On a bright Sunday morning, the winter that never came loosens its grip on the grass and vines that never really went away.
The older generation is gone, and all that's left are tiny paper bathroom cups and candy apple vials of Mercurochrome. I can't bring myself to throw the stuff away.
And so many photographs of vacations and Christmas Eves and new cars.
They were children in the Depression, and when they were 40 the earth was 40 along with them, squashing out its cigarettes and arranging colored glasses of Jello in the refrigerator to set. The stars clinked in the night sky like drunken ice cubes. A wall-to-wall carpet of sprawling elementary schools and jazzy churches rolled out on top of the old farms. As if there had been no time before, everything was modern.
Now snow exists only in jpegs of Colorado, or David Guterson novels. Our correctness is our religion—a whole-grain enlightenment. Children are the new adults, fascinating and authoritative, thriving in the soil of our confused emptiness.
Our Januarys cannot even freeze the ground. We cannot make a memory.
February 24, 2013
January 1, 2013
New Year's Day
The pork roast is in the iron pot fat side up, like the bare back of a pasty, overweight guy passed out upon a mattress of sauerkraut and apples matter-of-factly, unresponsive to the beer and chicken broth splashed on top of him.
Gary is on the phone, reintroducing himself to his mother. Last night he said, apologetically, I wonder what it must be like to begin a new year not knowing whether you will live through it.
He struggles with grief's suffocation, its undertow sucking him into unfamiliar depths, further out and further out from his bright, dry, breezy beach of Signals catalogs and upholstery swatches and New Yorker cartoons.
The year begins with a groan—the expected hangover, the late, groggy start. My body moves to heal itself again, perfunctorily. For the date has not been reached when my organs can clean out their desks, take home their mugs and placards, or cash in their vacation. The job of taking me metabolically forward continues—a bit less efficiently, though, like the enthusiastic, unsteady song of an old dishwasher—into a pointless future.
The boys nap at my feet like two wiry throw rugs, so certain of their lives with us, so happy within their rituals.
I drink the rest of the beer I didn't pour on the pork.
Gary hangs up the phone.
Gary is on the phone, reintroducing himself to his mother. Last night he said, apologetically, I wonder what it must be like to begin a new year not knowing whether you will live through it.
He struggles with grief's suffocation, its undertow sucking him into unfamiliar depths, further out and further out from his bright, dry, breezy beach of Signals catalogs and upholstery swatches and New Yorker cartoons.
The year begins with a groan—the expected hangover, the late, groggy start. My body moves to heal itself again, perfunctorily. For the date has not been reached when my organs can clean out their desks, take home their mugs and placards, or cash in their vacation. The job of taking me metabolically forward continues—a bit less efficiently, though, like the enthusiastic, unsteady song of an old dishwasher—into a pointless future.
The boys nap at my feet like two wiry throw rugs, so certain of their lives with us, so happy within their rituals.
I drink the rest of the beer I didn't pour on the pork.
Gary hangs up the phone.
December 14, 2012
The Newness of Things
I still experience the newness of things, the immediacy of objects that come under my scrutiny for the first time, or again after a long while. It's the only antidote to melancholy, which is pleasurable but deadly, like drinking poison.
The computer facilitates this tactile work, like the putting on of a new cotton shirt, or the first step into the mouth of an unknown trail through woods—seductive, full of unfamiliar bends and pockets where little brooks flow.
One by one I collected antique French chef's knives. The milky, pockmarked surface of the carbon steel blades thicken toward the bolster, heavy but perfectly balanced in the hand by the fastidiousness of an old craft. The metal is soft.
I discovered M.F.K. Fisher, the sensual, gin-quaffing food writer who was the world's Julia Child before the later model—puritan, striving, horsey and middle class—emerged. I collected the unpopular books, filled with her open-ended sentences like the floating metaphors of William Carlos Williams.
