Not all who wander are dead

Through some conspiracy of celestial scope every time I sit at this desk to write it is Sunday morning. A time tunnel of Sunday mornings. Last night I spent it with Crevecoeur and, when my patience subsided, Nabokov. The former idyllic, the latter caustic. I weed through Nabokov’s tortuous prose like a turtle in brushwood, but still obdurate despite obstacles of form. You use too many SAT words, he says, and I say, man, you should read Nabokov, a little irritated but still patient with him because he does not understand that I do not do it on purpose.

As I paraglide through the pages I realize that I hardly need a dictionary anymore, here and there for things that refer to inanimate objects, like “crucible,” but this is only to be expected since there are not many crucibles in my life. How much of all this richness of language collapses into oblivion for lack of use, it saddens me. Words must be remembered on stray pieces of paper, on post-its, on documents on the desktop. I must retain them, for words are meaningful and beautiful, even SAT words, despite what anybody says.

Atypically early I brought the pages of the book together and Ada said goodnight, settled under her own weight on the nightstand. I sent my nightly epitaph and before I fell asleep I thought about the movie I saw today. Into the Wild. It finally dawned on me why Bill asked me four times “Do you really want to watch this?” and then implied that I would have to watch it alone. And I did. The best way to watch movies, if you ask me.

But it left me hollow. Words don’t come anymore, feelings either. The garments of emotionality stand at the gates, guarded, for fear of being brutalized again. Trapped, I feel a need to read Thoreau again, which I will today probably, since all I can do is read. Read and listen to this. As I listen I think about the guitar chords to play it and somewhere beyond mechanical perception there are thoughts about all the blog entries I will write about the movie. But still, words don’t come. Feelings either. I force myself to write four paragraphs just to prove myself I still know how.

London, Thoreau, Kerouac, Steinbeck, come back.

Please, come back.

Kindle

“Can I sit with you?” she asks at 7.30 in the morning.

“Sure,” and the smile I put on is not feigned but earnest. I look at her and she glows somehow, it is not the blond streaks in her hair but something within. This is worth waking up for, I can tell.

We converse over bowls of soggy grits and mushy biscuit. She made the first step, I reason, so it is my turn to be affable. As I gnaw at carbonized bacon I ask if she is a freshman. Of course she is. “I’m Kendal,” she says. Silvia, nice to meet you. “Sylvia?” she clarifies. Whenever I inform someone of my name I meet surprise. Is it such an unusual name?

People here have me labeled as antisocial, I think, because I don’t sit to eat at busy tables and I always bring a book to meals. This comes from my early training in meal etiquette, which haunts me still. Don’t talk while you eat. Don’t chew with your mouth open. Don’t drink water until you’re finished. An American, of course, cannot understand this – neither the rules, nor my commitment to them.

Maybe they think that I am not very talkative, either. Oh god, how wrong they are. Tell them, Bill, how I talk like the radio, all the way to Savannah and back. “You are quiet,” Shreeti said to Mother. “Your daughter does not take after you.”

When Kendal sits across from me I switch into verbose mode. I push the edibles aside and want to know everything. Where is she from. An hour and a half north from here, she says, and she tells me the name of a town that I forget immediately. Oh, I know where it is! I lie, and relish at the content look on her face. She is majoring in Women Studies and is considering Chemistry too. How wonderful, I hiss. Thinking about the zealot feminists in that department and the no-longer-new 13-million-dollar Science Center that is our mascot, I say: “Those are the most interesting subjects to take around here.” Another lie, I congratulate myself. Well, what are you supposed to say to a freshman? “Don’t worry, it will all be over soon”? You say this in their junior year. When they are like this, nascent and pristine, you say “You’ll get used to it.” I ask what she thinks of the cafeteria and her cute eschewal is a reply that I could have anticipated. So that is what I say: You’ll get used to it. She understands.

