the shove from behind had come with some power. I was surprised
again when, after arriving at work, I reached for my and saw that it had been turned upside-down and its
contents scattered on the floor.
A block away from work, I slowed past a much more serious freshly
made wreck. Though it would seem otherwise, today it's sunny and
blue.
My headache sounds like static, and I'm moving my body like a stiff
plastic doll. I sincerely hope that I don't have to wear a neck
brace again.
Tuesday, 16 July 2002
I took one of the last remaining seats at the front of the room
just before the first speaker took the stand. Two minutes into it,
I was forced to take out one of my contacts and store it in my mouth
for the duration of the public hearing, which would last two hours.
Besides making me reluctant to swallow, that meant the faces, the
bench, the lights in the ceiling would shift between blurry and
crisp, depending on how I tilted my head.
I had gone in support of green energy for North Carolina and was
surprised when everyone else had as well, even the people from industries
I thought would oppose it. I kept my good eye fixed on the transcriber
as he stared straight ahead and chewed his gum. I couldn't see his
hands; he was so still, it almost looked like he was doing nothing
at all.
It was good for me to go, to see a few concerned people, to listen
to their solutions. It's often I'm frustrated from assuming that
no one cares.
***
Last night a 24-year-old girl died in a car wreck, along with her
27-year-old brother. Apparently they were hit by a tractor trailer
while slowing for roadwork on the interstate that connects North
Carolina to California, the interstate that connects me to my office
in Durham. She lived in Raleigh, though I don't think I knew her
(Raleigh's not that small), but she worked in a restaurant where
I once worked, and she was seeing a guy I briefly dated several
years ago (Raleigh's not that big). I'm not sure why, but I want
my friends who knew her to tell me what she was like. And I want
to see a picture of her, so I know whether I'd met her. Strange,
trying to become acquainted with someone who's no longer alive.
Monday, 15 July 2002
I had my first job when I was fourteen. I think it was a friend's
idea to get a job, rather than mine or my parents'. I think it had
something to do with where I lived.
I moved there when I was twelve and have always considered it strange
and small—nothing there but a university and a couple of churches,
not even a grocery store. Houses, a small, flat brick school, an
old junkyard, a golf course, a gas station, a post office, and two
non-university-affiliated restaurants with grade C sanitation. Some
people call it quaint and safe, and they probably use the word friendly.
I spent my sentence there like a popcorn kernel on a hot pan, readying
myself to jump out and evolve.
During the summer months, just as the town began to drift off into
quiet boredom, 1,000 little boys came roaring in, shipped in from
all over the east coast to attend the country's oldest basketball
camp. Two weeks of basketball camp were followed by a blur of others—golf,
girls' basketball, soccer, volleyball, cheerleading, tennis—each
camp bringing with it different body types and personalities and
equipment, along with social stimulation for me and my friends.
Since I lived practically on campus, friends would camp out at my
place for the week, and we'd spend the warm evenings walking the
brick paths that zig-zag throughout town, playing video games at
the student center, and meeting kids our age. I almost never had
crushes on any of them, but my friends would always find one to
pine for the remainder of the summer. Stephanie's big love was Brian,
a skater with a bowl cut and a Vision Street Wear wardrobe. Sally
liked a basketball player named Corey and borrowed his last name
for her notebooks the following school year.
So the idea was to work in the cafeteria during the camps, shoveling
smelly overcooked vegetables into divided plastic trays, watching
the campers go past as if on a conveyor belt. We worked three meals
per day for minimum wage. Stephanie and I would zombie out of the
house at 6 a.m. for the breakfast shift, return to my house to sleep
until lunch, and spend our afternoons combing the campus until the
dinner shift. The summer weeks passed by in awkward two-hour segments
of freedom.
Neither of us actually liked working there. I had to wear my long
hair in a ponytail and encase it in a hair net; the combined smells
of the mop water, creamed spinach, and sausage made me queasy; and
I regularly found myself scooping dead flies out of the scrambled
eggs. But I guess it gave us a sort of affiliation with the camps,
with the foreignness we found so attractive, and gave us some money
to shove in the video game slots at the student center.
