Outside my window
"A lone man rides by on a one-wheeled unicycle. He steers with his hands on either side of the wheel, or maybe that's just him hanging on."
Sherry LaCourte looks over at me with a bland inquisitiveness, ever so slightly raising one perfectly groomed auburn eyebrow.
"I push my whole body against the window until my breasts are flattened and my nose aches from the cold."
I look to my left as I'm talking, pausing between "breasts" and "flattened" for dramatic effect.
"And you think this has something to do with your mother's breast cancer?" Sherry asks, curious.
I scowl. The last thing in the world I want to do is talk about what's actually happening. The room smells like stale wool.
"I thought you were a Jungian," I say, not without a sting in my voice.
Goddamn I hate therapists is what I'm thinking, but instead of saying it out loud and dealing with the whole trite "transference" thing, I scratch the back of my left calf with the top of my faux alligator cowboy boot, greener than any swamp I've ever seen.
"Juniper..." she starts to explain something to me sounding exactly like my mother but with slightly less noticeable exasperation. Still I can feel it there.
I play with a tiny piece of gravel I find with my right hand as I run my fingers along the textured surface of the love seat. Psychologists never have couches, contrary to popular belief. Too hard to get their patients out the door.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Sunday, July 29, 2012
The Daily Write: My recipe (July 29, 2012. 12 minutes)
My recipe
You need a Teflon pan. A block of Tillamook cheddar cheese. A grater. A stove. Heat up the pan. Grate the cheese. Put it on the hot pan and watch it melt and bubble. Cook it longer than you think you should and soon you'll be able to pull the whole thing up off the pan and eat it. If you want something sweet and there's nothing in the house, you can mash up soft butter with brown sugar. It almost tastes like cookie dough.
If you want to shock your friends, you can pull out your mom's boyfriend's daughter's placenta from the freezer and ask them to guess what it is. When they figure out it's not frozen berries, you can tell them and watch them react in wide-eyed shock. It's fun.
There's never much to eat in the house. We usually have orange juice made from a can. It sucks when the can is still frozen and we're out of juice and need it. Then we have to run it under warm water a long time, or pry it out until the hunk of frozen orange citrus plops into the bottom of the green plastic pitcher we keep in the fridge. Then use a wooden spoon to mash it around with water until it turns into juice. It's really annoying and you can't get all the chunks out.
One time I was really hungry and I wanted beef stew so I opened a can of Dinty Moore but I couldn't wait to heat it up. I grabbed a piece of potato right out of the can and put it in my mouth. Only it turned out it was cow fat and not a potato and I couldn't get the horrible globs of fat from coating the inside of my whole mouth.
Once a week my mom would take me and the twins to King's Table for the all you can eat buffet. They had turkey and meatloaf and macaroni n' cheese. Plus mashed potatoes and gravy. I would stop in the chocolate shop first and get sugar free candy. The twins would make huge soft serve sundaes all by themselves. It was fun.
I worked in my friend Lori's mom's sandwich shop for a while. I didn't get paid. It was just something to do when I was skipping school. Only I thought it would be cool to give people extra of everything, seeing as I was always hungry. So I made the ham two inches high and then piled on extra cheese and mayo. No one seemed to like it. Some even complained. I got fired.
Lynne was on welfare and had a lot of mouths to feed. She knew how to stretch a food stamp dollar. She made really yummy casseroles. I always wanted to stay at her house when it was dinner time but she always wanted me to leave. I tried to get myself invited, but I guess that would have cost more than she had and besides, I usually wanted thirds.
Me and Kristi used to go to the mini-mart gas station and get Jo Jos, wedges of crispy chicken-fried potatoes with ranch dressing for dip. If I weren't allergic to gluten now, I'd go get some Jo Jo's from Safeway cause I like them that much.
My dad's specialty when I was little was barbecue steak. Only when I was six and had just moved in with him after he picked us up from our grandma's apartment in Oregon, he was on some kind of a steak diet and when he cooked them under the broiler, they always caught fire. That was scary. But not as bad as the time he reached his hand into the pantry to get something and instead pulled his arm out holding a snake and screaming. Also, one time the Nutter Butters on top of the fridge got infested with wormy larvae. I never liked peanut butter after that.