Pointlessly she stirs with the fork in the grits and takes minute bites. She eats awkwardly, she knows that I am watching and is averse to this silence between us. She has bright, blue-green eyes emphasized with black eyeliner. What is that, a nose ring? Did she really have one or did I forge the memory? A freckled face, this I am sure of. Her hair is short, straight, with blond streaks. A flattering haircut, I appraise. “You remind me of Rory Gilmore.” She looks at me and her brow contracts in puzzlement, how adorable. A few seconds elapse until she gets the reference. “What – Oh! I love that show!” She finds that I paid her a compliment and I am pleased that my comment reached the target.

Well, Kendal, I must leave you. The 8 o’clock class beckons. As I say her name I wonder about the spelling and all I can think of is “Kindle,” but I know that it cannot be it. Of course I don’t ask. I will look it up in the e-mail address book later. I tell her that I like the name. She smiles, Rory-like. See you later.

I remember coming here, two years ago, a novice myself. I was scared of everything, always worried that I was doing things wrong. Surely I was not smiling enough. I was being rude. What a freak. These new people seem much more at ease, presumptuous even. Is it true, or is it a veneer and underneath there is bedlam. If so, did I put up such a persuasive performance of composure back then? I wonder. In any case: “You are almost out the door.” That is what you say to a senior.

To the hermitage, Godspeed!

I have an hour to write a post. Strange how my schedule changed so suddenly. From sedate reverie my life has transformed into demented running around. If only I were more flexible so as to adapt more comfortably to these abrupt shifts. It feels like plunging into cold water, needles and pins and my lungs lapsing into irregular suction. Breathe in, Silvia, the coach says, and he steps on my hands to make me let go and take off. So I do, I flap my flippers into blue cascades. Now let us see if I remember how to write.

Please, wait! the machine instructs me nervously and as the barrier lifts I thump the vehicle in first. I blast off and cut in front of the guy who drives parallel to me because I am a woman and he is a man and this is how things ought to be. For the same reason I park on two parking spaces, outrageously. Each time some karmic purpose brings me to the Atlanta airport I think about Bill. Bill, the perpetual vicarious traveler, always the one who waves to people who disappear along labyrinthine walkways marked “Have passport ready.” He is never the one who leaves. Never the one who arrives. It is always somebody else. Someone who waves back with gratitude and promises postcards. Bill waits until the silhouette is obscured by behemoth guardian figures and daydreams about those postcards. His little pebbles of the world. I want to go to Spain, he tells me. And to France and Sweden and Norway. And Nepal and China. And Romania and Bulgaria! And... Sure, Bill, I say, and I smile indulgently. Let me get my shoes and I’ll come with you.

As I wait, in the wrong place as usual, I build up nervousness. I snap out of it for one brief moment, as long as it takes me to realize that I am waiting in the wrong place. I storm to the South Terminal, the function of my nervousness reaches a maximum and then glides downward as soon as I catch sight of a Starbucks. Finally I am in the right place savoring a ridiculously expensive drink in large gulps and I wait. A little girl ogles me and starts to follow me around. We play hide and seek around the conveyor belt where the parade of luggage unravels. We are at the zoo of suitcases. A set of Barbie’s luggage. A hobo’s bundle. A businessman’s briefcase. All are present. I sit down on the side, next to a flight attendant. She is wearing a red uniform and smells like clean. Her luggage is the first to be spit out by the machine. She takes off to lunch in Atlanta, or maybe to sleep, maybe to another flight. The flight attendant, a perpetual half-traveler who sightsees in microcosm.

