Tuesday, March 31, 2009
my process.
Monday, March 30, 2009 7:16:10 PM
my process.
i am listening to this american life on my new ipod shuffle. it is green, like a six-spotted tiger beetle in july. i love six-spotted tiger beetles. i remember them from my seventh grade insect project. we had to collect something like 25 different bugs, and research all kinds of information about them like what they ate and where they lived and other names they were known by. but in order to identify and receive credit for them, they had to be suffocated to death in jars of cotton balls saturated with rubbing alcohol, and pinned to trays of styrofoam above perfect rectangular labels:
Scientific Name: Cicindela Sexguttata
Common Name: Six-Spotted Tiger Beetle
Species: North American Beetle
Family: Carabidae
my best friend maggie was an artist who wore pink bell-bottom jeans, and refused to kill anything for any reason. she was allowed to take photos instead if she had her parents sign a permission slip to opt out of the slaughter. i admired her, but i loved this project, and the leaf project after that. and the vegetable project after that. and the quail project after that, which i somehow did not manage to place for at the science fair, even though my investigation was wildly unique. but maggie’s defense of all creatures did make me look at living things differently. i didn’t used to feel that a bug’s life was worth protecting, or that a leaf should not be plucked from its tree, or that a quail and all of its friends and family may not enjoy being the subjects of clumsy and meddlesome adolescent schemes. (the blue ribbon went to the girl who dyed an embryo green.) but after witnessing young maggie’s conviction to something so noble, i suddenly felt some gratitude for the things that i worked with in science class, and i was able to notice suffering in a new way, undisclosed by the clues of a wincing face or voice.
i found maggie on facebook last week. she is thin and blonde and conventionally beautiful. her picture defied my memory of her, alternative and windswept and small.
looking back, i wish someone would have told me you could make a living doing this, learning about bugs. i never took anything in school seriously because i didn’t know that one day i would need to decide what i loved enough to make a life out of. i guess teachers tell kids that all the time, “you’re gonna need to know this!” but it just isn’t real. school is school and life is life and there isn’t really any planning ahead.
my brilliant plan.
that is the name of the this american life program i am listening to. “ideas that arrive in a flash of inspiration, and then what happens next,” ira says.
i like that so much.
and i like stories.
i’m going to write something called “we don’t take the bus”.
because i witnessed such interesting interactions today from 12:01 to 12:56, and 1:32 to 2:38PM. the 16L runs all the way down colfax, and you must know where i’m going with this. i viewed a documentary produced by a fellow denverite in 2004 about colfax avenue. this road has great history and personality and symbolism, of course. i watched myself react to the people who ride the 16L. odors of rum and morning breath and sweaty, sagging fabric. small sense of privacy and space and social boundaries. i watched myself when the bus driver stopped to lift an extremely large woman in a wheel chair slowly into the aisle, give directions repeatedly to a young man in search of the nearest shelter, explain the return route to the restless woman who declared continuously to “blame it on the alcohol”. ‘i’m going to be late,’ i kept thinking, and then, ‘no. have some compassion’.
no, have some compassion. have some compassion.
i felt this way in mexico a lot, noticing my impatience, redirecting my judgment. it was so good for me, but eventually too exhausting. i needed some kind of relief in between where i could remember who i was, what i liked, how i did things. it is important, i think. or is it? does complete compassion mean full and total acceptance of all ways of doing things? are concepts like “safe” or “healthy” just as subjective as “right” or “good”?
the people on the bus would have a lot to say about this.
i like riding the bus. environments of clear segregation really interest me. churches and gay bars and neighborhood schools. and i like places where integration is available, but resisted. airports and long lines and college campuses. (and neighborhood schools.) they are like truth tellers, because they make you feel something about yourself. they present some comparison or variance, and make you think about where you fit in. and what makes you uncomfortable. and why.
we don’t ride the bus.
well.
my mouth is sticky and my cafe au lait is cold. i am sitting at daz bog across the room from a man wearing a long, red-and-black-striped felt top hat. he is sporting very black sunglasses and a sharp, sleeping face.
the woman he is talking to is always here. must be 85. slumps in her mobility scooter facing the window, talking about her cats and her girlfriend, whom i have never seen.
the girl next to me is responsible for the security of my power cord, but she keeps bumping it out of the socket with the inside of her knee.
and the gentleman next to her just asked our row if the word laptop is one word or two.
i could go on.
you know, there never was a people watching project at school. if there was, i might have known what i loved enough to make a life out of. instead, there are only glimpses, and a million possibilities. i could coordinate educational programming at an art center, or teach 14-18 year olds with mental and emotional disabilities how to read, or run after school programming for a girl’s inc. female empowerment course.
but maybe i’ll just start collecting bugs again.
and this time i’ll take pictures.
