56.

Protection

I’m sitting in Bentley’s with my usual stack of books on the table and a man just came over, tapped one finger on the top of the stack, and said, "Your books can’t protect you." He's a Bentley's regular, Tony, and I know that he meant it jokingly, but he doesn't understand the complexity of my relationship with books. You see, we don't joke like that Tony--especially when I'm still having panic attacks about the library falling down around me. I'm not looking for protection. At this point I'm just hoping that the 88 books I have checked out from the library don't organize themselves and come after me in the night.

55.

Perspective

Riding my bike this morning, I passed by four protesters at the corner of Speedway and Campbell. The four of them were gathered at that busy intersection to take on the issues of global warming, the war in Iraq, and teenage drug use. My anxiety over taking on too much with chapter five was put quickly into perspective.

54.

Book Anxiety

There is something about my fifth floor library study carrel that feels very unsafe. Every time I’m in there I sense that I am in immediate physical danger, exactly the way I feel when I’m on an airplane. When I’m in my study carrel, I vividly, often subconsciously, imagine all of the horrible things that could happen to me in there. When I get out safely I always feel relieved, and a little surprised—again, like an airplane. I cannot shake the feeling that the building is going to slip out from underneath me, that the floor will suddenly fall and the walls will cave in, burying me deeply in library rubble. Yes. I’m worried that I won’t get my dissertation done on time. Yes. I’m worried that I won’t make it at Stanford. Thinly veiled metaphors aside, everyday I honestly believe that I might be buried alive in books.

53.

Neck Sensitivity

I just laughed harder than I’ve laughed in a long time. It’s a classic Myers family move to laugh ourselves to tears, which often means five adults in the kitchen doubled over laughing and crying our eyes out.

Tonight I went over to Katie and Matt’s house for dinner/study nest. We (Katie) made a Katie and Matt classic for dinner: avocado enchiladas. They were delightful—“flavor country” in fact—and then we all lined up on the couch, Macs on our laps, and got some work done. When Emily came home, she was disturbed by the sight of our laptop line up, but I’m thinking that she would have been more disturbed if we’d gone full-on nest.

Study nest was Katie’s idea and it definitely goes in my top ten, maybe top five, things that I love about her. If I’m remembering correctly, the first nest dates back to the 2nd St. house, almost five years ago. Katie invited me over and we dragged as many blankets as we could into the extra bedroom, piling and bunching them into two small nests (perhaps with mini nests for the dogs). We surrounded ourselves with our books, snugged into our nests, and got to work. It’s a manifestation of Katie’s comfort in books, another being the extra bag that she brings on trips full of nothing but books—just in case she needs them, like friends.

It’s difficult—maybe impossible—to describe what got us laughing so hard tonight. Emily used the word “psychotic” more than once. Turns out, both Katie and I have extreme neck sensitivity. I know for a fact that my sister is familiar with my neck issues, particularly the weird hissing sound that I spontaneously make whenever someone’s finger comes near my throat. Our psychotic fit involved trying to touch each other’s necks, hissing, twitching, and laughing ourselves to tears. It was weird. And perfect, in a Myers family laughing in the kitchen kind of way.

52.

Stanford

For many this is not a new story, but I’m going to tell it again because I am nowhere near tired of it.

I was an unimpressive student in high school, average to the point of academically invisible. I focused my energy much more intently on sports, though I was also a very unimpressive athlete. When it came time to apply to colleges, I had big dreams—dreams that far surpassed the numbers on my transcripts and standardized test scores. I wanted badly, and secretly, to go to Stanford. My parents were the only ones who knew that I was applying for a school so outrageously out of my league. Knowing that my academic record was going to put me into the laughable pile, I put everything I had into my personal essay with the hope that they would sense the presence of a woman on the verge of great things. I don’t remember anything about the overall content or organization of the essay, but I remember the conclusion in very vivid detail.

I decided to tell Stanford a joke. If nothing else, I would give the Stanford folks a good laugh. I honestly believed that I was being clever. And, even worse, I think I believed that there was a chance that they would consider the joke girl because she was so clever. The joke I told is an oldy but goody and it cracks me up every time I tell it. I’m guessing, however, that Stanford wasn’t laughing with me.