I turn my head and there she is zooming towards me, radiant and tempestuous. She is wearing new clothes and I examine them critically, as I always do. Welcome statements. Then, the luggage belt. So, which one is yours? It has a broken handle. Maybe this one? Well, that was quick. Don’t worry, I’ll carry it. Her wrist is thin in my hand, thinner than mine I think. It surprises me and I look at my hand to make sure that it is really her wrist I am holding. You’ve lost weight, I say. You think? No, mother, you are obese. Let’s go already, I don’t want to pay these people for parking. But first, take five for a smoke in front of the airport. The puff-puff corner is trashy. It is true that cigarette smoke always goes toward non-smokers. It tries to entice them, to convert them. As I inhale without intention the life of the smoldering object I think of home, of barrooms and time-wasting artifices. Sure, we can sit here and drink our coffee and make small talk, but the repertoire is not complete without the smoke, now is it? You could not understand, I suppose.

There is a traffic jam, there always is on this godforsaken interstate. In the space between two cars that travel three miles an hour my thoughts lay down on the hot asphalt to be flattened and canceled. I talk, but it is not me who is saying things. It is the trivial creature inside me, the one I am loath to live with and am planning to have killed. So, how did you travel? Was the neighbor annoying? How many times did you get up to go to the bathroom? Do you know that once I flew from Brussels without going to the bathroom once! I step out of myself and marvel at my deftness with platitudes. Finally, we are speeding up. It seems like we traveled to the other side of the planet. Macon – next three exits! she reads out loud. Yes, Mother, we are here. She reads every sign out loud. There will be no time to think this week, I tell myself. I have to write things down. Chick-fil-a! is exclaimed from the passenger seat. What was I thinking. Self-scolding is in order, I suspect. I am already having second thoughts about this. Wal-mart! is proclaimed from next to me, with a German “w” like this, “Vaalmart.” Yes, Mother. That is where we are going later. After you sleep. Aren’t you tired? How can you not be? You are sure that you don’t want to sleep? I race to the third floor to take the elevator down so it can take us up. It’s complicated, Mother, you ask too many questions. As she takes over my space, invades my nest with her cosmetics that stain my sink and the clothes that will invariably become mine, I think, god, it’s great to be alone. To be a hermit in my hermitage, how simple and wonderful. How is it that we don’t know what little things are worth until we lose them?

Flotsam

It must have been at the beginning of time that someone decided we are to amble during the day and sleep during the night. What an arbitrary decision this must have been. Night is as propitious a time for work as any other. Is it the darkness that thwarts us? Come on now. There is always infra-red. I have a flash light in my car, wake up. Wake up and let’s talk. Let’s tell scary stories. Night, devoid of stifling heats and gnawing sunburns, what a discarded gemstone. I wish the day capsized, like an overturned cockroach jiggling its legs in desperation. And I want the night exalted, redeemed like a reinstated queen.

I suppose that if night and day were inverted I would switch to being up all day instead of being up all night. I like to be awake when everyone is asleep. An owl watching the comatose, reading their minds, scribbling about them, stealing their souls. Night is the time to make things happen. A time for lonely hours in the dark room, smoke and mirrors under red lights. The trays sway with fragrant chemicals and I see myself in their spume. Or is it my ghost? Flat, monochrome people reach out for me. I lay them down and smooth them out and with my own hand kill them on dry land. I watch the life pressed out of them. The photos bleed in black and white.

The drugged light of sunrise blinds me and in this infinite space where there is only me and the security guard I bump into him and gasp with surprise. “Have you been in here all night,” he asks childishly. “Oh, no... Just came by to get something from my locker.” He looks at me, bloodshot-eyed and tortured me, and believes me. He sees nothing.

Tonight is for popsicles, Coke, cold rice and strawberry jam. My addictions are benign. I am not even eccentric. Impossibly banal, that is what I am. If I did not like to stay up nights I would not even have a blog. Tonight is for Fleetwood Mac. So many nights are. I watch your videos and sift these years that passed by us. They settle like white, light, high-gluten Canadian flour. Everything has to be sifted, doesn’t it? We want things sanitized. So we keep the pure stuff and throw away the husk. Say I were to sit in the sifter and tell you to shake. If nothing would seep through, would it mean that I am all husk? Would I get thrown away?