Since the clouds are strewn silver and white from horizon to horizon, today's arboretum walk is apparently about flight--the shift of bird sillouhettes from pine to pine in the drought-thinned thicket, the drift of seeds delicate with fine, false feathers, and the shift of thought from drowsy to reminiscent to remorseful. Any alliterative embellishments are unfortunate leftovers from last night's Gloom, a card game of morbid mayhem that allows one to indulge one's Gorey/PBS Mystery dark side upon a tableful of one's friends. Perhaps that should have made this morning a grey whisper of crows; however, it is not.
Grey taffeta mockingbirds with black and white hems are slipping through the undergrowth and a fidget of tiny brown birds are zipping away from the azalea hill into the trees on the creek bank as I walk through a slow rainfall. Wondering if these large palm fronds would be effective umbrellas, I step under one and look up. Not making it underneath the tight base of the frond, I get a raindrop in the eye. The sharp fringes are not so much effective.
Following the palms through to the prehistoric section, I see that more cycads, etc. are being planted. This means that the frog pond area is under construction and I'm detoured over to the fairy tale pond, where I find a nice, large frog sitting with his face above the water as the rain continues to ring the water like a visible tone from an invisible bell. At the edge, someone has been cleaning up the lower branches of a tree that I don't recognize, save for the Froudian baby goblin frowning from just above the mulch.
The contrast of the flying birds and the falling rain runs like a bar of music through me and I find myself in a very Mumford & Sons mood as the rain drops strike faster and the birds call ever louder. A jangle of grey and a glissando of water and the begging of my own brain to be braver and hardier and less distracted push me to wake up, although I don't feel--standing in the park, in the daylight, shoes on my feet--as if I've been sleeping.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Friday, February 1, 2013
Mercer by Morning
It's not my hundred-acre wood; yet it makes a good stand-in in this suburban wasteland of green anoles and mockingbirds and cats and dogs and grass like a weathered welcome mat all around. Instead of reminding me of poetry, of which I know very little to heart, the garden reminds of specificities and ephemera from my own history.
My mother grew azaleas in the back of the house when I was little, when my bedroom formed the back wall and had a window on the backyard. Azaleas don't seem to care much for the clay soil but they do like blue Miracle-Gro dissolved like plant Kool-aid and sprayed on them in season. It wasn't until a few years ago that we traveled to her home town for a funeral and Dad drove us around their old neighborhood that I realized that azaleas looooove Port Arthur. They were not what I took away from vacations to my grandparents, however. Those were Pink Lady bubblegum slushies, green tomatoes off the vine with salt, soda in small glass bottles, tuna-noodle salad (today's lunch) and a gothic sense of family dynamics. Azalea season at Mercer reminds me to call Mom instead of long for family vacations.
The ephemera arrives as we move beyond the azalea banks and come to the velvet petunias, whose purple and cream streaks remind me of fruit and cream lifesavers and make me hungry for fake grape--the flavor of a bank lollipop, rough and sugary from the plastic, or the smell of a scented sticker ripe from the roll. This is the reason that I have "wine" candles in my bedroom. Purple grape is one of my favorite flavors/scents and it wraps around the back of my tongue while I'm looking at the petunias. I wonder what flavors hummingbirds find at the throats of the flowers at which they drink.
There isn't a concession stand in the arboretum. If you're on this side of the trail system, you're not supposed to be eating or drinking anything. The sun is warm and thoughts of grape slushies are making me too thirsty to linger, even among the red & white camellias. Instead, I head to the frog pond.
The tiny frogs in this dark plastic pond the size of a large bathtub are relaxing to observe, provided you don't startle them all into splashing into the water before you realize they are there. I've been practicing quiet approaches for days now just to stand at the edge and stare at them as they float with their eyes and nose above the surface of the water. Although I'm not a fan of the heat, the frogs are making me long for pool weather and the ability to float just like that while on vacation in LJ. Just relaxing into stillness to try to get a good photo lets me relax and ignore everything else going on around us. Part of me is worried about snakes (there are lots of yummy frogs not three feet from me), but I'm hoping it's too cold for them yet. Float, breathe, float, breathe. Watch the ripples to guess where the others are hiding. Lift the camera, focus on the eyeballs focused on you, click. Breathe.