At the end of the essay, I wrote something to the effect of:

“Well, if all that was not enough to persuade you, let me win you over with my favorite joke…”

And then I told it. I actually told it.

“So this rope walks into a bar, pulls up a chair, and orders a drink. The bartender takes a long look at the rope, shakes his head disapprovingly, and points to the sign behind him: “We don’t serve ropes.” Dejected but determined, the rope goes around the corner, ties himself into a ball, frays the top of his head, and returns to the bar. The bartender charges over to him and asks, “Hey, aren’t you that same rope?” And the rope says,

(Wait for it)

“Nope, I’m a-frayed knot!”

It’s a bad joke; I know that it is a bad joke. And chances are, the Stanford committee (if they even got to my essay) tossed my file into the “no” pile with a jaunty little, “Nope, Miss Myers, I’m a-frayed knot!” If so, I’m glad that I was able to provide that snarky little moment snooty fun. Mostly because I’m having my own snarky little moment right now.

They don’t realize it, but they finally let the joke girl in. Twelve years and significantly better grades later, I’m heading to Stanford for a post-doc. When I accepted the offer, there was a part of me that wanted to work in an “a-frayed SO,” but I resisted the temptation. For now.

51.

Natural Wonders

I have been to the Grand Canyon twice, but I have only seen it once. In fact, I have stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon twice but only seen it once. Come to find out, it is possible for the entire canyon, every grand inch, to fill up with fog—a fog so thick that a person can stand on an outcropping at the jagged the edge of a natural phenomenon and see nothing but solid, bright grey. As I stood there, I knew that my feet should feel tingly, the way they always do when I’m on the edge of something, but they didn’t. It’s a strange and stirring feeling to witness a natural wonder firsthand, but I think it is even stranger—and maybe even more stirring—to brush by one.

Just last week yet another natural wonder slipped by me. I flew from Tucson, AZ all the way up to Niagara, NY, spent three days there, and never got to see the falls. The entire town was quiet, wrapped in the silence of heavy snowfall, but everywhere I went the sound of rushing water echoed in my ears.

Niagara Falls provides power for states all the way down to Georgia. It is divided evenly between two countries and every year an unpublicized number of people soar over the edge, sometimes intentionally and other times not. I expected that the Niagara River would look and move like the Rhine, dark water with a frighteningly quick current. But the Niagara is deceptively calm. Large chunks of ice glide easily across a white/grey surface, contradicting the warning signs that line the shores. In the wintertime the falls must be carefully maintained to avoid ice build up, a process that involves “turning off” portions of the falls at night. I learned about its history, I watched its river flow by, I slept in a bed two miles away from it, but I left the Niagara region without seeing the falls.

I’m not sure what to think about these missed moments of grandeur. There’s a part of me that wants to make profound and insightful comments about sensing but not being able to see the powerful things around me. Or the way that missed opportunities can mean seeing new things or seeing things differently. I’m not sure what I was supposed to see instead of Niagara Falls. To be honest, the symbolic message of it all is lost at this point: those are really big freakin’ falls and I wanted to see them.

50.

Adjustments

It’s quiet in Penryn tonight. Outside, the dogs are running in wild, determined circles around the perimeter of the yard, tracking the sounds of distant donkeys, geese, and peacocks. Inside, we humans don’t know what to do with ourselves. It might be the transition from the mountains, the adjustment from thin pine air to the heavy inhalations of the foothills. We all seem to be in a sleepy nostalgia, daydreaming in the colors of sunny, snow-covered mountain days. The colors always dim as we drive down the mountain and both my mom and I look hard out the window, barely blinking, to catch every last bit of color. Milo loved the snow. He would jump up four feet onto thick snow banks and hop into the distance, belly dragging across untouched snow. He is unaffected by the mountain nostalgia, perfectly happy chasing imaginary peacocks.

