Long Time Traveller

Glenn and Paul

2010-03-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

I am in Jackson, Tennessee for the fourth time in three years. I like it here. I have only visited during the mild months of November and March, so perhaps my fondness is grounded in the gray sky and sinewy trees. Either way, I don't mind that early winter and early spring often bring with them a week in this town.

Today we visited the adult development center operated by the state. We had first experienced the center in November during a tournament, and they asked us to come back for another visit when we found out we would once again find ourselves in Jackson for Nationals.

I wrote the story I just posted after visiting the facility for the first time in November, and was reminded of it while I talked with some of the other workers there today. It is easy to wander among the tables and introduce yourself to three dozen people before walking into the next room, but I thankfully have overcome my fear of talking to people I don't know enough to strike up real conversations with several of the workers I have met. Today was another such rewarding day.

I want to write down the people; I want to tell someone about their lives. They have lived, and many of them have lived a long time. That's what made me write about Connie and her boyfriend, and that's what is driving me to write about Glenn and Paul right now. The story I wrote about Connie is fiction, and therefore not entirely true to the conversation I had with her. But the essence, the surprising manifestation of romance in a developmentally delayed couple, was all real. What I am about to recount is all fact.

I thought Glenn was one of the facility supervisors when I saw him sitting at the corner of one of the long work tables. He had the intelligent eyes and tanned skin and white hair of a man who had been active in his lifetime. Glenn's features were sharp and the only irregular shapes his mouth made were typical of any man with a little bit of a southern drawl. He introduced himself, first name and last name, and stood up to shake my hand. His movements were coordinated; he had on an old gold watch with a link band like the one my grandfather wore.

"Do you like working here?" [Jessi, with a smile on her face. Asking these leading questions usually makes having a conversation with the workers flow more naturally, since it's a polite question that allows the other person to steer the conversation if they choose to or are able.]

Glenn: Well, it's a job. [He says it the way a polite, unsatisfied person would.]

Jessi asks him if he's had any other jobs.

Glenn: "I worked on a farm since I was two years old."

Glenn was raised with his four siblings by his parents on a farm in nothern Minnesota. They had nine fields, beef cattle, and pigs and chickens. He has driven, planted, and built. His four siblings all died and left him to work the farm alone with his parents. Glenn was taken out of school and sent to work full-time on the family farm by his father long before he could graduate high school-- Glenn was slower than the other children, and so his place became doing manual labor and working with his hands. He played baseball and football and has a silver medal he won in the 100-yard dash.

Glenn is the product of a rural area and older time, where children who did not fit the academic track were removed and sent to work where they could be most useful. While this made Glenn able to function in the world outside the disabled community, it also put a strain on his ability to support himself in his old age. He had no official job title or retirement plan; his work found him wandering the north Midwest. And now Glenn is old. He has a bad leg and back; his body -his source of income- has grown weak from constant use. With no skill set and nothing to fall back on once his body failed him, Glenn has ended up doing menial factory work with scores of adults ranging from mild to severe retardation.

Paul: 5 brothers, 6 sisters (all died but three sisters)

One sister died age 6 from cancer: "She's up there now, now she's happy and don't hurt no more"

"Smoking can get cancer in your brain"

"My sister flew to dallas texas to get surgery on her brain. She had cancer in her brain." "A tumor?" He brightened at the recognition of a familiar term. He knew I knew what he was talking about.

Born in the Jackson general hospital. Raised in Jackson.

Lives by the airport; always hears and sees planes coming and going

"My mama and dad died a long time ago. Cancer too."

Old; at least 70

Old baseball cap and crooked decaying teeth

Face-age spots and wrinkles

I kept finding myself looking directly into his eyes as he talked. Usually it helps to watch the workers' mouths when they speak so that you can understand what they are trying to say, but Paul was using his unblinking eyes to convey his earnestness, his desire to be understood and not simply to be heard correctly. It made hearing him mean more when I looked straight at his eyes.

a second story.

2010-03-15T12:48:00.000-07:00

Working in Tennessee

The gem in Connie’s plastic ring was big, square-cut, and pink. Anna had once bought a similar ring in San Francisco; the nickel-plated band had made her finger swell. She had been nine years old when she had scattered the cheaply embroidered coin purses and plush harbor seals to reach the bin of shiny rings, and she had eagerly paid the $4.50 and pushed the bauble onto her thumb.