I lost myself in the dogma of the clarinet, the endeavor for good breeding in tone, a gigantic snobbery. The hand-tuned instruments of the 30s and 40s, asleep in their brittle cases aromatic with mold, are cool to the touch. The burnished ebony of the joints reflects the colors of brick and aubergine and even sky blue like soundless overtones.
I plunged my face into a copy of The Common Reader twice my age, inhaling the odor as if it were the overcoat Virginia Woolf filled with stones as she stood on the bank of the Ouse. The old paper became the smell of knowledge itself, of possibility.
I ate a buttered fresh beet, which I haven't done since 10, and life filled my mouth with its spice, not staled by its long absence—a frightening journey of loss, of adult pleasures that now seem childish, of towering commitments I couldn't honor.
The depressive and the manic—heartbreak and blissful curiosity, sugar and salt—continue under the noontime sun.
The computer facilitates this tactile work, like the putting on of a new cotton shirt, or the first step into the mouth of an unknown trail through woods—seductive, full of unfamiliar bends and pockets where little brooks flow.
One by one I collected antique French chef's knives. The milky, pockmarked surface of the carbon steel blades thicken toward the bolster, heavy but perfectly balanced in the hand by the fastidiousness of an old craft. The metal is soft.
I discovered M.F.K. Fisher, the sensual, gin-quaffing food writer who was the world's Julia Child before the later model—puritan, striving, horsey and middle class—emerged. I collected the unpopular books, filled with her open-ended sentences like the floating metaphors of William Carlos Williams.
I lost myself in the dogma of the clarinet, the endeavor for good breeding in tone, a gigantic snobbery. The hand-tuned instruments of the 30s and 40s, asleep in their brittle cases aromatic with mold, are cool to the touch. The burnished ebony of the joints reflects the colors of brick and aubergine and even sky blue like soundless overtones.
I plunged my face into a copy of The Common Reader twice my age, inhaling the odor as if it were the overcoat Virginia Woolf filled with stones as she stood on the bank of the Ouse. The old paper became the smell of knowledge itself, of possibility.
I ate a buttered fresh beet, which I haven't done since 10, and life filled my mouth with its spice, not staled by its long absence—a frightening journey of loss, of adult pleasures that now seem childish, of towering commitments I couldn't honor.
The depressive and the manic—heartbreak and blissful curiosity, sugar and salt—continue under the noontime sun.
November 26, 2012
Old English Major Tells All
Thirty-one years later, I still have tiny seizures of memory about the writers I loved in college. Whatever was contained between the covers of their books enlarged upon entry, like stepping outside from within a dark and tiny house: the sensation of the sun on your arms and the endless sky.
Not too long ago I bought another copy of the old Norton anthology, my first literary companion and still the ultimate symbol of my education. The swayback enormity of its pumpkin orange spine arched in an ever-greater curve with each use, each consultation by a student. Like the Bible, its thousands of onion-skin pages spoke with a bygone authority: Here is everything you need to know.
The bookstore with the wagon wheel is still there, a compartment in the tiny do-nothing shopping mall south of the campus. Walking through its series of rooms was the first time I felt the restrictions—the bite—of economy, longing for the complete novels of Jane Austen or a set of Proust or a particularly old edition of Pylon.
Not too long ago I bought another copy of the old Norton anthology, my first literary companion and still the ultimate symbol of my education. The swayback enormity of its pumpkin orange spine arched in an ever-greater curve with each use, each consultation by a student. Like the Bible, its thousands of onion-skin pages spoke with a bygone authority: Here is everything you need to know.
The bookstore with the wagon wheel is still there, a compartment in the tiny do-nothing shopping mall south of the campus. Walking through its series of rooms was the first time I felt the restrictions—the bite—of economy, longing for the complete novels of Jane Austen or a set of Proust or a particularly old edition of Pylon.
October 31, 2012
The Costume Party
I was 24.
Bob dressed me, his long arms forming a thousand slender, firm bridges between us, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. I concealed my inhalations of his scented breath, the hibiscus oil of his shoulders and chest. (I concealed everything.)
