Ping

The other day, I waltzed into a salon, sat myself down, and breezily let the stylist have her way with my hair. Child that I am, I indicated a length somewhere around my collarbones. Layers? Sure!

My hair hung, lustrous and heavy, down my back and draped over the back of the chair. I haven't had layers since I was twelve. Oh yeah, because I HATED them.

When I stood, the tips of my hair reached just below the dip in my back. I had been lazy this year and hadn't cut my hair the drastic six-eight inches I did every year. It was more laziness than any actual desire to have hair that long, but let me tell you something. Long hair becomes a way of life.

You heard me.

It's safe. Feeling fat? Or shy? Let down those long locks and boom. It's more effective than an invisibility cloak. (Okay, not really)

It's surprisingly low maintenance. If it looks like shit you can throw it in a bun or a braid, but if it's a good hair day, you look like a fairy princess. Now that I've gone and murdered mine, I can tell you that it's almost too short to be coaxed into a braid or bun. It's tiny, and uncertain as a bun and laughable as a braid. Who'd take it seriously? Now I gotta style it every morning.

It's a statement. Random people, strangers, would stop me and compliment my hair. Do you know how few people can grow out their hair that long? It's a prestige thing. Now if people look at me and see this disgraceful hedge growing out of my head they'll never know how capable I am.

And the color. I've henna'd my hair a couple times, and the color was something marvelous. Purple, red, orange, mixed all through with my natural bluey black. Some threads of gold. In the light, it was soooooooo cool. In darkness it was...well, I'm not going to lie. In darkness it just looked black. Whatever. I live in San Diego; it's always light out.

I just wanted you all to know how very upset I am. My vanity is in the hospital. Please think carefully before you hack off all that beautiful hair.

God, the layers just add insult to injury.

Fever

Imagine a suit of armor cast of fire, the mail writhing like snakes- more threat than protection, but protection enough. For those lucky few.

Imagine being smothered on the hottest day in August. Not silk, nothing cool. Your final, dying gasps are beastly hot and you expire with no memory of comfort.

Imagine falling into the dunes in the desert with the merciless Sun screaming and screaming down at you. your tongue is a blackened bit of leather in your mouth. The wind buries you alive in sand. In death, you dream only of thirst.

It's enough to drive a grown man crazy, enough to make a young girl forget her first love. Madness is what it is, when the mind burns faster than lungs, legs, eyes.

Remember the old days, the newer ones, when they piled heaps and heaps of wood and set the piles ablaze. Ash. In the end, all was ash, but before that, they were voices that screamed like the Sun in the deserts. Children whose eyes clouded over then burst like crones' eyes. Women whose babies boiled inside their bodies. Men that couldn't love like they had to. In the end, the smoke cleared and they were all ash.

Look Further withing Us. Behold the beating heart, whose still-pumping ventricles sent virgins into ecstasy. Rejoice in the hiss, the evil-smelling smoke, as the coals devour it.

We have lived in Hell, exulted, craved, feared it. We'll never know It, yet there are redes and laws that govern, that tell who will escape into coolness and who are condemned.

This could also have been titled: "Shout Out to Matt McLaughlin. California's Really Proud"

Table for Three

 If you could magically have dinner with one person who is living and one who is not, whom would you choose and why?

I would choose Ernest Hemingway for my first dinner guest, because of the grey of his clouds and the briny smell of the Seine. Always his works evoked Paris, and rain. In 1965, he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I want to ask him why he did it. I want to know why he waited until then, and how he lived with shadows for so long.

I want to tell him that A Moveable Feast made me want to try to write someday.

I want to watch him get drunk.

For my second dinner guest, I would choose my paternal grandmother. She has absolutely nothing in common with Hemingway. In fact, she doesn’t even speak English, so imagine how awkward the conversation would be, what with a tipsy Ernest Hemingway and a stoic old Chinese lady who knows only how to say “yes” and “no” and “more soy sauce”.

Awkward or not, I would choose my grandmother because I haven’t seen her in years- not since I first read A Moveable Feast. She would sit in silence, fiercely proud to see her blood come so far, to sit with a literary genius like Hemingway. She wouldn’t understand him at all, but I think Hemingway would understand her. She, too, lived through a world war, and was almost shattered by it.  Disillusionment is a language they both speak.

And I can see how her careworn hands would stroke my cheek, the way Hemingway’s strokes a wine glass.

