Homecoming

Eight hours in a car. Eight hours in a car following one of the most painful experiences of my life. My body ached. My mouth hurt in new and interesting ways and a sore had found its way to the edge of my lip following hours of wrestling with wedges and instruments and stubbornly tight-set teeth on the part of my dentist.

I couldn't be happier.

I was surprised I didn't awake with bruises along my chin and cheeks. I did awake aching and tired after far too little sleep, to the sounds of tiny footsteps and young voices. With my hair pulled back, wearing cherry print pajamas and a favorite orange hoodie, I sat on the couch with my laptop, checked my email and met my friends' small son.

We watched the Doodlebops as he told me about the bear in his bag. His older sister grinned around her thumb, leaning against the recliner and staring at me from the corners of her eyes. I'd met her before – as a baby, as a toddler and now as a preschooler with a toddling little brother chattering away in a baby's voice about bears and books and falling down.

We came back for Homecoming, Blue and I. Her boyfriend came along for the ride, the eight-hour ride. Neither of us had ever been to Homecoming. Actually, we hadn't been back since graduation. Not much anyway. Half hearted plans for years, an email from friends, and suddenly, there we were. Here we are. Back to school.

"They have a tattoo parlor here?" Blue asked, looking at the advertisements shellacked to table over dinner, tomato bread and pizza so thick and deep she couldn't even finish the first slice, the beginning of our culinary tour of places etched into our memories and our histories. Our lives.

"It's a good thing that they didn't have it when we were in college. I'd have the Tramp Stamp now."

"Marvin, the Martian."

"Ass antlers."

Laughter gurgled across the table, bubbling, mounting, erupting with sheer delight at our own potential folly, our innocence, our youth.

Walking home, a little unsteady for the cheap pitchers of very good beer and uncomfortably full of cheesy goodness, we passed younger versions of ourselves on the street, lining up for bars. Younger versions of people who never could have been us. Girls in short shorts covered almost entirely by long silky shirts. High heels. Short skirts. The boys looked the same but for the button downs that had replaced worn Ts and the marked absence of sneakers.

"I don't remember dressing like that in college."

"I don't remember owning anything like that in college. In fact, I'm pretty sure I didn't own anything like that until last year."

We had spent the car ride, the road trip, reminiscing about the place we once lived, the people we once were. Bars and restaurants that had come and gone. Houses and boyfriends that had done the same.

As we walked through town, we continued to point out the ghost of places that had started to fade. As we walked through town, we felt old, going home as kids made their way out to the bars, the dance club, the hot dog cart that opened at midnight.

By morning, awake by seven, awake by eight, we moved beyond the "remember whens" to now. Working and walking. Kids these days. We checked the scores for high school football, cheering as my friend's students moved up in rank. Reading. Writing. City development. Real estate. Travel. Food.

"Is the Corner Grill open for breakfast? I want an omelet and tater boy fries."

A little of the college girl remains.


Tag: Homecoming

Heavenly

"This is the closest to heaven that I've ever been," I thought, standing there, in the dark, with a man who used to date a girl I used to know. I thought for a second and revised my opinion slightly, "This is as close to heaven as I've been on a sleepy Thursday night."

I swayed in the dark, yawning again into my cupped hand, and closed my eyes, letting the music wash over me.

The girl in front of me bounced, curls springing, in time to the music. She leaned toward the boy beside her and tilted her face. I stepped back, a little too close to the kiss. Her purse brushed against my skirt, the pompoms from my hem hitting my knees, the pompoms my sister hated, as I absently played with the beads.

"I forgot to dress like I cared," I said after we exchanged hellos, the man and I, after I jumped around a bit with, "I'm so glad I'm here."

"What do you mean?"

"I was wearing my work clothes [pompommed and beaded black skirt/white shirt] and then I put on this sweater [orange wool zip up hoodie] and flipflops [blue with purple stitching]." I clashed and shrugged as he laughed. I neglected to mention that I'd fallen asleep on the couch watching Designing Women, a show I didn't even know I could find on air, for 15 minutes that felt like a lifetime.

Waiting for Art in Manila to start, we sipped cold beer from long necks and shouted in each others' ears. We talked about TV. About Showtime and HBO. About "Tell Me You Love Me."

"He was on 'Boy Meets World,' you know."

"Who?"

"They guy whose wife wants a baby."

"Oh, you know Sennett was on 'Boy Meets World,' too, and you've seen Jenny's movies."

I nodded, trying to think of a single movie featuring sultry songstress Jenny Lewis. I knew her voice. I knew she'd acted but I didn't know her work. The noisy club meant I would have nodded to just about anything, heard or unheard.

A man in a porkpie hat leaned over the railing. I wondered briefly how I knew it was a porkpie hat. A few steps down, a pregnant woman leaned on the rail. After Grand Ole Party, I nodded to a girl in the audience, a girl with an inked star covering temple and cheekbone.

"That's the drummer/singer."

"She's an alternative Phil Collins," he shouted.

"That's a very small... genre," I observed, thinking the word "niche."

She played the tambourine, the bongos, and sang for Rilo Kiley. Adrianne Verhoeven, the lead singer from the first opening band played the trumpet, and I, well, I disappeared into a little bit of heaven. Into shifting crowds and beach balls filled with glitter. Into the smell of beer, of sweat and cologne. Into memories of concerts, of Bush and Fatboy Slim, Saint Etienne and the brothers Finn. The names bubbled in my tired mind, a concert a week for a year, eight years of shows. A 3 a.m. line for tickets and boys playing hackey sack with 40s in hand. Friends long gone. Into a sleepy Thursday night. Into the music.


Tag: Music

Dinner conversation

My brother's voice echoed softly in my own as I tried to listen, to think, to respond. To represent America at this table of international delegates with preformed opinions and gentle, if unapologetic, reproof.

"All we get in Canada is the news from Detroit," he said from the across the table. "In Ottawa, in Montreal, everywhere."

"Even when I lived close to Detroit, I got more than that," I protested. "I don't know why that's an American problem."

"It's not," he replied. "It's a Canadian problem and that's what we get for being neighbors. News from Detroit. We think a murder there happens around the corner."

I couldn't quite see his point or understand how to refute it. After long days in meetings, of taking notes and giving presentations, of staying late to update hundreds of charts to reflect the days' discussions, of finding out where to buy a tennis racquet and the closest Bath and Body Works (with directions), of losing breaks to answering questions, reviewing decisions and helping guide work on other projects, I was tired. Invigorated by the discussion but tired.

I wanted to say more, to defend more. I felt as American as baseball, mom and apple pie, but I just couldn't think. The underlying issue, I feared, was the bits of America that other countries imported. Not necessarily the best bits.

During my brother's stint in the Peace Corps, he lived in Guyana where people watched the Fresh Prince, Oprah and Full House daily. They assumed that all white people knew each other, were each other.

"Hey, do you know him?" someone asked a friend of ours, pointing at the TV.

"Not every white person, not every American... Hey. Wait. I actually do know him." The friend destroyed his own argument, seeing a familiar face, a high school classmate, on TV.

"I saw you on TV last night," another friend heard.