You need a Teflon pan. A block of Tillamook cheddar cheese. A grater. A stove. Heat up the pan. Grate the cheese. Put it on the hot pan and watch it melt and bubble. Cook it longer than you think you should and soon you'll be able to pull the whole thing up off the pan and eat it. If you want something sweet and there's nothing in the house, you can mash up soft butter with brown sugar. It almost tastes like cookie dough.
If you want to shock your friends, you can pull out your mom's boyfriend's daughter's placenta from the freezer and ask them to guess what it is. When they figure out it's not frozen berries, you can tell them and watch them react in wide-eyed shock. It's fun.
There's never much to eat in the house. We usually have orange juice made from a can. It sucks when the can is still frozen and we're out of juice and need it. Then we have to run it under warm water a long time, or pry it out until the hunk of frozen orange citrus plops into the bottom of the green plastic pitcher we keep in the fridge. Then use a wooden spoon to mash it around with water until it turns into juice. It's really annoying and you can't get all the chunks out.
One time I was really hungry and I wanted beef stew so I opened a can of Dinty Moore but I couldn't wait to heat it up. I grabbed a piece of potato right out of the can and put it in my mouth. Only it turned out it was cow fat and not a potato and I couldn't get the horrible globs of fat from coating the inside of my whole mouth.
Once a week my mom would take me and the twins to King's Table for the all you can eat buffet. They had turkey and meatloaf and macaroni n' cheese. Plus mashed potatoes and gravy. I would stop in the chocolate shop first and get sugar free candy. The twins would make huge soft serve sundaes all by themselves. It was fun.
I worked in my friend Lori's mom's sandwich shop for a while. I didn't get paid. It was just something to do when I was skipping school. Only I thought it would be cool to give people extra of everything, seeing as I was always hungry. So I made the ham two inches high and then piled on extra cheese and mayo. No one seemed to like it. Some even complained. I got fired.
Lynne was on welfare and had a lot of mouths to feed. She knew how to stretch a food stamp dollar. She made really yummy casseroles. I always wanted to stay at her house when it was dinner time but she always wanted me to leave. I tried to get myself invited, but I guess that would have cost more than she had and besides, I usually wanted thirds.
Me and Kristi used to go to the mini-mart gas station and get Jo Jos, wedges of crispy chicken-fried potatoes with ranch dressing for dip. If I weren't allergic to gluten now, I'd go get some Jo Jo's from Safeway cause I like them that much.
My dad's specialty when I was little was barbecue steak. Only when I was six and had just moved in with him after he picked us up from our grandma's apartment in Oregon, he was on some kind of a steak diet and when he cooked them under the broiler, they always caught fire. That was scary. But not as bad as the time he reached his hand into the pantry to get something and instead pulled his arm out holding a snake and screaming. Also, one time the Nutter Butters on top of the fridge got infested with wormy larvae. I never liked peanut butter after that.
The Daily Write: A bottle. (July 28, 2012, 12 minutes and then some)
He smashed the bottle into the middle of out midnight birthday cake.
Jealous I guess. It's true that he never seemed to like me, although I
was only 9, and not yet the adult who would have got in his face
about the drinking and aggressiveness toward my mother.
For her part, she took a stance of stone faced nonchalance. Always one to downplay the difficult, she didn't seem to notice or care about his constant, drunken yelling. And she bailed him out of detox more times than you can imagine.
I don't know what finally broke them up. Him with his fortified wine and malt liquor in crumbled brown paper bags. Her with her brood of children, none of them his. But this was long before that, and long before we kept our address a secret so he wouldn't find us and pound on the door drunkenly demanding to come in while I huddled over the phone in my attic room, mom and brothers by me, begging the cops to hurry.