Connie’s ring did not seem to have made her hand swell, and Anna was surprised. It was the first thing Anna noticed when Connie held out her hand to shake. The first thing that Anna noticed when she met Connie, though, was the way Connie’s eyes drooped close together in the middle of her face. The second thing was the distance between her eyes and her mouth. The third thing, probably, was the way her hairline lurked around what seemed like the middle of her forehead.

When Connie spoke, she was loud and friendly and her eyes roamed the room, half-closed.

“Myye Kawhnyee,” she said. Anna was thankful that instead of having to go through the painful process of asking Connie to repeat herself multiple times, Connie had pre-emptively held up her work nametag on its lanyard as she introduced herself, leaving no doubt in Anna’s mind that she was meeting a woman named Connie Fisher.

Anna’s aunt ran the volunteer program at the development center. Anna had come to Tennessee from Reno for spring break—she had friends flying to Costa Rica and she had friends driving to Tahoe, but her father had called Aunt Rachel the minute Anna had dropped a hint about leaving home for her week off school. It was now Thursday of that week, and Aunt Rachel had been on the phone with Anna’s father late the night before, long after Anna had tried to quietly slip into the house after a night of line dancing at the Borderline Bar. Anna wasn’t completely sure what had been said, but assumed it had something to do with the condoms Aunt Rachel had found in Anna’s oversized purse. Anna had never been forced to come to work with Aunt Rachel before this Thursday, and so she considered her aunt’s discovery the reason she was now sitting at a table in a small cafeteria with six mentally retarded adults who were on their lunch break.

The Madison County Adult Development Center, to Anna’s surprise, was not a group home. She had been expecting carpeted rooms with rounded table edges and furniture that was too heavy to move, with beds and peek-proof bathroom stalls for 125 men and women too delayed to function in society. Instead she found three warehouses with high ceilings, long tables, and humming machinery, and people wearing protective eye gear and industrial gloves. The people themselves were still as she had expected; there was an abundance of rounded spines and stocky legs, and fingers were almost always spread and extended like feelers when they weren’t snapping door hinges into metal casings. But the metal casings were everywhere, as were the newly-welded hinges, and Anna couldn’t even identify the other three items being passed from station to station.

She had walked the workroom tables with her aunt for only a few minutes, observing the workers slowly and methodically stacking the products in boxes.

“The projects they’re working on are real, paying jobs,” Aunt Rachel had said. “Some of the local industrial businesses contract with the Center, and the adults who come to this facility are the workers. They each work about six hours, and get paid about twenty-four bucks a day.”

Anna didn’t even try to hide her surprise as her mind processed the center’s newly-divulged function. But it was almost like her aunt had expected this sort of doubt, and so she quickly went on with her explanation.

“They’re working just like anyone else would, Anna. It’s not exploiting. Hiring developmentally disabled adults helps everyone. The businesses get cheaper labor, but they sacrifice the time efficiency they would have if they just hired normal people or used machinery. And these people get something to look forward to every day, a routine, a purpose besides sitting around all the time.”

And so Anna was at lunch break. There were lunchboxes everywhere, many of them depicting cartoon characters and splattered with the crusty remains of lunches past. Anna had counted two hot pockets (one that she had cut into pieces for a woman who jerked her head to the right and never once opened her eyes while she yelled), three vanilla puddings, and at least seven peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But she sat down next to Connie Fisher and had no more time to count food items. Connie wanted to have a conversation.

“Thyiss maayha bhyyfreeyn,” Connie announced loudly.

Anna balked, this time with no nametag dangling a translation in front of her. She realized that the southern drawl on top of the speech impediment was going to be next to impossible to understand, and began to prepare herself for a conversation in which she would never know what was being said. Connie tried again, this time with the help of the man with dark gelled hair and prominent cheek bones next to her.

“Thyiss maayha bhyfreeyn,” she said, and grabbed the man around the shoulders. He promptly leaned over and kissed her on the side of the head, right above her ear. Anna understood.

“He’s your boyfriend? . . . Wow, cool.” Anna added the last bit of her comment after realizing that without it, she just sounded like a translator. She was going to have to give an effort to make this more than a one-sided conversation.