After a bit, the hammering of the woodpeckers and the calls of the cardinals slips into focus and the trees and bushes are busy with birds. The day loses interest in you and moves on, while you float your camera to your eyes and breathe.
My mother grew azaleas in the back of the house when I was little, when my bedroom formed the back wall and had a window on the backyard. Azaleas don't seem to care much for the clay soil but they do like blue Miracle-Gro dissolved like plant Kool-aid and sprayed on them in season. It wasn't until a few years ago that we traveled to her home town for a funeral and Dad drove us around their old neighborhood that I realized that azaleas looooove Port Arthur. They were not what I took away from vacations to my grandparents, however. Those were Pink Lady bubblegum slushies, green tomatoes off the vine with salt, soda in small glass bottles, tuna-noodle salad (today's lunch) and a gothic sense of family dynamics. Azalea season at Mercer reminds me to call Mom instead of long for family vacations.
The ephemera arrives as we move beyond the azalea banks and come to the velvet petunias, whose purple and cream streaks remind me of fruit and cream lifesavers and make me hungry for fake grape--the flavor of a bank lollipop, rough and sugary from the plastic, or the smell of a scented sticker ripe from the roll. This is the reason that I have "wine" candles in my bedroom. Purple grape is one of my favorite flavors/scents and it wraps around the back of my tongue while I'm looking at the petunias. I wonder what flavors hummingbirds find at the throats of the flowers at which they drink.
There isn't a concession stand in the arboretum. If you're on this side of the trail system, you're not supposed to be eating or drinking anything. The sun is warm and thoughts of grape slushies are making me too thirsty to linger, even among the red & white camellias. Instead, I head to the frog pond.
The tiny frogs in this dark plastic pond the size of a large bathtub are relaxing to observe, provided you don't startle them all into splashing into the water before you realize they are there. I've been practicing quiet approaches for days now just to stand at the edge and stare at them as they float with their eyes and nose above the surface of the water. Although I'm not a fan of the heat, the frogs are making me long for pool weather and the ability to float just like that while on vacation in LJ. Just relaxing into stillness to try to get a good photo lets me relax and ignore everything else going on around us. Part of me is worried about snakes (there are lots of yummy frogs not three feet from me), but I'm hoping it's too cold for them yet. Float, breathe, float, breathe. Watch the ripples to guess where the others are hiding. Lift the camera, focus on the eyeballs focused on you, click. Breathe.
After a bit, the hammering of the woodpeckers and the calls of the cardinals slips into focus and the trees and bushes are busy with birds. The day loses interest in you and moves on, while you float your camera to your eyes and breathe.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Distracted
There is no focus in my brain today. There is a stack of two books and a magazine beside me, several more in the bedroom, and one in the office. Some of them are sporting chic pastel page markers in the hopes that I'll either take notes or make the dishes therein. It's been windy enough that the chimney has been sighing and the table umbrella that James tied with an old belt after the last windstorm has been wobbling. I intended to start this morning in the arboretum, but I haven't left the house. The dogs are sleeping.
Not leaving the house tends to be a problem for me, because it lets me haunt Facebook and play Skyrim and in general fill up the day with the kind of chores that just keep the house together. The neighborhood feels like an experiment in isolation--how long can you shuffle clothes through the laundry room, a vacuum across the carpet, the dogs in and out of the backyard before your sense of purpose cracks?
I would have liked to walk through the arboretum on this windy afternoon and get out the last of the insomniac cobwebs lingering from a broken sleep out of my head. Instead, I listened to the hyper weather predictions and stayed here. With the stacks of books. That need to be read. Now.
Not happening. There has come to be a tension between my reader and writer selves. Neither believes they are fully compatible with each other. A good novel is enjoyable, but also a rebuke the work I'm doing. A bad novel reminds me that I'm flailing around in this same not-quite-there world and then reinforces the judginess that's already zooming around the writer self like a flock of bees. Zzzzzz. Bees are totally taunting the insomniac part of me as well.
The reader self is perfectly happy with reams of lit crit or fantasy novels, the writer self insists on contemporary romance or urban fantasy because those are genres that sell and disputes the lit crit while simultaneously wishing itself clever enough for that kind of depth.
There isn't much compromise on a day when I'm this easily distracted. I've deleted and rewritten this post several times to no great avail. It's still windy. The chimney is still thumping, the open windows whistling. Something is blowing in, although it is not yet here.