He never seemed to regret ruining my life. Imagine that for a minute. A girl who only sees her mother a couple times a year comes to visit for the summer. She is with her brother, a year and a half younger, and their twin baby brothers. Mother sleeps on a bed in the living room with him. The kids sleep four in the tiny bedroom at the back of the apartment - two bigger kids on bunks, the babies first in their own drawers and then a shared crib. They cry a lot - at least to the girl's sensitive ears. They scream and wail and make rapid fire baby decisions about whose attention they need most and how soon.
He doesn't notice or he doesn't care. He loves the babies when he's in the mood for them. Calls them his guys. Smiles at them. But most of the time, he's more focused on the mother and her hairy armpits, "Cut that fucking arm hair!" he bellows at her as she tries to feed one baby, change the other and deal with her oversensitive daughter. Her middle son, who really isn't old enough to be out on his own, has opted to trek by himself down the long train tracks on a solo adventure that fills his older sister with worry and panic.
Maybe he hated the girl because she and her mother were so much alike. Maybe he hated being observed by both of them.Whatever it was, he made sure their special mother/daughter midnight cake which straddled both birthdays, was ruined. By a beer bottle.
For her part, she took a stance of stone faced nonchalance. Always one to downplay the difficult, she didn't seem to notice or care about his constant, drunken yelling. And she bailed him out of detox more times than you can imagine.
I don't know what finally broke them up. Him with his fortified wine and malt liquor in crumbled brown paper bags. Her with her brood of children, none of them his. But this was long before that, and long before we kept our address a secret so he wouldn't find us and pound on the door drunkenly demanding to come in while I huddled over the phone in my attic room, mom and brothers by me, begging the cops to hurry.
He never seemed to regret ruining my life. Imagine that for a minute. A girl who only sees her mother a couple times a year comes to visit for the summer. She is with her brother, a year and a half younger, and their twin baby brothers. Mother sleeps on a bed in the living room with him. The kids sleep four in the tiny bedroom at the back of the apartment - two bigger kids on bunks, the babies first in their own drawers and then a shared crib. They cry a lot - at least to the girl's sensitive ears. They scream and wail and make rapid fire baby decisions about whose attention they need most and how soon.
He doesn't notice or he doesn't care. He loves the babies when he's in the mood for them. Calls them his guys. Smiles at them. But most of the time, he's more focused on the mother and her hairy armpits, "Cut that fucking arm hair!" he bellows at her as she tries to feed one baby, change the other and deal with her oversensitive daughter. Her middle son, who really isn't old enough to be out on his own, has opted to trek by himself down the long train tracks on a solo adventure that fills his older sister with worry and panic.
Maybe he hated the girl because she and her mother were so much alike. Maybe he hated being observed by both of them.Whatever it was, he made sure their special mother/daughter midnight cake which straddled both birthdays, was ruined. By a beer bottle.
Friday, July 27, 2012
The Daily Write: The sky (July 26, 2012. 10 minutes)
The sky
The ocean, right in front of her face but completely invisible. This is why she is afraid of going blind. This is why she is claustrophobic. There is a gut clenching, heart palpitating, shallow breathing horror that comes from being two feet from the rolling waves and yet unable to see them because the air is so thick with fog it could fill a mug.
There is nothing to be done. She can't wave her arms. She can't blow it away with her mouth or a fan. She can't turn around three times and click her heels until the blue comes back. No. She has only three choices:
1) Walk toward the place where she knows the waves are, dipping her feet in to assure herself that even without vision, one can know the ocean
2) Turn around and search out any visible marker possible in the tulle fog, running up the sandy path lined with sweet carnations growing on either side
3) Stay still, eyes closed, and pretend that she is making it happen. That she only need open her eyes and all balance (or at least the horizon) will be restored.
Crackling camp fire smoke smells sweet and dry. The sand cradles her feet like the hot wax of an expensive pedicure. The invisible waves roll toward her, one after the other, like cars rushing past on a busy freeway overpass.
But the sky is nowhere to be found. Unless she imagines herself at cruising altitude, among the clouds.
A bird.
A plane.