"No, that was Angelina Jolie. Thank you very much, but that was not me." This from a lovely girl with short red hair, glasses and heavily inked arms.

The news from Detroit. CNN. Friends and Full House, Gray's Anatomy and much of Hollywood, though nothing independent. Paris Hilton. Britney Spears. Not bad, but not... everything. We're not all Wal-mart and SUVs, suburbs and kids. We're not all granola, fair trade and organic. We're not all anything, but from across the table, "you" and "they" flew.

Popular culture. A diminishing middle class. Exploitation of workers. Unions. Social liberalism. The conversation spilled faster than the wine, though the wine poured freely. (American wines, brokered to maintain the peace between my New Zealand and Australian tablemates.)

We talked late into the night. We might have stayed later, despite another day of meetings, but for the need to turn over the table. To see the White House. The Washington Monument. The Capitol. To walk, to think more, to talk another day.


Tag: International

Stinkin Linkin update

Late last week, I got an email from a man I had never met. An email and a picture...



The crew of the Stinkin Linkin at the Bonneville Salt Flats.

"We made it happen, the hard way."

The message, just one little line, made my day. My weekend, really.


Tag: Stinkin Linkin

Monday nights and looming towers

"Who would have thought we'd be at the same social event as Richard Clarke?" I asked my brother. He had pointed out the former counter-terrorism czar as we waited in line.

"There's Clarke. Terrorism guy. What's his first name?" I craned my neck and rose on tiptoe, straining to see. "There... under the sign."

I caught sight of the man and nodded. "Richard. Richard A. Clarke."

"Right. I wonder who else is here that I don't recognize." We knew Clarke on sight, having attended a reading of his latest book, but as for everyone else, it was a question to which we'd never know the answer.

Given the nature of the program and the venue, chances were that we'd find most of the audience rather interesting if we'd ever had the chance to talk.

This unique presentation is based on [Lawrence] Wright’s recent bestseller, The Looming Tower. The Washington Post already raves that it's a journey worth taking. According to the New York Times, "More than a linear narrative about the formation of Al Qaeda, the show is an informal scrapbook of Middle Eastern politics and culture seen through a Westerner’s sharp, informed and sometimes sorrowful eyes, complete with visual aids in the form of slides and video clips."

College students and the former counter-terrorism czar. An elegantly dressed woman in her 40s jumped the line, bringing her husband with her. A white-haired pair of women in sequins sent them back to the end of the line. The performance wouldn’t start without us and we all paid for tickets. Most of us anyway. No one was more entitled than anyone else.

At the end of the performance, President of the Center for National Policy and former congressman from Indiana, The Honorable Timothy J. Roemer facilitated a question and answer session with the writer, the presenter, the performer. Questions longer than two or three sentences needed to end in “And aren’t I smart?” Not everyone adhered to this rule, but Roemer held himself accountable. He and friends had seen the performance over the weekend and he wanted to ask questions, arranging for the special session after Monday’s performance.

The show carried us on a journey from New York to Egypt, Saudi Arabia to Oklahoma. It covered dogs and chicken, women and war. The Carpenters juxtaposed with calls to prayer, and through it all, terror and al Qaeda reigned.

In the elevator, a woman laughed.

"It's your flip flops," she said by way of explanation or apology. I never quite figured out what. "Do you remember those girls at the White House? People thought the world was going to hell."

"I was wearing heels earlier, but I couldn't quite walk." I had walked miles to get from work to home, home to metro, metro to the Kennedy Center. I wore a skirt and blouse but had lost the shoes en route to the performance.

She laughed again as she strapped another necklace around her already bedecked neck.

"There's no reason to do that to your feet."

I felt a little underdressed but not markedly so as patrons' garb varied from sequins to shorts, ball caps to something just short of ball gowns. It was the Kennedy Center on a Monday night. Anything went.


Tag: Lawrence Wright Kennedy Center

Dixie Diva / La Notaria

By NOLA Celeste

Nearly very day on my way home from work while driving towards Chartres Street (that's "Chaaah-truh" to the uninitiated but "Charters" to the wise) in an attempt to find a parking place somewhat near my temporary French Quarter abode, I pass a strip club called Dixie Divas.

Dixie Divas is an off, off, off, off Bourbon Street strip club. Unlike its much fancier cohorts, Rick's and the Hustler Club, who boast buxom blondes with DDD chests and Size 4 waists, the Dixie Divas is a place where strippers go to die.

* * * *

Nearly every day at work I notarize something: the appointment of an agent for service of process for one of our subsidiaries…a regulatory application… an unclaimed property affidavit. Louisiana attorneys are permitted to become notaries without sitting for the Notarial Examination. All you have to do is run around to about 50 state regulatory agencies for various signatures and then find a Louisiana Supreme Court Justice who is actually at the office to sign your commission.

Nearly every day around 6:30 p.m., the same girl is slouched by the front door of Dixie Divas. As far as I can tell, she has three outfits. Sometimes I see her in green hot pants with a matching low-cut frilly top. Other times she is decked out in head-to-toe gold lamé, even down to the strings on her "string-up platforms." Every once in a while she wears a Brittney Spears at the VMAs type-outfit, including the fishnets. Her stomach looks distended, but not in a pregnancy sort of way.

* * * *

The first time I notarized something I felt important. I even remember what it was – the formation document for a Louisiana limited liability company. The coolest part about being a notary is the silver seal embossed with my name, "Attorney-Notary" and a pelican (taken from the Louisiana state flag). It's a lot heavier than you think, and to really make an impression you have to squeeze very hard.

Once you have notarized hundreds of documents, however, and particularly after you are asked to notarize 43 Florida DHHS regulatory applications in one day, the job of Notary Public becomes a lot less glamorous. After this point, you somehow no longer have it in you to squeeze your seal quite as hard, causing it to inflict the faintest impression of tiny bumps on the last page of the application.

I wonder how my doorframe friend felt the first time she got on stage. It probably was not at Dixie Divas (although it may have been if she was new to town and had a serious drug problem). I wonder if she felt important as eyes stared lustfully at her. I wonder if it is a lot less glamorous after your 100th dance…After you really start to resent being there and aim to make just the faintest impression that will give you enough dollar bills for your next rent payment. (I will leave out a crude joke about having to "squeeze very hard" at Dixie Divas.)

* * * *
There is a really nice lady in our Regulatory Services department named Linda who is always asking me to notarize something (she was responsible for the 43 Florida DHHS applications). The first time she wandered into my cube with a stack of documents sporting "Sign Here" and "Notarize" flags with tiny red arrows, she was almost bashful. "Do you mind notarizing these for me? I heard you are a Notary," she said, with a huge wishful grin on her face. "Of course," I said, pulling out my heavy seal and ID stamp. Now she just walks into my cube and, with a regretful frown, plops down a stack of documents with an "I'm so sorry" post-it note on them. She is still nice enough to affix the "Notarize" flags with the tiny red arrows on the proper pages, however.

I can imagine some really nice guy in town for a bachelor party, too broke to pay the cover charge at Rick's or the Hustler Club, wandering his way down to Dixie Divas. Doorframe girl, new to the profession, spots him from across the room and thinks to herself, "He looks nice."

