Notes on a Warm and Fuzzy Scandal (or two.)

A couple of weeks ago, a small scandal erupted on my little dead-end street.  My eighty-three year old neighbor came over to dish out some delightful gossip—her sister in law, also eighty-three years old, was getting remarried.

“Married! At her age!  Can you believe it?  She hasn’t even known this man a month and now she’s going to marry him!  I think she’s crazy, myself.”

We talked it over for awhile, pondering the logistics of such a change in lifestyle.  My neighbor was sure her sister in law just wanted someone to drive her around (she’s going blind) and take her shopping.  She wondered if it would last, or if they would drive each other crazy enough to cause an even bigger scandal by getting a quick divorce.  She shook her head a little and decided she would never have the courage to marry again so late in life.

“But you know, it would be kind of nice to have a fellow to sit next to at church and go out to dinner with.  Wouldn’t it?”

Maybe her thoughts were still with me a few days later, when another little scandal happened.  (Not really a scandal…just something completely adorable.)  My friend the Two (the one who prays for people and will soon be a Three) waltzed right up to another Two and kissed her.  He turned bright red and denied it ever happened, but for the rest of the day, they were like a little old married couple.  They sat next to each other at lunch, chattering.  Since the girl Two is still learning the greater complexities of conversation, it went a lot like this:

“(girl Two says boy Two’s name)”

“Whaaaaattttt?!?!?!??!”

“(she repeats herself, elated)”

“Whaaaaaaaatttttt?????”

They didn’t get bored with this.

Maybe it’s silly, but I get such comfort from this.  No matter how old or young we are, I think we all want the same thing—someone to sit next to at church (or in the park, or at the movies, or whatever) who won’t get tired of us saying the same things over and over again.  Someone who will drive us around when we lose our eyesight and share the paints during art class.  I’m getting really close to being greeting card cheesy here, so I think I’ll just leave it at that.

We’re all looking for the same thing, more or less.

Endless summers and serious rock moments in Youngstown

I’m sitting here in my room, windows open, listening to the crickets chirping in the backyard.  There’s a good breeze coming through, and it keeps ruffling my curtains.  The air smells different than it did a couple of weeks ago.  It could just be because we got a big rain last night…but I think it’s the smell of the end of summer.

It always seems like summer is never going to end.  It’s something you start planning for while there’s still snow on the ground—gathering in coffee shops or basements in the suburbs with friends or family members, planning big trips to the beach or historic battlefields, waxing poetic about bonfires and picnics and all day swimming marathons, scoping out the summer music festival scene (or at least checking online to see if that one band you like is coming anywhere close). Summer always feels like a new event, no matter how many times you’ve experienced it.

Summer’s almost over, and I almost feel like I’ve wasted it.  I think that’s normal—there’s only so much time, after all.  Still, normal or not, I have this weird urge to be like, “Wait!!!  Somebody, anybody, come with me!  We still have to do this, and this, and this…before it’s too late!”  We forget that summer almost always comes back.

I’ve done the typical summer things.  I spent time in the Tennessee mountains, sweating in the humidity and blinking at the Americana tourist attractions.  I watched some friends throw furniture into a bonfire and pretended to know how to play volleyball at a picnic (my team quickly learned to cover me).  I even went swimming and to the zoo.

One of my favorite parts of summer for the past few years has been the concerts, and this year I was lucky enough to attend a few.  I blogged a couple months ago about the Counting Crows/Augustana show that I saw, and last Thursday I was lucky enough to get to see Augustana again.

It was the kind of show that made it feel like summer was really on the way out.  It was at the local state school, a concert to celebrate the first week back at school.  By some twist of fate, we got in for free.  The concert was absolutely beautiful, if a bit weird—it was in a gymnasium, with stadium seating and people wandering in and out on their cell phones, texting and talking loudly between songs.  The band seemed a bit weirded out by the quiet, ambling crowd, but most members appeared to be pleasantly drunk and so took it in stride.  Towards the end of the night, right as the band started to play one of their last songs, the people in charge turned all of the lights on—quite a shock, in the middle of a good concert, pitch black practically, to suddenly be transported back to a junky college gym.  I thought that would be the end of our free little concert, but I was wrong.  So wrong.

After a bit of a confused scuffle onstage, the lead singer unplugged his guitar, yelled an inaudible curse to the powers that be, and stormed off the stage.  Instead of running into the corridor, however, he ran right up into the bleachers—right next to my friends and I, but of course—and, along with the rest of the band, finished their set.  I’m probably running close to sounding like more of a ridiculous fan than a writer trying to show a good experience but…it was so cool.   I sat there, with one of my favorite bands inches away from me, and listened to acoustic versions of two of my favorite songs.  We were close enough to get hit in the faces with guitars (this happened) and be shaken by frantic stomps (this also happened…stomps instead of drums, I suppose).  And then, just to make the perfect concert even more beautiful, they led a sing-along of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

It ended there—security guards were slamming the bleachers back into the walls at this point, a less than subtle sign to get lost.  My friends and I walked outside into the cooling air, said our goodbyes, and drove home.

