snowdrops and phlox

benedict arnold, i'm moving

2009-09-16T18:10:00.000-07:00

Hi guys. I don't know how to say this, but...From now on, GO HERE.

I'm moving to tumblr. Blogger has been so good to me. But it's time for a change. You can find me at snowdropsandphlox.tumblr.com

I will be keeping this little bloggie up, since all my links and stuff are here. And I may still post stuff here. Not sure.

Adieu for now, Blogger.

look at these fucking archaeologists

2009-09-14T14:15:00.000-07:00

Bwahahaha! From LATFH via Max Silvestri:

Look At These Fucking Archaeologists

Apparently Williamsburg fashion circa 2009 comes straight out of the Badlands circa Jurassic Park. Note the sunglasses, plaids, high-waisted denim jeans, messenger bag, and the mullet haircut on the dude in the back. Even the guy working the dino ultrasound is sporting one of those Gestapo-style buzzed-on-the-side-parted-on-the-top haircuts that tall hipsters in my neighborhood like wearing.

you do not always know what I am feeling

2009-09-14T00:08:00.001-07:00

There was a long period of my life when I idolized Frank O'Hara, but I haven't really thought about him in a long time. This morning I woke up super early and couldn't fall back asleep, and as I was in bed watching the early sunlight through my window, his poem "For Grace, After a Party" (which is probably my favorite poem and which I've posted here before) popped into my head. The opening line just kept running through my head, over and over: "You do not always know what I am feeling. You do not always know what I am feeling. You do not always know what I am feeling."

mrrrrr

2009-09-11T00:44:00.000-07:00

more gimme gimmes

2009-09-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

This necklace from vadjutka is soooo pretty. There are other autumn-y ones I love too but this one is super twee.

eek!

2009-09-09T22:59:00.000-07:00

Someone employ me quickly so I can buy the hell out of these dresses from Built By Wendy's fall collection:

I could never actually afford them, but the Internet is like my special fantasy land where I'm allowed to look at dresses like these and dream. And I'm always impeccably dressed and coiffed and sitting on some velvet sofa in France playing the violin, instead of reality, where I'm contemplating Taco Bell and haven't done laundry since I got back from California. Whoops. Domesticity Fail.

heart california heart dogs

2009-09-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

I have hundreds maybe thousands maybe zillions of photos from this summer and I'm soooo lazy that I can't even post them on my entirely defunct flickr account.

This weekend is the festival in Pagosa, which is always my end-of-summer marker. Strange. Flying into LAX earlier this week I saw the giant smoke cloud from the wildfires out there. It looked like a big piece of cauliflower hanging over the city. Amber moved to Portland, which is horribly sadface.

Missing many people at the moment. The kind of missing that hurts. Telepathic hugs and kisses to all.

where do you move when where you're moving from is yourself?

2009-08-02T14:25:00.000-07:00

So I'm currently in San Diego and it's lovely here and all I do is take naps on the beach and play with Lola, who is the cutest dog EVAR and looks like a Fraggle, and read and swim. And I have no money and no idea what to do next.

Some Santa Fe pics:

wanted: new snuggle buddy

2009-07-02T11:36:00.000-07:00

Lonely. Socked-in by clouds of malaise and morose. In need of some serious spooning. Here are my top two candidates:

{socktopus}

{spock monkey}

If anyone would like to buy these for me, I would not object. That is all.

santa fe, as sung by christian bale

2009-06-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

Hey there folks. Sorry for the hiatus. In the months-ish since I last posted, a lot has happened. I moved to Santa Fe for grad school. Cue the song from Newsies:

It's absolutely beautiful here. I took this photo from campus with my PHONE. Phones have cameras now, fyi. I'm slowly falling into a rhythm here — a rhythm that, unsurprisingly, consists of more tequila drinking and less school work then I'd like to admit. But I'm learning, I swear. Jack Kelly dreams (and sings) so longingly about Santa Fe for good reason. I love it here. I got stung by a wasp. I saved a mousie trapped in the library. Oh yeah! And David Sedaris came here! He talked about breast milk and distributing condoms to teenagers and buying olive oil and strawberries at Costco with his brother-in-law. He seemed tired, like all the traveling and speaking was wearing him down. But he was still funny as hell. When it was our turn to get our books signed, one of my friends asked him, "so this is the next book in the Twilight series, right?" I think Sedaris thought that was pretty funny.

But I miss my cool Colorado cats. Everyone is scattering. K8's in California. Dennis, Gretchen and Piedra are in Oklahoma. Drew is in Tajikistan (which he assures me is, in fact, a real country). Amber is leaving for Portland. My heart is tugged in so many directions.

Come visit me. Send me your address and I'll write you a letter. Or I'll send you a tape of me singing "Santa Fe." Or better yet, "Sieze the Day!"

Love,

SOS

squeeee

2009-05-08T13:58:00.000-07:00

This came in the mail today:

My darling Emmalynn bought it for me for my birthday. It's sitting on my windowsill. The lilacs are in full bloom in my yard. It's May! Happy happy.

birdday wish list

2009-05-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

I totally have my birdday outfit all planned out for tomorrow, replete with springy colors:

{dress from Joules}

{cardigan from marc jacobs}

{shoes from MaraisUSA}

Perfect, right? I'm all set for my birthday! Of course, I don't actually *own* any of these things. Nor can I afford them. Le sigh. I wish I were one of those people with "money." Miss you, money. Hope you're enjoying your new home, wherever that may be. My grandpa gave me some money this weekend, but I immediately spent it on Polaroid film on Ebay. And my mum said she'd put some money towards the purchase of a cheapo Diana or Holga, because I want one for the summer. So I guess I know where your new home is, money. Your new home is on Ebay. I hope Ebay is treating you well, money.

may is my very favorite month

2009-05-01T01:29:00.000-07:00

{July 1958. My father is in the middle}

PHOENIX FREEZE TAG

When the red mountains rise

over the sun and dry air fills

with stars, the white specters

spread out on the sidewalk

while we cactus kids chase.

Our feet crunch grass and laughter soaks

in the hot cotton air. We spin and dodge

together in the dark, but always

slow down, always let someone tag us,

freeze us. Everything but our hearts

and breath stop, and we think of how

desert and ocean are then same,

cactus kids floating in both.

Boo, Forever

2009-04-20T00:21:00.000-07:00

{photo}

BOO, FOREVER

Richard Brautigan

Spinning like a ghost

on the bottom of a

top,

I'm haunted by all

the space that I

will live without

you.

OURHYPE/Eye Spit

2009-04-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

Bonjour, mes amis. Just so you know, I'm going to be contributing to this wonderful new bloggie, OURHYPE. Le blog 'twas beautifully brewed up by the ever-talented Gabe and Will. Go check it out.

Now, what does this mean for the fate of this lil' bloggie, you ask? Not much. I'm still going to post about books and dogs and embroidery and needlefelting bunnies over here, but will also be posting about other things at OH. So if my silence seems longer than usual, this is most likely because I'm in more of a digital-as-in-music-and-design state of mind, rather than

digital-as-in-using-your-fingers-to-embroider-constellations. So you can find me there.

Also, if you'd like to contribute, or have any ideas for posts, lemme know (sarah@ourhype.com). I believe Nichole and I are the only girls at the moment, and we can always use more ladies. Ladies!

In other news, Eye Spit has been on hiatus for a while, due to the fact that Drew has a real job, and we're both going to be out of town for the next couple of Fridays. Also, we don't have a web site yet. But we will! And we'll be cooking up ideas for the future of Denver's Worst Photographic Society. Again, lemme know your ideas. More in the future. Love love.

boo winter

2009-04-05T15:12:00.000-07:00

{photo}

Go away, snow.

However, the Bonnie "Prince" Billy show is tonight in Denver, and this weather feels kind of appropriate. You know, wearing long underwear and such. It's right up Will Oldham's alley. Also, all this wintry nonsense really puts me in the mood to watch Let the Right One In again.

UPDATE: Erm, BPB took off his pants and played in his long johns. I tots called that one!

heh heh

2009-04-04T13:23:00.001-07:00

snow day

2009-03-29T20:47:00.001-07:00

Woke up Thursday morning to find that our beautiful spring weather had been completely whisked away overnight. I spent the day shoveling and playing with the pup outside. I love this polaroid of her; the snow looks purple next to the white background. I went to a wine tasting at Burnt Toast with Sara and Dave and Yambear, then came home and crafted! Snowy days are the best for crafting.

{note the beautiful pup on the bed. also, my room is a mess, please 'scuse}

I sewed all of my vintage handkerchiefs along a ribbon to make a garland. It felt like a springtimey thing to do, like a May Day craft or something. Like, if I made an homage to spring, it would come back. I know Colorado needs all the moisture we can get (and according to the weather, it's supposed to snow again tomorrow). But I want springtime! I'm ready to start my flower garden. I'm ready to wear dresses w/0 tights. I'm ready to get some new freckles. Come back, spring!

foulmouthed flower of bohemia

2009-03-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

{photo}

"As they made their way up through the increasing gloom, Joe seemed to steer only according to the light shed by the action of her palm against his wrist, by the low steady flow of voltage through the conducting medium of their sweat. He stumbled like a drunken man and laughed as she hurried him along. He was vaguely aware of the ache in his hand, but he ignored it. As they turned the landing to the top floor, a strand of her hair caught in the corner of his mouth, and for an instant he crunched it between his teeth.

She took him into a small room in the middle of the house, which curved queerly where it backed up against the central tower. In addition to her tiny, girlish white iron bed, a small dresser, and a nightstand, she had crowded in an easel, a photo enlarger, two bookcases, a drawing table, and a thousand and one other items piled atop one another, strewn about, and jammed together with remarkable industry and abandon.

'This is your studio?' Joe said.

A smaller blush this time, at the tips of her ears.

