Tag Archives: writing

Oct 11 2012
15 Comments
Humorous, Two minute read, Writing

The Elastic Minutes

Get it? It’s a toast clock.

Now, here I am, in a place I didn’t expect to be for longer than a couple of minutes. It doesn’t matter where it is. It could be the bathroom, it could be the doctor’s office, it could be a shark tank or a church or on the side of the road waiting for the N to come so I can get on and sleep and mouth breathe on everyone around me.

Sometimes I think most of my life is spent in these places, when dinner goes too long or a class didn’t get out on time, because it’s these times that stretch the most. These are the elastic times, when you could swear on a number of things, both holy and unholy, that more than a minute has gone by but alas the damned clock speaks to a different reality and the fish in the aquarium are pecking feverishly at the plants just like they were a minute ago.

These are the extra minutes that no one wants. Everyone wishes for more time, but what if somehow the request was granted but instead we spent another sixty minutes waiting in lines in a 25-hour day?

Maybe what we do with these nothing minutes is important, because if we ever got past feeling like they were unbearable we could write a song, or think of a way to make a loved one feel appreciated, or give Suzie a call. Who’s Suzie anyways? These are all things we could find out.

If you really want to go for it, talk to a stranger in line and see how uncomfortable that makes you and everyone. At the very least, you’ll have a great story. At the most, you’ll have an interesting conversation and maybe a couple extra bucks in your pocket if you decide to go for coffee afterwards and the other person pays for some reason. This is all theoretical, so don’t blame me if this doesn’t happen and all you get are scared stares.

I’m just the messenger. Waiting time is time, so we should use it. I should use it. And especially Suzie should use it.

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Oct 08 2012
11 Comments
Serious-ish, Travelling, Writing

Oh Travel, Why Are You So Magical?

A carnival around the bend? Only one way to find out.

It’s the feeling of being between two places, a temporary state, what an ice cube feels right before it becomes liquid, where nothing I do is real and when I walk into a gas station and I know I’m on a different plane than those around me, moving in between them and above and below them but not with them, and the candy bars even taste different when I’m traveling. Tomorrow I’ll be gone, but Mr. Gorman will still be here, restocking the Snickers.

I get on a bus and go somewhere I didn’t intend to be, somewhere no one knows or expects me. I’m disrupting the time-space continuum. My body in this place wasn’t supposed to happen, but here I am. Maybe my past self, one time when I was going through the laundry room in Oklahoma, made a decision to go to Target that day and that made all the difference, so now here I am, in the present, and I’m in a city I’ve never heard of, just wandering the streets and thinking that life here is much more interesting than it actually is, feeling the world is very fragile and that gravity is the only thing holding me down.

The most exciting time of travel is on the train, when I’m not anywhere at all. I’m not in point A. I’m not in point B. I’m drinking a coffee and I am option C. This is like time that was carved out of the real world, sealed up and made into railroad cars, and in this moment I can do nothing besides travel. As the world flies by my window, maybe I’ll daydream about point B or reminisce over point A or read that book I’ve been lugging around with me. Maybe I’ll draw.

I can’t draw. I’m awful at it. The only things I can make are psychedelic doodles with rigid aesthetic rules that I don’t fully understand, so maybe I’ll do that for a while and it doesn’t matter because I don’t exist right now. My computer’s off. My phone doesn’t work in this country. My friends are on my left and my right and in front of me, so maybe the whole world is right here.

At this moment, here in the train, anything is possible. It is the moment of greatest potential. When we reach point B, we could meet a roving band of musicians, or a documentary film maker, or a group of college students who like to dress up in 80’s clothes and go out dancing on Monday nights. We might sit in a café and pay too much for coffee and remark on how fashion is or isn’t different here, and how fanny packs (bumbags) really should (or shouldn’t) come back. We might see an opera, if it’s free, or start up a conversation with a mustachioed gentleman.

Everything will happen and we’ll see fireworks and run along the canals and laugh in the sun and shade and generally agree that life has never been better.

From the train, Point B seems like paradise and ultimate freedom, which are the same.

The train makes this world possible. The in-between gives finite points meaning. Stopping makes traveling worthwhile, but the transience makes it magical.

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Oct 04 2012
6 Comments
Anecdotes, Humorous, Open Letters

Dear High School Crush

Not our actual high school. No romance was here.

I hope you’re doing well. We haven’t talked in a couple of years, except for that random facebook message you sent me semi-recently which I responded to coldly just to let you know that whatever kind of crazy non-romance we had between us is definitely over. Thanks for the chance to reminisce.

We could have ruled the school, you and I, you with your skinny arms and me with my daring sweatshirt/dangly earring combo. I thought the two went together because the white bangles in my earrings matched the white letters on my sweatshirt. Years later, part of me still wants to believe that they do.

A couple of months before we parted forever, we had a little spat regarding a certain writing instrument. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the details. As a result of this disagreement, I believe I posted an angry message on your wall, which you deleted.

In return, I erased all of the facebook messages you had sent me in which you asked for advice in another romantic relationship. I’m not sure this had the desired effect on you that I wished it to, but it does keep me from reminiscing too deeply and rereading all of them. Perhaps I should be thankful.