I have always been kind to myself when it comes to allowing periods of adjustment, taking time to appreciate something that I know I will miss—people, places, sounds, feelings. But I also know that it’s time to embrace a different kind of adjustment right now and return to my dissertation. Each day there is pounding at the door and each day I have been telling it to go away, to let me sleep just a little bit longer. Yesterday I sat in front of the fire place, a good book in hand, and allowed myself that one more day of rest. Today there was the task of getting home, but tonight there is no excuse. Tonight there is just the quiet of three people spread out, each in a different room of this big house. It’s the perfect moment to return to my writing, but instead I’m thinking about snow banks and pine trees and places that never feel like work.

49.

Frontier Fantasies

A couple of days ago, Katie and I went running on the Arizona Trail, sprinting up rocky hills and slipping around shady, snow-covered corners. Katie told me that every time she stands at the outlook point with the rusty trailhead sign she is overcome by Laura Ingalls Wilder fantasies, imagining herself at that same trailhead in the 19th century. In the fantasy, Katie/Laura steps out of the chuck wagon in her flannel gown and long underwear to take in the splendor of Southern Arizona. After breathing in desert air for the first time, warm sun on her face, she promptly returns to the wagon, pulls out her diary, and writes: “February 23, 1876: Arizona!”

During our run I also learned that young Katie had elaborate daydreams in which she brought historical figures to school for show and tell—Laura Ingalls being one of the featured guests. She would protect the fragile historical figure, warning eager students to be gentle, “Laura Ingalls has never seen television before, be careful with her.”

But I think my favorite of Katie’s frontier fantasies is the dream that her and her true love would someday go on a romantic trip, perhaps even a honeymoon, out West to see the chuck wagon ruts. Nothing warms my heart quite like the thought of a young Katie (or, let’s face it, our current day Katie) day-dreaming about seeing those ruts.

Lately, I am lamenting the loss of things that were never really mine—imagined directions for my life that I wanted badly and could see clearly. I know that imagination can be dangerous, that is can torment people with a deep longing for impossible things. But there are impossible things that fill people up in good ways, the best ways, steadily supplying thoughts of hope and grandeur and solace. I think that recognizing the things that people long for can make us love them more. It’s certainly the case with Frontier Katie.

48.

Taking a Moment

Before every major birthday, I have taken a moment to reflect on the magnitude of the event. On the eve of my thirteenth birthday, I wrote a profound farewell to my youth in my Hello Kitty diary, paying homage to my childhood as I faced that first bold step into my teenage years. I stayed up late on a school night and wrote until my pink Sony cube alarm clock said 11:59. I watched the numbers and waited, feeling both ready to be different and terrified of it.

At seventeen, I wrote a similar farewell, again reflecting dramatically upon the sunset of my childhood and the dawning of a new, adult era. “November 15, 1995. Well this is it. In approximately two hours and fifteen minutes the childhood of Kelly Myers comes to an end.” I went to bed that night facing what felt like an unavoidable, inalterable transformation. “I’ll be eighteen years old when I wake up and there is nothing that I can do about it.” (It didn’t end there. I went on to quote Shakespeare—something about stages and performances. Really nerdy.)

Somehow, my thirtieth birthday came and went less dramatically. There was no diary countdown, no dramatic farewell. I was sound asleep at midnight. It was a little bit like the first time me, Case, and Meg slept in on Christmas morning. After years of getting up at dawn and racing down the stairs together, there was finally a year (not that long ago, if I’m being totally honest) when we just slept.

Even though there wasn’t a diary involved, I did take a moment to think about my 20s before falling asleep. If there’s an epiphany to be had, it’s that my window of self-doubt has narrowed, which means that I question myself less broadly, but what I do question is focused and deeply rooted. In my old diaries, I was searching and hoping in sweeping ways, trying out different personalities and aspirations and needs. At some point, though, the searching shifted and I started to make choices—big ones that I have been reliving for years and little ones that I didn’t even feel. As I sat in my house, my dog curled up on my lap, I realized that I’ve reached a point in my life where I have built the majority of my immediate world. The choices that I have made over the last ten years are all around me, lining my physical and emotional spaces.

Lee called on the night before my birthday and just before hanging up he said he would talk to me when I’m 30. He said it at the right moment and in the right way, just like Julie would have said it, just like my family would have said it. I fell asleep thinking about my people, feeling appreciative of all that is consistently good in my life.

