What we do

Some of our best conversations have taken place in the front seat of a car while we wind through back roads after midnight.  Too bored to stay home and too poor to go out, we just drive.  Taking curves at top speed, racketing through the dark with the music up and wind buffeting our hair until we need help later to fix the knots . . . I am happiest here.

Intentionally getting lost with her has become a favorite pastime for years.  If we have even a glancing knowledge of the area, we can always find our way back without fail.  No maps, no GPS—we rely on intuition and dumb luck.  And if we fuck it up, we turn around and find what looks familiar.

I play with her hair as she keeps one hand on my leg.  I tickle her at stop lights and we sing songs that make us gasp from giggling.

So we drive on and on, and once the singing has petered out (me with my constant harmonizing, her with her B-52s and Muppet-inspired shrieks) the talking starts.  Everything is covered eventually.  We have pored over our pasts, our families, our greatest fears, our triumphs.  Here is where we talk about our future and what we want.  An easy thing to do with infinite miles stretching out before us.  We spent our sixth anniversary in the front seat of a car, trying once more to land somewhere after fleeing a storm.  We have laughed and wept here, fought and loved.   We have warred and reconciled;  confessed and made grand declarations.

And every time I look over, catching her face in the brief gleam of someone else’s headlights, I realize just how great it really is.  Because there are few things better than tearing through the black skies and whispering back and forth, “just a little further.”

Learning the Rhythm

A conversation with A made me remember one of my greatest friends tonight.  Not that he’s ever too far from my thoughts, but still.  I still miss you like mad, babe.

Eddie was a sensualist. Not in the sexual way (although that certainly came into play as we grew older) but because of his love of beauty. All beauty, especially music. He could be brought to tears by a good guitar riff, or a spectacular piano melody. But rhythm was his true love and he engulfed himself in it. One day, when I was fourteen and he was sixteen, he arrived at my house. I was in a mood, one of those moods that spontaneously pounce upon fourteen-year-old girls, and was sulking in my living room. “Field trip!” he announced. We went to New Orleans and walked to a corner near a construction site. He grabbed my arm to stop me and closed his eyes.

“What are you doing,” I asked. “Are you sleepy?”
“Shut up for a minute,” he said patiently.
“If we’re just gonna stand here, I came out for nothing. There are plenty of construction sites in Slidell. Aren’t we gonna DO something?”
“I said shut up. Have I ever brought you out here and not shown you a good time? If you shut up I can find it.”

Suddenly, he did. He opened his eyes and smiled.

“Okay, do you see that big yellow thing over there? The one that’s pounding the street?” he asked.
“Uh…yeah. So?”
“That’s the bass drum. Hear it? It’s a real slow beat, in 4/4. Now pay attention.”

I looked at him with my right eyebrow cocked in sarcastic bemusement. I had no clue what he was getting at. My early teenage attitude was on the rise and I was about to say something, but he beat me to it.

“I said shut up. You can give me that shit when we get home, but for now I need you to listen. So, we have a bass. Alright, hear that glass? Like a crashing, tinkling sound. Those are the cymbals. The hammer over there, that’s the snare. The heels, hear em? Those are the rims. Now close your eyes and listen.”

I did. I closed my eyes, before he yelled at me, and leaned my head back for good effect. I stood there, thinking what a moron and then…I heard it. I heard it. I heard the beat of the bass start it off, I heard the clicking of a woman’s high heels at a faster tempo. Someone threw a bag of trash somewhere, crash.  Glass broke, cymbals shivered. I heard something new: swish, swish. A street sweeper had come along. I opened my eyes and looked at Eddie. He was thrilled; he’d always wanted to try brush sticks. He pulled me in front of him and began to beat a rhythm on my back. We stood there, audience for the street corner concert, and listened.

Blindness (the movie), and a comment on women

There are spoilers here, so move on if you haven’t seen the movie or read the book already.

Last night C, M, and I went to see Blindness. I had heard such great things about the book from both M and G, and the trailers looked promising. Everyone mysteriously goes blind except for one woman, and it focuses on a large group that has been quarantined. Sounds interesting!

First of all, this movie had some of the worst pacing. It was almost agonizing. And I understand that it was probably mimicking the pace of the book, but it just didn’t translate well to the screen. Some of the acting was a little over the top, and the whole thing just kept, on, going.

And then, and then, the rape scene. The extended, prolonged rape scene. One group has taken all the food and they are trading with other groups for it. Money doesn’t mean anything, possessions have already been bartered, what’s left? The women. And while in the context of the story, which is examining the degeneration of society, it makes sense . . . it was repulsive. It made me physically ill. I was more disturbed by that than most things I’ve seen in any other movie.