Not leaving the house tends to be a problem for me, because it lets me haunt Facebook and play Skyrim and in general fill up the day with the kind of chores that just keep the house together. The neighborhood feels like an experiment in isolation--how long can you shuffle clothes through the laundry room, a vacuum across the carpet, the dogs in and out of the backyard before your sense of purpose cracks?
I would have liked to walk through the arboretum on this windy afternoon and get out the last of the insomniac cobwebs lingering from a broken sleep out of my head. Instead, I listened to the hyper weather predictions and stayed here. With the stacks of books. That need to be read. Now.
Not happening. There has come to be a tension between my reader and writer selves. Neither believes they are fully compatible with each other. A good novel is enjoyable, but also a rebuke the work I'm doing. A bad novel reminds me that I'm flailing around in this same not-quite-there world and then reinforces the judginess that's already zooming around the writer self like a flock of bees. Zzzzzz. Bees are totally taunting the insomniac part of me as well.
The reader self is perfectly happy with reams of lit crit or fantasy novels, the writer self insists on contemporary romance or urban fantasy because those are genres that sell and disputes the lit crit while simultaneously wishing itself clever enough for that kind of depth.
There isn't much compromise on a day when I'm this easily distracted. I've deleted and rewritten this post several times to no great avail. It's still windy. The chimney is still thumping, the open windows whistling. Something is blowing in, although it is not yet here.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Hobbits and Donkey Kong...Spoilers and Spoilsports Ahead
Please be aware there are spoilers below regarding The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
You know that sinking feeling when you're looking forward to a book or an album or a movie and the buzz starts to turn sour? I'd been fighting that before going to see the new Hobbit movie. My own enjoyment of the movie was more than likely affected by what I've heard and read; however, that doesn't change the fact that I left the theater without any desire to see the next two films.
Which doesn't mean there weren't pieces that I enjoyed: the snorting dragon buried in his gold, Radagast and his twitchy rabbit sled, and Gollum. Radagast in particular embodied everything that I found to be right about the film: he was something new in Middle Earth and his scenes seemed more urgent and emotional than much of the rest of the film. I was concerned for the dying hedgehog, frightened by the giant spiders, and shivery as Radagast investigated the Necromancer's tower. Because these scenes weren't part of the book, my brain wasn't fighting against their rhythm or dialogue.
This was a minor problem for me for the rest of the film. The Hobbit is a swift read and Tolkien's mastery of his text means that it has a rhythm that makes for well-remembered scenes and songs. Changing these up, even if necessary for a film, still engenders a bit of mental static.
The greater problem was the lack (save for Radagast's scenes) of any sense of wonder on this journey. Bilbo and the dwarves are constantly beset by goblins and wargs (which we've seen before...it's not MORE exciting the 53rd time around) and there is little time to sink into the story or get more from Bilbo other than grumbling. Where is his sense of wonder about the elves? Where is the sense that elves are something more than really awesome warriors...just like Rohirrim, only...less blonde? More immortal? Where are the songs, Mr. Jackson? Where is any sense of mirth, merriment, or camraderie?
Oh...here it is. In the silly giant-headed goblin. Who lives in the Middle Earth's version of Donkey Kong's skyscraper, were we will spend several minutes racing across rickety wooden catwalks while I silently tick off potential hints for a future videogame. And once we're done with that, look, more wargs and goblins. Perfect for heroic last stand for Thorin and Bilbo, right?
However, Gandalf has already summoned the eagles (there is no sense, mostly because the animals still don't talk, of the eagles as beings with free choice) and so everyone is rescued and left on a giant rock. After a chance remark from Bilbo, we're treated to a reminder that there's a dragon somewhere up ahead and then the film ends. With a giant thud. I guess the dragon is supposed to inspire me to want to see what happens next, but I already know what happens next. I've read the book.
For me, this film demonstrates that the scripwriters & director were more interested in creating a prequel to the LOTR films than in telling Bilbo's story. Perhaps this couldn't have been done successfully. On the other hand, Middle Earth was pretty interesting from his perspective. I'm not as interested in it as merely a combat setting.