Del Mar

Black hair, Black eyes
looking at the road through as sea of dark
one hand, a finger, none at all.
She decides if we die
hurtling down this road,
this life.

The sea beckons 
with foaming robes of
blue, gray, black, black, black
we are closed in,
in black

We three girls, not so young 
yet children still

Los Arboles, the turn
Clarion, the inn
Vida, Brio, Bustle

The air is salt,
the ocean sweat,
and our car black.


Maybe I shouldn't explain anything, because that would box in the meaning of my poem. But I will, because I feel silly leaving it like this, as though I could ever hope to be an enigma.

Tomorrow I will wake up at 4 am to catch a 6:15 flight to Syracuse, New York, where unlike San Diego, is expecting actual weather. 

Lord, I haven't seen snow in so long. Apparently asides from the interviews (that's why I'm flying to New York), the dress code is casual. Dress like you would at school, they tell me. That would be appropriate. Except that I wear flip flops and shorts to school like my life depends on it.

Anyways, that's all besides the point. I just meant that it's cold up there, which is why I went to Del Mar. For those of you non- espanolers, that's a beach here in San Diego. It hit and passed ninety this weekend, and I wanted to spend as much time as possible in the sun before I stuffed myself into a thick coat and Doc Martens and a liberal dusting of a meth-like white powder. Back East, they call that "snow".

It's warming up here, which is nice because I was getting tired of cold weather. Well, not cold. Coldish, I mean.

So the poem is about Del Mar (hence the name). The first stanza is about my friend Brittany, who was driving. I'm not trying to rat a girl out, but she scares me when she drives. She's so confident that I never think she'll get into an accident, but really, who the hell drives with one hand while spooning the contents of her Sambazon bowl into her mouth with the other? 

"Yo, Nina, put the car in drive for me."

Lord. 

Then, obviously, the next stanza is about the sea as it meets the shore. When you drive along the main road, you can see the ocean on one side. It's so pretty, how it sparkles and wrinkles and folds. 

"The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls..."

The "black" thing is referring to Brittany's car, which is black. Sleek, shiny, man-made. The roar of its engine is lost in the roar of the sea, which is sometimes also black. Different, though.

The stanza with a seemingly random assortment of words is a collection of landmarks in Del Mar. A sign at the turn reads "Los Arboles", but I'm not sure what it means because I never read farther than that. I mean, it's Spanish for "the Trees", but I don't know if they're condos or apartments or a real estate company or whatever. Then, as you drive on, you'll certainly pass the Clarion Inn.

Clarion, like trumpets. Like bells, like the clash of spears. Sorry, "Clarion" just sounds so Camelot-y.

Vida, Brio, and Bustle refer to other small businesses. A nail salon, a boutique, whatever. 

I don't know why I've been writing so much poetry lately, or why I've suddenly gotten so comfortable putting it out on the internet. It's not very good, but I'm getting there.

Hope you're all well.

Primavera

@mypubliclands

The dark is warm,

velvety and sweet

and bitter as tears

falling from a bride's eye.

The night is long.

The sun needs all 

her brilliance to shatter

the enveloping black.

The heart is loud.

it's uneven beat 

marks a presence

in stillness.

The body is limp

as though it wishes it could melt

like glaciers into the rivers

in August.

And day is coming.

And the stars are fading.

Hotel du Lac

Something funny happened to me yesterday. Yes, funny and amazing and astonishing. At about 5:50, after I finished tutoring a student, I drove to Vons on my way home. I had some checks I needed to deposit, and it gave me a sense of independence to walk alone, keys jangling in my purse, my checks clasped importantly in my hand. Like an adult.

I went into the store, deposited my checks without interruption and left in a similarly unremarkable fashion. Nothing really worth mentioning, except maybe that there was no line at the ATM. What a great day.

As I walked out, in that short distance to my car, I was approached by a very obviously homeless man. He was very tall, dressed in faded denim rags and carried a military knapsack- an imposing character. 

"Excuse me, miss," he said, raising a bushy white eyebrow and looking down at me. Let us all take a moment and appreciate what it means for him to do that; he was so tall that to make eye contact with me, his chin was nearly tucked into his chest- and I'm not short, either. I'm a good 5'10" in my Chuck Taylors. 

