Friday, September 21, 2012

Brownstones, by Gwen Glazer


The party to which you are not invited is the best party, in an apartment on the top floor of the brownstone in the middle of the block.

And brownstones are the best stones, reflecting the late-afternoon fall sun but radiating it too, lit from within, by globes of light suspended from the ceiling of that apartment on the top floor, by the bread baking in that apartment’s tiny oven —

No, not bread but appetizers, tiny round quiches and pigs in blankets —

No, not little hot dogs, something fancier, this is a very fancy party, with fig spread imported from Spain and expensive bleu cheese crumbles wrapped in phyllo, which a woman spent all afternoon assembling, back when the light was a little sharper, more clear sun and less honey butter.

The woman wore a half-apron, tied at her waist, that she’d never worn before. She scored each paper-thin sheet of dough before she cut, to make the most perfect triangles. She didn’t taste any of the figs, not one, but she knew they were the sweetest.

The party to which you are not invited will start early and end late, with eight people who don’t notice the light as it goes from honey butter to thick syrup, from syrup to sunset, from sunset to smudged ink that never gets truly dark because of the streetlights. Only the woman, who has long since exchanged her apron for pointed heels and a rustling skirt and a scarf striped with gold, will notice the light and flick the switch on the wall, chasing the shadows back to their corners.

The party to which you are not invited, although it was the best party, will end on an uncomfortable note when, after a fifth or sixth or ninth glass of wine, who knows, no one is counting because there will be taxis on the street waiting after the best party is over —

Anyway, after quite a bit of good red wine, the second chair bassoonist in the New York Philharmonic will ask another guest, the attractive mother of an up-and-coming young writer, if she would like to sit in his lap.

When she declines, casting a glance across the room at her husband of 25 years, he will pull her down on his knee anyway, and she will struggle a bit but quite like the attention, actually, the feeling of someone unfamiliar and rough after all this time, and the bassoonist will gloat privately, and the woman’s husband will act annoyed but secretly not mind much  —

After all, she’s read that “50 Shades” book and she can take care of herself, she’s always made that perfectly clear —

But the hostess, who by now is longing to take off her heels, will look several steps down the road where this is headed and think, that’s about enough of this, and cast them all out into the street and toward the taxis before any of it can ever happen.

All of them, the stars of their own shows, their own private and public performances, their own lives.

You, you too —

You are your own star, your own leading act, and by the end of the party to which you are not invited, you will be far away from this apartment on the top floor of the brownstone in the middle of the block.

You will be alone with your little black dog somewhere else, inside, your yellow coat hanging on a hook on the door, your green cap tucked away in its pocket.

You will have already read your newspaper.

Your feet will be tired and the party forgotten, or maybe the party never happened, or maybe it wasn’t the best one after all.





The inspiration for this piece came from two sources: the title of a poem by Stephen Dunn, "The Party to Which You Are Not Invited," which appeared in the August 13, 2012 issue of The New Yorker magazine, and a cover illustration for the March 6, 1971 issue, by Charles Saxon, showing a man in a yellow coat and green hat, walking his black dog down a street lined with brownstones.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

I Remember: Under 20 (a collective list)


Welcome to the latest CommunityWrite Project, with more than 70 people — children, teens, men and women — contributing their early memories to this word collage. You will probably find statements here that you identify with, as well as some that are very different from your own life experiences. Perhaps you'll be inspired to write your own list of memories from the years before you were 20.