You know that sinking feeling when you're looking forward to a book or an album or a movie and the buzz starts to turn sour? I'd been fighting that before going to see the new Hobbit movie. My own enjoyment of the movie was more than likely affected by what I've heard and read; however, that doesn't change the fact that I left the theater without any desire to see the next two films.
Which doesn't mean there weren't pieces that I enjoyed: the snorting dragon buried in his gold, Radagast and his twitchy rabbit sled, and Gollum. Radagast in particular embodied everything that I found to be right about the film: he was something new in Middle Earth and his scenes seemed more urgent and emotional than much of the rest of the film. I was concerned for the dying hedgehog, frightened by the giant spiders, and shivery as Radagast investigated the Necromancer's tower. Because these scenes weren't part of the book, my brain wasn't fighting against their rhythm or dialogue.
This was a minor problem for me for the rest of the film. The Hobbit is a swift read and Tolkien's mastery of his text means that it has a rhythm that makes for well-remembered scenes and songs. Changing these up, even if necessary for a film, still engenders a bit of mental static.
The greater problem was the lack (save for Radagast's scenes) of any sense of wonder on this journey. Bilbo and the dwarves are constantly beset by goblins and wargs (which we've seen before...it's not MORE exciting the 53rd time around) and there is little time to sink into the story or get more from Bilbo other than grumbling. Where is his sense of wonder about the elves? Where is the sense that elves are something more than really awesome warriors...just like Rohirrim, only...less blonde? More immortal? Where are the songs, Mr. Jackson? Where is any sense of mirth, merriment, or camraderie?
Oh...here it is. In the silly giant-headed goblin. Who lives in the Middle Earth's version of Donkey Kong's skyscraper, were we will spend several minutes racing across rickety wooden catwalks while I silently tick off potential hints for a future videogame. And once we're done with that, look, more wargs and goblins. Perfect for heroic last stand for Thorin and Bilbo, right?
However, Gandalf has already summoned the eagles (there is no sense, mostly because the animals still don't talk, of the eagles as beings with free choice) and so everyone is rescued and left on a giant rock. After a chance remark from Bilbo, we're treated to a reminder that there's a dragon somewhere up ahead and then the film ends. With a giant thud. I guess the dragon is supposed to inspire me to want to see what happens next, but I already know what happens next. I've read the book.
For me, this film demonstrates that the scripwriters & director were more interested in creating a prequel to the LOTR films than in telling Bilbo's story. Perhaps this couldn't have been done successfully. On the other hand, Middle Earth was pretty interesting from his perspective. I'm not as interested in it as merely a combat setting.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Trust
Yesterday, a young mother and her son were sitting on the floor in the office waiting area and she was trying to encourage him to start walking. While seated, she would stand him up, let him go, and then encourage him to step forward. Although he was enjoying himself (at least, he was smiling as hugely as possible at those of us passing through waiting area), he tended to lean forward and fall toward her rather than walking. Each time he leaned and began to fall, she caught him. He was having fun falling forward.
I was reminded of him this morning in B&N, as I was poking through the new book shelves and came across an illustrated book about snowmen after dark. At a certain age, you could fall into a book like that and be caught every time by the artwork and the story. Living here in southern Texas, an illustrated book of snow and snowmen pretty much counts as fantasy literature, too.
Not that I imagine that there arms out there waiting to catch me, but I miss that sense of falling forward into wonder, the excitement of not-quite-able-to-catch-yourself that requires trust that something is there to catch you. Lately, I've lost this trust both as a writer and a person. This means that I'm not letting myself go with the stories that I'm working on. Years ago, I would have just slammed out whatever I was feeling. Jealous of a cousin's perceived good fortune? Blam! Short story about children fighting in the dirt hills of a local construction site.
Does this make for great literature? Sometimes, although not for me. What it does is connect me more thoroughly to my inner writer rather than my inner editor/pessimist. My inner writer...let's call her Betty, for short...is the part of me who trusts herself. Betty is not willing to say that she's happy taking on something that makes her uncomfortable. Betty does not believe she's useless because she had another birthday or doesn't have kids. Betty believes that she's incredibly fortunate to be alive, to have a Frappucino and a few minutes to stare at all the people in the cafe and the freedom to reimagine them. She's not embarrassed by her lack of publishing credits. She believes you should be embarrassed because your tomato crop wasn't accepted by Whole Foods' supply chain last season. Betty can be bitchy.