But I digress. Anyways, I was taken aback, as I think anybody would be. More than that, I was frightened. What society has trained us to assume about the homeless, and all. I mentally calculated how much change I had in my wallet, looked bravely into his weathered face, and smiled expectantly. Or at least I hope I smiled. 

"Do you like to read?" His voice was very deep and very gravelly. I think he must have been a heavy smoker at one point in his life. Maybe he still was, but I couldn't smell anything on him. That was another strange thing. He didn't smell like anything at all, not cigarette smoke, not alcohol, not weed, not even dirt. 

"Uh...yes..." I did that thing kids do when they're unsure of themselves; eyes darting in all direction, head tilted slightly, eyebrows knit together.

"I have something for you," the man said, and unslung the pack from his shoulder. He smiled and in that moment, I believe I trusted him. It was a very nice smile, squinty eyes and all. So there we were, teenager and vet. At least I think he was. 

So he rummaged in his knapsack for a moment- it was buried deep underneath what was made of faded blue fabric. A blanket, maybe. People were staring as they passed; an elderly lady with pearls in her ears and a little girl on her hand frowned at us, but she passed without comment.

"Here," he said at last. I took the book he offered. Hotel du Lac. A battered cover and dog eared pages. It was obviously well loved, and I was at a loss. I looked at him, confused. I certainly hadn't ever heard of it before, and I didn't see how I could offer any sort of opinion or commentary. 

"For you," he said.

"What?"

"For you. To read. You said you liked reading, didn't you?"

You know how in movies when the protagonist pinches herself to make sure she isn't dreaming? I would have done that had it occurred to me; it would have been appropriate under the circumstances. 

"You're giving me your book?" The confusion in my voice made me sound young. I cringed, to hear myself at age ten again. 

"To read," he nodded. "Because I liked your voice." Well naturally. That explains it all, doesn't it? What an odd day.

"Thank you," I said numbly. He nodded.

"And you've got yesterday's eyes. Ever hear of that song?" I shook my head no. "Ah, well." he said. He smiled again, doffed his hat, and walked off. 

And that was that.

I tell you, though, that man's an intellectual. A philosopher, maybe, that belongs to the class of bards and wanderers (okay, now I'm getting carried away). I looked up Hotel du Lac, by Anita Brookner, as soon as I got home. It took home the Booker Prize in 1984, but curiosity alone would have been enough to make me read it. 

I wonder who that man was, before he was forced to live on the streets. I wish I'd asked for his name. 

I'll let you know about the book, as soon as I find time to read it. 

Miles to Go

(stream of consciousness)

There is a road not too far from my house that I sometimes run along. There's only one lane going in either direction, and except for rush hour, not much traffic.

I like to drive on this road when it's late afternoon, and even more when the sun is setting. The last bit of sun burning my skin, settling inside the car like a cloud. It's intoxicating.

Music. Enya, Led Zeppelin, Gregory Alan Isakov? Hozier today. And Tomorrow. Celtic Woman when it rains, Stevie Wonder when the fires came. I don't know why, but somehow everything sounds better when I'm driving down that road. It's not just that my car has excellent acoustics, either.

Dusty Springfield. Maybe the news, because it's important to know things. Nobody ever seems to care what, so long as you know them. It's the act of knowing, funny enough.

This road knows things. As it winds and climbs and falls, it tells stories. It remembers the firemen that came speeding, and the police car chasing the Mercedes. It remembers the scent of weed from the boys that climb the slope on one side and sit, in plain view of  everyone, smoking and laughing.

From time to time I'm the only one driving down the road. It's a real treat to release the gas and feel us drift slowly toward 20 miles an hour. It used to make me anxious, but I've learned to appreciate the sensation of letting go, allowing myself to slow down and feel every bump in the road. Isn't it funny how much of a rush people always are, even when they haven't any place to go that merits it?

Ha ha.

I always see older couples walking, in the early morning, after lunch, in the evening. What is it like, I wonder, to walk with someone after forty, fifty years. I'm afraid to grow old, but their faces are so sweet and their hands are clasped sometimes. When love becomes a habit.

The Yard birds, because I was feeling something bluesy.

The quiet purr of the engine, the sound of air whipping past- something I can feel more than I can hear. I know this road like I know my favorite book. I know the beginning, middle, end, eyes closed. But that doesn't mean I don't prefer to keep them open, for just one more reading.