'Also my bedroom,' she said. 'But I wasn't going to ask you to come up to that.'"

—Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

i wanna rub tires with you

2009-03-23T01:57:00.000-07:00

{from cracked designs etsy}

Why has no one ever asked me to rub tires? I obviously don't have enough romance in my life.

Speaking of romance, or the lack thereof, the last episode of BSG made me cry and cry and cry. I was getting really worried because this year's episodes were sometimes overwritten and lame, but I really enjoyed the finale. No one got the happy ending I was hoping for. Frak. Poor Chief. Poor Adama. Lee and Kara didn't make out (because Kara is...an angel? That was a bit of a stretch, but I'm willing to look past it). Frak frak frak it was sad. BUT! To paraphrase a message I sent to Drew way back in June, "I hope the Chief finds out that Tory killed Callie, rips Tory's head off, then grabs Boomer from creepy Cavil's clutches and makes out with her. In fact, that's exactly what I want the final scene of the series to be." I didn't *quite* get my wish, but it was still satisfying.

Also, I'm glad only like two people read this blog, because this post is nerds to the max.

FINALLY

2009-03-16T23:55:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Ontario, I showered every day with citronella shampoo and body wash. I literally bathed in it. Sometimes I even wore those embarrassing mosquito net shirts/pants under my clothes. But nothing, NOTHING kept those bastards off of me.

SUCK IT, MOSQUITOES!

bon dimanche!

2009-03-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

Hi folks. Today was a beautiful halcyon Sunday day. Yambear and I took the bus down to Den-bear to visit the zine library and whatnot. We got coffee at Paris on the Platte and I ordered a drink that had not one, not two, but FOUR layers of deliciousness. Scott and I ordered the exact same sandwich, which also had multiple layers of yum. Then Yambear, Scott, Dennis and I sat in the park and watched happy people and puppies, and I rolled down an hill and got covered in dead grass. I looked like a hay bale. Then Yambear and I went to City O' City, and got the most amazing pizza I've ever had. Apricot sauce, green olives, tarragon and cashew ricotta, PLUS a vegan sweet potato cinnamon roll for dessert. Holy cow.

Also, in case you were wondering, this is what Drew would look like if he were an alien ghost with glowing headphones:

It was a nice day.

I feel like this

2009-03-12T23:03:00.000-07:00

Hey, I'm alive. Just in case you were wondering, since I haven't posted in so long. No time for updates at the moment, as I am a sleepykitteh (whouldathunk I'd ever get back on to a normal sleep schedule, right? Am not a vampire anymore), but I am going to start posting regularly again.

Besos,

Sarah: Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...

2009-01-05T01:14:00.000-08:00

Yambear is making a zine, and over the past couple of weeks we've been trying to come up with a tagline for her. Also, because I bugged Amber till she said yes, I might be contributing to the zine, perhaps with an advice column à la Nicole Georges (because I am a font of wisdom, maturity, and responsibility). So I selfishly want a tagline too. I feel very strongly that if I have a kickass tagline I will be able to paint the tabula rasa of this year all kinds of crazy cool. Yambear and I discussed it, but nothing has really stuck. "Sarah: maybe a vampire?" and "Sarah: hates your eyebrows" were mentioned, but they're both a bit too hostile for my tastes.

Sarah: In space no one can hear you scream.

Sarah: Love means never having to say you're sorry.

Sarah: The truth is out there.

But for reals, people. Any suggestions? I need outside advice. I enjoy Luke's at TBTL: "Luke Burbank never met a Band of Horses song, soft taco, or poker game he didn't want to be a part of." I think if I were to appropriate this for myself, it would be "Sarah never met a Wolf Parade off-shoot band, green chile tamale, or outdated board game she didn't want to be a part of." Except maybe replace "outdated board game" with "MMORPG." Just kidding! But I would feel bad just brazenly stealing someone else's tagline. I'm over my plagiarism phase. That's so 2006 (sorry Trinie Dalton and Shelley Jackson! I mimicked the hell out of you).

Also, I've been thinking: If I had to live inside an album cover from 2008, which one would I pick? I mean actually live there, like if I was somehow zapped and transported into the artwork. Like when cartoon characters turn a corner and find themselves in Dalí's The Persistence of Memory and freak out. I think I would live in M83's Saturdays = Youth, just because the light is so nice and the teenagers so willowy, and then I could borrow those skeleton pajamas and the wolf hat and talk about records with that Molly Ringwald clone. Or maybe David Byrne and Brian Eno's Everything That Happens Will Happen Today because holy cow it's The Sims! Living in this album cover may be a blinding pixelated hell, or it may be awesome. I'm predisposed to think it'd be awesome. Or maybe I'd just hang out in the Fleet Foxes cover because, you know, I wouldn't get bored. And I'd be medieval.

2K9

2009-01-01T23:27:00.000-08:00

My first day of 2009:

Woke up really sweaty. Why was I so sweaty? Eew.

Got breakfast with Drew. We drove around Boulder with no real destination and listened to Portuguese music and I'm pretty sure I saw a parrot sitting on a telephone wire. We agreed this was an auspicious sighting.

Watched The Office (the British one) and fell asleep on the couch for two hours. I awoke to Ricky Gervais playing the guitar and singing "free love on the free love freeway." I love that man to the ends of the earth.

Talked to Amber on the phone for a really long time. She got kicked out of a dive bar in Marquette last night because her friend brought in his own beer. Apparently this is unacceptable?

Took a shower and discovered I have a big bruise on my arm from one of Drew's Vulcan nerve pinches, which were being bandied about last night as freely as the sexual harassment and the champagne.

Went to the bookstore. Whoops! How do I always end up here?

Talked to Gabe on the phone. Plans plans plans! Also, his dad is trying to set him up with a 19-year-old. To this I replied, "Well 19 ain't 17," and realized that maybe my morals are slipping.

Got burritos with Emmy and Heather and then snuck them into the movie theatre. I got so much rice in my hair and my scarf trying to stealthily eat that burrito in the dark. We saw Milk. I cried and cried and cried. I love seeing movies with Emmy, because whenever there's a really amazing shot (of which there are many in Milk), we just look at each other and do this kind of excited thumbs-up thing. We also did that whenever James Franco was onscreen. Also, I covet the glasses Emile Hirsch wears in the movie. Go see it.

Invented some new emoticons via text with Sara. For example, :| (passive aggressive) and :{ (mustache).

Spent way too much time here looking for fabrics for my next project.

Ate some chocolate mousse and watched Wristcutters. Fawned over Patrick Fugit.

Finished Gob's Grief.

Aaaaand...that brings us to now. Et voila, the first day of 2009. I did not make any resolutions (except for these). I've never really bought into the blank slate thing. Carte blanche my ass. However, I am excited for this year. Crafting and writing and Tim and Eric and road trip and Eye Spit: Denver's Worst Photographic Society and moving and MOVING and May and music and books and friends. Yes, please.

dressing an invisible, flat person

2008-12-26T22:16:00.000-08:00

LTLYM assignment # 55

I have another polaroid of a more recent significant outfit, but my parents' scanner just e-barfed everywhere. It's a piece of junk. I think it was maybe the first scanner ever invented? The title/description of this outfit is forthcoming. Maybe.

Also, Christmas. Happy late Christmas. Presents are forthcoming. Maybe. No, presents really are forthcoming. Get excited.

Wolfspeak

2008-12-16T02:29:00.000-08:00

WOLFSPEAK

by Dean Young

It's like Blueberry saying she's a lake

and all people can do is dump in her

busted refrigerators.

No, it's like you spend half your life kicking

the supports out from under stuff

to prove everything can float

and even though everything collapses,

So far, you say, so far.

No, it's like you're repeating yourself,

which is actually a bad copy of someone else

saying the world's a dream

of someone who's eaten nothing

but praying mantises for weeks.

No, the world's a dream

of someone eating the world

then throwing half away because

a banquet's not a banquet unless half's thrown away.

Well maybe, but it's also like you're digging

in the garden and you hear screaming

then thank god you missed the baby rabbits!

Well, if you're going to bring god in,

it's like god wanted to hide you

only you got tired of waiting to be found

so you leapt into the garage light

and said Here I am

which scared the mignon out of everyone

because you are a wolf.

You know the deal.

How everything unlaces.

You have a halo.

Sometimes you trot into town to drink from swimming pools

even though you know it's bad for you.

People misunderstand your smile.

Also lakes

and the inner flotation of all things.

Nothing is ever lost.

You can't forget where you are

when you're never anywhere

like a star. The star's coloring book

is just like yours, the universe.

Almost none of the black crayon's left.

People misunderstand black crayons

but put a baby rabbit in their mitts,

they'll feel immense panic.

Maybe not right away

but soon and forever.

2008-12-05T23:54:00.000-08:00

She was watching a movie, one that she watched every day. It was her wedding video, or at least a video of what her wedding would have been like, if the world hadn't ended, if her boyfriend had lived long enough to propose to her.

She lay on her belly on her bed, feet kicking in the air behind her, and said "Forward," so the image in the monitor, as big as her window on the opposite wall, blurred and accelerated, until she slowed it down at the reception. Some days she just listened to the blessing of the minister, a big lesbian looking lady in a purple dress that made her look like Grimace the milkshake monster, and some days she just watched when the camera took a slow track along the buffet table, feeling nostalgic for the salmon fillet and miniature quiches that she had never tasted. And some days, when she was feeling up to it, she watched the dancing, hugging her pillow while her new husband — they were twenty-five when they married and age only made him more handsome — spun her around to a bluegrass tune. She had never imagined that she would have banjos and autoharps at her wedding, and yet from the first time she heard them she knew the angel had got it all just right, just as it had been, and just as it never would be. The exchange of vows never got to her, but somehow the dancing always did her in. While her father called out that her sausage was getting cold, she cried and cried.

squid squid

2008-12-02T23:07:00.000-08:00

What's your squid name?