I don't trust Betty. Lately, I'm not willing to give her than a few tiny sheets of notebook paper on which to scrap novel. She's trying to encourage me to fall back in with her (aaahhhh!!! metaphor torture!!!! stop with "falling"!) while there are others who are encouraging me to pack her away and stop stumbling around. To get over myself. I think I'd rather have a chorus line of snowmen. Even if they don't catch you, the snow angels will.
I was reminded of him this morning in B&N, as I was poking through the new book shelves and came across an illustrated book about snowmen after dark. At a certain age, you could fall into a book like that and be caught every time by the artwork and the story. Living here in southern Texas, an illustrated book of snow and snowmen pretty much counts as fantasy literature, too.
Not that I imagine that there arms out there waiting to catch me, but I miss that sense of falling forward into wonder, the excitement of not-quite-able-to-catch-yourself that requires trust that something is there to catch you. Lately, I've lost this trust both as a writer and a person. This means that I'm not letting myself go with the stories that I'm working on. Years ago, I would have just slammed out whatever I was feeling. Jealous of a cousin's perceived good fortune? Blam! Short story about children fighting in the dirt hills of a local construction site.
Does this make for great literature? Sometimes, although not for me. What it does is connect me more thoroughly to my inner writer rather than my inner editor/pessimist. My inner writer...let's call her Betty, for short...is the part of me who trusts herself. Betty is not willing to say that she's happy taking on something that makes her uncomfortable. Betty does not believe she's useless because she had another birthday or doesn't have kids. Betty believes that she's incredibly fortunate to be alive, to have a Frappucino and a few minutes to stare at all the people in the cafe and the freedom to reimagine them. She's not embarrassed by her lack of publishing credits. She believes you should be embarrassed because your tomato crop wasn't accepted by Whole Foods' supply chain last season. Betty can be bitchy.
I don't trust Betty. Lately, I'm not willing to give her than a few tiny sheets of notebook paper on which to scrap novel. She's trying to encourage me to fall back in with her (aaahhhh!!! metaphor torture!!!! stop with "falling"!) while there are others who are encouraging me to pack her away and stop stumbling around. To get over myself. I think I'd rather have a chorus line of snowmen. Even if they don't catch you, the snow angels will.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Books and Piles
Last night my brother popped into his son's room at my parent's house--they're just down the street and so their guest room becomes my nephew's default room unless someone kicks him out while visiting my parents, as I was that night--and grabbed a thin book out of the stack at the foot of the bed.
A bookshelf had been moved out of the room and piles of books lined the hallway. Mom had made a stab at separating the books that had belonged to each of us as kids and I'd added the book my brother was now holding to my stack. Of course, it had been in the house since I'd been in elementary school (quick quiz--can you name every teacher from kindergarten through fifth grade? Second grade drops out for me.) and I remembered reading it; however, he remembered buying it at a book fair and was determined to keep it there.
When it comes to a digital chunk of books that we've lost ownership of and stacks of old electronic devices, have we lost anything?
Neither of us had read the book under contention in years but last night I did read a couple of teen romances I think I might have borrowed (by now, permanently) from a friend. They were awful, full of the kind of syrup and rigid character roles you find in mediocre sitcoms. Compared to the stuff teens have today, these are middle-grade at best. I remember reading them and envying the lip-glossed/perfect hair heroines and trying to fit those crazy rigid structures over my own experiences. Silly as they are, I've brought them home to live on our bookshelves.
As we share the space where we used to live, the books where our imaginations used to live scatter. If this stacks end up somewhere like Half Price, who's going to read them? We're talking about teens who are waiting by phones that are attached to the wall. Is it better to have those experience dissolve into the past? These are farcical relics--the "historical documents" of Galaxy Quest.
Guess NaNo does this to me. As I scramble to fill up the 50k word quota this month, I start to think about whether my obsession with books makes me a writer, a hoarder, or just a Former English Lit Major. And why my normally not-much-of-a-reader brother is so obsessed with his old books.
A bookshelf had been moved out of the room and piles of books lined the hallway. Mom had made a stab at separating the books that had belonged to each of us as kids and I'd added the book my brother was now holding to my stack. Of course, it had been in the house since I'd been in elementary school (quick quiz--can you name every teacher from kindergarten through fifth grade? Second grade drops out for me.) and I remembered reading it; however, he remembered buying it at a book fair and was determined to keep it there.
