it's not vicious, or malicious.

Friends, i have spent the entire day on the internet. This is not a lament, or a boast: it is a simple truth.

And i found some stuff.

This lady's comics are great.

Here are some photos that are not mine:








The National Geographic Photo Contest is at it again. Have a gander!

i just discovered The Fray. It has good stories in't. Sat here reading for an hour or more.

(All of the orchids in my house are almost done blooming. Feeling poisoned from smoking too many cigarettes. i think we'll eat pumpkin pudding for dinner.)

i drank too much last night and would like for that to not happen again. There was a variety show among friends: "Africa" was covered, and Nico, as well as "Groove Is In The Heart" (complete with slide whistle). There were rum balls and Guinness cupcakes. i found a "k" in a snapped-off twig. The clouds were like cotton balls stretched out across the sky. i was finally able to say aloud to someone that i was having a difficult time getting truly involved in the 'Occupy' movement because i feel that there are bigger problems in the world... his response was that, well, doesn't the problem of the rich getting richer sort of have a hand in most (if not all) of those other problems i was mentioning (rape, slavery, lack of clean water, etc.)? It was a tough call; i had a hard time clarifying my position and verbalizing what i meant. Also, as i believe i already mentioned, i was pretty inebriated.
Oh, to have excellent speech and debate skills!

This post brought to you by a hangover.

how does a day take shape? there are distant hums, sirens, and cages..
smells and sounds, inner rumblings.
cloud swaths, ethereal
and the cold, hard ground.
there might be a dusty road
or a bright smiling face.
lines on your hands, and on trees' trunks,
(everything is growing)
light reflecting in pools of inky water.

we are trying to keep something alive.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Someone thought of us, once.

It's true–
we flashed across their brain pans and for a brief moment
each and every one human
(some robust, some passing in and out)
was quickly and carefully
lifted up
and held;
lovingly inspected
each and every inch.
But there is not enough time
can't look for very long
So they closed their eyes and imagined, hard

emblazoning all of the faces,
and garments,
and shrieks (of laughter, and pain!)
and endless possibilities
of combinations.

it burned brighter and became a din,
ferocious.
until the moment passed,
and they resumed their own life
picked up where they'd left off
(where was it?)

Someone thought of you, once.

tidbits

~Sometimes i drink too much coffee ('sometimes'– hah!) and feel like there's going to be an earthquake. Could these two things really be related?

~Last night Nat and i were reading through the True Blood wikipedia page (we grudgingly [yet semi-enjoyably] watched the first season, then came to the conclusion it was not good enough to pursue, thereby deciding to check out the rest of the plot for the remaining seasons), and when it was revealed that (SPOILER ALERT:)
Sookie was part fairy, i almost jumped out of my chair. No fucking fair!! i want to come from such an amazing lineage, too! Balls. Why can't life be a fairytale? [*EDIT: who am i kidding? it basically is– i spend an inordinate amount of time daydreaming about toadstool houses and pixiedust and forest moss. Plus, i'm tiny. Nat said he would be surprised if i wasn't from such stock somewhere way back].

~As of 3:40 p.m. on September 3, 2011, i have no fucking clue what my Halloween costume is going to be. This is a new low. Suggestions, people?

~There have been 3 shark sightings here in the past week. Eek.

~The More You Know: After spending several hours scanning in a hefty portion of my old film photos and saving them as jpegs, i noticed that they (the brand-new digital files) were all looking a bit worse for wear; subsequent internetting has led me to understand that this is due to lossy compression– did you know that every time you modify and then save a jpeg it loses information(quality)? So, say you rotate that bitch because you scanned it in upside-down: boom– information lost. Cropped the edges? bam– quality down the tubes. Saved it after sharpening or lightening the image a bit? biff– you're further screwed. i was furious to find this out, but not surprised. There is just so much to know about technology, it is nearly impossible to keep track of it all. So, now i have to go back and re-scan all of those photos, then save the scanned images as TIFFs, which is a lossless form of image compression. Sigh.