“Yeeya. He maayha bhyfreeyn,” she smiled widely and closed her fist gently around his pointer finger. “He gayme tiss.”

At this point, Connie held out her right hand suddenly, startling Anna a little further back into her seat across the table. The pink ring was set in nickel and flanked by two clear gems of similar cut but smaller size. Anna was impressed that this relationship had progressed to gift giving.

“It’s so pretty—”

Before she had time to bring closure to her observation, the boyfriend had retracted his finger from Connie’s grasp, recoiled his arm, and then quickly shot it out in front of him, palm down, toward Anna’s neck. Her mind flashed to her death at the table of a group home cafeteria, and she enjoyed for a fraction of an instant the regret her father would feel for sending her to Aunt Rachel’s. But his arm had stopped long before it was close enough to Anna to be a threat; and when Anna resurfaced from her thoughts a moment later, she noticed the bracelet made of giant green and blue plastic beads around the man’s wrist.

“Did Connie give that to you?” Anna asked.

What came out of the man’s mouth next was unintelligible. Anna was floored; it went on for what must have been several sentences before he looked back at Connie and smiled absently, done with his speech. If she had struggled to understand Connie, there was no way she would be able to decipher what had just been said. But Anna decided she did not need to respond when Connie slowly leaned toward her boyfriend and deliberately mashed her nose against his. Apparently Connie had got the message entirely.

Fifth-Life Crisis.

2009-07-21T16:02:00.000-07:00

I am not using my time wisely.
I am not using my money wisely.
I am not using my abilities wisely.

I am running out of time.
I am running out of money.
I am running out of ability.

I want more money.
I want more time.
I want more ability.

I use time to make money so I can waste ability.
I use money to make ability so I can waste time.
I use ability to make time so I can waste money.
I use time to make ability so I can waste money.
I use money to make time so I can wate ability.
I use ability to make money so I can waste time.

I am young. This does not need to change.

I wonder when I will stop saying that in good conscience.

egg.

2009-05-02T20:39:00.000-07:00

I am an egg.
There is something surprising about release
that makes me want to be knocked off ledges, abandoned
to the grocery store’s chilled tiles.

Sometimes there are jewels inside, cloudy plastic polygons shouting that they won’t even try to disguise scratches.
They trip and bounce and slap each other as my milky complexion rapidly pales
Into prostrate confetti on shallow faces.
I didn’t know I could hold so many.

And sometimes there is only water clinging desperately to my curves
Hydrophilic universes in two halves- pooling,
Pulling
Only waiting to be upended.

There was a book once.
Its binding hadn’t made it; page after page breathed its
first in a nauseating heap of confused birth order and amniotic ink.

The words had rebelled against their Siamese counterparts,
Bleeding into the air around the nest
Only to return as torrents of angry liquid vowels
and soak their more passive sisters.

a second sea.

2009-03-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

Written on a flight to Memphis.

I’m in the air. The sun has passed us- but not without leaving his wake of orange and those confusing clouds that look like the sea. Sometimes I feel like they really are the sea, or at least a second sea, lighter and misty, which wanders where only airplanes and the bravest of mountains may visit it. I wish it were the sea. I think the ocean is heavenly enough to belong even in the thinnest air. Perhaps that’s the thing. Only the most delicately spun sea may sheet the air of the highest skies.

I am thankful that we needn’t move into that sky that’s always black. There is something bewildering about all those stars poking holes, and I don’t quite like how the world would spin above us or below us or whatever it would do. It is a relief to quietly ford only the waters of this more gentle ocean.

Do we get charged less now that we live in a triple?

2009-02-08T10:51:00.000-08:00

Problemo Numero Uno: We named him.

Issue The Second: He insists on free passage between our room and the outside.

Thirdly: We are allergic to him.

The Fourth (aha!): He sleeps in a basket that once held our crocheting, therefore displacing a heap of yarny goods.

The Fifth Element: His right hind leg is curled protectively against his belly at all times, resulting in a pathetic hobble and an inability to jump.

Six: He needs a bath.

Seventh Dilemma: He probably has fleas.

Number Eight: He sounds like he has a respiratory issue-- at the very least, he has a very silly purr.