47.

Aging Poets

“Do you know how long it takes for any one voice to reach another?”

I’m not sure what I was looking for tonight, but I know that I was hoping to be filled with something new. One night in college I happened to wander into the Soda Center when Carolyn Forche was reading and she simply stopped time for me. I honestly did not know that words could do that. “What you have heard is true.” Stopped time. Life in my body felt different.

And then another poet came to campus. She visited my Aristotle in Modern Literature class and sat right next to me—I could have touched her shoulder with my shoulder. We had been studying Aristotle’s Poetics, memorizing and scrutinizing Aristotle’s carefully laid out formula for how poetics work. But the moment she sat next to me, poetics buzzed in my body in a way that Aristotle could not contain. That night she read her poetry with such force that we all shook a little—the people, the chairs, and even floor seemed to shake slightly when she was reading. As I sat there, I did not want it to end, and, at the same time, I wanted badly for it to end so that I could begin to live my life with this experience. Tonight, thirteen years later, she came to Tucson, again to read her poetry.

With all of the vulnerability and rejection of the job market, I went to her tonight feeling depleted. I needed for her to shake me, to stir the poetics, to tip me back in my chair and remind me of the force of the female body. But somehow in the last thirteen years she has become an old woman. She stayed seated and her voice did not carry. I could not hear her.

My poets are aging. The forces that originally brought me to writing and the teaching of writing are growing quieter. I owe it to them to try to shake the ground a little.


http://www.blueflowerarts.com/cforche.html

46.

Halloween

Alright, when did I become the crazy lady who dresses up her dog on Halloween and waits by the door, huge bowl of candy under her arm, peeking anxiously through the blinds? When did I become the person who says, in a high-pitched voice, “And who do we have here?” I just said that: “And who do we have here?” By “we” do I mean “And who do me and my small dog dressed in a wee leprechaun outfit have here?” Seriously, what am I doing with my voice? I can’t seem to just say, “Oh you’re so cute.” Instead, there is giggling and “ooooohing” happening: “Ooooohing, you’re so cute!” I’m basically squealing.

And holy crap, I just said, “Hey, where’s my trick or trick?” to a little Thomas the Tank Engine. Who am I?

During my first semester teaching at the U of A, I dressed all in orange, put on a headband with two ghosts on springs, and brought a giant bag of candy to my 8:00 class. This morning at 8:00 I met with a group of my Business Writing students and they gave me a full run-down of their client project proposal. Really, the “And who do we have here?” excitement makes sense. I don’t know who to be on Halloween, so I’m performing the role of the women who used to give me candy when I was kid (or a teenager, because let's face it I went trick or treating way beyond the appropriate age). I don’t want to be the crazy candy lady or the all-business teacher lady—I want to be somewhere in between, preferably wearing a springy headband.

45.

Crafty Animals

I’m dogsitting for Katie and Matt this weekend, which means a weekend-long dog party with Jeb, Cielo, and Short Dog. If I’m being honest, the dogs are a little needy—a twinge emotional and perhaps a hair neurotic. I’m a poor substitute for Matt and Katie, the cross-eyed old lady who shows up in homeroom when everyone was hoping for the hip young guy with the spiky hair and sweater vests. No matter how many times I wrestle Jeb or rub Ciel’s belly, they just look at me from across the room and sigh: Oh, you’re still here.

For the last two and a half hours, Jeb has been chasing the same lizard. I watched them for awhile and I swear the lizard is deliberately messing with Jeb. At one point it was hiding at the top of a tree stump and when Jeb got within an inch of the spot, it sprung into action, executing a Mountain Dew X-treme leap off the edge, landing perfectly between two pieces of bark. There’s something going on with this lizard, honestly, no one’s that good. Wedged between the bark, the lizard breathed heavily, clearly calculating its next move. This is spy tech lizard—or the spy tech lizard training ground. It’s hard to imagine how a lizard could get wilier than this one, but I’ll remain open to the possibility. Jeb just came in for water, every part of his body shaking. The lizard is clearly winning.