The ocean, right in front of her face but completely invisible. This is why she is afraid of going blind. This is why she is claustrophobic. There is a gut clenching, heart palpitating, shallow breathing horror that comes from being two feet from the rolling waves and yet unable to see them because the air is so thick with fog it could fill a mug.
There is nothing to be done. She can't wave her arms. She can't blow it away with her mouth or a fan. She can't turn around three times and click her heels until the blue comes back. No. She has only three choices:
1) Walk toward the place where she knows the waves are, dipping her feet in to assure herself that even without vision, one can know the ocean
2) Turn around and search out any visible marker possible in the tulle fog, running up the sandy path lined with sweet carnations growing on either side
3) Stay still, eyes closed, and pretend that she is making it happen. That she only need open her eyes and all balance (or at least the horizon) will be restored.
Crackling camp fire smoke smells sweet and dry. The sand cradles her feet like the hot wax of an expensive pedicure. The invisible waves roll toward her, one after the other, like cars rushing past on a busy freeway overpass.
But the sky is nowhere to be found. Unless she imagines herself at cruising altitude, among the clouds.
A bird.
A plane.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
The Daily Write: A child frightened by something (July 25, 2012. 18 minutes)
There were no mistakes. Not when she was talking on the beige push
button phone and pulled the extra-long coiled cord over to the stove
where she was making Hamburger Helper and it caught on fire in the gas
flames. Not when she bumped into the unfinished wooden planter with a
mirror she made in wood shop, and knocked it over. Not when she spilled
her milk.
Her father, a therapist without a license, practicing in a
town full of rich and repressed drunks, told her so.
If she broke a glass, or misplaced a book, or scraped the bar of Irish Spring soap on the faucet to get a hair off of it until it was concave in the middle, or cut herself slicing beef steak tomatoes for the nightly iceberg lettuce salad, it was because she had ulterior motives. She dreaded the confrontation. So much so that she would rush into his shack, a brown room lined with plywood shelves, tables and counters piled high with radio gear, electronics, a soldering iron, wire, and tools, to tell him. It was worse to be found out later, woken from sleep and required to admit what she had done.
She hated talking. She hated waiting just inside the doorway, waiting for him to stop tapping, dah-di-dah-di-di-dah-di-dit, before he faced her for the confession. She shifted from foot to foot, twisted her tangled brown hair, stared at the intricate white meerschaum pipe on a shelf. It had belonged to her grandfather, a surgeon, now dead. Next to that some kind of fungus carved into a country scene, something he had done on a fishing trip. Someday these things would go to her brother, and she would inherit the old red and white china with ugly scenes of English cottage life.
"I have something to tell you," she would whisper while he stared at her, dark eyes hardly blinking, hands crossed over his chest with his fingers interlaced, tapping, analytical.
"Yes. What is it?" His voice was soft and low, but it did not comfort her in the least.
"I," she started to breathe too fast.
"I," she couldn't concentrate. She just wanted it to be over.
"I burned the telephone cord."
He raised one heavy black eyebrow. He squinted his eyes. He demanded to know how it happened. And then why.
"Why do you think you did that?"
She almost put herself in the corner to stare at the textured plaster painted over with misleadingly cheerful yellow to think about it until she came up with an acceptable answer.
"I guess I wasn't paying attention."
He looked dissatisfied. And worse, disappointed.
"That's not good enough. Why weren't you paying attention?"
Why? Why couldn't he just yell and get it over with, or send her to her room? Why did she have to stand there under his judgmental gaze until she could figure out what awful internal motivation had made her act out?
She wanted to scream. Instead she stood there, being watched, as she searched her mind trying to come up with a reason.
If she broke a glass, or misplaced a book, or scraped the bar of Irish Spring soap on the faucet to get a hair off of it until it was concave in the middle, or cut herself slicing beef steak tomatoes for the nightly iceberg lettuce salad, it was because she had ulterior motives. She dreaded the confrontation. So much so that she would rush into his shack, a brown room lined with plywood shelves, tables and counters piled high with radio gear, electronics, a soldering iron, wire, and tools, to tell him. It was worse to be found out later, woken from sleep and required to admit what she had done.