"Would you like a lap dance?" she whispers bashfully.

"Um…yeah," he says with a huge wishful grin on his face."

Fast forward: 15 years later.

A flip of a coin and that nice guy turns into an obese drunk with whiskey breath. He wanders in and she wanders over. "Would you like a lap dance?" she says half-heartedly. "Yep," he says, without being sorry. This time she has learned to place dollar bills under strategic places on her outfit . . . all they are missing is the tiny red arrows.

* * * *
On my Notary ID stamp, right below my full name and Louisiana Bar Roll Number, it states "My Commission is For Life."

The strippers at Dixie Divas are also commissioned for life, except for the fact that their lives are pretty much over.

"You can run all your life, but not go anywhere" – Social Distortion: Ball and Chain


Tag: New Orleans

Tired and happy

"Are you ashing in my plant?" asked the hostess.

"Yes," replied her boyfriend, the host. "I didn't think it would be a problem."

"It is a problem. Do you want an ashtray?"

A beer can sufficed.

At the time, nobody thought to question why we were standing at the screened window, sharing a cigarette at three in the morning, and ashing into a plant. I had already won and lost at poker, beating the boys in a long, low-stakes game. A girl curled up under a blanket on the couch, a man stretched out full in a recliner and the hostess unfolded a futon.

In the recliner, we quizzed each other with wine-spotted trivia cards. At the table another hand of poker turned into just one more. Chocolate crumbs from the lopsided and delicious "very special cake" dotted the plates, the felt, the floor.

I would awaken to a cool breeze from the window, roll over and tug on a blanket. I wouldn't think to close the window. I wouldn't think to get up for my jacket, to get up and go home until much later. After crawling into the hosts' bed and chatting for a while with my friend from college, her boyfriend fetching us water. After cleaning up. After walking and metroing and walking some more for cheesy, greasy goodness at the American City Diner.

Tired, so tired. And happy.


Tag: Friends

Over beer

Last night, over beer with friends, I introduced a new philosophy.

"Basically, I figure there's three groups of people in the world," I started. "There's me. There's the people I like and the people I don't like."

The friends laughed as I tried to explain.

"Obviously, there are different levels in each category, but basically, the important thing is to make yourself happy. Don't do anything that would hurt yourself or hurt others and don't worry about the opinions of those people you don't like."

I hadn't quite worked out the kinks. I hadn't tried to articulate any of it before, this train of thought that I found myself riding. I needed to think on it more, to figure out what to do with people I didn't know yet - treat them as people I like unless/until I don't? What about people I did know who just didn't register as "liked" or "disliked"? The philosophy definitely required more thought but the more we talked, the more it developed.

"Growing up, my mom used to ask, 'What will people think?' whenever I did anything," a friend said. "It's ingrained."

"But it doesn't matter what people think. You don't get a gold star at the end of the day. You don't get bonus points when you die for living up to other people's standards."

Easier said than done, but it seemed a worthy aspiration over beer with friends on a Friday night, those who fit into the category of "people I like."

I wouldn't do anything stupid. I wouldn't do anything that might hurt myself or others. I would try not to care about the opinions of anyone other than a select group of those I liked.

I would enjoy the night, the beer, the conversation. Jeans and a t-shirt. Seeing a friend happy in a new relationship. Talk of books and men and travel. Life. We went to a pool hall and didn't play pool. It was the perfect end to an imperfect week and all my stress melted in the bottom of a pint glass.


Tag: Friends

Into the Wild

My heart broke a little last night. It wasn't a man... I take that back, it was man, several men, in fact, who made me feel perfectly wretched. Emile Hirsch and Eddie Vedder, Jon Krakauer and Sean Penn, Christopher Johnson McCandless. Heartbreakers all.

I almost missed "Into the Wild." I wasn't sure I could or would leave work on time, and then I didn't. I went anyway to see if I could get a seat. I'm glad I did. It would have been a shame to miss this movie because of work.

INTO THE WILD
Based on a true story of one young man's tragic "return to nature." After graduating from Emory University in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters that shape his life. The film stars Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Hal Holbrook, Catherine Keener, Jena Malone, Kristen Stewart, Vince Vaughn, and Brian Dierker.

Heartbreaking. The word kept surfacing, niggling and wiggling and jiggling inside my head. I wanted to cry, though not for the reason one might expect: the tragic "return to nature." I wanted to cry for a little boy lost and the man who found himself on the road and in the woods, the world he discovered, for the people left behind, the lives that kept going in spite of themselves.

The movie was long and slow, painfully, inevitably moving toward tragedy. I couldn't stop watching. It hard and sad, worth every miserable second. And it was miserable (though only because it was so well done). There were so many "good byes" in the movie, so many people hurt and abandoned in the young man's "adventure," not the least of all McCandless himself.

The movie was tragically beautiful. Accompanied by Eddie Vedder's worn denim voice, the sounds of nature, and a never-ending stream of literary references and quotes, Hirsch (as McCandless) canvassed the United States (and a little bit of Mexico), hitch hiking, train hopping and hoofing it. Working a little, walking a lot and living life fully.

The scenery was incredible. The shots incomparable. It made me long for the open road and my camera, to consider my own choices in life and remember Socrates admonition that an unexamined life was not worth living. McCandless, an avid reader, looked to Tolstoy, London and Thoreau for inspiration, and one could easily find motivation in the words of the authors he adored.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
- Henry David Thoreau

My own words failed me as I left the theater. They fail me now. Thoreau's words fill my mind, my broken heart, as well as those of London.

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
- Jack London


Tag: Movies

Dinner and a movie

The dynamic duo took a turn Wednesday night as I found myself eating a pesto pasta salad out of a plastic container at a screening of The Heartbreak Kid.

"Now remember," I advised, "don't try to kiss me. There's too much garlic."

My friend laughed as she handed me paper towels from work and a plastic fork.

"I know you'll be tempted."

"Of course, it's a comedy... a romantic comedy."

THE HEARTBREAK KID
Single and indecisive, Eddie (BEN STILLER) begins dating the incredibly sexy and seemingly ideal Lila (MALIN AKERMAN). Fearful that it may be his last chance at love and happiness, with the encouragement of his father (JERRY STILLER) and his best friend (ROB CORDDRY), Eddie proposes to Lila after only a few weeks. However, while on their honeymoon in sunny Mexico, Lila reveals her true beyond-awful nature and Eddie meets Miranda (MICHELLE MONAGHAN), the woman he believes is his actual soul mate. Now Eddie must keep his new, increasingly horrid wife at bay as he attempts to woo the woman of his dreams.

I wrapped the long noodles around the plastic tines, dropping pesto-tinged strands in my cleavage, and laughed my garlicky way through the film.

Directed by the Farrelly brothers (Shallow Hall, There's Something about Mary, Kingpin, etc.) and starring Ben Stiller, the film seemed like mind candy and a decent midweek break from the reality of life and work. It didn't fail to please with physical comedy, slapstick humor and a bit of the obscene with a touch of truth providing a firm foundation.