Problem Nine: He is not litter-box trained.

Ten: We are going to keep him.

Fred Baby is curled up in a basket behind me as I write this, snoring away between a blanket and a pair of sweatpants. He is the poorest old slob with a name that I ever did see-- and he decided last night that he wanted to live with Sharon and me. And since he literally hasn't left my sight in ten hours, I think the ten reasons can be overlooked for now.

2009-02-01T10:30:00.000-08:00

I just wrote another self-critical post about egotistical secret habits-- but my computer deemed it inappropriate and made it disappear into space. Disappointing.

I am listening to a beautiful song titled "A Nightengale Sang in Berkeley Square." It is wonderful for dancing with an unrequited love, or possibly a friend one secretly adores. Preferably on a dimly lit street, or perhaps in the kitchen in the wee small hours of the morning. Humans are obsessed with tension-filled romance, even when they themselves are perfectly contented in love. I wonder why.

My roomate and I like to surprise each other with a picture of a crocheted poop tucked away in the other's belongings. It has rosy cheeks and is apparently ideal for potty-training children.

I would rather be in a smoky bar than a sweaty nightclub. The quiet desperation of drunkeness and melancholy offends me less than blatant cries for affirmation.

There is something frightening about the open sea that belongs only to resting on its surface. I know that if I were on the Nautilus, I would be perfectly at ease. But ships must always fear the depth and power of that which lies below them, and that weakness ruins it for me in a way that a submarine would not.

I wish bears were more susceptible to being friends. If I could befriend a bear, I would be so much more content in this life.

I don't understand hand sanitizer. Does it zap germs, terminating their existence and sending them into oblivion? Or does it merely purify the particles it comes in contact with? In theory, could hand sanitizer clean dirt?

I also don't understand inkjet printers. I get typewriters. Input, output. Printers, no.

Did someone invent the internet? Eew. Who does that? I like to think someone was on a computer one day and just stumbled across it. Otherwise, I get sad thinking about the person who sat and thought of how to create a virtual reality.

The most vulnerable sort of clothing is a sweater that doesn't quite rest on one's hips properly. It makes one insecure at every moment because it must constantly be tugged on.

i would love something if it belonged to me.

2008-12-17T02:04:00.000-08:00

I am a wild thing.

That's what everyone is exalting in as they watch Breakfast at Tiffany's. This latter revelation prevented me from truly exalting in the moment myself. I was very consumed with indignation- I could feel the dull ache resting against the roof of my mouth and the bottom of my neck. Moon River is the song of my existence, and no one else's. I am the only untamable beautiful creature in this city; after all, I call all cats Cat and steal from the five-and-ten on a regular basis.

It hurts me when what belongs to me belongs to other people, too. I want to hide away the treasures of my childhood which have been mistakenly given to the public, dash into the sty and snatch up my precious pearls. The small and bright something inside me turns cold when I hear a fragment of a familiar lyric pour out of a foreign soul. My navel tucks toward my ribs with every calender prostituting my favorite paintings.

I loathe the self-awareness that comes with sharing. I want it all to be mine; and if other people get it, then I don't -shouldn't- want it. There is no identity to be had if all that I allow to define me can simultaneously define another person with equally good taste. There are lots of girls that wear black dresses and kiss all men on the cheek- and no matter how I deceive myself, I am not the only girl to imagine having a crackerjack ring engraved at Tiffany & Co. And so I don't want it. I will find something else, something more obscure and therefore worthwhile, to define me. I will watch odd movies, gaze endlessly at bizzare framings of sparse portraits, and listen to recordings of bird's wings in the mid-level trees of the Amazon until someone else starts doing that, too.

After all, I am a wild thing.

snapshot.

2008-11-13T23:27:00.000-08:00

I am learning to use a nice camera. The excitement has left me conflicted. I acknowledge the passion to create art. But is it really that important that I, too, take photos of that which I see? We all have eyes; but do we all need cameras? I fear that, like books, everyone is taking the next Great American Photo. Everything is beautiful and everything deserves preservation. I am not convinced that I am therefore obligated to fire off a camera at every weeping willow.