I remember walking down the stairs next to our Christmas tree, reaching out for the little glass violin ornament and taking a big bite out of it.
I remember kindergarten clothes: my brown plaid dress with its white pique collar and my mustard yellow wool winter coat with the matching leggings.
I remember buying my first pale green Esterbrook fountain pen at Rice's Stationery Store for fourth grade spelling tests.
I remember those thrilling Woolworth's hobby kits — paint-by- number horses, wood burning sets, and genuine do-it-yourself Indian bead rings.
I remember racing around the roller skating rink really fast when I was 10, moving to live organ music played just for us.
I remember pedaling my toy car around the block and then driving into the garage of our home to refill the gas tank. 
I remember racing to the top of the rope in the school gym, touching the ceiling before anyone else.
I remember winning a tiny, fuzzy yellow chick when the ping-pong ball I tossed landed right in the bottle at the school carnival.
I remember racing home after school, pulling off my dress along the way, so I could get into my beloved jeans.
I remember taking Myrtle, my little turtle, to school for show and tell.
I remember someone asked me "what do you want to be when you grow up," and I replied, with all sincerity, "a dog."
I remember sitting in my closet talking to all my stuffed animals, telling them how I loved them more than humans.
I remember learning to roller skate down the concrete aisle of our dairy barn, with cows on either side of me, their tails swishing. 
I remember walking through the graveyard where many of my mother's family were buried, and listening as she told stories that made them each come alive again.
I remember dancing in a barn, with wide doors open front and back so that the fragrance of the surrounding fields blew through and created a wonderfully romantic setting.
I remember getting my purse stuck between the subway doors on my way to a job interview. 
I remember catching my cat, Pancha, sneaking into the open refrigerator to steal a piece of fish.
I remember the incessant sounds of the iron lungs breathing for the patients next to me in the polio ward.
I remember trying to convince a friend that my doll was growing real hair after I took some of my own hair and pasted it on the doll's head.
I remember learning how to write cursive letters, using a ruler to make them neat.
I remember sitting in a neighbor's storm cellar, among spider webs and old canned goods, listening to weather reports on a transistor radio.
I remember running away from home for a couple hours with a change of clothes in a brown paper sack, only to be joined by my neighbor who told me she wanted to run away, too.
I remember watching the clouds and identifying what animal they resembled.
I remember riding on the bus, wishing I was big enough for my feet to touch the floor.
I remember when I wore a size 13 shoe and realized I was getting to be a big girl.
I remember when my cat gave birth to a litter of five, and later having to say goodbye to four of the kittens.
I remember making an "ultimate hopscotch" course with my friends, using brand new symbols and motions that would take over five minutes to complete.
I remember finger painting castles and flowers and portraits of my family until the newspaper covering the table was rainbow-colored with paint.
I remember sitting in a circle in kindergarten, singing with all my might about the cow that jumped over the moon.
I remember air raid drills and blackout shades and my father patrolling the neighborhood to make sure all the lights were out.
I remember a hurricane blowing down a tree whose trunk became my bridge to a leafy canopy.
I remember saddle shoes and poodle skirts, and laughing with friends because we were all dressed alike.
I remember ice cream sundaes made out of sand.
I remember the smell of paints and glue, and the stiff colored paper on which we all drew.
I remember trees with leaves bigger than my head.
I remember collecting every sea shell I found, no matter how broken or shattered.
I remember worrying about cracks in the paint on the wall and mold on the ceiling.
I remember swallowing a wasp.
I remember finding a skunk in the driveway and seeing a rat in the toilet.
I remember long summer days, standing for hours in an open field
tossing a baseball in the air, dreaming I was the greatest outfielder in the world.
I remember playing hooky from preschool and sitting behind the wheel of a car while my desperate parents hunted for me.
I remember the Sunday when my grandma couldn't find her pew after communion and I went up and took her hand.
I remember imagining that the stars were hanging from the trees, outside our front porch, on a hot summer evening.
I remember attending the funeral for my sister's praying mantis, Pal, who was laid out in an auspicious shoebox.
I remember pretending to fall asleep on the couch just to feel my father's strong arms carry me up the creaky stairs to bed.
I remember being offered a Boy Scout magazine after a bad haircut.
I remember kissing my imaginary boyfriend once by a wall of mirrors, and again behind a ponderosa pine.
I remember thinking that when wolves howled, they howled for me.
I remember admiring my reflection in a framed photograph of the Horsehead Nebula.
I remember going to the Father/Daughter Girl Scout Dance with Daddy and Papa and wearing a beautiful pink paisley floral dress that was woven from paper.
I remember when my kindergarten teacher discovered that I already knew how to write the number seven.
I remember my older brother convincing me that I had a twin sister living with a great-aunt in Canada, by showing me a photograph of myself taken when I was too young to remember.
I remember the benevolent gaze of my camp counselor treading water, encouraging me to jump into the deep end for the first time.
I remember getting to school early, waiting by the back entrance with the janitor, who quizzed us on the names of the state capitols.
I remember when we held a mock Presidential election and I was one of 6 children in the entire school to vote for Adlai Stevenson.
I remember being sent home from sixth grade for refusing to remove my Brooklyn Dodgers hat when they were playing in the World Series.
I remember that my elementary school principal had wavy white hair and a stiff tall bearing, so to me she looked exactly like the portrait of George Washington that loomed over her desk.
I remember finally being able to ride a bike without training wheels. 
I remember being very excited when I wrote my name for the first time.
I remember playing store with my best friend for weeks after Halloween, laying out all the candy on my bed and deciding that bright pennies were worth more than dull ones.
I remember the way I always wanted to stay up longer, just a little later, just five more minutes, just one more.
I remember my mom driving us home from the pool and sitting with no seatbelt in the back of the station wagon, and how she'd take the back way past the cornfield to hit one perfect bump at full speed so that it felt like a roller coaster.
I remember my junior high locker and exactly where it was, but not the combination.
I remember hating hide and seek because I was scared that people would truly disappear and never be found, or that I would.
I remember feeling panicked about the future a lot of the time, and not wanting it to come.