Mine is Ravenous Sarah the Leviathan.

Piedra

2008-11-24T23:42:00.000-08:00

I finally got to meet Sweetie Pedie! She was born at 12:09 this morning, and she is so beautiful and tiny. Her full name is Piedra Sage Jones, and she is named after the prettiest canyon in Colorado (I suggested Piedra Obama Jones, but I like Sage, too). She is very vocal and makes squawks and sighs to Gretchen nonstop, and Dennis said she sounds like a squeaky toy. She has those tiny fingers and toes that always remind me of a tree frog for some reason. Dennis also said she makes old man faces, because she scrunches her face up like potato. She looks like her parents. Gretchen was on the phone with her sister in Africa, and Dennis was changing her diaper, and Piedra was not happy so she started bawling, and Dennis said, "Well, she is real," and I said, "Yes, she is very real."

You can't see her very well in the pictures — she's just a tiny head poking out of the blankets — but the photos are great anyway (visit their blog soon for updates and more photos; with a professional photographer as a father, Piedra had better get used to having her picture taken). None of us could decide what to do with our glasses, so they're in various states of disarray. My favorite is the one where G is taking off her glasses; she looks like a librarian studying Pedie:

Meeting Piedra for the first time made me think about the day Emmy was born. I remember the dish of hard candy in my mom's hospital room. My parents have always told me that since I was a C-section baby, I didn't cry at all when I was born. I just looked around at everyone. But not Emmy. Emmy screamed and screamed and screamed, and her head was lopsided, and her face was red and angry. Sometimes my parents still tease her about this. Even though she's cuter than me now, newborn-wise, I'm the winner.

I remember even earlier than that day, too; I was lying stretched across the coffee table (kids are weird), and my mom was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, which was made from big blue bricks and looked like some ice furniture from the White Witch's castle. She told me that I was going to have a baby sister. I don't remember what my reply was, but I remember thinking something like, "WHY?"Also, I remember my dad asking me which name I liked best for the baby: Emmalynn or Emmaline. (My mom was reading Anne of Green Gables). I wanted to name her Lacey, but my input was ignored, because she became Emmalynn. Obviously. In retrospect, I'm glad they didn't let their less-than-three-year-old choose a name, because Lacey is a hideous name, like if I named my daughter Doily or Tea Cozy.

When I was five, we adopted a puppy, and I insisted on naming her Lacey. She slept in a box with blankets, and my dad put a clock in the box so it would sound like her mother's heartbeat. I remember I thought that was so odd, that her mom's heartbeat was folded up with all the cogs and gears of the clock. I pretended Lacey was my baby, and I swaddled her and held her against my chest so she could hear my real, ticking heart, not the strange cogheart.

Whoops, tangent. Anyway, welcome to the world, Baby Jones! Piedra's a lucky girl to be brought into the world by such amazing and loving people. Also, she's lucky to have such brave parents, because I think so much courage and faith brought Dennis and Gretchen together. I'm not just talking about the note Gretchen wrote Dennis, or Dennis moving to Maine, but the fact that they both acknowledged wholeheartedly that they were made for each other. Because that's a terrifying thing to do, to tell someone how you feel, and give them your heart. It's the second scariest thing in the world (after velociraptors). But obviously worth it.

I love all three of you. And please tell Shelby that Pedie is NOT a squeaky toy.

Muttnik

2008-11-16T02:24:00.000-08:00

Muttnik

As she burned, immolated inside Sputnik II,

Laika barked out warnings to the dogs

tied up in snowy fields below

whose owners loved furniture more,

and the dogs raised muzzles to the stars

with nothing to keep them company

but the moon overhead and their own long howling.

I'm reading Sputnik Sweetheart, and it reminded me of my ol' friend Laika. I've always thought Roxie looks a bit like Laika. Well, I guess more like the dog who is Laika in that one video. On a side note, I hope the Obamas rescue a shelter dog.

that's right, touch it, it's called girlface!

2008-11-13T13:34:00.000-08:00

Thank you, Slog, for introducing me to the wonders of dubbing over soap opera footage. Deven Green, you're right up there with Brad Neely.

gone

2008-11-09T14:11:00.000-08:00

RIP hard drive. All of my writing from May 2007 to present is gone, lost to that ephemeral world where I imagine all digitally-trashed files go. I haven't yet decided if I want to pay $300-900 to recover my files (eeew, are you crazy, Mr. Mac Shack guy!?), as all of my music, pictures, and older stories were safely tucked away on Em's external. (Speaking of older stories, why did I write so many poems about giraffes in 2006? Mystery)!

So I guess the only things *really* gone are my newer stories and poems and that one weird file labeled simply "various" that contained mostly funny pictures/videos/etc I've gleaned from the webs (so long, photos of cats dressed in Harry Potter scarves and videos of singing muppets).

I cried on Friday in the Mac store when I found out it was all gone. Lesson learned. My new hard drive will be guarded more stringently than Minas Freaking Tirith.

So, to the point of this longwinded, Biden-esque explanation of the death of my hard drive: please, please, please let's start some sort of exquisite corpse/writing group/something. It can be totally casual, and we can do it IRL but also do some sort of email-y thing to include those of you who are lost to geography. I don't care. I really just want to write some new stuff with my friends.

Okay. Neato. Let me know.

"... a quiet, meticulous waiter who had the sad airs of a man long accustomed to the spectacular demolition of dreams."

bat chat

2008-10-28T12:28:00.000-07:00

1:12 PM Amber: oh yeah

hey

finger bones

what are they called?

1:13 PM me: phalanges?

Amber: like feet bones are called metatarsals...

me: oh right

Amber: yeah, I wasn't sure

me: carpals

Amber: i haven't fractured my fingers

just everything else

ooooooooooooh

sweet

yeah

cool

me: *metacarpals

1: 14 PM Amber: okay, neato

"I'll keep my cell phone in my apron so we can text each other"

2008-10-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

I took a three hour nap on the couch today in my underwear, during which I had weirdo dreams involving waiting tables and Tetris. I just got a brain freeze from eating applesauce too quickly. Now I'm going to put in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (inspired by Neil Gaiman's anecdote last night about Terry Gilliam just popping by for tea while he was working on Mirrormask) and probably pass out cold on the couch again.

When I'm not feeling like this, I'm glad my routine of couch-sleeping, work, and the innernettes is occasionally peppered with awesomeness, like hearing Gaiman read last night (although I was slightly embarrassed when someone asked if it were true that he's going to write an episode for Doctor Who and I yelled "OH SHIT!"), and The Silver Jews last Sunday, and Sigur Ros a couple weeks ago, and my planned trip home this weekend to see the fall colors and go to the pumpkin patch with my mom and play with my Tamale Mollie listen to dad and Em play the banjo/mando.

Also, I'm glad Yam-bear and I can connect via texts while we're at work; of course, her apron is undeniably cuter than mine.

thanks drew

2008-09-30T23:13:00.000-07:00

We love the camera. (We being me and my dogs). Thank you.

Yay! This is us hugging and celebrating the new camera!

Mollie, some berries, and so much happiness.

She looks just like a spinosaurus in this photo. The new camera is bewitched, I'm certain.

the unruly beloved emu

2008-09-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while. I've been busy (kind of. I've also spent a lot of time flâneuring 'bout the town). Et, je suis paresseuse. A few big things:

Firstly, Four Corners. Aug 29-31. Friday I emceed the late night stage, then overdid it a bit on the partying (Scott ran down the street naked and got the cops called on us; Marykate subsequently yelled "The strippers are here!" when the cops knocked on the door), so Saturday was a little more low-key. Well, until the evening, when I slipped and fell in the mud dancing to the Punch Brothers, emceed the late night stage again, and listened to the jams until 3:30 a.m. Sunday, despite (or perhaps because of) the rain, was the best day: two-stepping with a bit of swing dancing under the tent. That's all that I need to say. For those of you who missed it: come next time! For those who were there: high five! See you next year. I'll be the one with a bottle of Maker's Mark in one hand and a mic in the other (just kidding, I don't drink while I'm working. Complete professional, I am, sir).

Secondly, Dennis and Gretchen are MARRIED! Sept. 6, in Sedona (well, in between Sedona and Flagstaff, I guess). They were married in a sun-filled red canyon, and Emmy and I played in a nearby creek before the ceremony. I've never been hiking in a dress before. "I'd like to introduce you all to Mr. and Mrs. Jones!"

Thirdly, I moved back to Boulder. Yes, I live here now. My house has a wonderful backyard and two apple trees, and Emmy has named the squirrel who lives outside Winslow.

Fourthly, the Monolith Festival, Red Rocks, Sept. 13 & 14. I'm surprised I didn't have a seizure from sensory overload. Jumping from the Avett Brothers to Justice in less than six hours takes a finely-tuned mind and surly demeanor (and I posses both). Also, I discovered that sevenish pulls from the Tullamore Dew bottle IN THE CAR before the festival starts may be excessive; verdict's still out on that one.

So, I apologize for ignoring this little bloggy. Sorry for being a bad mom, bloggy. But to the approximately 2.5 people who read this blog, rejoice! For the first time since, well, since Paris, I've been writing (non-work writing, that is). It's just a bunch of little fragments right now, worthy of papier maché projects, at best. But still, I'll put in a concerted effort to post here more regularly. Surprisingly, chugging two mugs of coffee (like literal, desperate, throat-scalding chugging) and driving nonstop to Flagstaff for the wedding provided me with a lot of writing material. For example: a giant, bloated, dead white cow on the side of the road that Sean mistook for a polar bear. Priceless.

