overnight

It smells like fall this morning: earthy spices turned up by a clawing wind and whipped into an autumnal recipe overnight, so that when I stepped onto the front porch with Janie at my heels, the nostalgia took my breath away. Autumn always pulls my mind toward home.

Working as a custodian can be much more glamorous than many people think

(As if this photo isn't argument enough)
I am an eraser of petty histories.

Every morning, I get to see traces of hundreds of fingerprints on glass doors, their minute and matchless topography a testament to the peerlessness of each individual that crosses the threshold of my building. And I get to splash some ammonium solution on the glass, take my scratchy microfiber rag, and erase those traces.


I am the one who makes the coffee ring on the floor of the elevator vanish uninterpreted. If those breadcrumbs are showing the way home, I am the bird that gobbles them up. Crumpled study guides, torn messages, shoe-shaken dust...I take care that these unclaimed missives will not last long.

So much of life consists of leaving traces, pieces of your habits and personality sloughing off like so much dead skin when the act of brushing against the world works up enough friction. Cryptic detritus that whispers "So-and-so was here" like the blinking transparent icon in a video game.

the truth will out, Peri

(My rebuttal to the gross inaccuracies in the nutshell recorded September 18th, 2009 in Peri's fabulous sprintingtofloor3.blogspot.com)

I have the progress report you asked for, Mr. Hammersmith.
Ah, Hopkins. Excellent. Tell me about the new heroine. What’s the basic sketch so far?
Well, sir, she’s a 22 year old college grad. Average height. Has the liveliest eyes—the sort that any Mr. Darcy would fall for, and the sort of vibrant presence that we look for in a heroine. Spunk, I believe you call it, sir. She’s a current resident of St. Louis suburbia, but she’s been places and definitely appears to be going places, too.
Sounds pretty straightforward. Well, first things first: Relationship status. Married? Engaged? Dating?
No. *suppresses a look of deep relief* She is still solidly single.
Well then, she must have some avenue of meeting a nice young man—
Sir, you try and find a gentleman suitable to match a lady of her considerable merit. It’s a challenge worthy of your utmost endeavors.
...Okay. Is she financially stable?
Not at all. She’s living at home for an indefinite amount of time. She can’t afford an apartment or even a car of her very own.
Very Good, Hopkins. Financial setbacks are merely the guise that tremendous opportunities often take. I submit Austen and Bronte, among others, to your consideration. Does she have a career?
No. She’s trying to stay afloat in this wretched economy by jumping from job to job, while never quite managing to get a foot inside the door of her chosen field.
Any hobbies?
She... *a glint of excitement in the voice* writes.
A writer, eh! Has she gotten anything published?
No, sir. She’s your ideal starving artist type. Imagine the fanfare, once she’s discovered.
Calm yourself, Hopkins. Has she ever tried to get anything published?
No, none of her books are anywhere near completion. She’s at that crucial germinal phase of her writing life. A very interesting phase it looks to be, too, sir, if I may be so bold.
Is there any more about the heroine’s life that is interesting or has any indication of moving forward?
A few miscellanea to wrap things up, sir. Her friends are following her trajectory with the deepest interest, in hopes of piggybacking on her fame once it arrives. They will need to be monitored. She wants to move to Australia, which will boost that nation’s literary clout. Taking her on would thus improve international relations and perhaps incur some of that Nobel buzz that you are so fond of.
Hopkins, where’s my lighter? Pour some wine and break out the cigars. You’ve found us our heroine at last, and she’s one to celebrate in style.

enjoy your self

I was so sure that today would be horrible. It was with some abashment that I found a smile on my face and a lightness in my fingers as I swaddled trashcans with fresh empty liners. Enjoying myself.

Isn't that a funny phrase? But I was. I was enjoying whipping air into the crisp creased bags and watching them billow out. I was enjoying the satisfaction of pulling the fourth corner tight and knotting it, tugging it down and tucking the tail under, a process that feels like second nature after four years of practice.

It simply did not matter that I woke late and hadn't my usual hour to savor coffee and settle into wakefulness at the pace of the natural world. It didn't matter that the clouds continued their surly heavenly coup and had sent yet more troops to swamp the areas of weak defense on campus overnight.

What matters is that my nerves are like tastebuds, and everything is delicious, and I don't know why but I am glad.

Enjoy yourself today. Head, shoulders, knees, and toes. Eyes, ears, and mouth, and nose.

Put your whole self in and turn yourself around. That's what it's all about.

09.16.09

When it rains as it is raining today, with such primal urgency, I always long to put on my tromping boots and go out away from (and into) "it all" and just steep.

