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1. I'm probably not going to get an A this quarter because I don't speak up in class. Not in the I-must-really-like-the-sound-of-my-own-voice way, anyway, that teachers seem to encourage by making class participation a third of your grade. Last quarter, I made it a point to say at least one thing each time. I went home exhausted; (It exhausts me that no one, no one understands that.) This time around they can shove it. I will absorb quietly and I will write and so what if I don't feel like verbalizing. So what.
2. Remember to love it. I can't recall where I heard this, but it stuck with me. Remember to love it.
3. That class last quarter? Poetry. The professor asked that each time we met, someone bring in their favorite sentence and share why it's a favorite. I had a field day with that one. Every Wednesday evening at 7pm, I fell in love in Evanston.
4. "You wanna know my favorite word?" she asked at the end of class once, adjusting her green-framed eye glasses. She thrilled me. I hung on every word that came out of her mouth. She said: Velleity. The condition of having the desire to do something with out having the actual will. I learned a lot about myself last quarter.
5. Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion. - from Seymour: An Introduction
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He asked each of us to talk about something we've read and liked, and why we liked it. The ice breaker game in the last class was to go around the room talking about where we came from. I liked this better.
My turn.
"-- and the story's so tragic but the writing so gorgeous. I can't imagine how long he took structuring each sentence...so gorgeous—it's gorgeous."
He nodded and looked at me further, eyebrows raised. In what way, he wanted to know.
Explanations.
How do you explain waiting in line for a smoothie, seeing cut up fruits behind the counter, having them remind you of the way your father cuts up yellow-red apples with a squarish knife and leaves them to brown on the plate as he eats them slowly throughout the hour as if forgetting they were there—how do you explain the tears that come of this? How do you explain sitting in the train reading a paragraph of your current book and having to pause to read and re-read that line about birds disappearing into the Yucatan sky, then making your eyes dance over furniture quickly so no one notices how they pool?
How to explain beauty?
In that moment, that bird-train moment, if someone were to ask you why you look intense, could you say, "This line—this one line." ?
Words. They are so much power and yet, there's a limit to what they can express. That or, the limit is in what we can understand about each other.
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It was my senior year of college, a day like any other day except it was a week before graduation, a mixed bag kind of week of glee and regret and nostalgia. I was walking alongside the central lawn, walking like any other day the past four years of walking to and from meetings, friends, class (always late). But it was on this particular day after class, after dinner, that I first saw them—the sidewalk lamps that lined the pathway along the lawn. Planted like palm trees, these tall, iron lamps that made me stop mid-step, look up, bring my eyebrows together. Was that always there? The answer was beyond me.
And I'm like that; I'm like that (always late). I see nothing, and then everything.
When people say they're a good judge of character, that, too, is beyond me. It's like, at first and sixth glance the paint may look black but tilt it a little, offer it to light, and it's actually blue-black; brown-black; deep purple; gun metal; raw red.
And people are like that.
You can't make the call until you see what happens when the light varies, until they're tilted a little, put before fire. When they change color before your eyes you wish, you blink twice and you wish, that it was just your own eyes that deceived you. Deception? Imperfection? Exonerate by semantics?
It's a funny game. Person A criticizes Person B. At some point Person B (or C or D, independently) directs the exact same criticism towards Person A. All behind closed doors, of course, because we all want to seem nice. It's a cycle of deja vu we're not waking from—won't wake from unless we bring in mirrors. But bring in the mirrors and what will happen is, in one collective breath, oh look how nice I look. Deception? Imperfection? Wake me up, it's September's end.
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There was a young man who had arrived at the Northeast Center angry and belligerent, as inclined to take a swing as you as not. He began showing up in Bill's studio and started to paint. Bill watched him become an artist, and gradually he stopped being at the mercy of his rages. He got well enough to leave the center and move to a group home. This is what he said to Bill before he left: "What is art, anyway, except not pounding on walls."
A Three Dog Life
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My father hoisted me onto the glass showcase even though my mother said not to. There was always new merchandise on display. Earrings were my thing, even at age 6, even if they were, for me, just for looking. I remember the plastic heart-hoop earrings- hot pink with the white outline stenciled along the border. I remember how they dangled from the silver hook, how exciting and adult they felt in my small hands. I remember asking my mother if I could keep them (rarely did I ask for things from her store), save them to wear when I'm 20, because surely I wouldn't come across anything so lovely again. "Pink? How about orange?" and she held up the orange twin so that I could see. I remember the wrinkle of my nose, her immediate laugh at my conviction. I had already made up my mind. I would grow up like her, bold yet unassuming, wear my hair dark and long, never sleep with it wet, scratch names of those I love on napkins while talking on the phone, always take the smallest piece of fish and never take the last ("I'm full," I'd say so no one feels bad, dropping the piece on another's plate), make great spaghetti, remember what each person doesn't eat and plan accordingly, laugh when there's pain. I would grow up and save those earrings- pink- to wear once it was time.
I went home this June. These are some things I found: refrigerator drawings; graded quizzes; diaries; more diaries; tangled friendship bracelets; Keroppi everything; a boxed puddle of colorful beads; heart-hoop earrings- pink.
My reaction was specific. I'm pretty sure I'll experience something emotionally similar on my wedding day, as hypothetical as that may be at this point. I can't explain it, but I'm pretty sure.
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