In the meantime, a poem I really love: the unruly beloved emu. Are you the reverse stork of gorgeousness?

gently furious nostalgia: two old poems

2008-09-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

from spring 2007

phoenix IV (diagnosis)

The summer my sister came home from Sun Valley
Good Samaritan, I rooted out all the nail polish
bottles in our house and threw them away. I had heard
polish stopped sticking to fingernails after
sickness. I did not want her to see paint slip from her
fingers like fat, garish banana leaves. It was the summer of
120 degrees heat, of oven mitts worn in cars to grip
scorched steering wheels. Potted spider plants became
spindly starfish; cactus wrens haunted streets at night,
searching for glasses of chalky lemon water left on porches.
It was also the summer I learned all bodies held secrets:
my sister’s ribboned through her lymph until the
flues blocked and she was drained of her
waters like the city. After sitting in a patch of
withered dandelions, I saw the yellow streaks on
my thighs and thought I had jaundiced like her,
thought Here it comes. Yet there was no way for me
to understand. I could only twist the sprinkler and watch
the globed water net her small frame in the grass.
Outside the borders of her frayed blue bathing suit,
I watched the pale parentheses in her armpits, delineating
places where her body did itself harm. Stitches
shone like train tracks through the channels of her
groin as she crossed the dry husk of our lawn.

Upon Viewing the First Giant Squid Caught on Video

I anticipated this. Before you existed
in the world, I often envisioned your curved beak,
plump tentacles in the green sea, eyes Frisbee-big.
The largest eyes of any animal on the planet.

Glutted with books, I knew your red skin,
the secret barbs in your suckers
to catch and rip fish. I knew you well.
But old friend, to watch you die
after putting up quite a fight — to see you

caught on hooks, the thin brown
cellulose of film where you cannot
escape, where you will struggle
on the knife-grey water
causing the injuries that killed you —

I did not know this, the limp body slide
of a baby by giant squid standards,
never saw froth and pulp on pale eyes,
dead limbs animated, dancing with waves.

You should not have died. But we wanted
you here with us, not in your home
where we cannot see you, where sunlight
never reaches. I am sorry, but please understand:

We know nothing of you, except the
broken plank dreams left in your wake,
and that one day we will all swim forever
across the terrible water toward your brothers.

paper bee

2008-08-13T21:20:00.000-07:00

the brother returns home

2008-08-06T00:29:00.000-07:00

Dennis is coming home Friday for a few weeks before he heads off to Sedona to get hitched! I've been trying to clean his room for him, but unfortunately, all the detritus of my life has overflowed into his room, so I'm afraid he's gonna have to be living amongst all of my excess clothes/paintings/books/broken lamps, etc.

"You know, time and space are essentially the same thing. So with Daylight Savings Time, do we save space as well? Because my closet is really crowded." — Dennis, circa 2006

I can't wait.

scrabble, anyone?

2008-08-03T00:31:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been having a lot of fun with Scrabble. As in, I pick some of my favorite lines from poems, songs, whatever, and try to Scrabble-ify them. Some are impossible to do, but I totally nailed one earlier tonight:

It's hard to see, but it says "writhe and bear the fruit of screaming," and it's from Frank O'Hara's "For Grace, After a Party," which is one of my favorites:

You do not always know what I am feeling.
Last night in the warm spring air while I was
blazing my tirade against someone who doesn't
interest
me, it was love for you that set me
afire,
and isn't it odd? for in rooms full of
strangers my most tender feelings
writhe and
bear the fruit of screaming. Put out your hand,
isn't there
an ashtray, suddenly, there? beside
the bed? And someone you love enters the room
and says wouldn't
you like the eggs a little

different today?
And when they arrive they are
just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather
is holding.

I'm easily entertained (obviously). I suppose I should be focusing on writing my own poetry instead of Scrabbling other people's poetry. Eh, blargh. Oh, and I found the bridge from my very very first fiddle, which was no longer than a longish knitting needle, and which I grew out of when I was 8 years old. It was in the Scrabble box. Weird. The GDAE I penciled on it to help me remember is still visible. I'm going to make a necklace out of it. Like I said before, easily entertained.

mutatis mutandis

2008-07-23T22:51:00.000-07:00

I find way too much weird stuff on the internet. I wrote this for my thesis, in response to Shelley Jackson’s Half Life:

Mutatis Mutandis

In my memories, the glass separating me from the Two-Headed Boy was not actually glass, but rather a sort of lucent film. The hairs on the two heads waved slowly in the murky liquid as the boy floated, his motionless form occasionally knocking against the glass as though he was attempting to nose his way out of his amniotic pouch. In my memories, it is when the glass begins to stretch and bend under his force that I remember this scene probably is not from my memory at all. It probably never happened, was just seeped into my head by the floating Braille foam of imagination.
I used to ask my mother if we’d ever visited a museum that held a two-headed boy, but she always balked at the idea of such an oddity. I don’t know where the memory comes from, but those two heads with their black hair and closed eyes are as clear in my mind as my own reflection.

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING ARE TRUE OF YOU? (CIRCLE ALL THAT APPLY):

•I sometimes have the feeling that someone is looking over my shoulder.
•I sometimes have the feeling that someone is looking through my eyes.
•I sometimes have the feeling that I am looking through my own eyes, i.e. that my self and my eyes are not identical but keep a certain distance.
•I'm butting my head against a wall, and the wall is myself.

“Remind me, why do I have to fill this thing out?” I asked Petra.
Petra set her notepad on the side table and leaned forward in her chair, giving me a hard look over her thick, plastic-framed glasses.
“I told you, Blanche. It’s just a little experiment. Something new I’m trying with all my patients who exhibit your symptoms.”
“What symptoms?”
“Well, your paranoia, for example. Your sense of a haunted past. We weren’t able to dredge up anything with hypnosis, so I’m trying something new.”
I sighed and read on.

•It sometimes strikes me as preposterous that so many different people feel entitled to call themselves “I”.
•When I say “I,” I have the feeling there are several people involved: the one talking, the one talked about, the one listening, the one observing all the others.
•When I catch sight of myself in a shop window, or hear a recording of my voice, it takes a moment to recognize myself.
I circled all three.
•Parts of my body are mysterious to me.
“My eyelid sometimes twitches involuntarily. Doesn’t that happen to everyone?” I said, smirking. Petra simply raised her eyebrows.
•When my reflexes are tested with a rubber hammer, I often wonder whether I am pretending to kick or just kicking.
•I sometimes feel that part of me is devoted to some activity in which I have little say.

Circle.

•I have eyes on the back of my head.
•I am invisible.
•Nobody knows me.
•I sometimes have a feeling of déjà vu.
•I sometimes feel like I see the world backwards and upside down.
•I sometimes feel like I'm the wrong size and shape, that my real self is much bigger, smaller, or simply different.

Circle.

A small drawing on the next page depicted a boy putting his pants on backwards, each foot inserted into the bottom cuff.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
•The pants are on backwards.
•The boy is on backwards.
•Where is the floor?
•There is nothing wrong with this picture.

I passed a glass paperweight from Petra’s desk between my hands as she wrote down the name and address of the new doctor she wanted me to see, Dr. Shelley. The sphere was heavy in my palms, and cold. Ghosts of my chilled fingerprints lingered on the glass.

Sometimes in my memories, I have a sister. I know she looked like me, but her features are blurred and infantile. When I used to sit on the floor of my mother’s closet, my nostrils full of the leather smell of her shoes, my twin was there. Her small hand rested in mine as we whispered to each other. She used to point out the patterns in the woodgrain on my old oak dresser—the arches and curves of the lines looked like a cave to her—and create stories for me, stories of blind cave creatures. Her hand looked like a white star as she placed her palm on the wooden drawers. This memory is unlike my memory of the Two-Headed Boy, because from the beginning of this memory, there is not doubt in my mind that it is not true. I don’t have a sister. But then where do these memories come from?

I assumed the baby was a boy, but there was no way to tell from the black and white drawing. The furrow between its legs sprouted not sex, but another torso, two more arms and another head. The head was smiling, raised slightly to glance upwards over the bridge of skin and organs that separated it from its counterpart. One leg projected from the wrinkle of the baby’s hip, ending in a fan of mismatched, spatulate toes. A long crease replaced a belly button, leading into buttocks and two more bowed, fat baby legs. The baby’s skeleton must look like a chalky, spindly starfish, I thought as I traced each limb with my finger, wondering why Dr. Shelley would hang this in her waiting room.
“Blanche Adams?” A squat nurse poked her head from behind the oak door. “We’re ready for you now.”
I followed the nurse—Peggy, her nametag said—down a long corridor. No doors had been left open, but I could hear murmurs behind them. I thought Peggy would lead me into a room to wait for Dr. Shelley, but we instead walked through the doors at the end of the corridor, where several large white machines waited, hollowed out like insect husks. The drone and whir of the nearest machine filled my ears.
“If you could remove your clothes and put this on, we’ll get the tests started as soon as possible,” Peggy said, handing me a hospital gown.
“What tests?” I asked.
Peggy consulted her clipboard. “Looks like we’ve got you down for a CAT scan, MRI, and thoracic X ray,” she said.
“Why?” I asked, bewildered.
“Your doctor faxed over the results of your questionnaire. This is just standard procedure for someone with your results.”
“My results?” I asked. “It was just some mind-trick test.”
“Dr. Shelley thought it’d be best to take a look at your brain and other organs, just to make sure,” said Peggy, smoothing down the tissue paper on the vinyl-covered pillow of the nearest machine.
My ears rang with the word tumor, and every medical textbook picture I’d ever seen ran through my head—the glossy blue clusters corded with thick veins, clumps of tissue tucked between folds of the cerebral cortex like the miniature hearts that belong to mice and other small mammals.
“Do I have a tumor?” I asked. I was outside myself.
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Peggy said before she left the room to allow me to change.
Malignant cells hanging from ribs like moss, crawling up my spine like ivy.