Summer’s almost over.  For the past nineteen years of my life, this has meant that I would pack up my books, buy new pens and notebooks, and head off to Academia.  For the first time since I was a two year old who looked a lot like E.T., I’m not doing that.  It’s…weird.  I don’t know what to do in the fall, if not go to school.  I guess I’m about to find out.

A House Divided…

In January, I wrote this elaborate essay about the Inauguration.  It wasn’t about how much I loved Barack Obama, and it wasn’t about how much I hated him, either.  It wasn’t about how suddenly because he was president, things were going to become squeaky clean perfect, nor was it about how our good old country was going to go to hell in a hand basket because of his election.

It was about his daughters.

Seriously, did you see them during the ceremony and festivities?  They were so happy. And why shouldn’t they have been?  Their dad had just officially become President.  All across the nation, people were wearing tshirts emblazoned with his face, chanting his catchphrase, and just generally being excited for his existence in this world.  What is that like when you’re a kid?  If you’re lucky enough to have a good father in the first place, you already kind of think he might be a superhero.  When a good portion of the country is reinforcing this…wow.  Just wow.  I still get happy thinking about how happy they must have been that day.

Almost eight months have passed, and the superhero shine that the media put on Obama in the beginning is definitely starting to fade.  I don’t want to get really political in this blog…there are enough other people out there to do that.  But the truth remains…we’re in a strange place here in the States, and a lot of people are gnashing their teeth at the President.  It happens.  It goes with the line of work, I guess.

I saw a bit on the news the other day about town hall meetings regarding health care.  People were screaming, standing on chairs with spit flying from their lips in passion.  “You’re on his side! You’re working for HIM!” yelled one man at another.  There was so much hate in his face.   All I could think of was those two little girls on Inauguration Day, grinning and waving and hugging their father, so excited.  I hope they don’t have to know about this part of dad’s job.

You can take what you want from this, but I just felt like I needed to write it.  Love one another, regardless of political affiliations or anything else.

How to be Spontaneous; or, A Lesson from a Dead Writer

The other day I was reading about Jack Kerouac’s spontaneous prose technique (it’s okay that this makes me sound like a total nerd.  It was part of the introduction to the 50^th anniversary edition of The Dharma Bums, which I’m finally reading).  He has a beautiful style, totally winding and in the moment and relevant, even when he’s writing about the most obtuse things.  It seems as though his books just…happened, like he wrote down what he saw in a fit of insanity, and by some magic miracle, it was good.  According to this essay I was reading, this wasn’t quite the case.

Kerouac took his spontaneous prose very seriously, working hard at it and crafting it like any writing technique.  For practice, he would scribble down everything around him in big fat paragraphs, just taking it all in as it came, just so he knew he could.  When it came time to actually write, really write, his mind was ready…he could pound out his novels, capturing the fast moving lyrical style that he wanted, but without really having to work at it in the moment.

Spontaneity takes time, I guess.

Stick with me.  I read this essay while I was at work (I work in a somewhat sleepy museum, so I get a bit of downtime here and there.)  I read this portion, this notion of honing your talent for writing lyrical spontaneity, and I was just shell shocked.  I should have been doing this all along!  I watch what’s around me, I see it and appreciate it and soak it in and love it, but more often than not, I forget to write it down.

I spent the rest of my day at the museum doing my best to take everything in, with plans to write it all down when the day was over.  I didn’t.  (I don’t think this counts.)  It’s funny, but when you’re really looking for the beauty and insanity in the world around you, it almost seems to stick out a little more.  Does that make sense?  I watched a group of painters outside noiselessly move throughout the lawn, dressed in white and smiling like they were in some kind of bizarre play.  A little girl came in to tell me about her brand new pierced ears, then left.  I gave a tour to an old man and his family, and he reminisced about seeing Desi Arnez (aka Ricky Ricardo) at a theater in Youngstown before Desi met Lucy.  He even sang a bit for us, and then gave a wheezy laugh.  The stairs creaked and the doors slammed.

I don’t know what I’m trying to get at here.  What I’m writing about here is probably something I’ve been taught a thousand times, but it’s taken until now for it to really set in.  That’s how it works though, isn’t it?

Deerfield Catharsis

Over the past four years, I’ve spent a lot of time driving in Northeastern Ohio.  I take (took? Wow…) the back roads to get to school.  I’m not sure why…I guess it’s because it’s what my parents always did, and it’s more interesting to drive through quirky little towns than to just stay on the generic highway the whole time.