I wonder often who the great artists of our generation will be. There was Anselm Adams. Now there is Annie Leibovitz. And there are the 2 million Americans with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi slung over their shoulders. I have joined their ranks, and I am amusing myself with buttons and dials out the wazoo. But there is always something I could have done better. So I squint through a tiny hole at something which would otherwise be filling my eyes and my soul, so that I can look at it later in a pocket-sized edition.

I think I would rather hear the rustling of branches than the click of the flashbulb. And yet I pull the thing from its case and look at the tree from 10 different kneeling positions so I can get the sun tripping over the roots just right.

the other sides of walls.

2008-10-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

It's not homework time. I'm listening to The Weepies and thinking about all the things I'm not doing with my life. I'm really torn by this idea where I choose to consume istead of create. Who am I to think I have nothing to contribute to the world but gorging myself on the work of others? There is time for appreciating art without partcipating in it actively- but why do I spend, no, waste! so much time fiddling with adding genres to every song in my iTunes and looking at hundreds of photos of acquaintances on Facebook? That's so fruitless; such a waste of the mind, voice, hands, and soul that I've been given. How often do I create with what I received from my genetics, my environment, my experiences?

I am sitting in a room. One of the walls is made of brick. When I see brick when I'm in a room, I feel like I'm not actually in a room at all. What is it about brick that makes me feel like I'm looking at an exterior, like I'm shut out of the real inside of things? Brick is a perfectly acceptable wall material even when the side in the room hasn't been plastered. So why do I feel like a refugee, lodged in the shanty adjacent to the old firehouse? The strangest thing of all is to see picture frames hanging on the brick. Can you imagine? Walking past a building and seeing enlarged portraits and certificates framed, concealing part of an otherwise unobstructed brick wall? Why don't we hang pictures of ourselves on the outsides of our houses? We post them on Facebook.

This began as a letter- can you believe that?

I'm wondering if I should schedule every minute of every day and night. If I could stick to it, I would get all the stuff done in my life that I'm pretending doesn't need to happen. Is that worth it? Why do I ask so many questions. The punctuation on that last sentence is totally a cop-out.

Who would I send this to? I would put it in a bottle and throw it into Flour Fountain. Maybe it will wash up on a foreign shore, or be read by my doppleganger, start a revolution of hanging things on the other sides of walls, eliminate the question mark from punctuation. As it is, it's cold where I'm sitting and I feel a bit alone.

a starstruck pilgrim's tale

2008-09-24T16:58:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Chaucer recently. What a pleasure it is to sit down with words like "eke" and "woot" and comfortably suffer through thousands of lines of Old English poetry! The images are potent, the humor gloriously base, and the characters alive and kicking after seven centuries of setting out on the same incompleted pilgrimage to Canterbury.

The General Prologue itself is a masterpiece- masterful meter and rhyme, color symbolism, religious criticisms and social observations, all mixed with a comical cast right out of a primetime soap opera. I felt almost guilty reading it- the process of translating it from the Old English was the only thing that made me feel as though I were not merely reading 14th century mind candy. But, as Horace said, literature is to entertain and enlighten, and The Canterbury Tales certainly do not fail in either respect.

The Wife of Bath in particular may be one of the best characters I've ever read. What a woman. Infidelity and manipulation have never seemed so comical as they do within her tale and prologue, and I'm amazed at the convincing nature of her arguments for her lifestyle. I find that I am intoxicated right along with the other pilgrims by her stories of knights and witches, and especially of her own escapades with her many husbands.

Over the past few days I have found myself continually struck by the paradoxical lives led by the women society deems independent or wild. The Wife of Bath herself admits that she is not your average woman, but while doing so calls those traits she possesses which set her apart from her gender masculine ones. This acknowledgment of the masculinity of characteristics like boldness and strength proves that even the Wife of Bath has been subliminally affected by the constraints of gender roles on society. Chaucer seems to be pointing out through her characterization that while there are women who seem to break the mold of the cult of domesticity, they are still bound by the pervasive values of our patriarchal and almost masogonistic culture.

With all that being said, I am not a feminist. But I think my point is that Chaucer was not, either. The Wife of Bath exists to both satirize and embody the social order in which she obstinately resides, which in my opinion makes Chaucer brilliant. Plus, no one can use the phrase "sely instrument" quite like he does.

an inferiority complex, refreshed.

