Spaces

When I was little, I used to dream of turning our closed in side porch into a bedroom.  It was just big enough for a mattress, surrounded by  windows that stretched from the ceiling to midway down the wall, and I imagined lying on that mattress and staring out at snowflakes as they fell.  It would be my own little hovel, shut off from the rest of the house by a heavy door connecting it to the foyer.  I would stick something heavy in front of the door to the outside, a tall dresser, so no one could come in, and I would lay on the bed and revel in having this space all to myself, this space that was only big enough for me.

Lately I feel that way again.  It’s part of what I love so much about this tiny first floor apartment in Iowa.  It feels like a cave, partially underground, the bottom of the windows level with the grass outside.  It’s just big enough for me and Jerod and the cats.  Stuff is cluttered in everywhere, crowding in to wrap its arms around me and make me feel safe.  I draw the blinds and sink into the couch and feel warm, unlike that apartment in Denver that was so big and wide and high, with cold hardwood floors.  It was too exposed and sunny, cold, unlike the rest of the city.

I remember the thrill when I first found Best Food’s Mayonnaise in the grocery store in Denver.  It was our first trip to King Soopers after we arrived.  I was curious to know, after reading Tom Robbins’ “Till Lunch Do Us Part” in which he describes what he would want his last meal to be if he were on deathrow (a tomato sandwich on Wonder bread, smeared with a thick layer of Best Food’s mayonnaise, known as Hellman’s mayonnaise east of the Rockies), if Denver would have Hellman’s or Best Food’s mayonnaise, since technically it’s east of the Rockies, but so close to the Rockies that it could  almost be classified as west, for regional food purposes.  The grocery store shelves , though, were filled with both, side by side.  For the longest time I bought only Best Food’s in an effort to convince myself that I was really in Denver.  This was evidence.  I held it in my hand.  I used it on my sandwiches.  It proved my existence in that beautiful mile high city even more than the teeny tiny bit of mountain that was visible outside the bedroom window if we leaned to the side just right.

Right now I long for mountains, for those black, foreboding shapes pasted against the sky that reminded me everyday that there were things in the world bigger than I am.  I thought I wanted wide open spaces, skies that stretched as far as the eye can see, and maybe I do, but I know that deep down, when I’m given too many options, I don’t seem to know what to do with them.

Dried Out Thoughts

I’m sitting here tonight working on a revision of a story about my fear of turning into my mother.  Part of the story takes place five years ago, right after I’d gotten back from studying Spanish in Mexico for the summer, right after I’d broken up with my boyfriend of five years and the guy I started dating dumped me for his best friend’s girlfriend.  I dug out my old journal from that time, a blue notebook covered with irridescent sticker fish, their air bubbles floating on the cover right above their mouths, just out of their reach.  I read back through it, searching for details that might make my story a stronger one.  I found lines like this – “Is there a point to anything anymore?  I can only convince myself that there is for a short time, then I realize that there’s really not.  I’m tired of living waiting for what’s in the future.  I want to live for what there is right now.  Only – there is nothing.”

Oh, the angsty sentences of twenty-one.  As depressed and miserable as I was back then, it really was fun to feel like I was caught up in a spiral of fate, when every feeling felt was brand new.  It’s a strange thing when you have to squint to recognize yourself in your old thoughts.  Not bad, just strange.

Congruent Daylight

When I was in elementary school, I remember learning about congruent objects in the enrichment classes I attended, and how if you folded them in half, one side would match the other side exactly.  The teacher passed out sheets of paper filled with squares and circles and hexagons and pentagons and funny-shaped polygons that still, if you folded them along the dotted line, would match up side to side, and we spent a whole period folding pieces of paper to determine if they were congruent or not.

After we learned about congruent objects, I became obsessed with them.  I stared at every object I saw, whether it was the kitchen table, an armchair, the television, or our cat, drawing a dotted line straight through the center of whatever the object was and mentally folding it in half.  If folding it in half in one direction didn’t work (I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, draw a line across my cat’s back and fold it in half from head to tail and call that congruent), I would try folding it in the other direction, rotating the object in my mind.  I wanted everything to be congruent, to match up nicely and neatly.