~My bike was stolen about 2 months ago; recently a nice neighbor of mine gave me an old one he had laying around, which i promptly took to the shop for new tires and a tune-up so i could at least give it a test-ride. Well, i just got the call and it turns out that this bike will cost me more money than it's worth, which is unfortunate because it's actually more than bit too big for me and i was only going to ride it if the fix-up costs were minimal. Now i'm stuck in a limbo decision-state. Spend the money and try to ride it anyway? Or take it back, as is, crumbling tires and rust spots and all, and hope for a trade? Never tried to trade anything before, and now i don't have a bike– again. Double sigh.

~Complaining is so lame. Apologies.

~Made the best lemon meringue pie of my life a couple of days ago. The secret seems to be swapping some of the water for milk, and using half sugar/half powdered sugar in the meringue. Taste-tastic! Also, i added a quarter of a scraped vanilla bean to the filling. Delish. Highly recommend. Feels like it mellows the lemon out a bit.

That's all for now, folks. Here's a song i literally cannot stop singing every time i'm alone in the house (thank goodness i'm too scared to sing in public). Here's where to buy the digital song (or album), but honestly you should just go to your local music store and get it there!

Waiting for fall to hit.

Seriously, why so many September birthdays? It's almost as bad as June.

In other news: i have a bruised left pinky because of a stupid f*cking barbell. Children are dying left and right in Somalia, and there is little we can do to stop it. Tonight i will attempt to eat salad instead of leftover pizza or boxed mac-n-cheese. There has been a gaping hole in our bathroom ceiling for almost half a year due to a neverending of phone-tag/rescheduling game with the handyman. i am quitting smoking, for the umpteenth time. Nat has a bleached-blonde mohawk. My family is all kinds of discombobulated right now and i am reeling because of it. My bike (that i'd had for 8 years!) was stolen from my workplace one month ago. i seriously mourned; it's time to get a new (used) one. There are caterpillars everywhere, and you can smell fires at night sometimes now that it's colder.

Hopefully feeling inspired to enter a photography contest (small-scale, be assured), and my mom may have helped me get my rear in gear concerning a possible kids' book idea; just need some concept art to bring the words themselves into focus, because all i have right now is an image in my head. (Or maybe it doesn't even need words? a grown-up picture book, that's what it'll be.) Saw a perfect number 5 on the ground this morning– it was a green supermarket twist-tie that had been mangled and then stepped on, perfectly formed and flattened into the number of senses we all (if we're lucky) share. Half-a-block later there was an H, born out of fallen leaf-slivers and a twig.

It is hot right now at work, and slow. Tough to watch the flowers practically wilting right before your very eyes. Can't stop eating stone fruit (it will be gone all too soon), and putting off everything on my to-do lists. Feeling dreamy, lacking clarity. Will work for food, or company. Kind of want to hang out right here:

Taste the rainbow.

Fact: i am pretty smitten with the Amish (and i suppose, the Mennonites and other various 'plain' cultures). A long time ago at a stained glass store far, far away, my friend Sherri, a thin bookkeeper with artsy glasses and short hair, gave me a book called Plain and Simple.

i read that thing from cover to cover in a couple of days, easy. Inhaled it. The thought that there could be another way of life, free from stuff: free from technology and advertisements, traffic noise and ATMs, swimming pools, brand names and artificial colors and flavors, free from all things hustle-bustle, really invigorated me. In a powerful way, i yearned for that life. Yarn, oxen, wood and grass felt very real, and very close.

As an entirely non-religious person, however, it was a conflicting feeling. i have never understood the need to believe in something that somehow 'explains' 'it all'. The 'answers' are all around us, all of the time. It seems to me that faith in one's self should be first and foremost; without that, what do you really have? On the other hand, losing yourself so completely to a shared way of life with the close-knit community around you sounds mighty appealing to someone like me: a self-centered anxious hermit crab who is always wondering what everything 'means'.

All of these feelings were refreshed by the book Nat recently gave me, The Riddle of Amish Culture, by Donald B. Kraybill. Written in 1989, it certainly feels a bit dated, and being that it is a sociology book, it leans heavily on the history, customs, and belief systems of the Amish, really quite different fare from the personal, day-to-day quirks i had read about years ago in Plain and Simple.