Dr. Shelley examined the CAT scan of my braincase on the computer screen. I searched through the rings of red and purple glowing lines that denoted my brain tissue, but I found nothing. When I tried to envision it, my skull always held cavernous, unchartable depths; however, on the cathode rays of the screen, it looked small and insignificant.
“Well, I don’t think it’s a craniopagus parasite,” said Dr. Shelley, circling the crown of my head with her pen. “We’d see a lot less epiphyseal closure in this area.”
“Wait, I’m sorry. So it’s not a tumor?” I asked. My head felt light and hot, as though it was filled with cotton. “I thought the MRI showed a tumor.”
“There’s a tumor in your chest. I’m saying you don’t have a craniopagus parasite in your head. A type of duplicata incompleta. It’s what would have been your twin, attached to you,” said Dr. Shelley.
“I’m sorry, what would have been?” I asked.
“Yes. It would have been your twin, if its development hadn’t been stunted in the womb.” She handed me a packet of papers. “Didn’t Petra tell you anything about this?” Dr. Shelley asked.
“No.” I looked at the papers Dr. Shelley had given me.
The explanation is relatively simple. Conjoined twins are divided into groups from the area of conjunction, one of the groups being craniopagus twins, i.e. joined at the skull. In rare instances, the body of one craniopagus twin atrophies in utero due to deficient placental blood supply, and the result is craniopagus parasiticus conjoined twins, where the ‘normal’ twin has a parasitic head and rudimentary body attached to the crown of the head. The second head normally grows quicker than the lower one, probably due to hydrocephalus caused by defective venous drainage.
A picture showed a two bawling infant heads fused together. The upper head did not reach further than a neck-like stump, vegetal and shrunken, a small peach. Its skin was veiny and lucent like the ears of a rabbit.
“Oh my god,” I said.
“I have video,” said Dr. Shelley. “If you’re interested, I can show it to you. There’s a really great part when its mother gives it her breast and the lips attempt to suck.”
Individuals with buried craniopagus parasites often have the feeling that they are not alone. Moreover, they feel they possess a sort of guardian or alter ego, someone who watches over them, but who sees things they do not see, or sees the same things, but from an inverse perspective. They are occasionally stirred by sensations that have no identifiable source within conscious experience, and occasionally perform unintended actions, e.g. putting away the milk in the freezer, that seem to reflect some sort of logic, but a logic that is back to front. Usually, though, this is a source of secret satisfaction, as it may be the case that what seems to them their worse mistake may be in fact their salvation.
I ignored Dr. Shelley’s offer to watch the video. The peach pit neck and O-shaped lips disappeared and I saw only the Two-Headed Boy. “I used to have one of these?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so. But I do think,” she said, sliding the X-ray of my chest under a metal clip, fastening it to a glowing screen, “that you have a duplicata incompleta. You contain your incomplete, undeveloped twin in the form of a tumor right here.” She circled a smudge of white below my left ribs.
It sometimes strikes me as preposterous that so many different people feel entitled to call themselves “I.”
“I’m surprised you’ve never heard of this before,” said Dr. Shelley. “The twofers are getting pretty popular nowadays.”
“Twofer?”
“Dicephalus dipus dibrachius. Conjoined twins who share a body. Two-headed people,” she said.
“I’ve heard of it,” I said. “The Two-Headed Boy of Bengal. I’ve heard of him. And I think,” I paused. “I think I’ve seen it before.”
“On TV?” asked Dr. Shelley.
“No, I don’t watch the news,” I said.
“Oh, these guys aren’t on the news. They’re usually on the talk shows.”
“I thought those were fake,” I said.
“Most people do.” Dr. Shelley sighed. “I’ve been on Oprah twice. I think the Farber twins were on last month, actually.”
I didn’t know who the Farber twins were, but I had seen the Two-Headed Boy, floating behind his glass. I didn’t mention this to Dr. Shelley. I simply continued shaking my head, no, no.
“How can you be certain?” I asked.
“I’ve spoken with your psychiatrist, and Petra felt your paranoia, the haunting impression that your life could have been entirely different and something has gone wrong, made you a prime candidate for duplicata incompleta.”
“It could just be a tumor. Lots of people are paranoid.”
“Yes, but if you look here,” said Dr. Shelley, pointing to small white speckles on the X ray, “you can see that your tumor is growing teeth.
I looked at the string of white dots hanging from my ribs, illuminated on the screen like Christmas lights, and promptly vomited at my feet.

Twofers, I learned from the material Dr. Shelley sent me home with, have two hearts. I remembered from my books that vampires also have two hearts. One heart beats with goodness, the other with evil. While the good heart beats, the vampire is harmless, but there is always the risk of the second heart taking over, wetting its chin with blood. I wondered which heart I’d inherited.
Dr. Shelley said the twin buried in my chest likely did not have a heart, and if it did, it wasn’t functioning. But despite Dr. Shelley’s reassurances, I still felt it thrumming—a low, quiet vibration, like a leaky valve. Motionless, the sullen blimp of my twin hung in the empty space. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there, fattening.
When I thought about myself—myself, was I still myself? Or was I now myselves? When I thought about myself, I sounded like a bad riddle, (What has teeth but is not human? A comb!). What if my twin wasn’t even a girl—what was I then? I often turned to the pamphlets Dr. Shelley had given me. I realized I had the telltale sense that there was another life buried within my own, but that I have choked or stifled it. Or maybe it has, of its own accord, turned on itself? I could not tell.
I could feel the pulpy mass growing heavier and knottier in my chest. I imagined it was growing fibrous veins of its own, tendrils snaked through the valves of my heart, leeching away my blood. This could not be the same twin from my childhood, that benevolent sister of my youth. The picture of the undeveloped twin in the pamphlets resembled a stuffed turkey, limbs folded back in on themselves, spine curved over tucked knees. All that remained of the head was a shriveled, radish-shaped peninsula jutting from the neck.
You tend to be suspicious, to suspect others of carrying a secret, when you are the one with the secret—a secret that you do not know and will never know. Unable to determine what is wrong, you scrutinize yourself for signs of a contrary will, but in every respect you resemble yourself: you are normal. This strikes you as an almost unbearable deceit; if only you could let yourself express... express... what?

Dr. Shelley said I needed to decide whether or not I wanted to keep my twin. “The labs show it’s not malignant,” she told me over the phone, “but there’s not telling how much longer it will continue to grow.”
“Grow?”
“Yes,” she said, static singing across the phone lines with her voice. “As long as it—the entity—is connected to your blood supply, it won’t diminish. Some twins grow until they’re almost as big as newborn babies. I once extracted a skeleton the size of a pigeon from a woman’s abdomen.”

Dr. Shelley arranged for me to meet with a surrogate twofer I could relate with, someone who could help me make a decision. There were no twofers living in my town, so my assigned mentor had to travel an hour to get to me. I met her—them—I met Willow and Diane in a coffee shop down the street from my apartment. I didn’t actually meet Willow, as she slept the entire time.
“Narcoleptic,” Diane said before even shaking my hand, crooking her head to point across the cradle of neck to her sister’s slumped head. “She once fell asleep for an entire year. But she’s only been sleeping for eight days this time.” Diane shrugged their shoulders—I imagined she must have nearly full reign of the body while Willow slept. “She’s had chronic narcolepsy since we were twelve,” Diane said.
“My doctor says I have chronic suicide,” I said before I could stop myself. Something compelled me to divulge this personal information to Diane and Willow: perhaps it was the way everyone in the coffee shop was staring at them—I wanted to make the scene more intimate. Or perhaps it wasn’t me at all, I thought, considering the clump of cells in my chest.
“What’s that?” Diane asked politely. She rested her chin in her right hand, brushing her dark hair out of Willow’s face. Willow’s hair was cropped much shorter than her sister’s.
“It just means I subconsciously make my life bad, but never actually end it all.”
Diane nodded. “So, you have a foetus-in-foetu?” she asked.
“Is that the same thing as a duplicata incompleta?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes, I have one of those,” I said.
“How do you feel about that?” she asked.
“How do you feel about having two heads?” I asked, then immediately clapped my hand over my mouth. “Oh, that was rude,” I said.
Diane threw her head back and laughed, as Willow’s head jolted slightly from the vibrations of laughter in their chest. A small drop of saliva fell from Willow’s lips, hitting the collar of their shirt. Diane didn’t seem to notice. “We’re used to it,” she said.
“What I meant to ask was, how do you feel about sharing your identity with someone else? I said. “Don’t you feel that there should be something that is intrinsically yours?”
“No,” said Diane. “I think people like us—myselves, yourselves—I think we who share our identities are a better example of true humans. We all share pieces of ourselves with other people. And sometimes other people get under our skin so thoroughly they never leave us.”
“Hm.” I mumbled. Are my innards riddled with other people? Is nothing purely mine?
“When you think about yourself, there are already two of you—you and the you who is thinking.” Diane said, pulling a napkin from the dispenser. She drew something with black pen, then pushed the napkin at me. I saw a bracketed I:
[I]
“When you think about that, there are three of you—you, the you who is thinking, and the you who is thinking about the two of them.” Diane drew:
I[I[I]]
“Look at that,” she said. “Now there are four of you:
I[I[I[I]]]
I put my hand over the hollow below my ribs where my twin rested. Was it listening?
“Isn’t that neat?” Diane asked. “You’re an example that infinity is not far away, not in the voids of outer space or the grains of sand on a beach or all the raindrops collected in the ocean.” Willow gave a satisfied, sleepy grunt, and her eyelids quivered.
Any human being is big enough to get lost in, no matter how small we look pressed against the glowing hospital screens.
“I think I saw a twofer when I was little,” I addressed Diane, although I was still watching Willow’s eyelids. “He was in a glass case, floating.”
“We’ve seen him too,” Diane said. “The Two-Headed Boy.”
“Where did you see him?” I asked.
Diane shrugged their shoulders again. “No place real.”
She must have noticed my face fall, because she reached their left hand across the table, placed it on mine and said, “It could be worse. We could be microcephiles.”

