I came home and by the time I had eaten dinner the windows had transformed into black mirrors. Since it was blessedly a Friday, I settled down by the stove with The Scarlet Letter. The worn futon in the alcove next to the rear of the stove, where I was sitting, was covered with an old red cloth, and the warm lights set into the ceiling above it gave the impression of warmth. Combined with the very tangible heat from the soapstone stove it really was warm, but it was a February evening and I was happy to be inside next to the stove and not outside, where a first few flakes had just started their determined assault on the seasoned house. After a while I got up to make tea, and with the mug set on the blue-checked tablecloth, steam wreathing the electric teapot, caught a glance of myself in the mirrored window to the right, in a red bandana and jeans and chopped-off hair. I hung there for a moment, like the proverbial deer in headlights, looking at myself, before I turned away. The next object I saw completed the scene in some way: a fat paper-maché mask with a top shaded from yellow to gold to red-orange. The mug, the mask and I instantly grouped themselves in my memory, snapshots collaged to document a moment of my life. I returned to the stove with my tea and took up The Scarlet Letter.
Oh dear, I believe I'm verging on the unreadably soppy. Do tell me if that happens.
I'm writing like Madeleine L'Engle, in that I'm mingling truth and fiction. Sure, I came home today and saw a mug and a mask and myself, but I'm kind of doing half-truths. This happens a lot. Thus, if you read something really outrageous [that I post] it's probably not true.
22 February 2008
20 February 2008
Lunar Eclipse
the moon is being covered in a bridal veil,
preparing for its marriage to the sun,
the stars shining as attendants.
It amazes me to think that not only can the shadow of the earth cover the moon, the power to cover the moon is just roving out through the galaxy like an inverse spotlight. The moon can be seen only as a brilliant edge and a mauve smear in the sky at the moment. In the moment it takes for me to move from the window to my seat, the glow has shrunk still further. It's not like a crescent moon, where the other 60% is just totally blotto. It looks like someone spilled fast-spreading ink on a circle of wet paper
17 February 2008
Rain Date
Johnston Hughes was going to go on a date. It was a humble plan, but with characteristic seriousness he and his girlfriend had set the date, and the time, two days and three hours ago. They were going to go to the park and eat a picnic and feed the ducks. Johnston had already prepared the food—fried chicken and rice and stale bread for the ducks—though it was only six o’clock and he had an hour before he would be meeting his girlfriend.
It was the summer, and since Johnston had gotten off of work an hour previously, and he had already cooked the food, he had nothing to do. It was July; the air was hot and heavy with moisture. Johnston sat in shorts and a t-shirt by the window, reading by the late afternoon light, with the ceiling fan turned up to disturb the oppressively silent heat. He was reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
At six twenty-seven the clouds started thickening. Johnston had to get up and turn on a light, which he had avoided doing both because even the meager heat from the incandescent bulb raised the temperature in the room a few degrees and because he didn’t like to use the light unless absolutely necessary. Reading was absolutely necessary.
Johnston lived in a very small apartment with very few things except books. There were three lights in the entire house: one in the bathroom; one in the adjoining bedroom, which contained one bed and one cardboard box of clothes and an undetermined number of books; and one in the living room, which led into the miniscule kitchen at the rear of the whole business. During the longest days of the year it was perfectly possible for him to go through a week without turning on any lights at all: there was a handy streetlight outside of his living room window, which faced the street, the faint orange light of which he used if necessary to cook and read.
His girlfriend didn’t much like his apartment, because there was not much room for cooking—in fact, there was not much room for anything. She was amazed that Johnston was able to survive in it, but he had cooked their dinner for the night with ease on the single hotplate he used for everything. Simplicity was easiest for Johnston.
Seven minutes later, at six thirty-four, the first raindrops started. Johnston didn’t register at first the few hesitant drops that splashed onto his arm and the page of his book, but after a moment he looked up. The world, which had, a few minutes before, been a warm dusty color, was darkening as the rain started coming down faster and heavier. He didn’t think the date was over at first, because of the series of brief summer showers which had dampened the city in quick succession over the past month, but after twenty-five minutes with no letup Johnston was forced to call his girlfriend, who lived on the other side of town, and cancel their date altogether.
He got up to use the phone, which was in the kitchen, and get a glass of water. As he was filling the glass he looked out the second window in the house, which was over the small sink and which faced his neighbors’ small garden. The summer flowers were bent over with the force of the water on them; they looked like little traumatized people in subdued colors shaking with pain. The tomatoes by the side of the house, grown as tall as the first story window in the unrelenting sunshine, bounced slightly on their knotty green vines. There were rows of indiscriminate green vegetables collecting the rain in their wide leaves, hanging to the ground.
Johnston returned to his seat by the window, and, carefully setting his book to the side, opened it to look outside. Since he was a small child he had enjoyed the rain and the way it danced in the street and seemed to turn the world blue. The rain fell and fell. A solitary car, dark and newly shiny, shushed its way through the shallow water in the street. He thought of the ducks in the park and where they must be at the moment. Where were they taking refuge from the rain? Somebody somewhere put on a jazz album, and as its muted tones wove through the raindrops to his apartment, Johnston sat and watched the rain fall.
It was the summer, and since Johnston had gotten off of work an hour previously, and he had already cooked the food, he had nothing to do. It was July; the air was hot and heavy with moisture. Johnston sat in shorts and a t-shirt by the window, reading by the late afternoon light, with the ceiling fan turned up to disturb the oppressively silent heat. He was reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
At six twenty-seven the clouds started thickening. Johnston had to get up and turn on a light, which he had avoided doing both because even the meager heat from the incandescent bulb raised the temperature in the room a few degrees and because he didn’t like to use the light unless absolutely necessary. Reading was absolutely necessary.