Not surprisingly, there is a fair amount of bloodshed and martyrdom in those old (Protestant) roots – religion tends to have a stain of that wherever you find it. The belief system is really quite simple: obedience to Christ. They separate themselves from the evil (modern, outside) world, and excommunicate errant members of their society (shunning*). Sounds severe, no? But they value hard work, patience, and humility, three things which i live by.

Then i came across one simple sentence that flipped a switch in my mind: it reminded readers that in Amish society, wives are meant to be subservient to their husbands. [an insider discussion here.] Obviously, this is not unique to the Amish people, but it got me thinking: did a religion exist in which women held equal sway? After all my waxing romantic over the Pennsylvania Dutch, i was suddenly left hotly bitter.

With a bit of searching, the only one i could turn up was the Bahá'í faith, a religion formed (quite recently) in 19th-century Persia. In fact, if i was forced to ascribe to a 'recognized' spiritual belief system, it would probably be this one. The unity of humankind seems like a pretty simple idea to me, and one worth striving for. i'm sure i'll find my problems with it, though, just like i have with every other religion, faith, and creed out there.

For now i suppose i'll stick with my particular blend of heathen nature-worship. It's what i do best, certainly, and it's carried me this far... i am filled with reverence every single day, and it's never once felt forced. Having a healthy spiritual life has never really figured far up on the ladder for me, but maybe it was there all along, quietly flowing. That wistful Amish life i'd always dreamed of will remain a fantasy, and i will have to be content with mooning over the Mennonites at the farmer's market of my hometown in Montana, offering their beautiful jars of rose-hip jelly. Our religious differences don't have to be an impasse - it doesn't mean we can't still connect as human beings.

Unfortunately, however, this can be the reality in our world. But maybe next time instead of worrying that a Plain teenager will balk at (or silently judge) my bright pink hair and sparkly eyeshadow, i should just strike up a conversation about, say, goldfinches, and see where it takes us.



















*Check out Devil's Playground for a modern, somewhat sensational portrayal on Rumspringa, the period during which a young Amish person 'grows up', and decides whether to live their life within or without.

For no reason at all.

i am here to tell you about my first apartment.

It was on Dohr Street, in South Berkeley. Number 2950, apartment L. Top floor of three, with outdoor-stairway access. My best friend at the time, J, and i, both needed to find a place. She was looking for new digs, and i was moving out of my mom's house for the first time at the ripe old age of eighteen. We quickly found a place that was cheap enough ($750), and moved right in. One of the bedrooms was bigger than the other, and for some reason i let J have it. My little room only had one window, north-facing, and it was high up and slid open to one side, like a bus window. There was a weird vibe in that room, too, that i always attributed to a ghost; it felt as though someone had died in it not too long before, and probably an old woman. My bedroom door would never latch shut properly, so i always had to haul a giant pillar candle in front of it when i wanted privacy (which was often). Because i have an obsessive need for decoration, the walls were quickly adorned with postcards, drawings, and calendar pages from years past: butterflies, Dalí, Man Ray, Erte. We bought a bunch of "new apartment-stuff" at Target –silverware, garbage can, ice cube trays, shower curtain, etc.– and we were off.

The bathtub in the cramped bathroom was horrendously pocked and rusted, but i made up for it by sneaking some of J's clove-scented body wash from time to time. i have cried, cut someone else's hair, and done lines of coke in that minuscule bathroom (sorry, mom!). The tub would clog once a month or so, and we would have to plunger it back to health. Good times.