She hated talking. She hated waiting just inside the doorway, waiting for him to stop tapping, dah-di-dah-di-di-dah-di-dit, before he faced her for the confession. She shifted from foot to foot, twisted her tangled brown hair, stared at the intricate white meerschaum pipe on a shelf. It had belonged to her grandfather, a surgeon, now dead. Next to that some kind of fungus carved into a country scene, something he had done on a fishing trip. Someday these things would go to her brother, and she would inherit the old red and white china with ugly scenes of English cottage life.
"I have something to tell you," she would whisper while he stared at her, dark eyes hardly blinking, hands crossed over his chest with his fingers interlaced, tapping, analytical.
"Yes. What is it?" His voice was soft and low, but it did not comfort her in the least.
"I," she started to breathe too fast.
"I," she couldn't concentrate. She just wanted it to be over.
"I burned the telephone cord."
He raised one heavy black eyebrow. He squinted his eyes. He demanded to know how it happened. And then why.
"Why do you think you did that?"
She almost put herself in the corner to stare at the textured plaster painted over with misleadingly cheerful yellow to think about it until she came up with an acceptable answer.
"I guess I wasn't paying attention."
He looked dissatisfied. And worse, disappointed.
"That's not good enough. Why weren't you paying attention?"
Why? Why couldn't he just yell and get it over with, or send her to her room? Why did she have to stand there under his judgmental gaze until she could figure out what awful internal motivation had made her act out?
She wanted to scream. Instead she stood there, being watched, as she searched her mind trying to come up with a reason.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
The Daily Write: The Smell of Sadness (July 24, 2012. 12 minutes)
The smell of sadness
John wet his pants, every day. A tall and lanky geek, he had red hair, freckles and very pale skin. He was nice enough, except the smell of urine was so overwhelmingly pungent and sour that it was hard not to gag. This must've been before they had adult diapers. It was also before the word "oarder" was commonly understood. OCD too. These terms were private back then in the 70s. They either weren't known, or weren't used outside the context of a psychiatrist's office and the DSM.
I'm not sure why my dad let us go to Fred's house. Fred was John's father. And father to Mary and Frankie. Mary was a year or two older than me, but my friend. Frankie was my age and a friend of my younger brother. Fred, I guess, was a Ham radio operator like my dad. Otherwise, I can't imagine what they would have had in common.
Seems to me like my dad was in hiding back then. He never fessed up to being a Jew. It was bad enough that he was a therapist in a tiny bedroom community of old and new money. It was bad enough he got paid by the county and didn't come with his own inheritance. So maybe, in that strange state of WASP-wannbeness, my dad was perfectly comfortable being friends with a man whose house was so full of junk you had to cut a path through to get to the bathroom. And I guess we all pretended to ignore the pee smell, even if we found ourselves involuntarily breathing through the mouth to avoid the embarrassment of being caught noticing.
Poor John. He must've been miserable. Mary and Frankie too. I have no idea what happened to their mother. That's another thing we had in common with them - motherless children living with our single dads in an era when few couples were divorced and fathers raising kids alone was unheard of. So maybe the dads, however ill fitting they were as friends, were sticking together, a sort of male feminist embodiment of what happens when the mother isn't the primary caregiver.
I lost touch with Mary and Frankie and I was never friends with John, although it wasn't because he smelled. He was a lot older, and a guy, and an introvert. I heard Frankie changed his name, Mary disappeared and the house burnt down. Which I guess, when all is said and done, is maybe the best outcome you could hope for. As long as no one got hurt.
John wet his pants, every day. A tall and lanky geek, he had red hair, freckles and very pale skin. He was nice enough, except the smell of urine was so overwhelmingly pungent and sour that it was hard not to gag. This must've been before they had adult diapers. It was also before the word "oarder" was commonly understood. OCD too. These terms were private back then in the 70s. They either weren't known, or weren't used outside the context of a psychiatrist's office and the DSM.