Johnston lived in a very small apartment with very few things except books. There were three lights in the entire house: one in the bathroom; one in the adjoining bedroom, which contained one bed and one cardboard box of clothes and an undetermined number of books; and one in the living room, which led into the miniscule kitchen at the rear of the whole business. During the longest days of the year it was perfectly possible for him to go through a week without turning on any lights at all: there was a handy streetlight outside of his living room window, which faced the street, the faint orange light of which he used if necessary to cook and read.
His girlfriend didn’t much like his apartment, because there was not much room for cooking—in fact, there was not much room for anything. She was amazed that Johnston was able to survive in it, but he had cooked their dinner for the night with ease on the single hotplate he used for everything. Simplicity was easiest for Johnston.
Seven minutes later, at six thirty-four, the first raindrops started. Johnston didn’t register at first the few hesitant drops that splashed onto his arm and the page of his book, but after a moment he looked up. The world, which had, a few minutes before, been a warm dusty color, was darkening as the rain started coming down faster and heavier. He didn’t think the date was over at first, because of the series of brief summer showers which had dampened the city in quick succession over the past month, but after twenty-five minutes with no letup Johnston was forced to call his girlfriend, who lived on the other side of town, and cancel their date altogether.
He got up to use the phone, which was in the kitchen, and get a glass of water. As he was filling the glass he looked out the second window in the house, which was over the small sink and which faced his neighbors’ small garden. The summer flowers were bent over with the force of the water on them; they looked like little traumatized people in subdued colors shaking with pain. The tomatoes by the side of the house, grown as tall as the first story window in the unrelenting sunshine, bounced slightly on their knotty green vines. There were rows of indiscriminate green vegetables collecting the rain in their wide leaves, hanging to the ground.
Johnston returned to his seat by the window, and, carefully setting his book to the side, opened it to look outside. Since he was a small child he had enjoyed the rain and the way it danced in the street and seemed to turn the world blue. The rain fell and fell. A solitary car, dark and newly shiny, shushed its way through the shallow water in the street. He thought of the ducks in the park and where they must be at the moment. Where were they taking refuge from the rain? Somebody somewhere put on a jazz album, and as its muted tones wove through the raindrops to his apartment, Johnston sat and watched the rain fall.
13 February 2008
Some Drifting
Social interaction was difficult for them after long years of attempts and repeated failures. They lacked both the inclination and the polished manner to fit in with a larger audience, and in the group they did, both by choice and by default, belong to, they lacked the distinction and the lewdness to ever become really popular. By some twist of fate they were , the two of them, more mature than their peers, prone to subtlety and word-plays. This left them with some popularity among the teachers at the school, but they were never very popular among their peers and were often left alone at the edge of the group. This ostracization affected them both, to varying degrees: he, the extrovert, became frustrated early on with the failures at his sincere attempts to entice the populace; she, more introverted and pessimistic, kept to her books and her silence, becoming disillusioned to the pleasures of society more quickly than her partner. Therefore they shared common interests, and therefore each accepted the other as a welcome interlude from the indifference with which they were generally treated.
11 February 2008
The Robinsons
With the death of their aunt, they had begun to live their lives in a quieter mode, immoderate selves acclimating credibly to their newly frugal lifestyle as their effete possessions dropped out, one by one, of the already-cramped halls of their apartment, to pay for the funeral expenses (and really, had they been honest, as a kind of punishment for their neglect; but ultimately the auctioning off of their life became, to their juvenile mindsets, a kind of game): tapestries outlining generations of noble lineage gone to seed, draconian-footed oak tables sent end over end into the echoing, musty back of a U-haul; the last to go was the elephantine porcelain bathtub, scarred at the edges and drains by greenish deposits. When it had gone, too, the last of the weary trucks, drivers anxious to escape the torpor of that house and astonished at the insidious frivolity of its owners’ spending, fish-tailed around the bend in the road. The Robinsons turned without a second look to their afternoon tea, the formality still very much apparent and present, though their Earl Grey was served, in the motley collection of second-hand china they had been too ashamed to sell to the world, on a bent card-table; in every way it was to them like playing at pillow forts is with young children. They were constantly searching for new ways to spend their time, because they had not yet learned its value.
05 February 2008
February
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written, hasn’t it? And, so as not to give you the impression that I’m leaving Blogger for good (so many readers would be heartbroken, I know), I’m using my two-hour delay to type a little something up.
So…It’s February in New Hampshire. Although we are supposed to be having some nasty weather for the next few days—which means more missed school—you can tell that the year is getting on; it was still light yesterday at five, or it would have been if it hadn’t been for the cloud cover. The narcissus which provided me with so many good photo opportunities is wilting, and we have a glass bowl of daffodils instead, which I haven’t had the heart or time to photograph yet. I better soon, though, if I mean to at all, because I don’t think they have a very long life. They provide color for that corner of the room with their bright yellow triangular petals, but they don’t smell nearly as good as the narcissus did.
I’ve also been watching more anime, and, since I’m getting my sources entirely from the Megatokyo website they’ve all been very shoujo. My favorite so far has been School Rumble, because it’s so entirely random. Mind you, aside from a few 1- or 2-minute short episodes on the website, the only exposure I’ve had is on YouTube, so the episodes I do get are all from different time periods. And last night I admit I watched way too much Shuffle, which is to say I watched it at all: it’s this very highly improbable and sexist story about this guy who has five girls—all incredibly cute—crazy over him. Yeah. It must be something about…about…well, I really don’t know why I watch it at all.
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