August 24, 2011

Variations on a Rust Belt Theme

I have a propensity for repeating certain words. Mostly colors, adjectives that connote dystopias and adjectives and verbs that convey compression. Not a good propensity, as the only words worth repeating are the pedestrian ones. 

During third- and fourth-draft edits, the following keep coming up:

  • dun
  • sepia
  • drab
  • grey
  • rusty
  • barren
  • bleak
  • shabby
  • grimy
  • crumple
  • crinkle
  • rumple
  • crunched
  • powdery
  • battened-down (I know! How does ANYONE manage to forget they’ve already used this?!)
  • clods
  • divets 

Judging from this list, you might the book that takes place in the suburbs of some rust belt city. Really makes you wonder what the other 90,000 words are, no?

August 14, 2011
There’s a unremitting hive ensconced in my mind right now. Running would muffle it—if I stopped bringing along my iphone. Drinking feeds it, so a recent assignment on liquor cabinet essentials proved particularly nutritious. Sometimes I think I have edges, only to wake up with shadows.  In the half-full glass, the stories are in, the puppy is here, I don’t live in northern Virginia, a limpid August will soon become a bright-eyed September and this next weekend? I have absolutely nowhere I need to be. 

There’s a unremitting hive ensconced in my mind right now. Running would muffle it—if I stopped bringing along my iphone. Drinking feeds it, so a recent assignment on liquor cabinet essentials proved particularly nutritious.

Sometimes I think I have edges, only to wake up with shadows. 

In the half-full glass, the stories are in, the puppy is here, I don’t live in northern Virginia, a limpid August will soon become a bright-eyed September and this next weekend? I have absolutely nowhere I need to be. 

July 26, 2011

 

Things I know: 

  • 80082 is a lot of words. 
  • Candy-striped beets are much more fun to eat than candy-striped candy.
  • Plane rides can be fun when the planes are tiny and the sun is setting over pangean islands.
  • I tend to overpack the wrong things.

Things I don’t know

  • What percentage of 80082 words will make it into draft 4.
  • Whether it’s possible to grow other candy-striped vegetables. Like carrots.
  • Most of the names of the pangean islands. Which are essentially in my backyard once removed.
  • If I’ll ever learn which things are right for when. 
July 18, 2011

An Entomophile’s Delight

I was thinking about cocoons. 

As a kid, finding an abandoned one was

almost as exciting as a robin’s egg.

My housemate brought back chickpeas still

wrapped in filmy green. They looked like baby crawfish.

I haven’t shelled them yet. What if I don’t?

They will remain cozy and tumescent, dozing

most likely, in the cerulean bowl on the butcher block.

Remember the silk worm in James and the Giant Peach?

It never spoke, but it produced enough filament to 

fly a house-sized peach across the pond. 

I’m just waiting for those mulberry leaves to kick in. 

July 9, 2011

Summer slips light through my window

Fractured and breezy, inch-worm green. 

What a day to be on a computer, while

everyone decides, over paper tubs of 

soft-serve and new straw boaters that

life is beautiful. 

In other news, the third draft is *almost* done. With a new ending! Perhaps this one will stick. 

July 5, 2011

You know what are photogenic 100% of the time? Sea gulls, sailboats and the shoreline. Thank you, SoftArtisans, for making these photos possible. 

July 5, 2011
So, 98% of the time, my mother is 100% unphotogenic. Snap her paparazzi-style, though, and the other 2% comes out. 60% of the time, it works all the time. Especially on the Cliff Walk in Newport. Especially on the Cliff Walk in NewPort on a midsummer’s eve, after one squall and just before another.  100% of the time, it is immaterial, because no one loves their mothers based on their photogenicity.  

So, 98% of the time, my mother is 100% unphotogenic. Snap her paparazzi-style, though, and the other 2% comes out. 60% of the time, it works all the time. Especially on the Cliff Walk in Newport. Especially on the Cliff Walk in NewPort on a midsummer’s eve, after one squall and just before another. 

100% of the time, it is immaterial, because no one loves their mothers based on their photogenicity.  

June 25, 2011
In four days, three moving trucks will crunch into my mother’s driveway, and six men will curse the piano and that ridiculous sofa and the sheer amount of cardboard boxes required to hold 18 years. My sister’s job is to go through the photos (mine is books. Hello mildew! Hello Ms. Rumphius! Hello steadfast tin soldier!). My grandmother now wears Mephisto lace-ups and pleat-front khakis and even the occasional holiday vest, but back in the day, lady knew how to rock a sheath.  She still takes her scotch neat, though. 

In four days, three moving trucks will crunch into my mother’s driveway, and six men will curse the piano and that ridiculous sofa and the sheer amount of cardboard boxes required to hold 18 years. My sister’s job is to go through the photos (mine is books. Hello mildew! Hello Ms. Rumphius! Hello steadfast tin soldier!). My grandmother now wears Mephisto lace-ups and pleat-front khakis and even the occasional holiday vest, but back in the day, lady knew how to rock a sheath. 

She still takes her scotch neat, though. 

June 20, 2011
June 20, 2011

The Ties That Bound

Broken now. Or cut, I suppose. It feels odd to be entirely self-contained, a hingeless box, a nucleus alone. When I was younger, I used to assess my life through its three major activities: school, swimming, relationships. If one was going poorly, I’d comfort myself that at least the other two were chugging along, but having a great success in one didn’t mean I could ignore the others. Taking two seconds off my 100 fly did not erase the 67 in Algebra 11—but it tampered the sting. Arriving at a school dance giddy with hope and slowly inching up my tank top through the night wasn’t as painful if my English teacher’s comments about my most recent essay were still ringing in my ears. And so on. 

That summer before college, I stopped doing this. Now, the two areas that are going strong, the areas that are just me, just mine and tieless…sound hollow when I rap at them. Having so much isn’t as satisfying as having that one thing. The question is, do I shove all thoughts and memories of that one thing into the dustiest corner of the furthest shelf, or do I let it stay, and hobble my bicycle?