And I just couldn’t stop thinking about this. About all the issues it brings up. It’s a sad fact that the destruction of women’s bodies is a common war tactic. Rape the women to demoralize the men. In this instance, rape the women to feed the men. It at once brings women down to a commodity but also, it oddly highlights exactly what a women’s body is worth. And that worth is what seems to bring about the most punishment. This sounds strange, and maybe it is, but I almost wonder if . . . if women suddenly all realized this worth and used it, what could be accomplished? Is this what the second wave of feminism and “consciousness raising” was all about? My god, sometimes it is astonishing to realize the power that women hold. Which makes it all the more depressing to realize that it goes unused, ignored, or stolen.

Yeah, this is me having a feminist moment. I used to have a theory: It is a general rule that women have a higher pain tolerance than men. It may not seem so, but when it comes down to can’t-escape-it-no-getting-around-it-grit-your-teeth pain, women can last longer. Perhaps it’s a biological response to the pain of giving birth. My theory was that men know this, even on a subconscious level, and some are jealous. So jealous that they try to test the limits of what we can take.

I don’t know. But I know that I hated that movie for a whole bunch of reasons. I know that the rape scene was intended to be disturbing, to show how far they had fallen. I know that half the point is that the blindness is a blessing. The curse falls upon the one woman who can still see the atrocities around her. And I know that this movie is supposed to cause this kind of thinking. But I also know that watching that rape scene was like a punch to the gut and instead of making me feel angry and self-righteous (which is how I feel today) I felt a little scared and ashamed of being a woman. I felt nervous. I felt expendable. And that’s not what I want when I go out to see a damn movie.

Maybe

Bad writing? Possibly. Pretentious? Without a doubt. Do I care? Not a whit. The fact that I’m writing anything after too many years makes me happy.

My wants are needle-sharp,
deflating all my round comforts.
This new place is jagged
and honed by desires
that I haven’t named yet.
And instead of tiptoeing
through this maze,
I will unhinge my jaw
and swallow it whole.
I refuse to be careful—
It’s gotten me nowhere.
I will smile sweetly around
the shards in my throat
and remember:
This is what I yearned for.

Frustrated

After a long conversation with A, I decided to write this. It’s not dedicated to or inspired by anyone in particular. Just a general comment on how I’m feeling tonight.

The answer is waiting.
It’s sitting, pregnant,
heavy with the realization
that you fear most.

Inside this book, page one
line one.

I’ve opened it for you,
held it aloft and in your face.
But you clench your eyes;
When I scream,
you plug your ears.
Your valiant efforts at remaining
deaf and blind have made you dumb.

But now is the time to speak.
Open the damn cover.
Unleash the word.
Unglue your stubborn tongue
before the truth moves on with me.

This is my book.
And you’re too scared to read it.

Even better!

Met with my advisor/professor, M–. That term is getting a little old, perhaps I shall start referring to her as my mentor? Anyway, the MLA conference is actually looking to fill 2 slots in the linguistic section, but one person isn’t allowed to present twice. So M– suggested that I write and present one, and then co-author a second paper with her that she will present. But I will still be first author. She also agreed to do a summer conference course with me. The end product will be these 2 papers, but I’ll get 3 credits for the time and effort.

When I was a kid

Listen, I had a weird childhood. I don’t mind saying that and I don’t think my parents will begrudge me this opinion. They were there, they should know. First of all, I should mention that my father is a professional magician. That means that I grew up with some different concepts in my day to day life that other people were not privy to. Let me break these down for you:

Feeling homesick

I wrote this in August 2006, a year after Katrina and not quite a year before we moved to Austin. I like looking backwards to reassess how I felt, and to compare that to how I feel now. Anyway, it’s a bit of a love letter to Louisiana.

Random musings on home and weather

I’ve been sitting on my front porch for over an hour.

The weather is cooler tonight and there is the tiniest breeze that flutters the leaves in the renegade tree/bush that has planted roots in the ground and is threatening to overtake my porch steps.

More things I’ve written

Kamikaze Roach

This is something I wrote a couple years ago; it’s not finished.

First, I must explain to you the nature of Louisiana swamp roaches. I’m sure you’ve seen a roach, unless you’re from a state that has a rampant tick problem instead. Roaches are nasty, secretive little creatures that steal your food, stay in the kitchen, and scurry when the lights come on. They know their place in society: squishable bugs. Not so with swamp roaches. They are bold and rebellious. They defend their chunk of old pasta, the odd piece of carrot under the stove. They fight back. They fly. Not only do they fly, they fly at you. Not just at you, but at your face. This is very unsettling.

Things I’ve written

I wrote this during my evacuation for Katrina, and cleaned it up a few times after that. I have a horrible habit of losing things I’ve written so I put it different places online that I might remember to look. Just think of this as my giant online purse!