I’m sitting here at 9:30 a.m. this morning staring out the window at the bright morning light.  I woke up at 8, a couple of hours earlier than I ordinarily wake up, but I start a new job on Monday that’s going to be Monday through Friday, 8:30 to 5, so I figured I’d start transitioning to that schedule this weekend so it won’t feel so shocking Monday morning.  I like it, I think.  The morning light seems to spark creativity.  But yet, there’s something about it that’s not so different from the evening light.  The street in front of my apartment is still covered with shadows that will shrink with the tick of the clock and then reappear again this evening, although in the opposite direction.  If I could twist the day just a little at the center of it, spin its rubberiness around with a flick of my finger, fold it over and paste it on itself, it too would be almost congruent. 

Lately I feel like even my weeks are congruent, with Saturday not looking so very different from Sunday, except that it brackets a different end of the week.  Maybe even life is congruent, building to a peak in the center where you could slide your fingernail across and make a crease, except that at one end you’re heading out of the shadows and at the other, you’re heading into them.

The Problem of Special Interest Groups

I was watching The Colbert Report last night and the first interview Stephen Colbert did was with Lori Lipman Brown, director of the Secular Coalition for America.   They’ve been lobbying congress to stop spending tax payers’ dollars on religion.

Well, that’s pretty cool, I thought.  Finally someone to combat all those religious special interest groups.  But then I thought, well, wait, isn’t the Secular Coalition also a special interest group?  It seems that everyone has an agenda, and no two people ever have the exact same agenda, and so, each is a separate special interest group.  As long as there are interests there will be special interest groups and I’m tired of hearing people complain about them when what they’re really complaining about are special interests that aren’t in their own interest.  I’m equally tired of hearing people slam politicians for being beholden to some special interest group or other. 

Knee Deep in MFA Applications

I read a statistic today that a person has a better chance of getting into med school than an MFA program.  How inspiring.

Writer’s Block Has the Best of Me and I Start a Writing Workshop on Monday

I can’t write I can’t write I can’t write I can’t write I can’t write and it’s making me crazy. My life is an endless mess of started and never finished essays, of ideas I’m too lazy to follow through on, of frustrations.

My journal seems to be the only place I can write anymore. When I try to write anywhere else, I try too hard and the words come out all forced and mangled and misshapen. My journal is a freedom space.  If only I could figure out how to recreate that.  If only my ribs didn’t hurt.  If only I weren’t so lazy.  And if only I could remember that I’m better than I used to be and give myself some credit for that.

It’s like I’ve forgotten how to write and so I’m desperately reading essay after essay to remind me how and I’m failing. It’s scary. I’m afraid I’ll never remember, or I’m afraid that maybe I’ve read myself to death, over thought it all to the point where I’ll never be able to write again.

Hypochondria

Recently my mother told me that she’d just been diagnosed with diabetes.  I called her, she asked me how I was doing, and about midway through the conversation, I said, “How are things with you?”

“Good,” she replied.  “Except that I went to the hospital today because my feet were so swollen and they ran some tests and found out that I have diabetes.”

The news wasn’t really all that surprising to me.  With something like sixty percent of Americans suffering from the disease, it was bound to happen to my mother at some point.  She was definitely a high risk for diabetes-she was overweight, didn’t exercise at all (she leads a very sedentary lifestyle of lying on her couch and watching home shopping channels), and she loved sugar.  Cake was sometimes dinner for her, cookies and ice cream dessert. 

Creative Nonfiction, As I See It

Recently, at a gathering of writers, a fiction writer happened to comment that nonfiction writing doesn’t involve near the level of creativity that fiction writing does.  I wanted to respond in some way but I didn’t.  I kept quiet because he has four books published and a fifth on its way and I have, well, none.  And also because I wondered if maybe he was right.