Apparently this is the week the teenage golfers swarm around my
old town. It's strange, thinking that some of them weren't even
alive during the time I was there, netted and aproned, dishing out
servings of grease. I wonder which unfortunate local kids have taken
my place behind the counter.
Sunday, 14 July 2002
Three hours of half-sleep, tangled in sheets in my muggy room,
my thoughts drifting through my head like loose puzzle pieces. I
repeated myself and convinced myself and found out later that none
of it made much , except for the phrase which recurred the most: I really
ought to get up now. When I finally sat upright sleepy-eyed,
Martin came in and told me about the young opossum who's been hanging
out by the screen door, asking to come in. I have a bad habit of
wanting to welcome such creatures, even if I know that ultimately
it would be bad for both of us.
I went to bed at a stupid hour last night, and I've been paying
for it since. Only now, when I should actually be climbing into
bed for the first time and final time today, do I feel somewhat
refreshed and ready to be productive.
Earlier I went to a cookout at an old friend's house where I saw
some friends from high school, most of whom are married and some
of whom have babies. The cookout was actually only a few yards from
my high school, and as I was looking for the right road, I went
too far and ended up turning around where the giant yellow buses
routinely drop off their loads. As soon as the building came into
view, I was surprised by how bad it made me feel, as if it were
a living creature that had somehow offended me, rather than just
an innocuous building.
***
Today I looked for the Back button on the TV remote. Occasionally
I feel inclined to copy and paste tangible things. Sometimes, like
when I've just spilled something, I automatically think of the Undo
function. That's pretty sad.
Friday, 12 July 2002
In this moment, there is nowhere to be. The opportunities I
had for this hour have expired and are going on without me. And
now that I'm here, in this space of free time that I work toward
tirelessly, I don't know what to do with myself. There are so many
things to do, yet nothing at all. So I'm just sitting here, somewhat
paralyzed, taking it all in.
I have a wrought iron bed frame that has tall posts and horizontal
bars. I've outgrown the frame; I'm ready to reduce my bed to mattresses
with maybe a modest metal shelf that pulls it off the floor, though
the horizontal bars are handy for cleaning my room. My clothes inevitably
work their way from my body to the floor to the bar at the end of
my bed before traveling the five feet to the closet. Right now they
are in that space, in transit.
I can hear the faint noise of the TV in the far back room. It's
odd how it's recognizable, though I can't make sense of any of the
sounds. And louder than that are the tree frogs, surging and waning
in some sort of incessant courting ritual. My cat is sitting on
the bed, staring straight ahead, at nothing. I wonder how much time
she spends doing that. Sometimes it's more obvious than others;
sometimes she faces the wall, her nose inches from it, her eyes
blank, as if to remind me that I regularly give her too much credit.
You know, what I really want is to have many lives, lives with which
I can be careless or experimental, so I can sample all of the existences
that attract me, so that I have time for moments of nothing without
feeling guilty or uncomfortable. Like everyone else, I am a million
people but able to be only one.
Wednesday, 10 July 2002
Tuesday, 09 July 2002
As I parked my car next to the curb in front of my house and
climbed out, a man I'd never seen before walked past me on the sidewalk.
He stopped and made conversation: hellohowareyou, fine, howareyoudoing?,
nothing unusual for this part of the country. But then he pointed
to the house next door (the one with the giant smiley face painted
on it and a fleet of used Volkswagens parked in its yard) and asked,
"Is that where you live?" "Um, no," I responded,
without offering further information. Then he pointed to my house.
"So is that where you stay?" "Uh, yes." "Yeah,
I thought so. I knew it was one of those," he said and continued
on his way. "Well, have a good day," he called.
***
I miss the predictions that involved house-cleaning robots and Jetson-style
conveyor belts. This
I don't want to be around for. (Incidentally, The Guardian
is considered a mainstream publication.)
