imagination
i am a lucky girl. not only has my posture improved over the past week, but i also got to spin out a week of my life at cleveland state’s imagination workshop. for those of you who are turning up your noses and thinking–writing in cleveland, it’s not possible–think again. neal chandler, director, is a genius. and meeting josip novakovich was beyond delightful: the man is hilarious in a sort of deadpan eastern european way. my list of books developed a sort of bunnies-mating quality. and i’m even more determined to get a few essays out as soon as reading periods open again in september. it’s a pleasant little time-warp to feel like a student and a writer again after so many days of playing at the park and reading sandra boynton. so, all of you with dreams, give yourself at least a week to dabble in them. you’ll walk a little taller.
Filed under cleveland, life, writing guide | Comments (4)dirt
it’s finally here: dirt! i’ve turned all my pots and pruned the peonies. and i’ve got garden-lust, big time. i have to sit on my hands when i pass a garden center. (i sing to myself: musn’t fill the pots with pansies, musn’t fill the pots with pansies.) but i see my neighbors with little resistance and window boxes full of first flowers, pansies and violas.
and this year, instead of just a rambling porch garden, we’re expanding into the parking lot out back. our tomatoes starts arrive the third week of may. then watch out: we’ll be nursing gold medals and brandywines, sheepnose pimentos and burans. and lettuce! an entire salad just waiting for me next to the garage!
i probably shouldn’t admit this, but i have a secret little wish tucked behind all the normal things i seem to be wanting these days (a disposal, a garage door, a husband with a job, plush carpet)–i want to be earth mother to a sprawling garden. to live off my own fruits and vegetables. to wander into the grocery store as an afterthought: maybe for lucky charms or a rotisserie chicken. to wander out again without buying anything and harvest my own beets for dinner.
but i probably won’t ever be the green queen. you have to admit that paper plates are incredibly convenient.
Filed under cleveland, life | Comment (1)summon spring!
is spring this stubborn every year? we’re still hovering in the 30s and walking across cold crusty snow.
i decided to bait the sun and the buds and the grass by dressing henry up in something fancy. i’ll let you know if it works.
Filed under cleveland | Comments (2)the winter of our discontent
it’s been the sort of month where nothing is comfortable. my shoes pinch. my kitchen chairs squeak, rock, break apart. my toothbrush is mushy. my skin itches: it’s too tight, it’s not the right size, it doesn’t fit me, it cracks. i’ve been desperate to unzip and step outside myself, hand someone my heart and kidneys and ask them to watch them for a second, just a second, while i go somewhere else. anywhere else.
does it ever get to you like that? this everything? where you feel like every ribosome and mitochondrion inside of you is running amok? where you must get out or dry up like egyptian bones and sink into a lapis lazuli sky painted on the lid of your sarcophagus?
it gets to me.
there aren’t many solutions in the middle of a blizzard sodden cleveland. i did the best i could. i tied on my boots, found a scarf, and left. i didn’t pull a nora from ibsen’s a doll’s house, but i wanted to. i wondered how it would feel to just walk away from feeding people dinner and cleaning up smashed bits of everything from the carpet and chasing tiny hands away from the stove and never look back.
but all i did was walk. i walked through the evening that was sharp with snow and garlic, counting the things that i could change: the list was short and i felt like sinking into the snow at my feet and letting it bury me. i walked for a long time. breathing. pushing through the drifts. looking up into the blackness of the night.
and i saw something. it had bright eyes that flashed in the street lights. it was leaping through the drifts. a smallish cat, i thought. i watched it propel itself through the snow. leaping. pushing and pulling its paws through powder. almost graceful. and then i got close enough to see its tail, a long and hairless fleshy salmon pink. it was a rat. a giant rat hunting for shelter in the storm.
if rats can leap through blizzards…
Filed under cleveland, life | Comments (6)february
i wonder if february is lonely. i wonder if that’s the reason she pulls the clouds down over her face for days at a time. i wonder if that’s why she hurls rain and sleet and slushy snow at the windows–usually late at night, pinging and banging at me curled in my flannel sheets. i wonder if her loneliness is behind the wind blasting up the street, raging through lines of garbage cans and shredding posters stuck to telephone poles, clawing at the earflaps of my hat.
i wonder if february’s angst at isolation tips on the borders of madness, making her poke and poke at me until i feel lonely too–lonely and smothered in a thick wool haze of crazy.
i need spring. maybe february does too …
Filed under cleveland | Comments (4)