It's been a lovely Wednesday so far. I woke early and felt so utterly refreshed as I puttered around the darkly lit kitchen, brewing coffee and pouring dog food and clearing counterspace from the debris of last night.

Janie was particularly endearing, and wasn't visited by any phantoms all morning. Often she'll stiffen several times through the course of a morning and glower at the air in front of her, growling hoarsely. It gives me the creeps to witness this reaction to something I cannot even sense. (What heir of the Old Testament legacy does not wonder at the ramifications of Balaam's ass?) I sometimes wonder if dogs are attuned to the world on a supernatural level. We all know that they can hear things far beyond our range, and they percieve light and movement differently. I've read, too, that dogs can smell if a human has low blood sugar or even certain types of cancer. It makes me regard Janie with a certain awe. This lean, darling creature has the spunky innocence of a child and the grave sorrowful eyes of a saint. I love her.

The afternoon promises rainshowers and company. I'm looking forward to fixing some lasagna for a friend and conversing over dinner in a cozy sanctuary of a living room.

For now, though, work calls me away from my desk and out into the muddied halls and lobbies of my building.

anniversary

Well, my birthday has cordoned off another year. I had sweet, comfortable celebrations with those I love most from my Lookout Mountain community, and congratulatory conversations with family members over the phone.

And I decided, after an evening of music that called my heart out of my chest, that another year like last year simply would not do.

one of my deepest fears

A certain literary type has begun to fascinate me. She unsettles me, because I can see so vividly in her character tendencies that I have, tendencies that could eventually shape me into her. She tends to be the despised foil for the heroinne. She is Mary Piper of "Fall On Your Knees," Charlotte Bartlett of "A Room With A View," and Aunt Elizabeth of Lucy Maud Montgomery's "Emily of New Moon" series. Dorethea Brookes of "Middlemarch" and Lucy Honeychurch of "A Room With A View" narrowly escape evolving into her. Her male counterpart is Javert of "Les Miserables," Cecil Vyse of "A Room With A View," and Dr. Casaubum of "Middlemarch." Repressed, severe, and inflexibly moral, she refuses to acknowledge her own lostness, and thereby divorces herself from our sympathies.

The tragedy of her life is that she begins with the high hopes and ideals that we all begin with. Offered a glimpse of her future self, she would shudder and reject the image with the same distaste with which we regard it. But gradually her reactions to the forces of life corrupt the freshness and recklessness right out of her. And it usually all begins with religious devotion run amok: the belief that to avoid sin one must eschew all earthly pleasures, and even if compelled to partake, must do so with a spirit of self-mortification. She is a Judge. She finds both herself and others worthy of condemnation, and if she does not mete this out herself, she does mete out disapproval in a way that alienates her from its objects. And one of those objects is herself.

We loathe her because in all her righteousness she is so utterly in error. Despite her ascetism, she cannot find ecstasy. Without love, grace, compassion, she is nothing. In the end, her pride evolves into bitterness and at last into despair. She is the good girl who becomes the ultimate instrument of evil.

I am so afraid of becoming her. I am afraid that my love for purity and truth will lead me into a hypocrisy so dense and strangling that I will inflict horrible injury on others (and myself) while believing myself to be enacting God's will. I am afraid that the god in my head will resemble the God of the Universe only in His aspect of Judge and Executioner of Justice. I am afraid of forgetting that His death is the deepest magic of all, because it is both pure and loving and it compells me to be gracious to others and to myself in ways that defy rigid justice.

Oh Love that will not let me go...never ever let me go there.

You know when you finish reading a powerful book, how it continues to hold your head and heart in thrall, even after you've closed the final page and returned it to the shelf? How it changes the lighting on your perspective, and it takes time for your eyes to adjust?

I am still grappling with myself after reading "Fall On Your Knees", a historical novel by Anne-Marie MacDonald. I am still wondering if I should recommend it.

MacDonald is an artist, no doubt about that. Language listens to her and does what it's told, even if it means seducing you only to break your heart again and again and again.

But is it good? There are so many lies in this novel, masquerading as the truth. So much perverted goodness and evil upheld. I need to think about it more.

What have I taken from it? A reminder of the treachery of good intentions divorced from true love and integrity, and the ease with which one can slip into the groove of sin and not realize it. I needed to be reminded of that.

I may end up turning this knowledge against even this beautiful upsetting book.

this is how it felt

(a flurry of palpitations
as cold as sleet
rackets across the marshlands
of my heart
like a wild spring day )
when a few strains of a song I love took me by surprise earlier today.

I probably don't have to tell you who wrote that.