2008-08-07T22:52:00.000-07:00

The water I'm drinking right now may have slid down a column of the Acropolis.

It has probably been inside a dinosaur and I'm almost certain it was once crowded in a Medieval gutter, rubbing elbows with the Bubonic Plague and last week's rubbish.

A few molecules are even remnant of that rock which suffered an unnecessary blow at the hand of Moses.

It has tumbled down the slopes of the Himalayas with a flurry of furious snowflakes and it has tumbled with the dirty laundry in a washing machine in Tulsa.

It has carved paths on the stones of the earth and the faces of men.

It has been buried alive in the bodies of the dead only to seep into the soil and once again take to the heavens; it warms, it cools, it heals, it destroys.

And it has already been to New York City. Twice.

My water is much more impressive than I am.

a sand trap.

2008-06-12T19:30:00.000-07:00

While at the beach earlier today, I stumbled on what might be another's treasured possession.

It might also be a trap to lure beach goers- but I'll get to that in a minute.

The item in question is what looks to be a small coin purse or billfold. It is made of imprinted leather of an antiquated crimson hue, and is very well worn. There is stitching on the sides which implies that it was handmade, although the craftsmanship is far from amateurish.

One of the more interesting features of this item is the pin on its front. It is a silver square, depicting the classical Greek masks of the theater and encircled by the words "Screen Actors Guild." Upon researching this online, I have ascertained that this is indeed the logo of the aforementioned organization. The owner of such a pin, it is assumed, may very well be a member of the Screen Actors Guild- which, although surprising, is not difficult to believe.

The thought of to whom this purse belonged began to take root in my mind and grew into a fantastic dream. Soon I imagined meeting this famous actor in a public location, only to impress him or her so much with my intelligence and goodwill toward men that they request further communication with yours truly. Soon I was walking the red carpet in Bottega Veneta and exchanging pleasantries with George Clooney.

But the most interesting aspect of this coin purse is the inscription found within. The following is a (censured) rendition of what it says:

"LOBO"
(***) ***-****
REWARD

Box #**
*******, **

Mysterious? Yes. The ambiguity of the message intrigued me even further, so much so that I eagerly searched the Internet for actors with the nickname "Lobo" (of which there are several- however, none of these live in the area which was mentioned on the coin purse). This disappointed me- but I was not fazed. My imagination continued to race with anonymous post office box meetings and celebrity benefactors.

Gradually I resigned myself to believing the purse belonged to some average person, and that it was my civic duty to merely send it to the PO Box with no mention of my name or contact information- no reward was necessary for such a simple task. The wallet, however, continued to possess a great deal of my thoughts over the next few hours.

My brain demurely mused on the name "Lobo," noting that the word is Spanish for wolf. I pondered for a while the strange implications of such a nickname. And suddenly, a slow wave of skepticism began to lap at the ankles of my previous, more idealistic fantasies. The ink with which the name and information was written was surprisingly fresh, considering the worn condition of the wallet itself. And it was certainly strange that the word "reward" would be written in all capital letters and underlined, as if the owner expected to leave it on a popular beach. All of this was triggered by my working definition of a wolf: one who preys on females relentlessly.

Suddenly visions of a predator planting items on a beach flashed in my mind. I imagined this wolf plotting to gain contact with some naive sunbather, and was appalled that I had almost fallen into such a devious trap. Of course whoever found the wallet would be eager to return such a prize- the pin on the front implied that it belonged to someone famous, who would perhaps be willing to post a hefty reward for the item's return. This fact had certainly clouded my mind, and almost entirely prevented me from seeing the possibility of danger in the situation.

The most disturbing aspect of this ordeal is what it has revealed to me about myself and the population as a whole. I realize that the prospect of fame and fortune (and rubbing elbows with those that already possess both) is capable of blinding me to the reality of a situation, rendering me incapable of using discretion in dealing with the unknown. And it's true: we tend to throw caution to the wind when our lives start to play out like the plot of a movie we once saw. This is how compulsive gamblers end up flat broke even with periods of good luck. This is why one night stands that never end in meaningful relationships happen time and time again. And, creepy though it may be, this is how innocents end up in the hands of manipulative lobos.