I was at last a mannequin, starved down and petite in my pale yellow Sahara Club polo shirt and jeans like powder blue leggings—and I collected and memorized every stare, every approving, longing glance as I walked in the city.
The first outfit—whatever it was—had to be scrapped. Ruth insisted the skirt was an important item in her wardrobe. Her jaw became more set as I was transformed. Bob's decoration of me was for Ruth the gold leafing of an annoying, inferior object recently being paraded into their apartment.
Bob dressed me, his long arms forming a thousand slender, firm bridges between us, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. I concealed my inhalations of his scented breath, the hibiscus oil of his shoulders and chest. (I concealed everything.)
I was at last a mannequin, starved down and petite in my pale yellow Sahara Club polo shirt and jeans like powder blue leggings—and I collected and memorized every stare, every approving, longing glance as I walked in the city.
The first outfit—whatever it was—had to be scrapped. Ruth insisted the skirt was an important item in her wardrobe. Her jaw became more set as I was transformed. Bob's decoration of me was for Ruth the gold leafing of an annoying, inferior object recently being paraded into their apartment.
August 31, 2012
Goodbye to Princess Di
Five hours behind Paris, I was in the twin bed of my uncle's funky house in Maine when word came that she had died. This was before he had moved the bed into the corner, and it was still parallel to the narrow room. With its ribbed foam mattress pad, layers of blankets and duvets innumerable as baklava, the control bulb of the electric blanket tapping against the footboard, it was a lumpy canoe of insomnia due northwest, toward Bangor.
I had left the news bulletins, each one reluctantly graver than the last, downstairs. The reading lamp was already turned off when I heard my uncle on the chirping floorboards, coming closer through the unlighted maze of cut-up hallways and rooms. He was 64, and his steps landed always in the same spots. The old house was filled with his papers and souvenirs, sets of coronation china, postcards and photographs from former students—many of them fortyish now—and his acrylic paintings from 35 years ago. Landscapes of his beloved Maine, rocky coastlines, snow-heavy spruces, and a blood orange lake sunset with giant cattails in the foreground, they were fastidious, literal, composed but unimaginative. Yet they formed an affectionate opus, the backs of the boards amply filled in with the painter's name and location, the date, and often a handwritten paragraph of dedication. Painted for Grace L. Dodge in thanks for many kindnesses and in remembrance of many good and pleasant trips.
I had left the news bulletins, each one reluctantly graver than the last, downstairs. The reading lamp was already turned off when I heard my uncle on the chirping floorboards, coming closer through the unlighted maze of cut-up hallways and rooms. He was 64, and his steps landed always in the same spots. The old house was filled with his papers and souvenirs, sets of coronation china, postcards and photographs from former students—many of them fortyish now—and his acrylic paintings from 35 years ago. Landscapes of his beloved Maine, rocky coastlines, snow-heavy spruces, and a blood orange lake sunset with giant cattails in the foreground, they were fastidious, literal, composed but unimaginative. Yet they formed an affectionate opus, the backs of the boards amply filled in with the painter's name and location, the date, and often a handwritten paragraph of dedication. Painted for Grace L. Dodge in thanks for many kindnesses and in remembrance of many good and pleasant trips.
August 24, 2012
Waiting for September
Fall is coming, and the dogwood berries are tucked into bunches of leaves like clip-on earrings.
I spent the whole summer standing in the door frame of the back porch, smoking. Outside, the sun baked the steel landing and steps, and the trip down to the garden, wilting yet overgrown, seemed pointless.
The coneflower refused to stand, but the deep yellow rockets stared heavenward the whole time, like a children's choir. The saturated color against the grey-green and cobwebbed background drew my attention, hypnotically.
I spent the whole summer standing in the door frame of the back porch, smoking. Outside, the sun baked the steel landing and steps, and the trip down to the garden, wilting yet overgrown, seemed pointless.
The coneflower refused to stand, but the deep yellow rockets stared heavenward the whole time, like a children's choir. The saturated color against the grey-green and cobwebbed background drew my attention, hypnotically.
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