I remember I learned to read with Dick and Jane but never held it against them, just moved on and on and on to the world of reading.
I remember frustration with a recipe that said "cream the ingredients" when I didn't know "cream" as a verb and couldn't find cream in the ingredients list.
I remember watching Fourth of July fireworks from the desert because we were stuck to the axles in sand and couldn't get to town that night.
I remember Dad driving us to the library every Friday night for movies (travel and wildlife documentaries) and returning home with 10 books — almost enough to see me through until the next Friday night.
I remember building towns and excavating roads and tunnels in the dirt beneath the apricot trees.
I remember the pond near my house being two and a half feet shallower than usual, and smelling like rotting fish guts.
I remember going to my first gay bar in Manhattan and seeing policemen sitting by the door taking down names as men entered the room.
I remember going on the Parachute Jump at Coney Island with a friend and thinking "we're both going to die."
I remember that I knew all the shortcuts to school, some taking me right through private back yards.
I remember that I was always a star gazer; not the heavenly kind, but the Hollywood kind.
I remember walking up the hill from school with the cows, probably peaceful, chomping grass on one side and my mother, probably angry or sad, waiting for me in the house across the road.
I remember trying my ballet steps in the school courtyard at recess, and this was called showing off.
I remember wondering if my mom was the only person ever to eat green apples with salt.
I remember dancing like the kids on American Bandstand, in my grandmother's living room.
I remember the solid brick two-room schoolhouse, where I spent first through fourth grades —  the cloakroom and the coal stove and the cupboard where we kept our lunch boxes.
I remember decorating duck eggs and making them into hinged, 
velvet-lined boxes.
I remember the quiet in the halls of junior high when classes were passing from room to room — no talking allowed.
I remember sleeping under the dining room table which had a steel top, with a parent on either side, in London during the blitz.
I remember getting to school each day, looking to see which children had not taken the chairs off their desks, and wondering if they had been bombed that night.
I remember the day I went to elementary school on the public bus, and the conductor refused to take my pennies, saying, "The war is over!"
I remember worrying that if my mother had married someone other than my father, and if my father had married someone other than my mother, then the two halves of me would be lost to each other, but I decided this thought was too difficult to dwell on.
I remember sitting at my mother's dressing table and trying to hold a green-enameled hand mirror facing exactly parallel into the big mirror so I could see into infinity, but my hand was not steady enough, so infinity remained, quite literally, out of my grasp.
I remember my embarrassment after I told a friend that I had my hair cut at a beauty saloon and she laughed at me.
I remember overhearing my great-uncle telling my grandmother, in Yiddish, that I wasn't pretty.
I remember the sad mystery of our rabbits disappearing from the hutch in the backyard.
I remember thinking I was turning 6 when I was actually turning 4.
I remember how I would name everything: socks, beanie babies, and dresser knobs.
I remember thinking that clouds could move by themselves.
I remember feeling like the supreme ruler of the universe when I finally learned how to draw five pointed stars.
I remember being lost on the seaside pier at Weston-Super-Mare, Gloucestershire.
I remember a wave knocking me over and filling my mouth with sand, at Torquay in Devon.
I remember curtseying to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mum) at the Sherborne Boys' School 400th anniversary, in Sherborne, Dorset.
I remember standing in the yellow dust of the ancient Olympian stadium, in Greece, and I remember Venice at sunset — green flash over the Adriatic.
I remember completely and utterly believing that I could fly.
I remember when I was sixteen, praying monthly for a sign of menstrual blood, desperately bargaining with God that if I could please have my period I would never ever do it again.
I remember watching "one giant step for mankind" on a color TV.
I remember saving my allowance until I had enough money to go to the store so I could buy a jar of green olives.
I remember how the wind on the prairie was my lullaby.
I remember always being on the outside, waiting to be noticed.
I remember my first love and my heart breaking.
I remember dressing my cat in a crown and cape and dubbing him my king and sovereign.
I remember picking the most homely moth that had come to the purple light on the screened porch at my uncle's house and throwing it up to the bats — they never missed.
I remember the one moment in my young life when I felt beautiful.
I remember being taller than most of the boys and being a very good dancer without a partner.
I remember turning around in my black wicker stroller and watching the lines in the sidewalk go by.
I remember running, just for the sake of running.
I remember a purple, red, hunter green and white plaid cotton dress with a starched white collar that I wore on the first day of school.
I remember starting third grade and feeling so grown up because our desks had inkwells, and we got to use them.
I remember listening to The Lone Ranger on the radio, curled up next to the fabric of the large radio's speaker.
I remember how the procession of sugar maples lining the school's lane glowed like a string of lanterns in the fall sun.
I remember feeling totally indignant about mandated naps in kindergarten; that was baby stuff.
I remember the grabby sticky feeling of grasshopper feet on my skin.
I remember my mom in her fringed leather jacket, and riding with my dad on his motorcycle.
I remember cutting my hair with manicure scissors, a huge triumph because my mother was distraught, but feeling deflated when my sister laughed hysterically.
I remember learning to tie my shoes.
I remember a windstorm so strong that it pushed me off the sidewalk.
I remember learning, forgetting, and re-learning the correct way to pronounce the word "vehement."
I remember when it snowed so hard my legs hurt from walking through snow drifts.
I remember telling my friend that if she was thirsty she could drink her spit.
I remember getting my face painted as a horse and being upset when I saw myself in the mirror.
I remember the Goodyear Blimp silently floating over our pasture, so low that it nearly touched the treetops.
I remember when I was 10, and wore my favorite dark red corduroy pants and jacket, I felt that I was big enough to do anything.
I remember my mother changing from her slacks and blouse to a dress just before my father was due to come home from his job.
I remember learning how to jump in, while two girls turned the rope.
I remember loving school supplies.
I remember untying the tie on my Brownie uniform and needing help to tie it again.
I remember losing my flip flops in a stream somewhere.
I remember being so shy, I felt like I'd choke on my words in front of the class even though I knew I knew the answer.
I remember my first kiss, and numb lips, and wondering was that all there was?
I remember how all we could do was giggle and then be silent, just staring into each others eyes.
I remember when we were a family.   
