Bookmarks

I yank sheets off the mattress with zeal, pull the cases off the pillows and toss them into a pile of nights soon to be washed out of them - soaked and sudded and rinsed out into the gutters of Court Street. The fibers will soon be cleansed of the dreams I had about you and you and you (respectively), of the nights I screamed "no" out repetitively in my sleep, of the sweat and the cells and the hair. The pile of nights sits at my door and I check my wallet for quarters.

A dollar short. Of course. I check the desk drawers and the old purses and the coat pockets and the floor under the couch. Nothing. 3 bobby pins, a few gum wrappers, and one Thai Baht. I squeeze my eyes shut and summon the dollar demons from the cracks and creases of my apartment...

Yes! I used to use dollars as bookmarks when I was filthy rich and also too busy to finish enormous volumes. Apparently I haven't finished a few others, and each "bookmark" I used shoved me back to the spot I was sitting as I shut the book so long ago:

-100 Ways to Live to Be 100: page 487: Jamba Juice receipt, Berry Lime Sublime, $4.11, 1/14/2007.

-Don Quixote: page 30: ripped corner of French 101 worksheet.

-Reading Lolita in Tehran: page 78: index card with Ani Difranco quote scrawled across the top: "Life comes easy, with your sweet company, making it so complete." (sigh...Colin...)

-Autograph Man: page 120: yellow post-it note.

-David Copperfield: page 251: train ticket, Bangkok to Nong Krai, 10/23/2007, 1,200 Baht.

-The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: page 260: checklist from internship at Writer's House.

-Madam Bovary: page 100: a photo of my father at Christmas, sans gray hair, laughing.

-In Cold Blood: page 123: University Book Store receipt for In Cold Blood: 2/15/2006.

-Me Talk Pretty One Day: end page: small colored-pencil portrait of me, courtesy of Mai, my cutest and most proficient student in Chachoengsao.

After all this, no dollar. Just a pile of beautiful junk, next to my pile of nights.

(unLtiOtlVedE)

As a very young girl my favorite place was this space where the four trunks of a willow tree converged into a small nook just my size. The tree stood with it's sad green branches swaying at the far corner of our yard, so I was as far away as I could be while still in the vicinity of my mother's call. Sometimes I would invite her to join me, to eat pretend tomato soup or quietly braid each other's hair, but mostly I liked to be alone. As I lay in my little world of peeling bark and crispy, narrow leaves, I remember looking upwards at the glinting sunlight through the canopy and dreaming about love. My squeaky clean illusions of it at the time sometimes slip through reality's cracks, but most of them were lost in that willow.

Love, back then, was freshly brushed teeth and a shiny, newly waxed convertible. Perfectly timed kisses on an unexpecting neck and bright orange tulips wrapped in green ribbon. Two spoons in a drawer. Lights turning off on either side of the squishy bed at the very same time, and silent, blissful sleep. Years and locations matching like puzzles, and a simultaneous, drowning passion for one another: an unmelting chocolate ice cream cone that lasts forever.

"When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims -- these are lucky eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name."
-Jeffrey Eugenides, a master of pen and page, in My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead.

Today, I think about being back in the comforting arms of that willow tree, sipping tea from an invisible cup and being completely oblivious to what real love would turn out to be. A pristine white plate with a hairline crack down the middle. A stubbed toe. A bruised apple. A broken clock or a skipping CD. The lint in a belly button. Twisted decisions and piles of corks and cigarette butts. The feeling you get when you've lost something, or forgotten the name of an actress or the title of a movie: that vacancy, that frustration. As unpredictable as waves on the sea, crashing on your back or your chest when you least expect it, and then calm when you approach it with a surf board. Standing on the shoreline with the sand beneath your toes, you throw the surf board into the quiet water, and run up the dunes without glimpsing back.

But I do glimpse back. I always do. Cold ocean water is so inviting.

Diet Coke High

Sometimes I feel like my life is an episode of Saturday Night Live. Today, "Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy" came to my workspace with a brand new software that would make my life 5,000 times easier gripped in one hand, and a 1.5 liter bottle of Diet Coke in the other. His name was actually David, but we'll call him Nick Burns because the resemblance was uncanny (just add about 100 pounds). So, Nick Burns huffs and puffs over to my space, awkwardly walks past it and checks the number, and then walks back and says, "so you're Lisa!" I say, "Yes, indeed I am!" Feeling obligated to quickly get out of my chair so the master could work his caffinated magic, I sidled out of the way so he could lumber into my chair. He then proceeded to close out all of my 18 open windows, some which needed to be saved, but I kept my cringes to a minimum and took a deep breath. Guess I'll have to stay late tonight! (Guess writing this blog will further the stay!)

As Nick Burns installed Bradbury Phillips onto my machine, I bit my nails and played with my hair, staring off into the wide, sterile abyss that is my floor. My reverie was soon interrupted when Nick Burns began speaking to the computer. He held the mouse with his hand cocked sideways, so his elbow stuck out like a chicken wing. Each button clicked on with said mouse, was announced: "Start." "Open." "Next." "Ok." "Install." I felt like I was in the car with a child who was in the nascent stages of reading, reciting each passing sign on the roadside. When the installation bar slowly began filling up with blue, Nick Burns leaned back in my chair, took a swig of Diet Coke, scratched his leg for a few seconds, and said "Is it 5:00 yet?" I chuckled, agreeing that yes, I too hope the day is almost over... ha....

...

ha. He then pulled his Blackberry out and began reading his emails aloud, separating them with noises like "ch ch ch," and "hmmmm." Then he began shouting at the poor thing, at which point I jumped, thinking it might have been directed at me. "No, that's when you deactivated your account!" "What are you talking about apply synchronization!?!" "That was WAY too much information for me."

The blue bar finally filled up, and Nick Burns huffed away from my desk. So here I sit, my chair quite a few degrees warmer than it had when he arrived. My mouse is sweaty and there are spit marks on my monitor.

I Love Brooklyn

Listen to my favorite song about Brooklyn:

aqui

Dewey Beach, Delaware

Crammed into the venue shaped like a barn which was tattooed with street signs and beer ads from faraway Milwaukee, we listened to a cover band play Maggie's music and Nina's music and I realized that simultaneously I can always use someone like you and all you know and how you speak, but I will always love to put my hand up. My music would be there just 2 nights after I left. Damn.


Earlier in the night, a patient chaperone assisted my slow, Midwestern hands in tearing a newly-dead crab into shelled, moist, incredibly delicious pieces. The tablecloth was made from recycled brown paper bags. The wine tasted like somewhere far away from everywhere.

They convinced me that the ocean cures. The sand exfoliated our tanning skin, the sea salt combed through our hair, the roaring Atlantic filled our souls and we laughed at the incoming waves, (after which they laughed at us, as we struggled to re-tie our bathing suits and slid them back into their rightful, pious positions).

They rubbed my back as I sat close to them, retelling my tales about t-shirts I hold while I fall asleep, shoes I throw, moments in the kitchen when I collapse on the floor. They ran their fingers through my hair while I slept on their thighs, re-dreaming dreams about cold coke-a-cola in a bag and quiet spaghetti dinners on clean wooden floors. They hugged me longer than they usually do, squeezing it out of me, distracting me with discussions on the many uses of a coconut.

I escaped one night after 12 plastic cups full of something heavenly-orange, to the bay. As I waded out through the shallow, lukewarm water under ten thousand stars, the clock created hours out of minutes and years out of hours. Every sentence felt like poetry and every step further in brought me further from my reality. Later, I returned to the beach house with a box of jellyfish, horseshoe crabs, sparkling plankton, and a wide smile.