The fear of commitment. The other side of people we thought we knew. The secrets that we keep. It reminded that sometimes we know when we're with the wrong person, when we're settling, and sometimes we know that we're not giving a relationship enough of a chance. For the most part, though, it just made me laugh.

"The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them," Moliere once wrote. One might see a bit of himself, of herself, in the characters, but sometimes, though, amusement is enough.


Tag: Movies

Working too hard

An eight-car train. I generally only see them in the morning, Orange line train in the direction of Vienna, but last night as I left the office, I saw nothing but eight-car trains on the board, eight-car trains heading home.

I walked toward the end of the platform, away from the escalator, away from the people waiting. I wanted to sit, to read, to zone out for a while before getting home, stripping the bed, hitting the laundromat, remaking the bed and hanging the clothes, before making dinner, before unloading and reloading the dishwasher, before losing the to the shackles of growing up.

I found a seat on the second car from the end and I read, finding the rhythm of my Russian literature, finding the humor and the storyline. I lost myself in the exhaustion of a long day without accomplishing anything and I read, lulled by the rocking.

Sometime, someplace, between here and there, somebody sat down next to me. I didn't much notice, my nose in the book and the fugue of fatigue fogging my mind. Dimly, I grew of a seatmate but I didn't really notice even when he sat beside me. Or she sat beside me. I missed the sex, the age, the dress.

I read, lulled by the rocking, the exhaustion of a long day.

Every few stops, I looked up and marked my progress. Closer to home, ever closer to home. Federal Triangle. Federal Center SW. Capitol South. I put my finger between the pages and looked at the person next to me, busy highlighting a document in her lap.

It was a woman.

I purposely avoided the name at the top of the page, it wasn't my business. I glanced up at her face, preparing to excuse myself at the next stop and paused. Dirty blond hair pulled back, a bit of a profile, I nudged her arm and she looked up. Confusion melted into stunned recognition that matched my own.

"We work too hard," she said and gave me a hug.

I was sitting next to a friend, a good friend, a girl with whom I've been camping and shopping, drinking and dancing. I was there on her birthday - I gave her flowers and a bracelet. I was there when she entertained her boyfriend's friends. He was out of the country; she made us dinner. She's got a stack of my movies and a couple of my books. Apparently, we shared the seat for nine metro stops.

I was sitting next to a friend and neither of us knew it.

We work too hard.


Tag: Metro

Exhausted

So tired. I awoke exhausted and never recovered. The weekend, the wandering, placid, no place to be, nothing to do weekend, filled itself from dawn's early light until I passed out on the couch.

I learned how to make madeleines, burning every knuckle on each hand and steadily advancing on a devious plan to look better by comparison, otherwise known as fattening up the people I love with experimental baked goods. For myself, I wandered through Eastern Market and Dupont farmers' market – picking tomatoes and fresh greens, apples, pears and cheese.

We walked to the Lincoln Memorial and halfway back. We walked to Dupont. We walked so much I could barely stand and then I walked some more. Back to the market for the sixth or seventh time in two days to pay for the dresser I decided to buy on the way home from the bookstore. To my brother's apartment. To the grocery store. Home again.

More standing for the brownies that required chopping and melting, mixing and whisking. The frosting took more than an hour, mixing brown sugar, butter and cream over low heat, brought to a boil. I grated zucchini. I seeded and chopped dozens of cherry tomatoes in an array of colors, added quinoa, lime and cilantro, making a salad. I stood until I couldn't stand any more. I delivered the brownies and crashed on the couch.

Between the walking and the baking, the shopping and the crashing, there were things that I would keep to myself. I did too much. I did just enough and I awoke tired.

By the time I thought about lunch and discovered it was closer to dinner, I realized that I had chosen not to decide between movies. I went home, changed my shoes and walked with a friend. For two hours, we walked through the city, pointing out the White House to a pair of men, Chinatown to a pair of girls.

I came home to dinner of a tomato and fresh feta cheese. A movie. A book. And I crashed, deliciously exhausted.


Tag: Weekends

Decisions

To movie or not to movie, that is the question. Though, if the answer is "to movie," then which movie should I see?

THE HOTTEST STATE

Days before his 21st birthday, William (Mark Webber), an actor, meets and quickly falls madly in love with Sara (Catalina Sandino Moreno), a seductive yet elusive singer/songwriter. The film follows William from a Lower East Side tenement to a Mexican hotel room to a snowbound weekend in Connecticut to a sweltering homecoming in the hottest state of all – Texas – in the pursuit of Sara. His stubborn and sweetly innocent quest to find someone who loves him as much as he loves her may not lead to happiness, but surely leads to newfound maturity.

I read the novel, written by Ethan Hawke. I think I remember that I kind of liked it. I identified with it, in any event – of loving someone who doesn't feel the same way. Calling. Not calling. Reading into every pause or word or phrase. The craziness of it all.

DECEMBER BOYS

A story of four orphan teenagers growing up behind the closed doors of a catholic convent in outback Australia. For years the boys watch the younger orphaned kids leave with their newly adopted parents, and have finally come to the realization their time may never come. The Reverend Mother gives the boys something to look forward to by sending them to visit the seaside for the first time. Their long awaited vacation doesn't turn out the way they planned until they meet Teresa and Fearless, a young autocratic couple who would make the perfect parents. Now as grown men, they reflect back on the '60s when, as boys, they spent their first tumultuous summer by the sea, as they sabotaged each other's efforts to be the 'chosen one'--only to discover that the real meaning behind what it is to be a family. The film marks Daniel Radcliffe's first major role outside the 'Harry Potter' character.

As for December Boys, well, I know nothing about it, which means I don't have expectations of the film other than comparing it to Australian flicks that I already know and love, such as Muriel's Wedding; The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Romper Stomper.

Then, there's the Harry Potter tie; though, I haven't seen all of the movies and may be able to see Daniel Radcliffe as something more or less than his famous character.

I must decide before three or decide not to decide and let the time pass, relegating myself to home after work or working too late or making plans with friends between now and then. To bake. To read. To write. Trivia at Fado? Cleaning at home?

A number of friends have recently questioned their decisions in life, wondering at the seemingly small choices that have led their life to where they are today. Would they be married? Living in the Midwest? Fabulously rich and happy, miserably impoverished, just scraping to get by? As we age, as we reflect, we can see the choices we've made that didn't feel so much like choices at the time. Seemingly small decisions that set our life on a whole new course.

Granted, choosing one film over the other or no film at all won't make a difference. The fact that I have a choice in films is part of my life and the decisions I have already made.

I figure, when my friends start to wonder "what if," that I'd be here or someplace very similar, even if I had headed down a different path. I'd be the same girl, the same woman. My head only really works one way. The same with my heart.


Tag: Movies

Back to the blue-bucks

I slipped into a pair of jeans, the ones with the patch pockets and the tag that scratches, the ones I can remove without unbuttoning, and a fading pink T-shirt. I thought about a sweater. The news predicted temps in the 70s but at 7:35, it wasn't quite there. Flip flops. Market bag. Book.

Halfway there, I reconsidered the sweater I left on the shelf. Rubbing my arms, I kept walking, picked up the pace. I was practically running by the time I reached the building.