It's been a month, and I still have the wallet- it's lying limp on my dresser. I'm honestly not sure what to do with it. The obvious choice would be to send it to the address without mentioning who I am or how to contact me. This way if it really is a treasured possession, the owner will get what he or she wants without even paying a reward; and if it is a trap, I will be no worse off for returning it. Perhaps it is the part of me that wonders if Kevin Costner left it on the shores of our ocean which prevents me from sending the wallet in. Perhaps I think I'm saving some other person from this same wallet found on some other beach in some other county. Either way, I am paralyzed by indecision and a sense of apathy that is creeping in along with my doubt. As time passes, I gradually become disinterested- I am now looking ahead to my next shot at experiencing something I've only seen in movies.

concentrating on concentrations of humanity.

2008-06-07T18:20:00.000-07:00

I have an inexplicable fervor for the fever of the city.

It is a difficult thing to place, this desire to put on tall shoes and breathe dirty air. I certainly did not get it from my family. And yet I sit in my room cutting pictures of emaciated models traipsing about on narrow sidewalks from my copy of Vogue, imagining how killer my legs would look if i wore a short dress and a long jacket. I want to navigate a jungle of street vendors and puddles of filthy water; I want to look up and see fire escapes clinging to decrepit brick buildings like rusted salamanders everywhere I turn.

This is not to say that I do not also crave the solitude and peace of a life distant to that which the city can offer. I am an advocate of long walks that end in being thoroughly lost among hundreds of trees- and I may or may not be the most inclined person in the world to enjoy a cup of hot tea on a large porch when the twilight hours are dwindling. But appreciating that which is already present in the world does not render me incapable of loving the works of man as well.

And how I love them. I love buildings so tall that they seem to puncture-not merely scrape- the sky. I love obscenely cryptic pieces of modern art that litter corporation courtyards. I love bars on windows and a different smell every few feet. I love too many shoes and too few taxis. I love nights that shoot the beams of a million street lights into outer space; I love fire hydrants and statues and metal wastebaskets and billboards and one-way streets and worlds within a city block.

In a city you may not fit everywhere, but you fit anywhere.

A line, no longer fine.

2008-05-31T19:31:00.000-07:00

I used to have a book called Mirette On the High Wire. It was an oversized paperback with glossy pages and beautiful watercolor illustrations- and as I recall, there was a large gold seal drawing attention to itself on the front cover. It was written, I believe, to teach youngsters to face their fears. The only thing I gleaned from it as a seven-year-old was that I wanted to join the circus and walk a wire.

Mirette lives in a boarding house which would fill with colorful characters as they passed through the city (what city it is, I don't recall). I sat with her on the fire escape as she listened to tall tales spun by boarders over poker games which ran late into the summer nights. The romanticism of the eclectic- almost sinister- circus performers who climbed the shadowy stairwells of Mirette's home appealed to my middle class roots in a way I didn't realize was out of the ordinary. So when she met the man who was rumored to have walked a rope over Niagara Falls only to stop in the middle and cook an omelet on a skillet, I was not alarmed in the slightest. I, too, wanted to get a better glimpse of his dark hair and debonair mustache; Mirette and I shared the longing to know if there was truth behind what the other boarders said.

The Great Bellini was a reclusive man. Not until Mirette and I were trying to walk the clothesline in her backyard did he choose to intervene in our outlandish tightrope fantasies- and then he made his expertise humbly known. Under his peculiar and temperamental instruction, we could walk, we could turn. It was like walking on air.

There are no longer daredevils like the Great Bellini. Modern equivalents are covered in tattoos and pepper their incoherent interview responses with expletives. There is no mystery, nor is there romance in what they choose to do for a living. A young girl like Mirette (or my seven-year-old self) could not be taken under such a character's wing without general disapproval. The image of the professional thrill-seeker has changed permanently: no longer are there men in tuxedos walking in the air above us. And sadly, this means there is no one for us to join among the clouds, either. Instead we jump on the riding lawnmower and try to copy the stunt we saw the guys pull in the latest episode of Jackass. Those who astound us should be those who walk a wire between skyscrapers only to take up residence in the guest bedroom and awaken our sense of the enigmatic-who both take risks and appeal to our wondrous fascination with the mysterious.