The kitchen was a pea green-and-salmon affair, dated beyond belief– which would have been okay, actually, if there hadn't been a permanent layer of grease and dust on everything. J worked at a coffee shop and always brought home tea and coffee for me– what a pal. She often cooked, while i subsisted 90% of the time on tea and toast. Once she even made a vast, amazing feast of gyoza, and many a time we would simply barbecue fish out on the teensy back porch, smothering the fillets in lemon and then gobbling them down far too quickly... (From back there, you could see a water tower to the West; it was so alien to me, since i had always associated those with small-town hamlets in Iowa or Nebraska.) Beer was usually present, although eventually J and i would drink vodka-crans every night for months on end. Our temporary (read: year-long) roommate M would make a huge pot of his signature refried beans once every two months or so, which was not an event to be missed. Once, the tap on our kitchen sink just came plum off when someone turned it on, spraying water absolutely everywhere. Our scumbag landlord (whose first name was 'Stirling'), tried to tell us that it was because we had "too many parties" – it's as if he thought people were taking turns standing at the sink, turning the faucet on, and off; on, and off.

J had a mesmerizing octagonal aquarium in the living room, which she kept stocked with interesting fish and plants, some of which didn't always co-exist peaceably: fish would nip at other fish, or tear apart the rare marsh plant she'd just brought home in a bag that very afternoon. It was a constant battle to keep things friendly in there, but well-worth the upkeep for the amount of pleasure it gave our numerous stoner friends. Our roof would leak a lot during the rainy season, so pots and pans would have to be placed in the hallway, or on the arm of the couch. We had a square-shaped fan that we placed in the window, backwards, so that when one sat near it and smoked a cigarette, you could blow the offending plume right outside. You could see the Berkeley hills from that big front window, actually, which was probably the best feature of the apartment. i never once regretted living there, even when our downstairs neighbor's son shot himself in the hand and i came home from work to an eerily empty neighborhood and a pool of blood on their landing. One summer day in particular, i can remember sitting on the top step with the front door open, smoking a cigarette and listening to some Jimi Hendrix song ('Castles Made of Sand'?) from inside. Wouldn't trade that small moment for anything.

Eventually i met Nat, and he would come over at 7:30 in the morning, right after he'd get off work (night-auditor at a hotel), and just as i was getting up for mine. We would smoke together as i drank a cup of coffee, sitting quietly-as-can-be on that front step while the blue world around us began to waken. He would drift off to sleep in my bed while i finished getting ready for work, and i would kiss him goodbye, and goodnight. My morning walk to the art store (where i was first a cashier, then an accountant) took me past the 'shell house':


View Larger Map

while i daydreamed about my magical boy and listened to PJ Harvey (Dry), Bauhaus (Mask), Björk (Homogenic), and the soundtrack to The Breakfast Club. i was 20, and life was good. Sometimes that feels a lot farther away than just ten years.

In the evening, i would come home to the large, glittered "L" on our front door (a gift from a friend) and find a note from Nat, or, more rarely, find him still there, waiting for me in my room. i fell in love with him in that apartment, during those early evening hours, when no one else was home and he would play the violin for me or read me Murakami stories. Later, through the big front window, i would watch him pedal away in his his baggy green sweater, with his combat boots and tousled dark brown hair, and feel completely made of light. He used to call that place, and still does, "Sweet Dohr Street".

Quick question:

Does anyone else miss the light brown m&m?

a green-eyed, yellow-bellied, silver-tongued dark horse.

t's been ages. What have you been up to? As for me:


~saw a black widow.
~accidentally vacuumed up a pair of underwear.
~won an orchid (Cattleya) at an orchid fair.
~finally procured a jar of artichoke hearts (note: waited waaaaay too long to discover this).
~bit my nails back down to stumps.
~found out what blue Curaçao tastes like. verdict? not so great.

and:

~currently experiencing some sort of (pre-?)midlife crisis.

That last one is probably due to the fact that i will soon be entering into my third decade of life on this zany, spinning marble and haven't got anything of substance to show for it. Nor, for that matter, a whole lot of prospects on the horizon. But i think it's because i have been way too busy hiding under a rock to see anything. Hope this can be helped.

In other news: don't you just love bright green trees against a gunmetal sky?

And don't you just hate putting pillowcases on pillows? Yeah. Me too.

non-sequiturs, for sures.

The national spelling bee is tonight!