The line wrapped around the table and almost to the glass doors. Chafing my arms again and grateful to be inside, I joined the queue of "Rebuild Eastern Market" t-shirts and wriggling toddlers, people with one foot still in bed and hair to match. Ponytails and ball caps, strollers and babies in pajamas.

Behind the counter, behind gleaming stainless steel and brand new register, a gray-haired man shouted, "An order of blue-bucks!" and so it began.

The line moved quickly, relatively quickly, slower than in the past but fast enough. I read my book. I kept an eye on the wandering toddlers behind me and pointed out the girl by the fish case, watching a man squeegee the glass.

The communal table filled and emptied. Voices muted by pancakes and syrup, bacon and grits and rising again in conversation and laughter. The woman with the wandering daughter wandered herself, hugging friends, kissing cheeks, exchanging promises to call and meet for coffee talk.

I tried to keep the names straight in my Russian novel, each character with at least two names, sometimes three, but as I approached the register, I gave up, put the book away and waited. Familiar with a ritual of order, drink first, then food and pay. Down the line, head up, repeat the order. Alert. Attention to questions. Here or to go? Butter? Cup for syrup?

"An order of blue-bucks for here!"

Behind the counter, voices snapped. The man in the red apron, the man responsible for flow control, for figuring who would get served and where they could sit, the man who determined when you were done, stopped next to me.

"This is new building," he explained. "In the old building, no fighting. Here, they fight."

He shook his head and moved down the line, counting empty stools and clusters of people waiting. The line still stretched toward the door, constant and hungry.

"What did you have, sweetie?"

"Blue-bucks."

"For here?"

"Yes, please."

As I waited, I discovered a second, shorter line: the people who stepped to the end of the counter to express their thanks and well wishes.

"Butter?"

"Yes, please, and thank you so much."

The plate, the red tray and steaming hotcakes with a dollop of quick-melting butter almost brought a tear to my eye and a catch to my voice. I ladled syrup onto the plate and went back for a fork and knife. I had forgotten part of the routine. In the almost five months' absence, since the fire, I had lost a bit of the pattern, a bit of the plot. I almost kicked myself but realized that I'd always had to go back for plasticware.

At the communal table, a man wore a t-shirt from a company where I used to work. I stared, trying to figure out if I knew him, if he was there in the hay days of company cruises and drinking the corporate Kool-Aid but soon lost interest, reverting back to the steaming hotcakes and the Russian novel.

Plump, sweet berries burst against the buttery, syrupy almost rough texture of buckwheat. A stack three high and almost the size of the plate. The desire to eat quickly waged war against that to savor every bite. I alternately gave into one and then the other.

Behind me, the line stretched toward the door. A t-shirt made me laugh. "You looked better on MySpace." I doubted the same of its owner. He looked just fine in real life. The communal table emptied and filled. I finished my pancakes, eating more than I wanted, eating more than I needed, unable to stop.

Outside, the picnic tables were filled. Summer faded into angled sunlight and blustery wind. Fleece and jeans dotted the market; the tables were filled with tomatoes and apples, zucchini and pears. As I walked in the dappled sunlight, I thought, "This is home."

The Market Lunch at Eastern Market has reopened.


Tag: Eastern Market Market Lunch Breakfast

Shutting off

Leaning in through the open window of my Wrangler, I picked up a book and read. Beside me, money poured into the tank. Black gold. Texas tea. Refined, of course, to feed the American dream. I glanced back to watch gallons and dollars tick into a blur and looked back at the book, longing for another page or two.

The tank shut off. The hose stopped feeding my car. I looked at the numbers and realized that I had a gallon or two to go until full. I propped the spigot open and turned the page. Ounces and cups, pints and quarts rolled past but not as fast as the dollars.

Suddenly, I heard a gurgle and turned. Gas poured from the open spigot and sluiced down the side of the Jeep. Splashed onto the pavement.

Throwing my book aside, I reached for the nozzle and pulled it out, still streaming. Gasoline spilled from the car, from the hose, tumbling onto my bare legs and pooling under my almost bare feet.

An Olds pulled up on the other side of the tanks. Through greasy glass, I watched the driver turn off the engine, a cigarette tucked between his lips, inches of ash hovering in the space between wheel and mouth. In a panic, I looked down at my feet and back at the smoke filling his car. I ran to the booth.

"Yeah?" drawled the attendant.

Glancing over my shoulder, I stuttered, "Gas... it just flew..."

"Gas doesn't fly," I thought and started again, "There's been a spill. I'm sorry."

"Thanks," she called through the glass as I turned, making sure that my Jeep hadn't ignited into a ball of flame.

I climbed into the driver's seat and started the engine nervously, wary of sparks and the pool of liquid cash lying under the body of my car.

I forgot that I meant to wash my feet, my legs, and carried the smell of gas, of truck stops and lawnmowers, into my apartment. Later, leaning into the car to grab a parking pass, I caught the scent again, along the back of the car near the cobwebs and dust, in the driver's seat. I wondered briefly what had happened to the shutoff valve.

Much later, after a movie, after the scent had faded, I padded barefoot to my bedroom to change into pajamas. I glanced up at the ceiling, dropped a bit from the recurrent flooding from upstairs. The blossoms of mold seemed to stay, to stop growing in any event. I climbed over the dehumidifier and stepped into a puddle of purified water.

In confusion I looked at the floor, at the machine rumbling obliviously, back at the shining floor. I tugged at the string of a dress, dangling from bed to tile, and wrapped it around my finger, droplets falling from my hand. I pushed at the machine and it rolled easily, water splashing to the tiles below. I turned it off and tugged on the bin. More splashing.

Realizing that I couldn't carry it to the bathroom, I opened the doors leading outside and heaved, water sloshing over the sides, onto my feet, the floor, toward the door. Most made it outside. Some came back in. I put the bin back in the machine, restarted the dehumidifier and locked the doors.

I stood for a minute, looking at the machine and wondering what happened to the shutoff valve, the automatic shut off valve, the shut off valve with the nifty little light that had never failed before. I thought of the gas. I thought of bad things coming in threes. I wondered if it started with the flooding while I was on vacation and if I might be done. I wondered if another valve would fail, something I couldn't or wouldn't catch.

I thought of the glass I'd kicked in the living room, broken glass and cheap white wine pooling on the tiles. I thought of the dishwasher leaking hot soapy water into the kitchen, one of an endless list of repairs. My mind wandered as I considered the songs that looped endlessly through my days and nights, tangled with my memories and dreams. Of drinking too much and talking too much and crying without stop. Of reading 'til the sun rose. Of sleeping past noon. Of getting in my car and driving until I saw the left coast.

Shaking my head, I grabbed the pajamas and sidestepped the puddle. Only time would tell.


Tag: Valves Leaking

Holy naked Viggo, Batman

It took a while for my heat to slow to a normal, utterly sedate tempo, to something more suited to Muzak in my dentist's waiting room than a bit of techno in my heart. Most of the ride home, in fact, but it probably didn't help that I started a piece of Russian literature on the ride; the cadences evoked the rhythms of the movie I just left and started the dance anew.