On that recent trip down memory lane, however, I saw that I had called one of the teachers at our school a “skanky ho betch” in the last message I sent you. For that, I’m truly sorry. I assure you that I have grown personally and that my derisive names are much more sophisticated now, dummy.

For a while after graduation I would stalk you on facebook. And then one time we ran into each other at the University of Oklahoma’s freshman orientation, when I was visiting a real friend. That was the last time I talked to you, besides the facebook message. You didn’t confess your like for me then, and I’ll admit I was disappointed.

You and I both know what happened between us, the tale of unspoken like, how I would look forward to my classes with you, how I practiced your signature and watched for you at your car. Okay, maybe you didn’t know, and that’s probably for the best. At any rate, I wish you all good things in life, and I’m doing just fine myself. I only cried three times in the last week, stress-ate 6 bowls of ice cream, and compulsively cleaned once. And I read a book.

We’re both going to make it, I hope. Maybe we could even be friends. That is, if you’re as cool as you were as a junior in high school.

Best,

Emily

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Oct 02 2012
5 Comments
San Francisco, Travelling, Two minute read

Why Bluegrass Night is Unlike Other Nights

A real picture taken by a real person (nokapixel on flikr) of bluegrass night at Amnesia in the Mission

It’s a Monday night in San Francisco and about one month ago I ironed patches onto my skinny jeans to stave away the quite serious hole progression in the upper thigh area. The patches are not the same color as my jeans and they are huge. Are they a fashion statement? Are they hideous? It doesn’t matter. I can sit cross-cross-apple-sauce in them without exposing myself, and it’s bluegrass night and my boots are on.

For me, bluegrass night is also improv lesson night, and while we play games and learn to forget our inhibitions, my boots have a mind of their own, stompin’ and gearin’ up for the pluckin’ and strummin’ of the folksy tunes we’re about to hear. Somehow, improv and bluegrass go together quite well, based as they both are in community and doing something for the love of the game.

And bluegrass night is unlike the other nights of the week, no matter how special they are. Other evenings don’t hold the same perspiration-scented twang that homespun bluegrass tunes carry, or the madness inherent in the wild twitches of the banjo player’s hand. Other nights have 20% less stomping, 38% less twirling, and 72% less “yips” and exclamations of yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-haw.

It’s a very present call to the past, an invocation of a time that may not have existed, a rootin’ tootin’ shindig.

At Amnesia, the bar that feels like the hull of a forgotten ship, which has an octopus in the corner and a selection of Belgian beers on tap and in the bottle, bluegrass draws them in. Some don’t understand what’s going on, don’t quite get the spirit or understand how to stomp and clap at the same time and which foot and which hands to use. Some are caught up in the stereotype. But the energy is contagious, the mixture of nostalgia and booze, the fire-spirited fiddle and plum-drum bass brewing the night’s mood.

Sway a little to the beat, pick up your feet and set them down, in rhythm. Don’t be afraid to believe in the myth, in the fields and the honky tonk and the sweet smell of hay and betrayed love. Because it’s bluegrass night, where the music is too good for pretention. It’s only simple if you let it be.

Grab a Maredsous, pick a partner and do-si-do, if you dare, or at least stand a little closer to the stage. Biting is for afterwards.

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Sep 26 2012
6 Comments
Modern Life, San Francisco, Serious-ish

And You Wonder What’ll Happen to You

Got one!

Every day begins the same. The curtains open onto the morning. Waking up. Either too early or too late, the last dreamy wisps evaporating, leaving only vague recollections of my father, Colorado, and a buffet. The hot water boiler takes the same amount of time, with its impossible churning and final beep beep beep “I’m done.”

One cup of hand-brewed coffee, because Folger’s isn’t ground for the French press, and it’s either Folger’s or Ralph’s coffee crystals, which look like brown glitter and taste like a nightmare, so the Folger’s is in my cup, and yes, it’s a pretty damned good part about waking up.

And then I’m at the computer, my morning, evening, and afternoon friend, my whirring, over-heating, crashing buddy, my decrepit warehouse. My morning deletion of emails is followed by the usual wondering what to read, the nagging feeling that something better is always out there, and that my time would probably be best spent reading articles all day and learning about the world since it’s so easy to have it shrink to the size of my personal experience.

I read an article and in the back of my mind I want to be looking for jobs instead, jobs that will bring me into new social circles, to new realms of pay, to continued lack or blessed presence of health benefits, to 9-5, to an office with catered food or an office where I’ll be bringing my PB&J or something else entirely.

And then it’s Halloween again, and I’m wondering what I want to be today. What is the perfect intersection of my dreams, my skills, and the realities of living what with the mounting cost of soft serve ice cream? What is the worth of each corner of the triangle—are dreams less valuable than reality even though I think I was told I could be anything I wanted to be?

The game is different than I thought it would be. I’m not sure of the rules, how it’s won, and who’s on my team. Making a difference seems secondary to making a living.

And you wonder what’ll happen to you, when the things you thought you believed in don’t affect your actions, when there are so many opportunities for you to become either someone you wanted to be or something you never thought you would be.

It’s easy for these things to change based on your neighborhood.

Maybe I’ll go hunt unicorns in ancient Redwood forest groves, but not to capture them. I just want to speak with them, and find out how they’ve managed to stay who they are for so long.

Then I’ll trap them, and start a circus about following your dreams.

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