Last night when I was at the movies, the dogs banded together to lash out at me—and I know that Short Dog was the leader. I have a history of animals T.P.ing my house, starting with Abe Froman in New Hampshire. After making the fateful mistake of leaving Abe alone for a night, I came home to find that he had busted out of his cage, grabbed the toilet paper with his very small hands, and darted madly around the house. He was exhausted when I got home, stretched out on his belly under the couch. Last night I arrived home to a similar scene—an entire roll of toilet paper spread out through every room of the house. When I finally found the roll it was wedged in a small nook between two pillows at the top of the couch: Short Dog. I like to think that when I left Short and Abe alone together, they had long conversations, sharing stories and talking about world events. As I went from room to room scooping up toilet paper, I made a series of loud, sarcastic comments (“Oh no, you are right Milo—the one thing that I was hoping to do tonight was to collect streamers of toilet paper tossed wistfully around the house. Honestly, I can’t imagine a better way to end an evening”), but ultimately I’m considering it a tribute to Abe Froman. His legacy lives on.

44.

Dress Up

A few years ago, I bought a pair of huge, round, orange-rimmed sunglasses—not because I thought that I could pull them off, but because I really like to the idea of that person, the version of myself who can jauntily throw on a pair of outrageous sunglasses and stroll out the door, carefree and fabulous. On the real life me, those sunglasses look ridiculous, but they are connected to this idea of myself that exists vividly just outside the realm of reality, one that I have held onto for years—desperately at times. As my mom and sister will remember, when the orange sunglasses went over the side of the paddleboat and into the lake, I did not hesitate to throw my body overboard. I dove down after them and opened my eyes under lake water until I saw them. The whole thing lasted a total of about four seconds and as I climbed back into the boat there was a moment, before the laughing, where my mom and sister just stared at me, frozen in a shared state of utter confusion.

There is this long-lived part of my personality that feels compelled to wear mildly strange and surprising things on my body. It’s not a constant compulsion, but it has surfaced consistently every few years. The first incident I can remember was in sixth grade when I insisted on wearing big plastic earrings shaped, in perfect detail, like pieces of popcorn. I loved them, but more than that I loved the idea of me in them. They were just weird enough, hinting at an inner weirdness that I imagined people would find irresistibly charming and unique.

When I was a kid I used to have a little trunk—and later a huge cardboard box—full of “dress up” clothes, grown up dresses and jackets and costume jewelry and hats. The thought of that dress up box still thrills me, butterflies in the stomach thrills me. It held the possibility for transformation. I would go upstairs, close the door, and try on grown up lives. Sometimes I would play with other people, but mostly I would slip into the clothes by myself, imaging, even acting out, the lives I was trying on. They weren’t often very glamorous lives, just different. They were always me somehow, but they were different versions of me.

I can see now that have spent a lot of time living between myself and imagined versions of myself. I think that such imagination is essential for growth and aspiration, but there has to be a balance, an appreciation of all that I am in this moment, along with hope and desire for new elements of my personality. I guess the big picture thing here is that I’m living the part of my life that I used to act out in the dress up clothes. I’ve reached a point where my imagined self and current self are coming face-to-face more dramatically than they have before, which means I have to be honest in new ways about who I am and what I want and why I want it. That doesn’t mean letting the orange sunglasses go overboard, but it does mean looking more carefully at the fears and desires that they represent.

43.

Moving

My friend Anna has talked about how she feels the need to travel on a bodily level. When she stays too long in one place she can feel the next place pulling her—and, from what she has said, it seems like she can feel it in her skin.

In the last year, two of my friends announced that they have moved into the house where they will spend the rest of their lives, one in California, the other in Alaska. In each case, they played a role in the construction of the home, pouring themselves into the fiber and foundation of the place in a way that they tell me feels permanent. There is a part of me that likes the idea of a home that holds that much of me, but mostly I feel deeply unsettled by the thought of such stability.