"Holy naked Viggo, Batman," ran through my head. "I just saw Mortensen's penis."

I heard the word "genitalia" on the platform and figured the speakers, the men waiting for a Red Line train in the direction of Glenmont, had just seen the flick. It wasn't the nudity so much as the context that set my heart racing and inspired that note of wonder in their voices. The action, the blood, the balletic violence of the scene interspersed with humor and disgust couldn't fail to earn comment.

Nevertheless, it was only a small part of the movie. Not you, Viggo. You were lovely, but Eastern Promises would stand on its own merit as a story well told, with or without full frontal (back, top, bottom and side) nudity.

Russian never sounded so lyrical to my untrained ear. I never wanted so much to know more than "do svidaniya" (good bye), to understand more than the translation at the bottom of the screen and the culture behind it.

David Cronenberg's follow-up to A History of Violence involves a Russian chauffeur (Viggo Mortensen) who doubles as an undertaker for the mob, a London midwife (Naomi Watts), an infant born of rape, an incriminating diary and a kindly old restaurant owner (Armin Mueller-Stahl) who is not remotely what he seems. - NPR

The eternal draw of the bad boy intensified by veins of ice and vodka, a body covered in tattoos telling a history of violence and the History of Violence star and director of the same once again formed an incredible team, forging an unforgettable story.

Murder and intrigue, suspense and romance filled the screen and the hours that slipped quietly, violently, into night, into a racing heart and the prolonged flashing techno in my dreams.


Tag: Movies Eastern Promises

Just super

"I really should start this over," I thought. That and "Lois Lane's awfully dressed up for a day at the office."

I think there might have been a plot development to explain the sequins but I really wasn't paying attention, thus the need to restart the movie for the third time in two days. I just don't have the attention span for a movie at home.

To be fair, I started working first and played the movie for background noise. I should have just gone with the Plain White T's or maybe some jazz, but I'd been trying to watch Superman Returns off and on for a couple of weeks. I could have just shut down the computer but when I left the office at six, I knew that I had work to complete before my morning meeting.

"Attention passengers of the Orange and Blue Line trains in the direction of New Carrollton and Largo Town Center..."

I stopped listening. I knew the train was delayed. I knew the train was delayed for some time. The board indicated that a train would arrive in four minutes. Three. Two. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The time soon dropped from a second train as well. I buried myself in my book and ignored the fact that I had talked and walked out of the building with a coworker rather than stopping in the bathroom.

I shifted from left foot to right, glanced up at the signboard, down at the tracks and back to my book.

The train, when it finally arrived, was blessedly empty. I found a seat and continued to read. By the time I got to Eastern Market, by the time I emerged into daylight, I had almost forgotten that I needed to go. I had completely forgotten about the movie I'd hoped to attend, the second in three days that I missed for the sake of work.

After an hour or so later, I realized that I would need to go into the office before my meeting. An hour or so after that, I thought about driving into Virginia to do the work before bed. I pushed off the thought 'til morning and hoped it wouldn't keep me awake any more than anything else.

Eventually, I shut off the computer and stretched on the couch. I'd missed much of the storyline, the reason for the sequins, the years of absence and why, but I soon found myself caught up in the story. It wasn't the best of movies in the world, but I could understand broken hearts and bizarre love triangles, battles between good and evil and the need for a superhero.

On the way home from the metro, hours earlier, my mom had told me of a death in the family. She wasn't really my family by blood but I could not remember a family event without her. My cousin's grandmother, Vi. A farmer's wife. Life wasn't always easy for her. She nearly died giving birth to my uncle, her only child.

Vi and Irv joined our loud, crazy family at holidays, weddings, funerals. Irv gave away my orphaned Irish aunt when she married his son's brother-in-law (my uncle). Vi always made Jell-O salad, the kind with the whipped cream, and smiled serenely despite the chaos around her. They both loved card games.

Yesterday morning, she fell asleep after breakfast and that was it. It wasn't bad but I still wished that someone could have saved her. Maybe yesterday. Maybe 50 years ago. Maybe somebody did. Maybe somebody could save her only granddaughter, my cousin Heather, suffering from what might be MS.

This morning, talking about India, I suddenly remembered a girl I'd known a lifetime ago. Our friendship had faded by the time of the accident. We'd gone to separate universities in separate cities. Her father died. I moved out west. While jogging, she was hit by a car. A hit and run. A hit and skip. She's spent the past nine years in a coma, almost a third of her life. She could have used a hero, too.

Watching the movie, though, I wondered who would save Superman. Not in the battles, not from the bad guys, he had that under control. From life. From growing older. From staying young and strong while the world he knew and loved grew and changed around him. Who would save him from broken hearts and bizarre love triangles? As with all superheroes, the man of steel had his own vulnerability, a heart of glass. Nobody could save him from that.

I shook my head and cleared my plates. I turned to my tragically beautiful book with shattered hopes and shattered dreams, lost souls and a distinct absence of superheroes. The characters would just have to save themselves.


Tag: Superman

Baking

The smell of cinnamon met me at the door, almost physical in its force. Cinnamon and nutmeg, baked with apple into fresh, sweet bread. Leftover scents from the weekend.

My body ached, exhausted from a 12-hour day of meetings and email. Returning phone calls and messages. Trying to figure out what I did every day and trying to make sure I darned all the bits that frayed during my absence. As I tried to leave the office, as I tried in vain to make a movie on time, I found myself talking with a woman who worked on my project and it seemed more important to catch up after her vacation and my own. The film slipped away from me.

It was close to eight by the time I got home. The sun had set. The sky had faded to a worn, soft shade of cool almost night, melding with shadows along the tree-lined street. I walked quickly in the still warm space between day and night.

I kicked off my shoes and clicked on the television. I threw my mail, unopened on the table and a birthday gift, unopened, on the chair. I booted my computer and moved toward the kitchen, opening cupboards, pulling out bowls, measuring cups, spoons.

The TV lasted but minutes as I shifted to jazz and carried the computer into the kitchen.

Dip, level, pour with the flour. I peeled plastic from the top of a box of unsweetened cocoa powder and added a half cup to the flour. Baking soda and salt in equal parts. I mixed with a fork, thinking that I needed a sifter, thinking that I never remembered that I needed a sifter until I needed a sifter. The same with a whisk. New measuring spoons. I found the measuring cup in the freezer. I probably needed another of those. And a tray for madeleines, my newest obsession.

I had stirred absently through the mental inventory and turned back to the bowl, to another bowl, to sugar and butter and oil. Eggs, one at a time. Vanilla. Buttermilk... No buttermilk. Vanilla soymilk with vinegar, a twist on my substitution list, alternated with the dry mixture. Stirring. Always stirring. And finally zucchini. Folded into the batter.

With bare hands, I buttered the bottom of the pan and spooned flour into the bottom. As trumpets blared in the living room, as my shoulders ached and sweat beaded along my forehead, without air conditioning and the oven heating the kitchen to something well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, I coated the pan with flour, then batter, then chocolate chips.

Soon, the smell of chocolate overlaid the cinnamon and nutmeg. I crashed on the couch and waited for the buzzer, getting up to check the oven, to insert a knife and think, "I need picks. A sifter. Measuring spoons and madeleine trays..."