I remember my special airplane blanky that would never ever leave my sight, even on school camping trips.   
I remember accidentally opening the door when I should have knocked.   
I remember my first job: swatting flies, 5 cents per fly, paid by mother whose country kitchen had a fair share.
I remember thinking I was making a cool ironic statement by wearing black on my 16th birthday.
I remember waking up on my fifth birthday and seeing, next to my bed, the shiny white doll carriage my uncle gave me.
I remember learning to swim, wearing a harness attached to a long pole near the dock, not knowing when the instructor would let go.
I remember feeding my kid sister in her high chair, and opening my own mouth each time I brought the spoon to her mouth.
I remember having chicken pox and not being able to go to the first day of first grade.
I remember my father losing his job teaching math because he was a communist and I wondered what was communist math.
I remember reading my first racy novel, which my mom gave me because it was about manatees.
I remember being afraid to ask for a library card, and worrying that if I got any quieter I'd lose my voice for good.
I remember my best friend saying her knobby toes were ugly, and being shocked because I thought all feet were beautiful.
I remember learning to quilt in the high school library, while the other kids stared at me like I was growing a second head.
I remember falling in love with Chuck Close's paintings at the Museum of Modern Art when I was seventeen, and my life was never the same again.
I remember feeling so lucky the time my father took me smelting with him and I got to wear his waders, which came up to my neck.  
I remember wishing I were "normal."
I remember that I hated being short.
I remember how much I hated it every time my mother asked "where's your modesty, young lady."
I remember changing my bedroom furniture around every Sunday as I listened to Casey Kasem's Top 40 countdown on the radio.
I remember getting up at 8 a.m. to watch cartoons for the entire morning, every single Saturday.
I remember kneeling in the dirt, digging up roots, and getting a weeding fork in the eye.
I remember that on the first day of kindergarten I sat down and started coloring, not knowing I had taken some other kid's seat.
I remember my father reading A Midsummer Night's Dream to me when I was three, and I wondered what part of the backyard the fairies were in.
I remember being grateful I had a brother in high school with me even if he wouldn't say hi in the halls.  
I remember leaving for college, feeling like I was heading off to a new planet and I'd never be able to find my way back home.  
I remember my brother making my little sisters and me toss pennies, and keep track of how many heads or tails came up, as part of his ESP experiments. 
I remember the rose bush and my mother cutting roses while I held my arms out to receive them, until I saw a spider and my arms flew up, scattering roses all over the ground.
I remember hitchhiking home in Central Park, catching a ride with a horse and carriage.
I remember wearing my grandfather's old ties as a fashion statement of sorts.
I remember my father getting his driver's license when I was twelve, and never feeling safe when he was behind the wheel.
I remember how embarrassing it was to discover that people in the neighborhood called my beloved aunt "the crazy cat lady."
I remember thinking "I can't wait until I grow up so I can be happy."
I remember my pixie haircut which I hated, and my doll, Marie, whose hair could be curled; my hair could not be curled.
I remember getting a cherry dip-top ice cream cone every time we stopped at the ice cream stand on the way to Grandma's house.
I remember every summer trying to be brave enough to climb to the top of our farm's silo.
I remember picking berries on my grandparents' farm, hoping to earn enough money to buy a new doll.
I remember being told by my 7th grade history teacher that there are only true facts, not false facts.
I remember galloping over hot sands, immersed in blues above, salt covered, swimming, splashing, dissolving in turquoise — a two legged on a four legged.
I remember hearing the sweet coos of the Mourning Doves as I walked home from school, grateful to be out of that hole and on my own at last.
I remember the algal bloom in Lake Ontario that transformed me into the Great Green Sea Monster.
I remember "sweet sixteen and never been kissed" as an impending deadline I desperately wanted to contradict.
I remember lying on my bed crying, without knowing why.
I remember the bag of apples my parents gave me when they left me at college for the first time.
I remember my father often saying "Let's look that up," and I would run to our encyclopedia set that was missing the C volume.
I remember dancing the watusi, the twist, the monkey and the swim.
I remember my Tiny Tears doll, walking my slinky down the hall stairs, shooting marbles, playing with mercury from a broken thermometer, jumping rope, playing with my cut-out-dolls, and winning a hula hoop contest.
I remember when my older sister told me how babies were made and I couldn't believe my parents did that.
I remember when I was three, and my older sister was in school and my younger sisters had not been born, my mother, perhaps out of desperation of what to do with me, took me to the public library.
I remember wearing my blue cotton gym suit with the buttons up the front and the bloomer pants and wondering why this torture was necessary just to play kickball.
I remember getting our first television when I was 10 and thrilling to Kukla, Fran and Ollie and Captain Video, in fuzzy black and white on the small screen.
I remember dropping a cantaloupe out of the window of my grandparents' 18th floor apartment.
I remember family feasts under the grape arbor in my grandparents' garden.
I remember when I was young and wanted a snack before dinner, my mom would say, "go climb a tree" — there were mangos, genips, tamarinds, coconuts, papayas in our yard for the picking.
I remember wearing the same Halloween costume for years, a black leotard and black tights; I was a raisin.
I remember when everyone had to choose which Beatle they liked best, and I felt sorry for Ringo because no one ever picked him, but I didn't either, I liked George.
I remember a sleep-over party at my house when all the girls pierced each other's ears, using a semi-sterilized needle and lots of ice cubes.
I remember trying out half a dozen nicknames the summer I was twelve, but none of them stuck.
I remember my grandmother reading tea leaves for the neighbors at the kitchen table.
I remember lying about my age to get into a bar, but then only drinking ginger ale.
I remember liking the sound of pennies getting sucked up by the vacuum cleaner.
I remember washing my hair in the lake because a friend told me that would make it turn curly.
I remember thinking that three-leaf clovers were the lucky ones.
I remember the exact moment when I decided to be a promiscuous prude, on October 14, 1968.
I remember when a fly landed on my face and I thought it was going to eat me.
I remember when I was four years old and my father said it was time for me to start learning Chinese calligraphy.
I remember a field of flowers in China that looked like the sea.
I remember making little nests of straw and grass, filling them with rocks, setting them on the front steps of our house, and hoping that a bird would come and live there.  