Normally i don't close on Thursdays, but a co-worker is enjoying a much-deserved vacation in Costa Rica, so it's off to work i go, in just a few minutes here. If i manage to close at 8:00 on the dot (basically impossible), and pedal home furiously without hitting any red lights (also impossible), then i will only miss about 20 minutes or so. Hmph. Right now i'm kind of wishing that Costa Rica didn't exist.


Found a 'y' in a small branch on the sidewalk; it looks just like a snail's adorable eye stalks. Also, there was an "x" in two cast away palm frond leaves at work the other day. Perfect as can be. i was tempted to stand on them, but sometimes when "x" marks the spot, it is not in a good way.


Found out i am an "eternalist", which means that i believe the past, present, and future are all true and real... unfortunately, i realized afterward that i don't really believe in the measurement of time at all, so this label is basically null.


Once, in middle school, i noticed a weird smell emanating from the kitchen. It was coming from the big, low, sliding drawer where we kept all of our potatoes. i went to check it out, because i hadn't watched enough horror movies yet.

i slid open the drawer carefully. It was very heavy.

i opened the hinged top.

And then my world was only fruit flies.

A great, disgusting swarm of them streamed out, heading right for my eyeballs, nostrils, and other soft places. i gagged at the smell and ran screaming into the backyard with my arms waving maniacally. Turns out some of our potatoes had gone rotten, and were just sitting there in that dark drawer, deliquescing. A lone fruit fly must have discovered this treasure, and thus the Great Fruit Fly Army was born. Just thinking about them down there, replicating, really skeeves me out. It also makes me think that we probably just should have eaten more goddamn potatoes that week. Ever since that day, i have had a huge problem with fruit flies... i would rather have my kitchen overrun with ants, or even tarantulas. ::shudder::


So i am reading The Kite Runner (fabulous book, so far!) these days. When the light from our star lamp hits the title words on the book's cover, it creates an amazing, otherworldly red. It is as if the letters are suddenly made of neon, or volcanically lit from within. As if the book itself was filled with bright, red-hot magma. i swear i must have sat there for five minutes, ruminating on this. Where is my mind? To be fair, it was past one in the morning, and tired is as tired does.

Bye for now.

It's a small world.... after all.

Three examples (in ascending order):

1) A few years ago, i was at a get-together. You know the kind: my sister's co-worker was having a housewarming party. There was lots of beer, an awesome soundtrack playing loudly from the crappy boombox in the (dirty) kitchen, and tons of fashionable, hip people i didn't know. We spent most of the night in the hostess's bedroom, playing with her fat, orange cat and talking about books and music; generally hiding from everyone. As the one o'clock hour approached, suddenly a bunch of people were sitting on the floor near our little group, talking animatedly. i turned an ear over to their conversation and heard little snippets, which began to slowly fill me with a creeping dread: Have you heard from Caty recently? -Ugh, that fucking suckup. i went to culinary school with her, and she's such a snob! -Yeah, i just saw her on some stupid cable-access show, showing that shitty bakery where she works and all of those crappy cakes she makes. -Yeah, anyone here could bake a better cake than her! That bakery sucks. Their cakes are so dry and awful. -Seriously, if i wanted tasteless, rock-hard butter spread on dry bread, that's where i'd go. ::laughter, laughter::

Oh, MY god. They're talking about a woman i work with. That "shitty bakery" is where i work, for fuck's sake. Suddenly i am on the verge of a panic attack. My body is tingling, and i can barely hear what my sister or my boyfriend are talking about. i smile nervously and try to shrink away into nothingness, realizing that if Hilary or Nat hear what the people next to us are saying, the jig is up. They will say something, and i do not want that. i just want to fucking leave- like, now. So i jump up and kind of hint to them that i'm tired and have to work in the morning (at the shittiest bakery on the planet!, my mind cackles insanely), so i'm gonna get going. They seem a little startled, probably wondering why i'm suddenly itching to hie on out, but they are game. The group near us has moved on to talking about comics, or something. Outside, we unlock our bikes and get pedaling. A block away i break my silence, and they are laughing in disbelief. Why didn't you say anything?! they ask me. Ah, for the two people that arguably know me best out of anyone in the world, they don't know me at all.
The funniest part about all of this was that while our bakery was pretty widely-known as a cut above the rest (in terms of pastries, cookies, tartes, eclairs, etc.), our cakes really did suck. They were just not very good, and desperately needed (still need?) to be updated. So even though i basically agreed with these people, could i bring up the hilariousness of it all and have a laugh with them, these complete strangers? Nope. Absolutely not.