My favorite point of the journey has always been driving through Deerfield, Ohio.  It has everything you could possibly ask for: a strange yellow house that is only about three feet above the ground, a roundabout that is easy to get lost in if you don’t know where you’re going, and the world’s best junk/antique store.

I’ve stopped at this store at least once a year throughout my college career.  I’ve watched the store evolve over four years, changing from a big building with a few rooms full of serious junk and a few antiques to a big building packed to the brim with tons of antiques and some really great junk.  I’ve bought a few things in this place—etiquette books, magazines from the 60s, a button from the US Navy that advised against drowning.  It’s one of those places that surprises me every time.  I never know what to expect to find in there.

I knew I had to stop there on Friday.  I had just officially finished my last undergraduate class, it was raining, and I had no plans until evening.  The parking lot was full and the front door was propped open.  When I got out of my car, I was greeted by a man with both curly hair and a bald spot.  I knew it was going to be a good trip.

I took my time, walking through every little room in this huge place, taking it in.  I saw a mounted deer head, and next to it, a mounted Minnie Mouse head.  A mannequin with Rocky Horror makeup sported several aprons.  There was an entire table of owl figurines, juxtaposed with a room full of fishing lures.  My antique store was today the house of a demented grandmother, and I couldn’t have been happier.

On a table covered in old photographs (so much to be said about this, but I’ll let someone else do it) and old postcards, I found a letter.  It was addressed to someone named Amy, congratulating her on her successes in academia, advising her to be wary of the male gender (they tend to cause trouble) and telling her that she was always worth a thought.

I wanted to steal this letter.  But I didn’t.  I also didn’t buy it.  I left it there for some other Amy to find, steal, or purchase.

To whoever wrote that letter, however many years ago, to another Amy who may or may not have been touched by your sentiments: Thank you.

Ambiguous Answers to Really Big Questions

“What do you want more than anything else in the world?”

Alright, Bradbury, you asked for it.  I want to be fearless.  I want to travel the world without being fazed by language barriers or strange customs.  I want to smile at strangers on the street, even if they are bizarre or dangerous.  I want to be one of the mad ones Kerouac talks about so fondly in On the Road, but I do not want to explode.  I want to know as much as possible about everything without being an unliked know-it-all.  I want it all, but maybe a little less, because if you have it all, then there’s nothing left.

“What do you love?”

I love the way the birds outside my window always sing in the morning, no matter how long the night has been.  I love babies who wave at everyone they see, and also babies who stare with stern eyes even at the people they know the best.  I love listening to people’s stories.  I love when really old people walk up to me and start talking as if we were recently interrupted, especially if they are giving me love advice or defending their political views.  I love live theater, especially when it’s a play or musical I’ve been waiting to see for a long time.  I love the sky, which is beautiful and big even on the rainiest days or cloudiest nights.

“What do you hate?”

You.

Oh, how clever.  I hate the usual things: spiders, vomit (even though I apparently love using the word in poems), narrow-mindedness.  I hate it when people take things and experiences for granted, even though I’m guilty of this as well.  I hate it when tall people stand right in front of me, and also when they look at me and say “oh, you’re short!”  I hate cheesy commercials on the radio.  I hate the fact that I say I hate these things, and more things that I can’t think of right now, when I know I really mean that I am annoyed by them.

How do you know when you really do hate something, as opposed to when you’re just greatly annoyed by it?  Hmmmm….

What We Read Then

I’m really relating to what Joyce Carol Oates has to say about when she knew she was a “writer.”  Like Oates, I also filled pages with crayon scribbles that I thought looked pretty darn close to adult writing.  These pages were often punctuated with exclamation points and underlinings, and I almost always signed them with my name—the only letters I knew how to make so far.  I don’t think this is a totally unique habit, but it makes me feel a little cooler that I have that in common with Oates.

I’m also really digging what she said about how the books she read as a child impacted her more than the ones she read as an adult.  I read like a fiend when I was a kid, but I can’t claim to be as literary as Oates. When I was really young, my shelves were filled with hundreds (literally…yikes) of volumes of Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club series.  When I got a little older, I turned to V.C. Andrews and Lurlene McDaniel.  (Wow…talk about confession time.)  Andrews was the author of books like Flowers in the Attic, which featured four siblings locked into an attic by an evil mother and grandmother.  The two oldest siblings end up having sex, and the youngest sibling ends up dying by arsenic poisoning.  McDaniel, on the other hand, wrote sentimental books such as Don’t Die, My Love that centered around teens who were dying of cancer.