With gratitude to all the contributors:

Peggy Adams
Mara Alper
Robyn Bem
Carol Bossard
Kay Marie Bowers
Lourdes Brache
Martha K. Brewster
Edna S. Brown
Sherron Brown
Seraphina Buckholtz
Karina Burbank
Janie Carasik
HL Carpenter
Barbara Cartwright
Amanda Coate
Alana Craib
Charles DeMotte
Jane Edwards
Gabrielle Evans
Rita Feinstein
Joyce Frank 
Rachel-Elizabeth Frank
Will Fudeman
Nancy Gabriel
Caroline Gates-Lupton
Gwen Glazer
Maggie Goldsmith
Sue Heavenrich
Sophia Hiller
David Hirsch
Gay Huddle
Jayalalita
Linda Keeler
Noemi Kraut
Susan Lesser
Eve Levinson
Pat Longoria 
Yiwei Luo
Antonia Matthew
Perri McGowan
Ginny Miller
Peggy Miller
Sylvia Miller
Sue Norvell
Karryn Olson-Ramanujan
Rose Pinnisi
Ana Malina Ramanujan
Ruth Raymond
Maude Rith
Mihal Ronen
Julia Grace Brewster Rosoff
Jessica Ryan
Sue Schwartz
Rachel J. Siegel
Greta Singer
Maryam Steele  
Janet Steiner
Diane Sullivan
Werner Sun
Lottie Sweeney
Lynne Taetzsch
Claudia Tracy
Roxanne VanWormer
Gabrielle Vehar
Joan Victoria
Nikki Wall
Martha Blue Waters
Quina Weber-Shirk
Amy Weinsoff
Deborah Wells-Clinton
Barbara West
Annie Wexler
Jhenna Wylde
Sharon Yntema
Zee Zahava
Tian Yi Zheng
Yue Qin Zhu
Annemarie Zwack