~
In my memories, the glass begins to stretch and bend under the Two-Headed Boy’s force. Glass bulges forward until it deflates like a plastic bag and rips. Green water issues slowly from the case, like water from a faucet. I take a step backward as the loamy-smelling water gathers around my ankles. The Two-Headed Boy unfurls himself slowly like a scroll and wraps his two arms around us, careful to cradle our head in the gulf of neck between his two heads.

area: no measure of depth

2008-07-21T21:21:00.000-07:00

When I was 15, I was obsessed with — surprise! — Emily Dickinson. If you're a teenaged girl, I think it's required that you go through a phase of either Emily or Sylvia Plath. My Plath phase didn't come till I was 18 (man, and I was a total downer then). Anyway, I read all her anthologies, all the biographies. As she described herself: "I am small, like the wren, and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur, and my eyes like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves." How could I not love that? I used to grow heliotropes in my garden, because I once read that she requested she be buried with a handful of heliotropes "to bring to my (...)." George? Shit, I forget his name. Some guy she supposedly loved who died before her. In fact, this summer I had some heliotropes in a pot on the porch until my mom let them die when I was out of town a few weekends ago (for a woman who saves people's lives, she's a horribly unskilled gardener).

Anyway, I thought of Emily Dickinson the other day. The first time I've really thought of her in nine years. I thought of her because I've been mulling over the idea of location. I've been here since February, and soon I'll be back in Boulder. And I want to go to school in Seattle. San Francisco. New York. Austin. Chicago. Portland. Prague. Santa Fe. Oxford. Middlebury. I don't know. Sometimes I miss living in Paris so badly that it feels like I have a big, baguette-shaped piece missing from my life. I want to move to Brazil. Actually, I want to move to New Zealand. Or both. Maybe Russia.

I was at my desk looking up how to obtain a work visa to live in Reykjavik, and I found a quote: "A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for." How appropriate, I thought to myself. How fitting. (I later looked up this quote on Wikiquote and learned that "this quote has gained popularity among Facebook users as of April 2008." Blurg).

And then suddenly, I thought of Emily Dickinson, who never travelled more than 60 miles from her hometown. Okay, I don't remember how many miles exactly. But not very far. And I suddenly felt so suffocated at my desk, and so, so sorry for Emily Dickinson. And, you know, I did the normal freak out: I calculated how much money it would cost me to live in Paris again, looked up plane tickets, searched hostels, browsed ebay for kickin' old luggage.

But then I remembered another quote I once read. After Emily died, her sister, Lavinia, found the 1,800 poems that Emily never had published. And on a scrap piece of paper, she found something that Emily had scrawled out hastily:

"Area: no measure of depth."

And I felt like an asshole for feeling sorry for her, and for feeling sorry for myself.

"There's an awful lot we miss"

2008-07-08T22:21:00.000-07:00

Usually my job is pretty entertaining. Karl, my editor, and I like to make fun of the pictures of babies, weddings, and other randoms people send in to be published in the paper ("I wonder if she realizes she birthed a potato?" "Oh, I see Ichabod Crane there secured himself a lovely bride."). However, reporting in this town has been getting me down lately. I get pretty sick of trying to organize the messy sphere of human affairs in print. Sure, I meet a lot of interesting people and nutters (like the woman who believes she is periodically impregnated by the Council of Twelve, a group of otherworldly beings who use her body to produce the Children of the Violet Ray of Wisdom. No joke). But lately I've been trudging through the banal: school board meetings, kiddie fishing tournaments, town council votes. This weekend I had to go to the local production of "Oliver!" the musical. As much as I love watching kids dressed as scrappy Dickensian orphans sing and dance and celebrate child abuse and poverty in Victorian London, I really wasn't feeling it. Plus an old man yelled at me for taking pictures: "You knock it off and get out right now!" I was so furious and humiliated it made me cry.

That being said, I wasn't thrilled that I was slated to write a quick piece about the local worm farm this week. Oh my god. Worm farm. I was positive I was going to be murdered and turned into mulch. I imagined some horrible, eyeless, hook-mouthed monster rearing out of the soil and crashing down on me while the fanged farmer cackled in the background. Luckily, our local worm farmer — Jody, I believe, is her name — called and cancelled our appointment Monday morning. She told me the influx of tourists fishing over the Fourth of July weekend had completely wiped out her stock. I was off the hook (oooh, bad pun!). So instead, Karl sent me to interview an old man who had called the office and told us he had just met up with a childhood friend he had not seen or talked to since 1943. "Go write something to tug on the withered old heartstrings of this community," Karl told me.

So, I met the old friends, Jim and Glenn, at Jim's home, where they were sitting on the couch talking when I knocked on the door. Jim wore the hugest plastic-framed glasses I've ever seen — you know, the type that would look totally hip on someone in The Downer, but on an old guy, just look necessary and utilitarian. They introduced me to their wives, Elizabeth and Fern, respectively, and offered me a seat. Before I could even start asking them questions, they wanted to know everything about me. Jim and Glenn grew up together in small town Illinois, so they were absolutely fascinated by my Irish and Russian origins in Chicago (I left out the part about my grandmother losing her thumb in a factory when she was eight years old; I guess "Oliver!" was still too fresh in my mind.) They acted like the fact that I was born in Arizona and grew up in The Valley was a great achievement on my part (old people love Phoenix). When I told them I'd studied creative writing and French in school, Elizabeth wistfully murmured, "Oooh my, French," to herself.

I finally got them to start talking about themselves, and ended up listening for two hours. Glenn and Jim used to double-date with a pair of twins (haaaawt, right?), before Jim graduated and moved to Springfield and Glenn dropped out to work on his mother's farm. That was the last time they saw each other before their reunion Sunday. Glenn and Fern just happen to go to church in Illinois with Magel, "the gal Jim used to go with," and out of the blue, she asked Glenn if he'd talked to Jim. This prompted Glenn to look Jim up and contact him. They told me all sorts of sad stories and funny stories, a few of which I put in my article. When I asked Glenn how he and Fern met, he couldn't remember, until Fern said, "Well, you used to come watch me roller skate, then one day you asked me for a date." This, of course, melted my cold and surly heart, as I imagined a young Fern with curled hair and lipstick, red polka-dot dress swishing in time with the movement of her skates, and Glenn nervously folding and refolding his handkerchief as he gathered his courage to ask Fern for a date.

I really like talking to old people (when they're not yelling at me in musical productions, that is). But the entire time Glenn and Jim were talking, the only thing I could think about was how easily the people we love and care about slip away from us. Even today, with cell phones, email, facebook — blogs — it's so easy for people to disappear. When someone's been out of your life for long enough, it can feel like they're dead. Sometimes, if you really never speak to them again, they might as well be. And people we've only just met can leave as quickly as they came into our lives. It made me think about the friends, and others, I once loved who I haven't spoken to in years. I don't even know where some of them are. Reilly? Casey? Scarlett? Ron? They could be anywhere. Or the people I barely get to see or speak to because they're across the state, or the country, or the world. Or the people whose location I know, whose phone number I know, but I still can't talk to them, or see them. How do we make it so easy to lose track of each other? There are so many people on the peripheral I've lost, and quite a few on the center stage I've lost and miss, too, and I don't want 65 years to pass before I find them again. Because I might look cute and ironic in giant glasses now, but when I'm 88 years old, I'm sure I'll just look utilitarian, too.

When I asked Jim and Glenn what one talks about after 65 years of no contact, Glenn said, "Oh lord, everything." And Jim said, "You wouldn't believe it, we haven't stopped talking...except to go bed. There's an awful lot we miss."

I'm not just some chick

2008-07-08T00:13:00.000-07:00

I didn't tell anyone about this blog when I started over two years ago, then I deleted most of it. Secret blog? Dumb idea, Sarah. I get paid to sit at my desk and fiddle around on the interwebs anyway. A blog seems perfectly in order. How else am I gonna keep up with the cool kids? My Wayfarers are knock-offs, and I fell on my polaroid camera and smashed it, so I'm way behind the times. So let the blogging (re)commence.

To the Spiders

2007-03-06T23:06:00.000-08:00

No one would miss you. No one
would notice the absence
of your sniping gloom in my
bedroom — except me. And so I let you

live on and sink deeper
into your knitted homes. Because I know
as soon as you’re gone, every piece of dust
that rolls across the hardwood will be you.

Every small sweep of the sheet against
my skin at night will be you. And though
I will not see you, like the white bones
hidden in my dark body, I will know you are there.

raw beginnings of life in the howling ages

2006-12-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

A little slice of my thesis. And a morsel of my abstract. Enjoy together with a glass of lemonade:

"These short stories are concerned with how desire manifests itself through language, and the breakdown of language to communicate that desire. While this desire is not always sexual, the exploration of the language of the body is implicit, and I attempt to explore how this language often implies a disconnect between the mind and the body (or even between the body and the body). This exploration often centers on how imprecise language is, despite our attempts to use it precisely. The dominion that language can offer over others is juxtaposed with its abrupt and shattering limitations. These stories also explore the perils of using language in general, mainly through reading and writing. I focus on how books write us, rather than the other way around, and how our brains are infested with books, and the language of others is bound to crop up in our own work."