Monday, 08 July 2002
When I was in Astoria, standing on the roof watching fireworks
explode in the air over Manhattan, I had no idea what you were doing.
Nor did I know exactly where you were when I watched one of the
Rockettes play Twister on that same roof, or when I rode home late
on the lonely G line to the warm clacking sound of the train and
the screams of air seeping from the brakes. You weren't with me
when I watched an outdoor play in East Village, or when I stood
over that crater of a graveyard where families wrapped arms around
shoulders and posed for pictures, where merchants sold t-shirts
and of the ghost buildings.
There, the parking tickets are expensive, the subway rodents match
the dark gray color of the tracks, and plastic bags dance on sidewalks.
Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon. I wasn't ready to leave, so I
delayed it until it was way too late to be in New York with a car
and 500 miles ahead of me.
By the time I got to Baltimore last night it was dark, but I'd noticed
that the skylines of New York, Philadelphia, and Wilmington were
faint or altogether missing, as if the buildings had been bleached
by the sun or sloppily erased. I was worried that it might be due
to smog, since it wasn't muggy enough to be fog or clouds. I found
out today that it was actually smoke
from the burning forests in Quebec, which had drifted as far south
as DC.
The drive was much longer on the way back, partly because I was
forced to exit for food rather than merely reach behind the seat
and fumble in the cooler for a sandwich. I eyed the exit-food signs
suspiciously, trying to avoid and food malls and greasy diners, rediscovering that
those are, in fact, the only establishments advertised along the
interstate.
I did stop at a Wendy's in Virginia for some caffeinated iced tea.
In an overt contradiction, an employee wearing a Confederate flag
baseball cap informed me that the restaurant didn't serve sweet
tea. I was disappointed to learn that sweet tea, rather than an
appreciation for the Confederate flag, was the sacrificial Southern
element just beneath the Mason-Dixon line.
Home at 3 a.m. Getting reacquainted is slow.
Wednesday, 03 July 2002
Eight cops were standing in my driveway when I got home from
work today, hands on hips and arms folded, filling in the spaces
between their haphazardly parked blue-and-white cars. Apparently
a man had broken into a car and passed out in it, his lifeless brown
boots sticking out of the passenger-side door. The car, an old Volkswagen,
belongs to my neighbors but occupies . Over a year ago, I watched as they pushed it down
the street, laughing and running along beside it, surprising me
when they parked it where they did. It hasn't gotten much attention
since then, until today.
I couldn't figure out why so many cops were necessary; at least
by the time I got there, the man was sitting quietly on the curb,
his hands cuffed behind his back, a leaf stuck in his hair. The
cops were all pretty young and had closely cropped hair and wrap-around
shades; bicycle cop even wore a bulletproof vest. They laughed quite
a bit and gave each other hearty smacks on their blue shoulders.
I watched the scene like a silent movie from the back room, and
then I traded my vision for a room with better sound. From there
I could hear both parties being obnoxious, and I left my post. Forty-five
minutes later, the man was uncuffed and stumbled off, and the cops
slowly rolled away.
***
As of tomorrow morning I will be out of town, so updates may be
sporadic. At the very least, I should be back on Sunday.
Tuesday, 02 July 2002
I saw the cardboard cube poking out of my mailbox even before
I got out of the car. My name, printed electronically on the outside
just under "Keebler Company," a box inside of a box, plastic,
tissue paper—I unwrapped the mysterious present layer by layer,
with no idea what it was or why it was sent to me. Actually, even
now I have no idea what it is. It's a disappointing little piece
of metal in the shape of two teapots connected by bars. On one teapot
is an advertisement for some cookies, and on the other, an ad for
a store in London. Did I order this? I couldn't have. I wonder if
I paid for it.
Perhaps I will receive the instructions tomorrow, hiding in a series
of Russian nesting dolls.
Monday, 01 July 2002
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