I didn't think about the mold growing in my bedroom or the hives spreading on my arms. I didn't think about the noise from upstairs. Work to be done. The money I spent. The problems with my car. The anniversary of 9/11.

I didn't think about anything but the pan in the oven, the cake I wouldn't eat, the cake that I would give away, and I was happy.

CHOCOLATE ZUCCHINI CAKE

2 1/4 cups sifted all purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 cups grated unpeeled zucchini (about 2 1/2 medium)
1 6-ounce package (about 1 cup) semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup chopped walnuts*

Preheat oven to 325°F. Butter and flour 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into medium bowl. Beat sugar, butter and oil in large bowl until well blended. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla extract. Mix in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk in 3 additions each. Mix in grated zucchini. Pour batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle chocolate chips and nuts over.

Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Cool cake completely in pan.


Bon Appétit
November 1995

Tag: Chocolate Zucchini Cake Baking

Six years later

I almost forgot the day. Granted, I haven't known the date for more than a week, but it seemed wrong to forget. Wrong to not know yesterday that tomorrow, today, was 9/11.

The stories keep cropping up. The "where were you?" The common thread between so many strangers.

When I was young, my mom talked about where she was when she heard that JFK died - high school choir practice. Growing up, I had trouble imagining an event so etched as to remember where I was, what I was doing, how I felt, whom I saw. I understand a little better now. I know where I was when I heard about Princess Diana, about JFK Jr, and the day the towers fell. The last has become a memory shared in unlikely circumstances - spontaneously, reluctantly, almost eagerly, at times.

Blackberries and cell phones buzzing plaintively on a conference room table. Gas station attendants filling tanks by police order. The Dulles Greenway without a plane in the sky on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon. TV sets blaring the news hour after hour. Not quite believing that it was all happened in about an hour and 45 minutes. Waiting for something else to happen.

Some things I generally keep to myself. My 3-year-old nephew asking if the bad men were gone. Volunteering to help with the Pentagon hotline, working Wednesday from midnight to 8 a.m. in an admin support role and helping refine the hastily-constructed database that tracked incoming calls. The horrible, horrible Brit in New Zealand who told my friend that it, that 9/11, was the best thing that ever happened to the United States. He was angry that I had walked away from him earlier; he took it out on her, unrelenting in his attack. He claimed regret only for the fact that more people had not died. It was Thanksgiving Day.

My dad and stepmom talk of a sonic boom, the fright following a broken sound barrier not far from Wright Patterson. My neighbor of working in the Pentagon. My friends of living in New York.

On the way home the other day, on my second flight, my row mate, a good ol' boy from southern Virginia, with a lumbering draw, made me nervous with his talks of "terrah," of Osama Bin Laden, of the day itself. Some things just don't lend themselves well to conversation at 30,000 feet.

This morning I awoke to news of a video, of a call for a caravan of martyrs. The video itself is part of an Al-Qaida's annual tradition to mark the anniversary.

It gave me pause, reminded me of my nephew's question from six years ago and how we assured him that the bad men were gone, that he was safe, that everything would be OK. I would tell him the same today, even if it's not exactly true. There are always bad men in the world, but 3 year olds who've grown into 9 year olds don't need to know about it, yet.


Tag: 9/11

Welcome to the neighborhood

With a groan, I rolled over and stretched. Unable to sleep any more, unwilling to rise. I found in the clock in the dark: 5:27, and gave up. Gave in. Got up.

Tentatively, I swung my feet to the floor and sighed with relief, grateful for the dehumidifier. I had a headache, but the rug had dried.

I wasn't exactly sure what happened, but barefoot and exhausted after 23 hours of travel, I padded my way back to my bedroom. Water oozed from the rug underfoot. Outside the door, the drain was clear. I looked up to the ceiling and found extensive damage, including blossoms of mold. I turned on the machine and crawled into bed. A couple of hours later, I awoke. A few hours after that I got up. I showered. I prepared for the day.

In the kitchen, I mixed dry ingredients for zucchini bread. I wanted to meet the new neighbors. I needed to meet the new neighbors. My last nights in Provence had been plagued with thoughts of noise and entitlement, of trash bags outside my front door and midnight dishwasher runs over my bed, parties and play dates without warning. I tossed restlessly before starting the big day of travel, of planes, trains and automobiles.

Somewhere between France and home, I developed a plan: a loaf of zucchini bread and a card with my contact information. A warm welcome. An open dialogue. But as Robert Burns wrote, "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

While I waited for the market to open so that I might buy fresh zucchini, the neighbors started a load of laundry. Minutes later, a stream of water poured through my ceiling and pattered against the tiled floor eight feet below. I placed a (full) trash bin under the flow. I slipped into flip flops, unlocked the door and flew upstairs.

"Who is it?" rumbled a voice from within.

"Um, Kristin. I live downstairs."

The door opened to my new neighbor, an older man with a skeptical look. A small boy with a bowl cut hovered behind him. I stuck out my hand and introduced myself.

"I'm sorry. Did you... did you do something to the washing machine?" I asked. "I mean, there's a stream of water pouring into my room."

That did not come out right. The conversation devolved into "We just moved in" and "By doing something to the washing machine, we started a load of laundry."

My new, now defensive neighbor attacked me. Told me to call the landlord, in London, and denied any responsibility. I floundered, muddled with jet lag and a lack of sleep, startled by the flooded bedroom, mold and ongoing damage. I apologized again and said that I would call for help if they might just stop the washing machine.

Downstairs, again, I mopped. The water had poured unabated for five minutes, for 10. The floor was covered. Water splashed onto the antique dresser, the trunk. I slid across the floor in my flip flops and left muddy footprints in the bedroom and hall. I realized that I might need to move.

Leaving the mess behind, the dehumidifier running, water standing, mud leading the way from bathroom to living, I walked to the market. I picked up a zucchini and realized I'd left my wallet at home. I walked back, slid through the room and found the wallet (and my passport) in a pair of damp trousers on the floor. Leaving even more footprints behind, I walked back to the market and bought the zucchini.

Home again, I put a bowl in the sink and started to grate. I added sugar and oil. An egg. I added the dried mixture from before the flood – flour and baking powder, soda and salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. I whisked with a fork and poured the batter into a greased pan. Into the oven and I turned down the temperature, remembering the temperamental nature of my oven.

I grated the rest of the zucchini as the smells of childhood and home filled my apartment. I searched for a recipe for chocolate zucchini cake. I pulled back my hair. Cleaned a little. Organized the refrigerator, wrote out a card and waited. When the buzzer sounded, I wrapped the loaf in foil, picked up my bag and walked back upstairs.

"Hi, I just wanted to say welcome to the neighborhood and to give you my contact information," I smiled and held out the steaming, foil-wrapped package. "It's zucchini bread."


Tag: Neighbors

Thoughts on travel

The thing about flying
Up there, I remembered that the sun always shines. It's always a beautiful day. The clouds just get in the way sometimes.

***

Face pressed against the bracing, ice-flecked glass, I squinted, trying to see beyond my own reflection, cabin lights, the wing's flashing and futile flare at something close to 11,000 meters.