Raw Beginnings of Life in the Howling Ages

“And that he should be stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages.” — Jack London
“Animals are sexual talismans and aphrodisiacs. Animals appeal to our sensate selves with their tactile features and wild demeanors.” — Trinie Dalton

I used to read werewolf books to comprehend how a person can be so attracted to someone that they want to consume them. While puberty was striking the girls in my grade and parents were worrying about the anorexia they saw on TV, I was walloped with something akin to lycorexia: the canine desire manifested in humans as a need to stuff oneself with human flesh.
Although I never wanted to — and still don’t want to — literally devour Cecilia. Imagining her, a ripe and viscous plum surrendered to the pleasure of my teeth, could only have been carnal in my thirteen-year-old mind, never cannibalistic. And I really just stumbled across the werewolf section one late summer day after following her into the library. I was pulling books off a shelf so I could have a clearer view of her sitting alone at the beaten oak table when I noticed the cover of one of the discarded books. It looked like the stark woodcut illustrations in the Victorian novels my mother read, but the woman, instead of swooned over a chaise lounge, was slumped backwards into the arms of a grinning werewolf. The werewolf’s tail stood erect and spiked behind him, and even though the picture was black-and-white, I knew his eyes were the sallow saffron color of someone possessed. The woman’s long hair draped behind her and her mouth was open. Glancing up at the table where Cecilia was finishing her earth science homework with a purple pen, her pelvic bones curled into the orange plastic chair, I could understand why the wolf was so into that.

Cecilia and her family moved into my neighborhood—across the street, two houses down, green shutters—during the summer before our seventh-grade year. I’d often see her playing outside with her puppy (Tulip, as I later learned) running through the sprinkler or riding her bicycle up our narrow strip of road. But it wasn’t until the first day of school, two months later, when the girl with the light blue Keds and eyes the color of a root beer bottle began the slow process of taking me apart, piece by piece, with surgical precision. It was English class, I remember. Our teacher, Ms. Henry, was fond of rhymed poetry and saying things like, “the dénouement is never as sweet as the crescendo,” although she pronounced “dénouement” like “tenement” and it took me all year to finally figure out what she was saying. Ms. Henry had sent a letter to each student in early August, asking us to write a poem about summer and have it ready for the first day of school, but when she asked who wanted to read their poem to the class that day, it became clear the majority of us had ignored her request. I’d written a poem about the receding summer sunlight getting so thick that bugs got stuck in it like honey or wax, but I didn’t want to read aloud, so sat silently like everyone else.

“Anyone?” Ms. Henry asked again.

And then Ms. Henry was pointing at Cecilia, and Cecilia was standing up. I’m sure she said something before she read, but I don’t remember. Whatever she said, before I knew it, she was standing in front of the class, her tartan skirt slightly askew on her bird-small hips, and her mouth was opening. And as I sat there watching her push the fringe of bangs out of her face, she looked right at me, and said:
A soup of flowers marinates in the soil
And that’s all I remember. Something else about simmering through the winter, and boiling upwards in the spring. But that first line, that awkward plaid skirt and that thick curtain of bangs was all it took.
Vestiges of that moment are alive and well in my body to this day; I suspect they lie dormant somewhere in my thoracic cavity, nestled under plump, glossy organs until a subconscious firing of synapses in my brain sparks them back into motion and sends them into my blood stream, where they’re carted along to my heart. That moment floods back randomly and I’ll be shot through with incongruous feelings of lust and hunger while peeling the foil back from a container of yogurt or blowing my nose. Once, I thought I saw her in a public bathroom at the movie theatre, and even though there was no Tulip at her heels (how could there be, in a bathroom?), the physical ailments that only Cecilia could conjure in me flared up again, and I broke out in a sweat.
The effluvium of the long-evaporated Cecilia.

Two weeks later, the day I found the werewolf section in the library, I talked to Cecilia for the first time. I’d been watching her, trying to find something we had in common, but she didn’t seem to do anything but run around the neighborhood with her dog. I’d tried a few times to drag my old collie, Rufus, outside so we could skip around the front lawn together, and perhaps invite Cecilia and Tulip to join us, but Rufus was so old he wouldn’t budge from his sleeping place on the kitchen floor. Once when I’d attempted to push him from behind, he started howling and my mother scolded me, telling me to be gentle, to leave him alone, his hips hurt him.

So I was thrilled when I returned home from school that day, the first werewolf day, to see my mother’s car pulling into our driveway, Rufus’s snout smearing the window from the back seat. I dropped my backpack in our front lawn and ran forward to greet my mother and Rufus. I yipped and hollered as I bounded to the car, hoping Cecilia, who was in her own front yard (she always got home before me, because I always walked half a block behind her), would hear. As my mother held the door open for Rufus and guided his weedy limbs out of the car, he looked more like an aged and respected millionaire being helped out of a limousine than a shedding old collie in a station wagon. My mother told me to watch Rufus while she went inside. I patted him on the head and looked fleetingly to Cecilia’s yard. She was walking across the street, Tulip close behind. That image of Cecilia walking towards me in the late afternoon light is still tangled in the corner of my eye.
“Hello,” she said. It was the first time I’d heard her voice since the first day of school.
“Hello,” I answered.
Marinates, I murmured in my head.
“What’s your dog’s name?” she asked, sidling up next to me to pet Rufus. The fabric of her skirt brushed against my bare knee. Her forearm, freckled and dry, touched my side and her bangs fell into her face as she leaned over Rufus, and I thought of the werewolf books in my backpack, the woman in the long dress, her hair down her back.
“This is Rufus. He’s thirteen,” I said. “He’s very old and sick.”
As if on cue, Rufus let his fragile knees drop down onto the driveway and let out a long low sigh, like a river rolling boulders.
“Oh, no,” Cecilia said. She knelt down and offered Rufus a dog biscuit from one of her pockets; he sniffed it with his apostrophe nostrils, but did not eat it. Tulip, who’d been licking Rufus’s ears, stuck her snout forward and the biscuit disappeared from Cecilia’s upturned palm in the thick slurp of dog-tongue. Tulip sprawled on her back next to Rufus, exposing the shiny train track of stitches on her stomach from her recent spay surgery.
“He smells like mushrooms,” Cecilia said, standing up. She then leaned forward to pet Rufus once more. She looked at me, and I could see tears forming in the corners of her eyes. She offered no explanation; she simply said, “Come on, Tulip,” and walked back across the street with her dog. I watched her go, her long high legs dragging her Keds back home. And as I watched her, I tried to gather in my thirteen-year-old mind all I knew about girls. I knew that girls are hugely complex, smart, witty creatures, with labyrinthine brains, and I know boys throw themselves against girls just for the chance to be near that female wisdom, to get close to the heat of that superior mind. But sometimes girls really seem to be composed of just a ponytail brushing a collarbone, a muscle tensed in the neck, or a hint of lace stretched over the cusp of a breast.
Or, in the case of Cecilia, a slim calf dissolving into a light blue Ked, a notebook tucked under a dimpled elbow. And Tulip the dog close behind.
Rufus had urinated on himself. I ran inside to get a towel and my mother, but first I grabbed my backpack and brought it inside. Later that night, after my mother and Rufus were both asleep, I opened one of the books and read:
The lubins or lupins of France were usually female and shy in contrast to the aggressive loup-garous.
Cecilia, walking towards me, arms outstretched, smiling, dog biscuits held tightly in her palms.

By the time Rufus died one week later—cancer, his hind legs, my mother found him underneath the oak brush in the back yard—I realized Cecilia had already deemed him dead, mourned for him, and begun the long struggle to politely forget him.
I cried when my mother told me about Rufus. Being around Rufus had been like being in an old folk’s home: you love them, but you can’t wait for them to go. Of course, I didn’t tell Cecilia this. I tried to talk to her at school, but she refused to speak to me. Since the day she met Rufus, a pained expression would fill her face each time she saw me, and she would shuffle away as though she knew what was coming, her Keds squeaking on the linoleum, her corduroy-covered thighs making a slight scraping sound as she walked. Sometimes I thought she was crying, but she’d be gone so quickly I never knew if I imagined the blood draining from her face, the glimmer of tears. Once, when I caught her eye across the cafeteria, I thought I saw her blush, and I felt a hard kick to my digestive tract: could she be thinking of me, too? I carried that thought around with me for a long time. It was like when you see a spider hanging in the corner of your room: for the rest of the day, every piece of lint or dust that rolls by is that same spider. And when you’re lying in your bed at night, every small sweep of the sheet against your skin is the spider, waiting for you to fall asleep. That’s what crest of blood in Cecilia’s cheeks was to me. Every small flicker of her eyes, every time she walked past me in the halls, every time she dropped her pencil in class, every movement she made could be a movement towards me. Cecilia, walking towards me.

As the weeks went by, I read more about werewolves.
To drink water out of the footprint of the animal in question or to drink from certain enchanted streams were also considered effectual modes of accomplishing metamorphosis.
When Rufus was alive, and I was younger, I used to smell the pads of his feet. They smelled like the earth, and it comforted me. I wondered if Cecilia ever smelled Tulip’s feet. I wanted to ask her. I might have asked her. But she was absent from school the next day, and as I gazed at her empty seat in English class, I sickened for her like the sailors who go mad and throw themselves into the sea, imagining the knife-grey waves to be the rolling green hills of their homes. When lunchtime came, I could not eat the cheese sandwich my mother packed me. Without Cecilia nearby, I had no appetite, no desire to consume. During health class that day, my teacher taught us about bones and aging, but I only heard marinate, marinate, marinate. I sat at the desk where she usually sat and let my hand creep over it like something out of Poe—she had been there, there must be something of her left—but I found nothing.
Even her bones would lie, I thought, as I absently watched my teacher point at Mr. Bones, the classroom skeleton. Her bones would lie, I was sure of it. Even if she were to die right now, at the age of thirteen, and her body was stripped of all its thew and muscles, and the marrow slowly leached out over the years, and the calcified protrusion in her ankle where she’d once broken it came to the surface. If, years and years from now, her bare skeleton was found, the coroner would find a pubic symphisis so worn it would tell of an old life of hips ground to talc, not of the gracile thirteen-year-old hips I’d come to know so well, even if from afar.
I went to the nurse’s office after class and, complaining of a stomachache, called my mother to pick me up. Sitting in the backseat on the way home, I noticed Rufus’s dried snot still smeared on the window.