I'm not sure why my dad let us go to Fred's house. Fred was John's father. And father to Mary and Frankie. Mary was a year or two older than me, but my friend. Frankie was my age and a friend of my younger brother. Fred, I guess, was a Ham radio operator like my dad. Otherwise, I can't imagine what they would have had in common.
Seems to me like my dad was in hiding back then. He never fessed up to being a Jew. It was bad enough that he was a therapist in a tiny bedroom community of old and new money. It was bad enough he got paid by the county and didn't come with his own inheritance. So maybe, in that strange state of WASP-wannbeness, my dad was perfectly comfortable being friends with a man whose house was so full of junk you had to cut a path through to get to the bathroom. And I guess we all pretended to ignore the pee smell, even if we found ourselves involuntarily breathing through the mouth to avoid the embarrassment of being caught noticing.
Poor John. He must've been miserable. Mary and Frankie too. I have no idea what happened to their mother. That's another thing we had in common with them - motherless children living with our single dads in an era when few couples were divorced and fathers raising kids alone was unheard of. So maybe the dads, however ill fitting they were as friends, were sticking together, a sort of male feminist embodiment of what happens when the mother isn't the primary caregiver.
I lost touch with Mary and Frankie and I was never friends with John, although it wasn't because he smelled. He was a lot older, and a guy, and an introvert. I heard Frankie changed his name, Mary disappeared and the house burnt down. Which I guess, when all is said and done, is maybe the best outcome you could hope for. As long as no one got hurt.
Monday, July 23, 2012
The Daily Write: No moon, but urgent stars. (July 22, 2012. 9 minutes)
No moon, but urgent stars
As big as the wall. And the wall was big. Museum wall. Giant wall. A wall you would only find in an over sized space meant to hold over sized objects.
On the wall, the painting. As big as the wall. Oil maybe. Thick. Dark. Luminescent.
At the bottom of the painting, a man. Silhouette in white like gauze or the silk of a moth. He lays on a line. Ground, presumably. Or consciousness. History. The stuff of life. Physicality.
We see him from the side. His profile. Nose. He is on the line. Reality. Resting. Looking up at the sky. Close.
Sky dark. Sky bright with illuminated stars. Cosmic bursts. Suns. Solar flares. Infinity.
The man, a body, a soul. He is surrounded by stars. The darkness is lit. A million billion tiny brilliant lights. Star dust. Imagination.
Ephemeral yet grounded. He is looking up at the stars. As big as a wall.
There is no edge. Not the end of the frame. Not the completion of the painting.
He is clothed by stars. Encapsulated. Floating. Illuminated. Luminescent.
If you could capture the sky and yet allow it to be expansive, unencumbered, unconstrained. This is that.
He is rising into the stars. A pillow. A feather. A body.
The dark is light. Full of celestial bodies. Bodies. Bodies.
As big as a wall.
As big as the wall. And the wall was big. Museum wall. Giant wall. A wall you would only find in an over sized space meant to hold over sized objects.
On the wall, the painting. As big as the wall. Oil maybe. Thick. Dark. Luminescent.
At the bottom of the painting, a man. Silhouette in white like gauze or the silk of a moth. He lays on a line. Ground, presumably. Or consciousness. History. The stuff of life. Physicality.
We see him from the side. His profile. Nose. He is on the line. Reality. Resting. Looking up at the sky. Close.
Sky dark. Sky bright with illuminated stars. Cosmic bursts. Suns. Solar flares. Infinity.
The man, a body, a soul. He is surrounded by stars. The darkness is lit. A million billion tiny brilliant lights. Star dust. Imagination.
Ephemeral yet grounded. He is looking up at the stars. As big as a wall.
There is no edge. Not the end of the frame. Not the completion of the painting.
He is clothed by stars. Encapsulated. Floating. Illuminated. Luminescent.
If you could capture the sky and yet allow it to be expansive, unencumbered, unconstrained. This is that.
He is rising into the stars. A pillow. A feather. A body.
The dark is light. Full of celestial bodies. Bodies. Bodies.
As big as a wall.
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