I’m caught somewhere in between, a place that demands a blend of movement and home. It’s like the snails. For twenty-six years I believed, strongly, that snails shed their shells. I was convinced that they had a system of shedding and replacing that kept them outfitted in the right size and shape of shell. For decades, I imagined snails moving easily up hills, down sidewalks, across yards, always motivated by the hope of a better place—a home perfectly fitted to their bodies. It was a theory I developed when I was kid and saw all those empty snail shells in the ivy at Nanny and Uncle Tommy’s house. It made sense then and it makes sense now.

I’m not sure when I’m going to get to stop moving and I don’t know that I want to, but I do know that I need to keep home close to my body as I go.

42.

Vowels

At the table next to me, three friends have gotten together for a Sunday morning Scrabble game. I walked by their table just as one of the guys was announcing that if he ever has a daughter he's naming her A-E-I-O-U.

AQUATHON 2007

41.

Abandonment, Two Tables Over

Today in Bentley’s a guy put on big round headphones that covered each ear entirely and just let loose. He threw his head back and forth, curly mass of hair swaying side to side. He tapped his toes in a full-legged way, jazzercise toe tapping, running in place. He drummed every inch of the table, fingertips grazing the wood. He rocked back and forth in the chair, a movement that went from the top of his head, through his neck, chest, waist, thighs, shins, and feet. It was a perfect embodiment of abandonment, of a body giving itself over to something. We were sharing the same space in totally differently places. I watched him, peripherally, laughing a little to myself and wishing that I could hear what he was hearing.

40.

Whales

I am worried about the whales. At first I was thrilled, moved even, by the thought of humpback whales in my hometown. From my place in the desert I read about the whales, personifying and romanticizing their journey, even reveling in their refusal to follow the siren song back out to sea. Today they have moved to the Bay Area, another place I have called home, and are circling under the Benicia Bridge where we used to send pennies sailing out of car windows for good luck. Mom and dad started the tradition when they were in college and now two whales are circling above decades of pennies, unwilling to swim westward.

But it isn’t romantic. Their skin is drying out and sloughing off—too much fresh water in the pores. And people are lining the shores, cell phone cameras at the ready, applauding any slight movement. As much as I want there to be luck and magic in the story of whales in the river, mostly I see two animals who have become uncomfortable in their own skin.

39.

Delivery

Today I spent thirty minutes composing an email to a big deal art scholar who has written tons of books and happens to be the curator of the Warburg Institute photograph collection in London. She is a huge big deal and I want very badly to meet her when I’m there—so badly in fact that I spent thirty minutes composing one paragraph. To my utter horror, I just realized that I ended the email with: “Thank you for you time.” I labored over every word, reading each sentence out loud several times to ensure flow and accuracy. Thank you for you time, Elizabth McGrath. I hope you have a sense of humor.

38.

Intersections in Time and Space

I was feeling down today, just heavy and tired like I wasn’t entirely in my body. The days are getting hotter and hotter, which carries its own kind of weight—the knowledge of impending and inescapable heat that will lean into this city for the next five months. After a lot of slow movement around the house, I went outside to chase Milo and Barley around the yard, only to find that as the sun was setting a breeze had kicked things up into something like running weather. I hopped into my sporty orange shorts, grabbed my shoes, stuck my ipod in my bra, and ran out the door. As I was running down Olsen, weaving through one of the spots where the sidewalk disappears, a yellow swallow tail butterfly flew directly in front of me and there was this flash of a moment where I could see the pattern of its wing perfectly, right in front of my face. I swear I could feel the force of it, something projecting sideways into my body as we passed. We were one split second from collision, another split second from missing each other completely. And for a full moment all I could see was the pattern of the wing.

A couple of blocks later, I was running down Third Street and Shelley was running up. Another perfect intersection—a couple of moments of hesitation and one of us would have turned and we would have continued to run, tracing each other’s footprints unknowingly. Shelley always renews me. We ran much faster than I would have on my own, and maybe even faster than I knew I could. We went to her new house to water the huge tree that is producing pine cones in a desperate thirst. Neither of us had ever heard of pine cones as an act of desperation. Pine cones have been hiking treasures and bird feeders; they have been placed on mantles like trophies or decoratively in baskets, but they have never been a sign of dangerous thirst. And if I hadn’t been heading downhill at just that moment when she was heading up, I would have missed knowing that.