Sometimes i wish i was someone else.


2) A girl i work with right now (Apes) at the flower shop was running in the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco this past October. She invited me along, as she was driving up and knew that i missed my hometown (Berkeley, actually, but anywhere near the Bay is close enough!) and would love to get up there for a visit. So of course i accepted, to cheer her on and to visit my best friend up there. In the days before we left San Diego, we got to discussing San Francisco. i asked her if she had ever been up there, and her answer was Only once.
Apparently she was passing through with some friends years ago and her one desire was to go out to a live music show on the one night they were there. They ended up at some dive-y place, listening to a terrible band called The Vanishing. Apes said: i remember the name because my friend commented: 'God, i wish The Vanishing would just vanish!!'
So, at this point in her story i was grinning wickedly. What, what?!? Apes asked me. i shook the blush from my cheeks and offered up the nugget of truth: Hey Apes, guess what me and Nat's favorite local band was back in the day when we lived up there?
Oh my god. She looked at me with giant eyes. Heather, i'm so sorry!!
i was falling on her laughing, now. It's okay! Hey, different strokes for different folks, you know? i can understand why someone wouldn't like them, absolutely- they are very noisy and the singer was a bit of a prima donna, anyway i just think it's funny that you got to see them! i wonder if we were even at the same show...!
(they were fairly short-lived and this was back in 2001 or so, and Nat and i were so sad when they broke up and/or moved to Germany.)

3) The craziest one for me, though, happened on my first or second day of work at my last job, a French bakery (see part 1, above :P) in Oakland. It was 8:30 or so, half an hour after we'd opened, and i was high on No Sleep and New Job. We were very busy, but i was having a good time. i send a customer off with a bag full of various combinations of flour, butter, and sugar, and make eye contact with the next person in line. He comes up to the counter, a short, dark-haired man in jeans and a dress shirt. What can i get for ya? i smile and raise my eyebrows. Uhhh, excuse me, this is strange question... were you just in Paris? comes out, in a thick French accent. He looks almost shell-shocked or something. i became absolutely breathless in a matter of seconds. People nearby are kind of staring out of the corner of their eyes, and pretending not to listen to this strange exchange. Yes! i say, incredulous. We just got back a month and a half ago! We went to Europe for 2 weeks! And we were in Paris for a few days How did you know that?! He smiles at me as he pulls out his wallet. Because i live there! And i saw you, in front of the Notre Dame one day! You were with a... rather tall gentleman ::holds his hand way above his head:: Wow. i was just reeling, it was really way too weird for words. He said he was visiting the Bay Area on business, and had heard about this bakery and thought he would try it. How amazing, honestly. We just smiled and smiled at each other, as people around us shared in the moment. When he left with his pastries, weaving through the crowd towards the front door, i knew i would never see him again. But it was a great feeling, for some reason. And i never even got his name.

Memories.

a lemonade stand with my best friend Molly, in front of the grocery store around the corner from her house when we were 8 or 9. her mom was a progressive sort of woman (to put it lightly), so we did 99% of the work by ourselves. it was nice to learn how to problem-solve. we also sold homemade chocolate chip cookies to increase sales (plus the fun of baking), and when we got "too old" we even wrote the e's in "lemonade" backwards, to garner sympathy. i'm not sure, but i think this was my idea. at least, i remember being the one to write it out. it does seem strange that i would have thought of that. once a police officer came by and told us we needed a permit. i think that was the beginning of the end. we used to take our profits ten feet away to the Mexican restaurant and eat cheese enchiladas with red sauce. i remember the clear plastic tumblers of ice water were always sweating heavily onto the lacquered table. it was quiet, usually there was no one else around. fans lazily spinning above us. we always sat in the same window booth, and i would use tortilla chips to clean my plate of sauce, rice and beans, when i was done with the enchiladas. i think Molly thought that was weird. but i was always told to clean my plate.

