this is where we look for things

Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries

2.27.01 - 11:45:02

we hope she shows up. well...she may not show up, and we are aware of that possibility, but we do hope that she does show up. we are not sure, but we hope. are we talking about the girl who only drinks bottled water? maybe. but what you don't know is that she saves the bottles and fills them with tap water every night. no, not so you think it's fancy-shmancy stuff. reduce, reuse, and recycle. you don't know the first thing about her, even though this is a very small thing. but you do realize, don't you, that the big things are just a lot of very small things put together. she is skinny and her teeth hurt. there. she made it. now we do not have to wonder any more.

you can't remember if his name was really mr giovianni or if it was something similar and now you've read hawthorne's short story 'giovianni's garden' so many times that you wonder if you're borrowing. and now you're not even sure if that was really the title of the story but you remember the pretty poisonous girl. that's for sure. mr giovianni taught biology for half a semester before he left school to die from aids. of course they didn't tell you that. they would tell you that he had been in surgery and had a shunt placed in his brain. you can't remember why, exactly. they would maybe whisper cancer, but softly, so you couldn't tell where it was coming from. and in the end, they would tell you it was pneumonia, but it was almost an insult because you all knew by then about immune system suppression and opportunistic diseases and you all knew what pneumonia meant even if they didn't want to tell you.

you said, i copied the figures, and she said, the figures were copied, and you knew that she had never been an english major. not one that listened, anyway. it isn't always bad or wrong or even inappropriate. but this time, it is. you copied the figures. ok.

we were at a slumber party, i think. or it was just getting late. we were at leslie's house and the news was coming on and we let it play behind us without thinking. we were 15, 16, maybe. we ignored the television until we saw his face flash up on the screen and we knew him. what do they do with a picture that lets you know the news isn't a scholarship or first place at the swim meet or an eagle scout, finally, an eagle scout. they would use the same picture, handsome and solemn, if he'd won the science fair. i think. but you just know. somehow. and then we listened and they told us he was dead. he played the upright bass with us in orchestra. what happened, you see, was friends and a gun and some facts left out and an accidental, i guess, shooting. i never really knew differently. and then we went back to school and there was an extra bass stool and we remembered. because he was tall and shy in his own way and a little bit of a rebel. because he smoked outside during lunch. because he had dark eyes. because he had figured something out and was headed to college where he was going to "make something of himself." i remember all of this. i remember sitting on the floor and the shock of recognition. i could tell you his name but it would mean nothing to you and you would forget and i think, instead, i will remember it to myself. in middle school a cheerleader fell off the top of the pyramid and broke her neck. they watched her. later she died. they dedicated the yearbook to her. yeah. you don't need to know her name either.

down south it isn't just the accent that's different. it's the speed of things. does talking more slowly make the moments longer? we don't hurry often. does it stretch the good things or are we missing something, the hurry, the corre corre of the place we call 'up north,' though the truth is you can find it anywhere there's a skyscraper and money to be made. do they find something extra or does it just happen the way you move from dorm to apt to house to bigger house, growing to fit your space but never knowing what you added. only knowing that this time it will take longer to pack than the last time and next time it will take longer than this time. more doesn't always mean something.

you have learned a few things growing up. you have seen sacrifice. delayed gratification. the caring, the nurturing, always someone else, some other. but when you are curled in your bed, trying to sleep at 9 pm because the waking hours are just too long, you realize you have never seen a moment of selfishness, the time for 'me' and you don't really understand the workings of it. then sleep.

is it easier to love in the dark when things are hidden and you can't see and you're reaching out with these feelings to be a little less alone. is it easier when things are dark and frightening and you are searching for solace? or is it that the things that are hidden are the things you run away from in the day and now that you can't see them you can breathe and rest and feel. or do you love more in the daylight with the sun and the brightness and the traffic of rush hour, the constant stream of conversation on morning radio when you really, really, really want to hear some music.

there are two more things. well. more than two. but we have only so much time. you feel it when you are walking or sitting or trying to write a response paper about alan shapiro's poetry but the rush is too much, there are too many other words that need to be said, even small ideas, the memory of gluing fingers together with rubber cement, the way it felt to rip them apart. the other thing. when you have to take responsibility for something it is easy to try and mold the situation differently so that it really wasn't your fault, it would have happened to anyone, it had nothing to do with you, you are completely immaterial. easy. but the tricky thing is that when it's true, when it's not your fault, when there is nothing you could have done or not done or said or not said, you try to find it, the blame, the place where you made the mistake. you could have changed things, you say. it could have been different. our minds are perverse machines. so you will sit and ruminate and cogitate and speculate until you have forgotten the meaning of it all and in the end you find yourself praying for the answer even though you never believed in god. you thought. and in the end you will know that the scientific name for rainbow trout is Oncorhyncus mykiss and that it's probably not the leidenfrost effect that allows people to walk over hot coals. that schroedinger didn't really put a cat in that box. that t.s. eliot wrote the waste land in a mental hospital. that there is a bird in australia and maybe elsewhere called the thornbird and it sings only once in its life, the most beautiful song. it keeps it inside and one day it flies into a thornbush, it impales itself on one of the sharpest spikes. and then it sings once, before it dies, once, beautifully.

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!