When it comes to a digital chunk of books that we've lost ownership of and stacks of old electronic devices, have we lost anything?
Neither of us had read the book under contention in years but last night I did read a couple of teen romances I think I might have borrowed (by now, permanently) from a friend. They were awful, full of the kind of syrup and rigid character roles you find in mediocre sitcoms. Compared to the stuff teens have today, these are middle-grade at best. I remember reading them and envying the lip-glossed/perfect hair heroines and trying to fit those crazy rigid structures over my own experiences. Silly as they are, I've brought them home to live on our bookshelves.
As we share the space where we used to live, the books where our imaginations used to live scatter. If this stacks end up somewhere like Half Price, who's going to read them? We're talking about teens who are waiting by phones that are attached to the wall. Is it better to have those experience dissolve into the past? These are farcical relics--the "historical documents" of Galaxy Quest.
Guess NaNo does this to me. As I scramble to fill up the 50k word quota this month, I start to think about whether my obsession with books makes me a writer, a hoarder, or just a Former English Lit Major. And why my normally not-much-of-a-reader brother is so obsessed with his old books.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
All Souls Day, NaNo Day 1
Food Court, Willowbrook Mall.
I'm hiding behind a giant styrofoam container of blackened chicken and rice. It's too early for coteries of tired shoppers; instead, a thin sprinkling of workmen, mall walkers, small families, and sales people rime the outer tables of the food court. Despite the background patter, the place seems quiet. I am cushioned in a crinkling bubble wrap of noise. It is too loud for desultory speech to carry, even that of the center fountain's linear falls of municipal water. Men are the predominant singletons.
Perhaps I have ordered the Polyglot Medley, summoning my surroundings like a dish from one of the ambiguously ethnic rice & meat places from which I have ordered my own lunch. This is the beginning of my daily 1700 words. For now they are coming at an orderly pace, like a stream of cars exiting a freeway. Some thoughts slip forward, connected to observations and memories that aren't related to this exit, to this place.
More people come to the court and the balance shifts toward women singletons. Perhaps to parity. I don't bother to count because the Day Crowd has begun to weave through the outer tables.
A few years ago, I noticed them. Constrained to constant unobserved motion, by age or custom, they will break out at night into the slow, glittery, loud clusters of chaos that mark the mall at dusk. The Day Crowd becomes the Evening Crowd. They are magic--which has both steady ritual and random flash. We call for it and wait upon it. Its answers pinch us or sting us or amaze us, according to whim.
At all times, this is their court.
For a place dedicated to food, little smell of food lingers. The predominant scent at this table is soap, mop water predominates at other, and fried starch is limited to those tables on which it rests. The Day Crowd--working their ritual--keep erasing the traces of what came before. Once a table is left, all the symbols etched in the air and on the surface are effaced.
Every set is removed as it is inscribed. This is Day, and everything must pass the test of the sun--it must be blank enough to give back the light. I slide the notebook closer to me, careful to keep my notes in my own shadow and the bright white pages that I am defacing with text away from the sun bars falling on nearby tables.
When the Evening Crowd arrives, the electric lights won't have the kingship sunlight possesses. They will laugh and shriek to each other, draw dark lines around their eyes and lips so that the shadows recognize them, and become careless of the marks they leave and the words they utter. They Day Crowd comes early to clear away the workings.
Who can hear the shadows under this rumble anyway? This sea of sound beneath the sun, this aquarium of discourse, is more than enough to pacify them. The light roils the words and drops dark images of the pale slats upon the tables and floor. Any leftover incisions or scrawls would disturb the crisp images. The Day Crowd will leave no such remnants.
Even now, a few of them wander past my table. One casually brushes someone's earlier leavings from beside me. I smother the writing with my forearm and shovel another forkful of rice into my mouth. The Evening Crowd forgets. All of the formality of the Day, the stories, the morals, the memories, are written in lines and marks on the Day Crowd. They cannot efface themselves until the sun sinks and the forgetfulness takes them. Until then, everything else must be cleaned away and rewritten, or overwritten, on their silence.
