June on the west coast, part III

A stitch in time saves nine.
June 23rd, 2009

Tuesday. The barista asks your name and how old you were on your last birthday. The second question is not entirely out of place; he likes the broach you’re wearing and you tell him it was a birthday gift. He asks if your birthday is soon.

Yes. You tell him it was yesterday.

Well, happy belated birthday.

On your most recent birthday, you were 9teen. Some synesthetes* associate numbers with personality (You have never liked the number 4. She isn’t trust worthy). 9 is slouching and self-conscious. You write it down and it either hunches or leans backward awkwardly. It is either toppling over or falling into itself. 9 always looks uncomfortable. Over sixty types of synesthesia have been recorded but the neuroscientists cannot tell you why 9 is so very awkward. 9’s eyes are cast downward; he is not telling you something.

You think of the time when you went the first week or so of knowing a person before he asked your age. You were 18, which is twice 9 and perhaps twice the awkward. He wanted to take you out for a drink. Well, you said-

He was surprised. He wasn’t entirely displeased.

You also remember being 9 years old. Ten years ago you were sitting in the backyard during a hot Texas summer. You baptized your dog in the swimming pool. She sneezed. You felt guilty. The dog was afraid of water. She was black and shaped like a barrel with short triangle ears and golden eyes that made your uncles uncomfortable. Your ninth birthday party took place in that same pool where you saved the soul of an animal. Nine was, generally, waterlogged.

June on the west coast, pt. II

Coming Up.
As we speak,
a ukulele is being played several floors below,
gets me excited.

I imagine
you just spent ten minutes taking off your jacket.
“I am coming up.”

“What does that mean?”

“Cheerleader, I fly into Seattle Sunday.”
(I have your ticket. They spelled your name wrong.)
“How’s that?”

.
.

(this poem is a testament to how great my friends are. The words in this are just texts I’ve received, re-arranged.)

June on the west coast, pt. I

There was a strange moment this morning when, seeing the clock read “8:00,” I thought I had somehow returned to yesterday evening. I am trying to figure out what the next three months will look like without the red tea kettle in the morning, without this view.

I spent the last nine months putting roots in the west, but every word pulls me east, east, east.

And, often, I feel I am repeating myself. At least, thematically.

"Personal space."

Semantic Susurrus

Walking around downtown, there are so many pious youth with their heads covered in reverence to an unresponsive deity. Hipsters wearing knit hats, cruising from one temple to another, following musicians. Pipers. With all that wool covering their ears, one would think they would be safe.

But-

These ones, the painfully hip adult children, have no idea about the kind of poetry they’re participating in.

As an avid reader, I am never alone. And, though warmth and morning render me useless as a linguist, I was sitting with Milan and Antoine over breakfast and we talked about  semantics and the symbolism surrounding hats.

Kundera and Exupery are the voices I heard in the not quite sleeping hours of the early mornings in my adolescence. A professor told me I had a good literary background when we were discussing Milan Kundera and metafiction, but she didn’t understand that I wasn’t going out of my way at all. It would have been impossible to avoid those whisperings, that semantic susurrus. I feel as if I have never come to anything of my own volition; it’s like changing your point of reference, deceiving yourself that the sidewalk is moving and you are stationary just by shifting perspective. I am perpetually being catapulted towards something, in spite of myself, as an observer. And the great thinkers continue to speak to me despite my will.

Directionless, yes.

I.
I am* walking through my ninth floor window across the city, down to Elliot Bay. I have not become particularly large but the skyscrapers become stepping-stones. I have learned & acknowledged that reality is subjective and I can defy physics.

When I finally make it down to the pier, I look back and the city has flooded. The tide came in so, so far today. The hills of Seattle are islands and people are using boats on (or, technically, above) the same thoroughfares usually backed up by the poorly managed automobile traffic. The crew team at my university has begun to run a taxi service in the off-season so they can stay in shape while earning a little coin. “Where to ma’am?” A customer tells them someplace. “Alright team, now row!”

The city is like some living tribute to Al Gore, global warming and melted ice caps.

Scuba gear has increased in popularity because some things, places in the city, are no longer accessible without it. There used to be an imported spice store bellow Pikes Place that is now flooded. Teams of merchant divers go down to bring back the glass jars and I am floating somewhere nearby, watching them. The tight seal of the mason jars has saved all the expensive seasonings.

“Sea saffron,” I say as one of the divers brings up a jar of the red thread spice.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I reply and take a floating, half-empty jar of nutmeg.

I need a camera to my eye.

I have been looking for so long through my expensive new eye. My cyclops sees in wide angle, in vivid color, and it is sometimes too lazy to use manual focus.

And I love looking at the world, but I have been looking for what feels like so long. My eyes are tired, my camera battery is at 30% power.

“I will photograph this view,” a friend said on Saturday, “and remember it forever: the night we laid in the grass.” There were cherry blossoms suspended above us and none of us had been inhabitants of this town long enough to know if they were late or not. It was (and continues to be) the beginning of May.

The shutter snap was a hollow sound, but not near as hollow as her sigh; it immediately confirmed that the image did no justice to the actual. That is my constant battle in both photography and writing. I have an incessant need to show people the actual through reproductions.

This was Saturday’s view: The blossoms were just barely tinted pink on the slender tree in the island in the center of the road. There was a man in the tree, the second cyclops, looking down on us with a slightly narrower view than my own. The air smelled like grass, asphalt, gnats flying into our mouths, ears and noses. Had I been in a lyric quoting mood, the words of choice would have been, “I want your flowers like babies want God’s love.”*

It was so far beyond “golden hour” by that time all of our photos were either noisy or underexposed so we removed the last thing separating us from the moment, to deal with each other and the swarming mosquitoes.

We all went back to my room and watched a movie. It was dark, I was tired. I stopped seeing the movie and only heard the actors speak, heard my friends’ reactions. I put the lens cap on, succumbed to night blindness.

And I know, if I had to choose, I would choose blindness over deafness.

Thursday

Today looks like:

A friend, studying in my dorm.

Tomorrow will look like a young woman, me, standing on a train platform, a curb, sleeping on a futon elsewhere.