The next day Cecilia returned to class, and the school received an announcement from our principal. During homeroom, she told us that a disaster drill would occur sometime later in the day, but did not tell us when, which left us all sick and jittery with anticipation, pulling our hands up into our sleeves and crossing our fingers in the hopes the alarm would go off during math class. Much to our dismay, the alarm went off during study hall and did not interrupt any true work.
My class gathered in the library, and as we slowly crawled underneath the large wooden tables, I watched Cecilia compress her frame under the table like a melodeon. Seeing her packed in so closely to the others underneath the table, I tasted blood at the back of my throat as my heart welled over and spilled into my esophagus, and I thought only of how desperately I needed to be stuck next to her, entwined under the table with Cecilia in a state of emergency. I would trade my body for the wooden leg of the table, just to be so close to Cecilia’s spine; I would trade my teeth for the cold screws that held the table together, just so I could finally feel them press into the rind of her back. Perhaps as the table I could finally wrap my long legs around Cecilia’s huddled form.
When I was much younger—kindergarten, first grade, second—our P.E. class had a favorite activity called simply The Parachute. During The Parachute, our teacher unfurled a huge parachute on the lawn, and we all stood in a circle around it, grabbing the frayed and dirtied edges with our tiny hands. On the count of three, we raised the parachute over our heads then scurried under, maneuvering our bodies so we ended up sitting cross legged on the lawn, the parachute still clenched tightly in our hands under our buttocks.
I still don’t understand how the parachute stayed up; the language of physics always baffled me. But when that parachute was swelled overhead, it created a soft red dome, as though we were sitting against the fleshy shelled-out walls of a pomegranate or perhaps a grapefruit. And even at that young age, amid the humid limbs of our globed tent, I remember thinking what an intimate atmosphere it was, and I somehow had the urge to take my fellow classmates into my arms under that soft red sky we’d created. I remember the urge to lie next to them in that secret, enclosed space. Static electricity in the crackling globe pulled our hair to the walls.
In the library that day, waiting for the alarms to go off, I wished I could pull Cecilia’s crunched body from under the table, yank her into the pink cupola with me.
A year later in eighth grade science, we learned about the solar system, and biweekly we lay underneath a pitch-black dome, waiting for our teacher to flip the switch that turned on the map of sky and star lines overhead. Cecilia was gone by then, but in every constellation, I saw only her:
Cecilia tipping a water pitcher into her bath
Cecilia affixed to a starry throne
Cecilia tied to a post on the beach, awaiting the jaws of a sea monster

I thought maybe I’d write a poem for her, a poem about Tulip. I grabbed some paper, but quickly found I could not muster the words. I only thought: Tulip, flower, marinate. I picked up one of my werewolf books and read:
In Portugal, the seventh daughter is supposed to become a witch and the seventh son a werewolf; the seventh son often gets the Christian name “Bento” (Portuguese form of “Benedict,” meaning “blessed”) as this is believed to prevent him from becoming a werewolf (also known as turnskin) later in life. The belief in the curse of the seventh son was so extended in Northern Argentina (where the werewolf is called the “lobizón”) that seventh sons were abandoned, ceded in adoption or killed.
Looking back now, if I were to describe Tulip as passionately as I believe Cecilia might, I’d have to use Lolita-esque accuracy: the pale sand-colored markings bisecting her forehead, creating a pattern similar to a mosaic or stained-glass window; the unnecessary dew claws on her back feet that I’m sure Cecilia couldn’t stand to have removed, despite the risk of injury and infection; the tail, long and feathered like the plume in a three-cornered hat: every spot, every whisker down to the last detail.
But really, I never found anything remarkable about the dog. She was just another mutt, and she was scrawny. But I still would have swapped my skin to be that dog, to be so near Cecilia. There had to be something I didn’t see that made Cecilia love her so much, to throw herself into that dog so wholly. Because what is love if not a mutual obsession?
And with this in mind, I’ve swiftly learned there are some proposals that language simply denies—you and your Siamese twin can’t love yourselfs, and I could not love her—Cecilia, that is. Because by the time Cecilia left, there was nothing mutual about it.

About six weeks before Cecilia left, it was announced that all seventh graders would have the opportunity to participate in a writing contest. The guidelines were simple: write a children’s story for the first and second graders, and the winner would get his or her story bound and put in the elementary school library, plus a gift certificate for a free brunch at Luby’s. No one paid much attention to the contest, but I was plagued with anxiety for weeks, trying to come up with a story that would win the contest and win over Cecilia. I had given up writing about Tulip, as I found it impossible. Instead, I fabricated another dog. I named him Rufus, and wrote myself onto him. As Rufus, I stood as tall as any tree and combed my grey fur with the rib bones of animals I’d killed. I smashed houses in villages and used the broken planks to stun women and bring them back to my woods. But that was all I ever got; I quickly realized I had no plot, no ending. I also realized that other people would read the story. This terrified me. I could not imagine giving someone else my story, slicing out a neat cross-section of myself and handing it over to be judged.
So instead of entering the contest, I formulated plans to rig it so Cecilia would win. I read articles about voting fraud, but ended up simply stealing a piece of her story from the library wastebasket. It was just a few lines scrawled in her small, loopy handwriting, but to me it spoke volumes:
Mr. Wombat, vegetarian, lives in cave, eats spiders
Can’t kill spiders, gets pet Frog, Frog eats spiders
How can you eat spiders? Isn’t that wrong?
You are just as guilty as me.
I learned later that Ms. Henry (the enthusiastic judge of the contest) had deemed Cecilia’s story too somber for the elementary children. In the end, the winning story was by a boy whose name I’ve forgotten. I remember his story: something about a woman who wore her coat to the store, then put it on a hanger and tried to buy it from the store. When the storeowners finally make her leave, she gives her coat to a homeless man and walks away, and I’m sure the ending had something to do with footprints in the snow. I heard the original ending, in which the homeless man follows the woman’s footprints only to find her frozen to death, had been cut at Ms. Henry’s insistence. I never liked the story, and the illustrations were boring. Besides, we all knew Ms. Henry only gave him first place because everyone recognized his crazy Aunt Matilde, who was always caught trying to steal the gaudy buttons off waiter’s suspenders at one of the local restaurants, in his protagonist.

The last second and last time I talked to Cecilia—she moved away in November, her dad’s job, I still don’t know the details—was a Saturday morning in late October. It had rained the night before, and I was sitting on my front porch facing the street, a werewolf book in my lap. I’d found one of Rufus’s old tennis balls in an overturned flowerpot. I bounced it on the ground a few times then let it roll out of my hand. Following the ball with my eyes, I noticed a ripple on the wall of my house behind me; it looked like grains of wood, the growth rings of a tree boiling outwards. I watched the ripple for a few moments before I saw Cecilia walking across the street. Cecilia, walking towards me.
“Hello,” she said, climbing the porch steps to stand in front of me. Tulip bounded up behind her and immediately snapped up the loose tennis ball in her jaws.
“She can have that,” I said. “Rufus died.”
“I know,” Cecilia said. She touched her cheek, but no tears this time. At least I don’t remember any. Tulip slobbered briefly on the tennis ball and then walked over to Cecilia’s side, wagging her tail and sticking her nose into the pocket on Cecilia’s dress.
“I’m out of biscuits,” she said softly to Tulip. “I’m sorry.” She glanced up, and I saw her staring at the ripple on the wall. We both watched it for a while, the beams of light wobbling against the brick, until Cecilia said, “Look,” and pointed down.
A tiny insect was flailing in a puddle of rainwater on the floor; its movement reflected on the wall created the ripple.
“Weird,” I said.
“He’s dying, and its being reflected by the sun.” Cecilia said, gesturing to the ripple on the wall. Tulip stuck her head around Cecilia’s legs and bent to gingerly sniff the bug. “Now it’s really going to die, because she’s going to eat it. Leave the bug alone,” she said, gently pulling Tulip away by the collar.
Cecilia and I watched the bug writhe in the puddle for what could have been seconds, or minutes, or a few sun-lit hours, and the whole time Cecilia, standing in her green dress and light blue Keds, was so close to me, I could touch her, engulf her. I could hear her breathing. I could see wisps of her hair blown forward with her breath. I wasn’t sure if werewolves had heat-sensitive vision—I hadn’t gotten that far in my reading—but I was certain I could see her heart beat blue in her chest, see the orange heat rising from her body.
Tulip began nibbling at the back of Cecilia’s light blue Ked.
“Do you have any cheese?” Cecilia asked me, pulling her shoe from Tulip’s grip. “She really likes cheese.”
In the refrigerator, I only found a quarter of a wheel of soft white cheese, its pallid surface streaked with blue veins like the back of a hand. I carried it out to the porch, out to Cecilia.
“Roquefort,” Cecilia said, reading the label. She pulled the cellophane off the cheese and handed it down to Tulip. Tulip ate the cheese in one bite, licking Cecilia’s palm afterwards. Cecilia smiled and wiped her hand on her dress.
“Thanks,” she said. Her root beer bottle eyes were clear, and I looked for blood in her cheeks, but I couldn’t see any. Cecilia gave me a brief smile and hopped of the porch. Tulip was curving her back to chew on her own tail, like those old black and white pictures of snakes eating the ends of their bodies. Devouring themselves.
“Come on, Tulip.”
She jumped up quickly when she heard her name and followed Cecilia home.
Cecilia, in her light blue Keds, walking away from me. I’d thought it was the girls who were waiting, waiting for others, and who were eventually disappointed. I thought the girls were the ones to be left alone. But Cecilia, even at thirteen, turned out to be very different. And I was the one left with only my werewolf books and the bones of old memories to gnaw on.