Each sliver of sound becomes something I must see. Schools of sound becomes songs or ads or family discussions and most flash past without breaking their rhythm. An old Simon and Garfunkel song whispers to me. The Day Crowd moves in silence, but they are drawing closer. Soon they will ask if I am done, signalling that I must move on. It is late in the year; the turn toward evening will take place this afternoon. I can feel the tide in the conversation, running higher toward a brightness just after noon.
Then something clear--a silver whisper from the double shadow of body and table beside me. I get up, lunch over, concentration broken.
It is only as I'm driving home that I look up and see at an intersection a cloud, then a dappled shadow, then a white van turning the corner that I remember the Day Crowd is part of who I am becoming. I have forgotten the evening for the pattern of my days. Was the whisper earlier a question? When will forget myself and answer?
I'm hiding behind a giant styrofoam container of blackened chicken and rice. It's too early for coteries of tired shoppers; instead, a thin sprinkling of workmen, mall walkers, small families, and sales people rime the outer tables of the food court. Despite the background patter, the place seems quiet. I am cushioned in a crinkling bubble wrap of noise. It is too loud for desultory speech to carry, even that of the center fountain's linear falls of municipal water. Men are the predominant singletons.
Perhaps I have ordered the Polyglot Medley, summoning my surroundings like a dish from one of the ambiguously ethnic rice & meat places from which I have ordered my own lunch. This is the beginning of my daily 1700 words. For now they are coming at an orderly pace, like a stream of cars exiting a freeway. Some thoughts slip forward, connected to observations and memories that aren't related to this exit, to this place.
More people come to the court and the balance shifts toward women singletons. Perhaps to parity. I don't bother to count because the Day Crowd has begun to weave through the outer tables.
A few years ago, I noticed them. Constrained to constant unobserved motion, by age or custom, they will break out at night into the slow, glittery, loud clusters of chaos that mark the mall at dusk. The Day Crowd becomes the Evening Crowd. They are magic--which has both steady ritual and random flash. We call for it and wait upon it. Its answers pinch us or sting us or amaze us, according to whim.
At all times, this is their court.
For a place dedicated to food, little smell of food lingers. The predominant scent at this table is soap, mop water predominates at other, and fried starch is limited to those tables on which it rests. The Day Crowd--working their ritual--keep erasing the traces of what came before. Once a table is left, all the symbols etched in the air and on the surface are effaced.
Every set is removed as it is inscribed. This is Day, and everything must pass the test of the sun--it must be blank enough to give back the light. I slide the notebook closer to me, careful to keep my notes in my own shadow and the bright white pages that I am defacing with text away from the sun bars falling on nearby tables.
When the Evening Crowd arrives, the electric lights won't have the kingship sunlight possesses. They will laugh and shriek to each other, draw dark lines around their eyes and lips so that the shadows recognize them, and become careless of the marks they leave and the words they utter. They Day Crowd comes early to clear away the workings.
Who can hear the shadows under this rumble anyway? This sea of sound beneath the sun, this aquarium of discourse, is more than enough to pacify them. The light roils the words and drops dark images of the pale slats upon the tables and floor. Any leftover incisions or scrawls would disturb the crisp images. The Day Crowd will leave no such remnants.
Even now, a few of them wander past my table. One casually brushes someone's earlier leavings from beside me. I smother the writing with my forearm and shovel another forkful of rice into my mouth. The Evening Crowd forgets. All of the formality of the Day, the stories, the morals, the memories, are written in lines and marks on the Day Crowd. They cannot efface themselves until the sun sinks and the forgetfulness takes them. Until then, everything else must be cleaned away and rewritten, or overwritten, on their silence.
Each sliver of sound becomes something I must see. Schools of sound becomes songs or ads or family discussions and most flash past without breaking their rhythm. An old Simon and Garfunkel song whispers to me. The Day Crowd moves in silence, but they are drawing closer. Soon they will ask if I am done, signalling that I must move on. It is late in the year; the turn toward evening will take place this afternoon. I can feel the tide in the conversation, running higher toward a brightness just after noon.
Then something clear--a silver whisper from the double shadow of body and table beside me. I get up, lunch over, concentration broken.
It is only as I'm driving home that I look up and see at an intersection a cloud, then a dappled shadow, then a white van turning the corner that I remember the Day Crowd is part of who I am becoming. I have forgotten the evening for the pattern of my days. Was the whisper earlier a question? When will forget myself and answer?
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