Monday, August 31, 2009
Bon (Paddleboat) Voyage
Sludge-green water the opacity of weak coffee slurps at the raft. We're in the bull's eye center of the lake. Dry land - safety - looms tantalizingly near in each direction, yet not close enough. The wind whips my hair out of my face and then immediately back into my eyes. The clouds race across the horizon. The birdsongs go silent.
We're drifting with the wind now. I let out a stifled scream. Or, it escapes from my lips: a reflex of fear. I don't need to be brave. I just need you to think I am. What if you judge me? I let go and gasp, "you...you have to steer us! We're going to crash!"
Your hand is sun-kissed a deep bronze, rather "Hollywood" for a white kid from North Dakota. You clench the rudder with a calm strength. Our course smooths out. It stabilizes. My erratic navigation is forgotten in an instant. I think the craft wheezes its sigh of relief.
"I told you we weren't going to crash," I meekly mumble through the smile I attempt to flash in your direction.
Our conversation picks up again with the wind. Rounding a bend in the shore, we pass a family of four fishing, or at least dressed down for the part. The youngest - a girl - might actually be wearing pink pajamas. Images of aquatic monsters vanish from my thoughts. Children couldn't frolic so near the edge if such water-dwelling beasts really exist, I reason to myself. "This is very reasonable," my subconscious agrees with myself since I don't see any crunched and bloody bones littering the shore.
No, the aquatic monsters aren't the issue. For all we know, Nessie is quite friendly. But those slurky, chirging, squeerlish water plants! I attempt to avoid gazing too closely at the brine lapping the sides of our craft. What might be hidden in those tangled knots of vegetation? Tentacles! Pinchers! Thousands of tiny, lacerating teeth!
We have so much to catch up on. Small talk first, then"what'dya think of so-and-so's new book," and finally, "have you heard from your ex lately?" Over the years we've both ventured to imagine what life would be like if we were nearer to each other - if we could have these conversations weekly, even daily (preferable on dry ground). I wonder if I should mention it now. Instead I make a joke.
"If this was 50 years ago I'd be wearing a dress!"
"And I'd be wearing a three piece suite!" you say.
We both crack up. You think you're hilarious for pointing out that I'd maybe have a big floppy had and a parasol. I think I'm smart for informing you, "no. That would be 80 years ago." To your credit, you agree with me.
Up ahead the dimpled surface catches my glance, the telltale sign of a patch of underwater foliage floating very near the surface. I flinch involuntarily. Reflexively.
"What would you do if I drove us right over that?" you ask with a good-natured smirk. (It's like you know the contrast between your teeth and movie-star tan would be blinding. Your smile is teeth-less, and therefore somehow softer.)
In the second it takes me to process your question I see we've approached within feet of the floating menace. You don't really believe I could be scared of such an inanimate glob of chlorophyll and cellulose, do you? More than the dark, even more than public speaking? Yes!
Abruptly, at the last possible second, we turn, and we pass the saturated tangle with inches to spare. These inches are measured from your side of our craft. I mark this significant detail as I realize I had forgotten to exhale. And, I had forgotten that your smooth hand was still guiding our voyage.
You saved me. The thing I fear most, and you don't even flinch as you stare straight into the swampy depths.
The wind picks up again. We chatter on again about beauty, hard work, and family grudges. Soon we safely land at the dock, all dangers a memory of the distant past. Life and limb are safe once again, and really always have been. On average, how many paddle boat accidents does one hear about on a yearly basis? In North Dakota?
I never was afraid.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Single White Female
Sometimes we played it for several days in a row, sometimes it would just be once a week. In that case, it would be the highlight of my week. I almost always won. Like many adolescent games it began with one player "it" (the "ghost") and all the others pretending to be as stiff as death. Two rules: dead people had to have their eyes open and the ghost was not allowed to touch anybody. If the ghost got you to crack up, you in turn were also made a ghost. The game continued until one dead body remained - that was me. Now, a decade later, I feel it's safe to let the secret out. Sure, biting down on the insides of my cheeks until they bled was one way to keep from smiling. But I had a single phrase I repeated that instantly gave me nerves of steel. There, now you know. If I told you anymore I'd have to kill you, metaphorically speaking of course.