Luckily, the books I read in junior high haven’t had a lasting impact on my writing style or what I choose to write about (although I did go through a really big phase of writing about teens who died, but that’s another story.)  Still, I feel like those books have had more of a lasting impact on me than the ones I’m reading now.  I can still tell you the personality traits and favorite classes of my friends in The Baby-Sitters Club, but I’ve forgotten the plot-line of a book I read last month.  Maybe it’s just a time thing, because I know there are books I’ve read in the past few years that will stay with me, but I don’t know.

It just seems like what we read (and love) as children will stay with us the longest.

Four Score and Seven Years Ago

I’ve been trying to think of something to write about concerning the number four, and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just not that great of a number.  Or maybe it is, and I’m just too dense to see it.  One is the loneliest number, two is a lovelorn relationship, three is a crowd, but what the heck is four?  A double date, maybe, or a group of high school friends thinking about vandalizing a park bench.

I planted four flower bulbs in the garden (not really my garden, but my dad’s) a few months ago, and have been watching them slowly grow.  I’m not a gardener by any means.  I like to sit on the back porch and watch the birds and squirrels stealthily eat all of our broccoli and corn, but that’s about it.  So planting these four flower bulbs was a pretty big deal.  I bought them (they’re freesias) because the bag said that they were fragrant, and I had this vision of a sweetly scented backyard.  So far I’ve got what looks like four really long pieces of grass.  Patience is probably important.

There are four Oakley sisters (I get to call them my aunts).  All four are brilliant, both with patience and gardening.  Their yards are sprawling messes of flowers and vegetables, and by messes I mean beautiful.  Maybe not the kind of gardens you would find in magazines, but the kind of gardens that, although they’re in the yards of houses that rest on ridges and dangerous hills, attract attention.  The oldest Oakley sister fell this winter, something she’s still recovering from.  She worried about her garden, knowing that she couldn’t go out and weed through it the way she usually did.  She knew the neighbors would be bringing their friends by to see her creation.  One morning she woke up to find those neighbors in the yard with gardening tools, cleaning up the flowers because they knew she couldn’t.

Gardening takes patience.  And so, apparantly, does the number four.  I didn’t think I had anything to say about this even number, yet here we are.

Third Place Blues

So, here we are in the middle of the week and in the middle of the five-blog-challenge.  What’s that saying?  Wednesday’s child is full of woe…probably because it came in the middle.

When brainstorming about the number three in class Monday, the only thing I could think about was the middle finger.  It’s the third finger on your hand (unless you have had some removed, in which case I am very sorry that you are not included in this broad statement) and always will be…no matter which way you start counting, that poor long finger always comes in third place.

Third place is often thought of as last place.

I feel bad for the middle/third finger.  The pinkie is liked because it is small and sticks out, the thumb is opposable and opinionated, and the two in between can be used for rings or pointing, depending on which way you start counting.  What is the middle finger good for except for insults?

When I was three, the only other kid in my neighborhood told me that sticking up your middle finger meant that you were talking to the devil.  For weeks afterward, I would check to make sure no one was looking, and then stick up the poor third finger, curious to see what would happen.  I never heard Satan talking to me, and I have to admit I was pretty relieved.

Let us take a moment to honor the middle finger.  It always comes in third, and maybe that’s why it is used for insults.  I would be pissed too, if I always came in last place.  Yet, without the third and last finger, our hands would be a little (a lot?) less functional.

Tale of the Twos

Every Sunday morning I help out with the two year olds at church.  I miss the sermon, but I get to hear brand new voices yelling the words “Peace! Be still!” and sometimes get good hugs.  It’s a fair trade.

You always hear parents talk about the “terrible twos” and how it’s such an awful age.  I only see my two year olds for a few hours a week, so maybe I’m a little biased.  But I think Twos are pretty Terrific.

One of the Terrible/Terrific Twos is the son of a family friend.  We recently went on vacation to Tennessee together, staying in a log cabin with elk memorabilia everywhere.  The Terrible/Terrific Two and I had Very Serious Discussions every day, debating whether or not the animal on the wall was a goose or an elk.  I don’t think we ever reached a mutual agreement.

The Two is in the middle of the most adorable baby phase, Learning How to Talk.  He jabbers constantly, mangling words perfectly.  He’s also the grandson of two pastors, so he is quite righteous, telling everyone he sees to “bead your Bible, pray evy day” and finishing it off with a hearty “amen!”

On the last day of our trip to Tennessee, I laid on the couch, sick from too much sun.  My friend the Two came over, ready for more goose/elk talk and was informed of the news.  “Why don’t you pray for her?” someone suggested.  “Alwhight.”  He found his green New Testament, the one with the cover half chewed off, and then crawled up next to me on the couch.

“May May,” he said, Bible in hand, “you be healed!”

I totally trusted the Two.