Suddenly, there they were. Stars. And then I saw it, beyond the tip, larger than it had ever been before and larger than it would ever be again, the Big Dipper. Ursa Major.

Shaking my head, I looked around. Surely someone else saw the wonder outside our flying room with reclining chairs pushed far too close together, but no. It was mine and mine alone.

Spiderman flickered on the back of headrests. Fracture. Waitress. In the Land of Women and Perfect Stranger and that ice skating thing with Will Farrell and the guy from Napoleon Dynamite.

I put on my glasses and looked again. The constellation appeared so much clearer with corrective eyewear.

The dimpled man beside me got up to stretch his legs, to see a man about a horse, to do something. Anything. The movies had ended. Most slept, reclined, heads in neighbors' laps. A few read. I scribbled in meandering lines across the pages of my journal, unwilling to turn on a light and lose the stars.

The dimpled man came back with another cup of coffee, delicately balanced as he wedged himself between his own seat and that of the university girl before him. A semester abroad for much of the plane.

I listened to the inflight entertainment, to the Cranberries crooning, and watched the sky lighten, the Big Dipper fade.

***

I didn't understand the announcement. It was in French.

"Blah, blah, blah, Marseille, blah, blah."

Normally, I would go and look at a board but I had helped an American couple my parents' age, from Seattle, and we got to talking while we waited for our trains – they to Nantes, me to Avignon. I'd already figured out the numbering, had taken a train before, and advised them as they puzzled over their tickets.

The train that arrived, their train, which was 10 minutes late and due 15 minutes after my own, did not bode well for my travels. I wished them well, pointed them in the direction of car 17 and found a board.

"Marseille, retard 0200H." Flashing. As if I needed to highlight a two-hour delay after a seven-hour flight and approximately 32 minutes of sleep since Thursday night.

It was Saturday morning.

It would be Saturday noon at the earliest before I left the station and midafternoon when I arrived. I shrugged.

"I don't have anywhere to be until a week from Monday," I told my new friends when they apologized for their escape to Nantes. I didn't blame them. They had spent the previous night in an airport hotel having had runway issues, a delayed flight, a missed connection and a missed train. I wished them well on their two-week adventure. We'd bonded in the 20-, 25-minute wait for a train. Any train. Unfortunately not my train.

I took a seat on the platform when I realized the change in time. I didn't really have anywhere to go, nothing to do. I crashed into a metal seat and sighed. The pilot opposite me looked less than pleased to share the emptying platform but I couldn't quite stomach the thought of returning to the crowded station. Besides, he looked less than pleased with life in general.

On the seat next to me, an abandoned backpack gave me pause. An unattended package in a public area. A train station. Part of the airport, no less, but nobody paid it any mind. Over my shoulder, I spotted an equally unattended car seat and stack of luggage. I stopped worrying and watched the trains come and go.

Nowhere to be until a week from Monday.



Tag: Travel

Sleep

The phone in my pocket just sounded, scaring me slightly and inspiring a frantic search for the source. It hadn't rung in days. Weeks. Not for a call, anyway.

The alarm clock. 10:45 pm in DC. 4:45 am in Provence.

In the past 24 hours, I have finished packing. I have taken a car, a train, a plane, another plane, a bus, the metro and walked about a mile and a half. I have traveled from the south of France to southeast DC.

I have sifted through approximately 400 email messages and I have read about 400 pages of my current novel.

At this point, planted on my couch, heavy-limbed and blank-minded, I don't know if I want to sleep or cry. I can only hope that the neighbors, the new neighbors whom I have yet to meet, the neighbors who piled their trash outside my front door on a steamy Saturday, several days before the trashmen come, that my neighbors are not early risers.

I need sleep.


Tag: Travel

Coffee

I take my coffee black.

I grew up in a house without coffee. It made my mom spasm and in a single parent household, Mom ruled. When my sister came back after a year in France, she'd picked up the habit. Coffee drinking. Among other things, not to mention the air of French tobacco that clung to her leather bomber jacket, that probably still clings to her leather bomber jacket, two decades, a husband and three children later. She stopped smoking almost as quickly as she started but the coffee... the coffee stayed.

At some point I started. Drinking coffee. Smoking, too, for that matter, but more of the coffee.

Thoughts of college bring back memories of all nighters. Of coffeehouses filled with flavored beans – chocolate, raspberry, pumpkin. Books and games. Huge, worn sofas. Mugs more aptly called bowls of caffeine. Shaking for days with strong, bitter breath.

I wasn't a true addict, preferring my caffeine cold first thing in the morning, but I learned to appreciate it. Order it. Take it black.

"I like my coffee like I like my men," I quipped to friends. "Weak and bitter."

Truth be told, though, I drank it strong and black. Undiluted. Pure.

I could enjoy a cappuccino, a macchiato, a frappucino, au lait, café crème, with a shot of just about anything sweet and/or alcoholic but straight up coffee, slightly burned and served from a pot that had been bubbling in the back for hours. Served by a waitress with a nametag, bunions and a polyester uniform over support hose. In a place redolent with grease. Strong. Bitter. Black. That's how I drank it.

Honestly, it generally earns more than a modicum of respect with shrugs, shakes and excuses from others but that's not why I did it. I figured, when I finally took to the stuff, that I might as well. You never know what you are going to get. Why set myself up for disappointment?

I would go into how coffee drinking resembles an approach to life but it's been too long since my last cup. My brain is muddled. My body tired.


Tag: Coffee

Falling stars

Mouth open, I stared at the stars above, more than I'd seen in years. Since college, maybe, that summer I worked at the camp in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe Mackinac Island. Maybe those years in Colorado or the boat on the Great Barrier Reef or in National Park, New Zealand. Whatever it was, it had been a while and there I stood, leaning against a wrought iron railing in the South of France, watching the stars fall.

Granted, stars weren't falling any more than I was, mouth open, head back, eyes open and feet firmly planted on a ball of molten lava circling one of those things. I dozed by the pool in its light earlier in the day. I waited for it to turn the village golden at sunset. I circled. We hurtled. None of us fell, but I watched anyway.

"It's just so... awesome," she said. "It makes you feel so tiny."

"And insignificant," he added.

"Takes off the pressure," I replied and they laughed.

"It's true. What does it all mean?"

Nobody knew the answer to that.

We'd come home from dinner to find the night calm. The Mistral done for a moment at least and wandered out to look at the stars. I wandered back in to put on a pair of trousers under my dress and a sweater over and walked back to a bench at the end of the terrace.

"Oh, a shooting star," I exclaimed.

"Is it moving slowly?" he asked, doubting my eyesight despite the carrot sorbet with dinner.

"It's faster than a plane. Definitely not a satellite... and there's another."

"I don't see them. I think you're making them up."

I remembered the first time I'd seen a shooting star or more specifically the time before I'd ever seen one. Lying on my back in a field, watching the stars for hours on end, growing frustrated as I concentrated so hard and my friends ticked them off easily. As soon as I saw one, I knew. I realized that I didn't need to look at all. I could just be and they would appear to me.