Now, if dating had rules, what would they be? Hopefully "no touching" isn't one of them. But I jest. Perhaps there are similarities between love and child's play. The one who's right for me, the one who's "it," may at this very moment be wandering the "graveyard," passing by one after another after a thousand other people as each one caves...cracks...crumbles. The he finds me. I'm the last one left in the darkened gymnasium. Sitting up tall, legs crossed in front of me, I'm staring straight ahead. You killed my rabbit, I murmur silently to myself because trembling lips fastly turn a corps into a ghost in this game. "Rebecca, the game's over. You won." Still, I don't budge an inch. They always say that right at the end to trick you into moving. I won't loose that stupidly.
He shrugs his shoulders and walks away across the linoleum, each footfall sounding more faint until he's just a silhouette in the bright playground light as the west door swings open heavily. It closes and the gym is cloaked once again in its graveyard twilight. I'm too skeptical sometimes.
Appendix:
Thursday, August 6, 2009
A True Story From Real Life
I think I was right in the middle of my Great Wall album. Anyway, at some point I heard the front door open and Tyler said, "oh, my parents must be home from their walk." Almost immediately I heard that same beautiful voice with an attitude call out "Tyler, do you have a pretty girl over?" (This made me blush uncontrollably.) The pair of them came downstairs and Bernice took one look at me and asked "is it hot in here" (obviously noticing my pink face) "or maybe it's just because I was out walking," she said. Mr. and Mrs. disappeared up stairs and my breath came back in a rushing wind, draining the pink from my face as suddenly as it had appeared.
I thought it was over at that point. Flustered and a little bit on edge I babbled on about China as my ice cream melted into a giant lake of dairy-ness around the birthday-cake-island on my plate. Around 10 p.m., as if on cue, I heard Bernice call down from upstairs again. At this point her voice had such a complete Pavlov effect on me I'm sure I blushed just at the sound of it. "Rebecca, why don't you just spend the night? It wouldn't be a problem at all, and it's so late already!" Not sure if this was innocently thoughtful or suspiciously scheming, or a little bit of both, I stammered something about it not being too extraordinarily late yet and that I best be getting home tonight.
The rest of the details of the night are insignificant except for the befuddled state of my head. "How DOES she do it?" I nervously mused to myself the entire 100 miles back to Bismarck. I just know that next time I'll be ready. How? I'm not really sure at the moment - perhaps a Kevlar vest.
Monday, May 18, 2009
First attempts are always awkward
May 15, 2009 I decided to get over my fear of failure and at least start something, if not finish it. I have no idea where this is going, but I suppose that's the root of my fear. Do share thoughts/criticisms if you feel so moved. Danke.
The benevolent hour when the sky reveals neither time nor temperature has the greatest potential. All other hours somehow demand or withdraw their expectations so that our inaction either makes us guilty of squandering the day’s great potential or justifies our lives in lacking any great potential of their own.
This was a benevolent sky that greeted her.
Rolling over towards the light, she knew by the building’s stillness that everyone else still slumbered. The hour demanded no extraordinary or valiant action on her part. She had no sense of urgency, like on the mornings she awoke to a different stillness – a coffee-tinged stillness that meant the others had gone and she was late. She closed her eyes again.
The window was open and rain was falling gently so that a person could be wet through and through before he realized what it was about. It smelled like London but stronger because London was just a memory. This was all just a memory. What time was it? An eggyness wafted from probably next door, or downstairs, or the memory. Or London?
“It’s always raining in my memory of London,” she explains from time to time.
Waking up for real this time, she sits up, noticing it’s not raining here. But someone is cooking eggs, probably downstairs or next door. What a strange joke to be living here with only a layer of wood and sheetrock isolating one tenant’s life from another. Only a flimsy physical divider, but it’s enough to make them strangers. “And we’re all strangers.” She thinks about this a lot.
She’s at the sink now, filling a glass and swallowing the first deep draft. Outside she examines her morning sky for the time and temperature and notices neither. “Well, this is my morning,” she reasons after another swallow. Meanwhile someone else’s alarm startles them from dreaming. “Right, turn your cell alarm off,” she reminds herself. It would no longer be needed. (To be continued...)