.
my process.
i am listening to this american life on my new ipod shuffle. it is green, like a six-spotted tiger beetle in july. i love six-spotted tiger beetles. i remember them from my seventh grade insect project. we had to collect something like 25 different bugs, and research all kinds of information about them like what they ate and where they lived and other names they were known by. but in order to identify and receive credit for them, they had to be suffocated to death in jars of cotton balls saturated with rubbing alcohol, and pinned to trays of styrofoam above perfect rectangular labels:
Scientific Name: Cicindela Sexguttata
Common Name: Six-Spotted Tiger Beetle
Species: North American Beetle
Family: Carabidae
my best friend maggie was an artist who wore pink bell-bottom jeans, and refused to kill anything for any reason. she was allowed to take photos instead if she had her parents sign a permission slip to opt out of the slaughter. i admired her, but i loved this project, and the leaf project after that. and the vegetable project after that. and the quail project after that, which i somehow did not manage to place for at the science fair, even though my investigation was wildly unique. but maggie’s defense of all creatures did make me look at living things differently. i didn’t used to feel that a bug’s life was worth protecting, or that a leaf should not be plucked from its tree, or that a quail and all of its friends and family may not enjoy being the subjects of clumsy and meddlesome adolescent schemes. (the blue ribbon went to the girl who dyed an embryo green.) but after witnessing young maggie’s conviction to something so noble, i suddenly felt some gratitude for the things that i worked with in science class, and i was able to notice suffering in a new way, undisclosed by the clues of a wincing face or voice.
i found maggie on facebook last week. she is thin and blonde and conventionally beautiful. her picture defied my memory of her, alternative and windswept and small.
looking back, i wish someone would have told me you could make a living doing this, learning about bugs. i never took anything in school seriously because i didn’t know that one day i would need to decide what i loved enough to make a life out of. i guess teachers tell kids that all the time, “you’re gonna need to know this!” but it just isn’t real. school is school and life is life and there isn’t really any planning ahead.
my brilliant plan.
that is the name of the this american life program i am listening to. “ideas that arrive in a flash of inspiration, and then what happens next,” ira says.
i like that so much.
and i like stories.
i’m going to write something called “we don’t take the bus”.
because i witnessed such interesting interactions today from 12:01 to 12:56, and 1:32 to 2:38PM. the 16L runs all the way down colfax, and you must know where i’m going with this. i viewed a documentary produced by a fellow denverite in 2004 about colfax avenue. this road has great history and personality and symbolism, of course. i watched myself react to the people who ride the 16L. odors of rum and morning breath and sweaty, sagging fabric. small sense of privacy and space and social boundaries. i watched myself when the bus driver stopped to lift an extremely large woman in a wheel chair slowly into the aisle, give directions repeatedly to a young man in search of the nearest shelter, explain the return route to the restless woman who declared continuously to “blame it on the alcohol”. ‘i’m going to be late,’ i kept thinking, and then, ‘no. have some compassion’.
no, have some compassion. have some compassion.
i felt this way in mexico a lot, noticing my impatience, redirecting my judgment. it was so good for me, but eventually too exhausting. i needed some kind of relief in between where i could remember who i was, what i liked, how i did things. it is important, i think. or is it? does complete compassion mean full and total acceptance of all ways of doing things? are concepts like “safe” or “healthy” just as subjective as “right” or “good”?
the people on the bus would have a lot to say about this.
i like riding the bus. environments of clear segregation really interest me. churches and gay bars and neighborhood schools. and i like places where integration is available, but resisted. airports and long lines and college campuses. (and neighborhood schools.) they are like truth tellers, because they make you feel something about yourself. they present some comparison or variance, and make you think about where you fit in. and what makes you uncomfortable. and why.
we don’t ride the bus.
well.
my mouth is sticky and my cafe au lait is cold. i am sitting at daz bog across the room from a man wearing a long, red-and-black-striped felt top hat. he is sporting very black sunglasses and a sharp, sleeping face.
the woman he is talking to is always here. must be 85. slumps in her mobility scooter facing the window, talking about her cats and her girlfriend, whom i have never seen.
the girl next to me is responsible for the security of my power cord, but she keeps bumping it out of the socket with the inside of her knee.
and the gentleman next to her just asked our row if the word laptop is one word or two.
i could go on.
you know, there never was a people watching project at school. if there was, i might have known what i loved enough to make a life out of. instead, there are only glimpses, and a million possibilities. i could coordinate educational programming at an art center, or teach 14-18 year olds with mental and emotional disabilities how to read, or run after school programming for a girl’s inc. female empowerment course.
but maybe i’ll just start collecting bugs again.
and this time i’ll take pictures.
.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
home, again.
what does home mean to you?
your food is scattered throughout the city, west and north and central, a crumb trail dotting your kitchens in a frame on a map. now another, then another, until you have bridged all the corners of your life here, until you can reason every turn, until you discover your own unfolding.
no matter where you are, you will live here. in these homes.
there were warm cookies on your vintage golden counter top. they were thin and tawny and puddled at the edges, as cookies without packages are. flawlessly misshapen and fragile and faintly grainy from too much sugar. lifted from fraying recipe books that love crisco and gluten and lots of eggs and butter in heavy sticks. cumbrous electric mixers. red ruffled aprons. aspiring middleclass cupboards. (they were white; she painted them white.)
and everything just built up around that view without asking, and the mountains are hidden behind hills of treetops and lampposts, and the new roads invite such swift and cursory travels along that fence.
is it tragic?
is it romantic?
yes, we are (home)made from and (home)grown by and (home)bound to our homes. and entrapped and displaced and divided, it’s true. they remember how we lived, to uphold us, to spite us. they call to us from new rooms and carpet and trees that appear inside someone else’s memory, and old floors and walls and windows that never budged.
of course, we are like them.
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