Sunday mornings in apartment #5 (the first [& longest] place i ever lived), on a quiet street in Berkeley, California. my dad is blasting opera music from his bedroom. he has an awesome sound system. the dog (an akita) is lying in a patch of late morning sun on the cheap brown carpet. dust motes stir and settle, stir and settle, endlessly around her. beyond, in the kitchen, i can smell breakfast potatoes frying. rosemary, butter, pepper. that means there will be eggs, sunny-side up. and silver dollar pancakes if we are lucky. my parents will drink delicious-smelling coffee and mostly ignore each other. my dad will be jolly and smiling because of the opera and the sunday breakfast. sometimes, a lot of the time, he sings along. maybe my mom is sewing, or more likely she is on the small back deck watering the potted plants. my older sister is in our bedroom, plotting ways to get out of the house today. my little brother and i are probably playing a game, involving either action figures, a homemade fort, or the Nintendo. i can hear kids playing outside in the courtyard, and see the leaves rustling gently on the trees outside the obscured glass of our window. i can feel the wind in the trees, and smell the sap, and feel the tiny heartbeats of the birds who nest there and are flying away now, into the great cloudy-blue sky and the endless possibilities of the great wide world.

when i was one or so, and learning how to walk, i burned my left hand rather badly on our wall heater. the weird thing is that i actually remember it all: struggling out into the living room, wanting to show my mom how proud i was of myself: i'm walking! inching my way towards the kitchen. i could hear my mom's voice, so i was getting close. maybe i uttered a yip of happiness at that point, who knows anymore, but my mom came around the corner and saw me. i grinned hugely and ramped up my efforts, but her eyes got big and scared. "no!!" she rushed towards me in slow motion. my smile was instantly gone in the confusion. what's wrong? and then something, somewhere, began to register. my mom reached me, then, and pulled me away from the wall as fast as she could, grabbing my arm. i had stopped along my epic journey, and rested my chubby little hand square on the wall heater, which of course was hot hot hot. there was a charred pattern of stripes going across my palm and fingers in a horizontal fashion. i began to bawl. it was awful. my mom was visibly and audibly upset. in the healing process over the next days and weeks, i would suck and suck on my hand to get it to stop hurting, so my mom had to put a sock over my hand and tape it there. but apparently i would suck on the sock until it was cool and sopping wet, same difference. ah, childhood!

a Slip 'N Slide in somebody's backyard. a small dog yipping around us in the excitement. green, green grass, dark and bright, crushed beneath our heels. small rocks would lie silently under the yellow plastic, waiting to be found by our arms or torsos. a sprinkler waves back and forth forever, somebody's mom yells for us to turn the water off. puddles are forming, and light mud. it is sunny, but still not hot enough to warrant us being out in our bathing suits. goosebumps and threadbare towels in plastic chairs, we talk about the funniest slips, and then we run inside to drink milk and eat peanut butter sandwiches.

at my elementary school, we had a whole wall of honeysuckle on the southern end of the schoolyard's long fence. the particular bitter sweetness of the blossoms' nectar on my tongue had a power to stop time. sometimes i felt like recess was hours long. i would lie on the grass and make daisy chains from the tiny white and pink flowers there, a crown fit for a benevolent fairy queen. after a rain, the worms would come wriggling out from the dirt. the boys would stomp and kill them, so i would cut them in half at that special spot, and pray for two to form and reset the balance. there were licorice plants bordering a smaller edge of fence, that at certain times of the year would be studded with what looked like big gobs of foamy spit. our recess counselor showed us that if you looked closely enough, you could see the caterpillars inside. they were going to be monarchs. later we would see the big butterflies over our heads, but it was always hard to make the connection. now whenever i smell a licorice plant, i see a big orange-and-black beauty fluttering in my mind. when was the connection finally formed?