Friday, September 14, 2012

The Mice and I, by Rita Feinstein


I suppose dark things were destined to happen in the northwestern-most corner of the northwestern-most room. Though painted a springy shade of “frolic,” my living quarters were more of a dying quarters — for the bees and moths encrusting my windowsill, anyway. I spent so little time in my insect necropolis that I didn’t notice my surviving residents until I found their plunder in my bookshelf.  
Somehow, though, I wasn’t surprised when I pulled my purple binder off the shelf and a torrent of dog food poured into my lap. I’d been hearing claw-tipped footsteps inside the walls for weeks, and now I understood where they were skittering with such determination. I enjoyed their company, enjoyed knowing they were smarter than my dad’s glue traps, enjoyed imagining cartoon pawprints stamping their way from the slatted pine ceiling to the buckling flagstone floor and through the ever-expanding crack in the northwest corner of my room.
At first, I kept the crack a secret. I was delighted to learn that our house had no foundation and my room was slowly sliding downhill. I kept an eager eye on the adjacent corner, but it never even developed a hairline crack, just a large stash of kibble.
All the same, I never stopped hoping that my room would burst its drywall seams and skid through rivers of rocky red mud on its full-throttle voyage to anywhere but here. At seventeen, I still refused to let go of the distant kingdom where I, the lost dragon princess, would someday reclaim my throne. It was not just around the riverbend. It was not somewhere over the rainbow. It was somewhere that could only be reached by a severed bedroom with lots of downhill momentum.
My bedroom wasn’t even a bedroom. It was too small for a bed. It was, come to think of it, only slightly longer and deeper than a sarcophagus.
My room was a museum of dark whimsy, a marble cake of my bleakest and brightest moments. If it happened to grind to a halt in the neighboring Baptist Center, the good, God-fearing Christians would be aghast to see that spiders had died in the webs they’d woven around my painting of naked angels. They’d be alarmed by the papier-mâché replica of The Tower tarot card hanging beneath my shelf of “cowie banks.” If they glanced at my bookshelves and saw my Bunny Suicides collection next to My Little Pony Round and Round, they’d be too upset to pray. 
Wherever I washed up, I’d take the mice with me. They’d worked so hard collecting corn-and-wheat-free dog food, they deserved to munch their spoils while my room bobbed downriver into the Pecos wilderness. They’d have to respect my space, though. This was no luxury liner. And they’d have to respect my stuff. Stuffed animals, that is. I’d never had much luck with human friends, but at least I had Sick Puppy, Baby Earmuff, Princess Louie, Madame Claire, General Collie, and various bunnies and ponies named Pink Rose.
I was good with animals. I knew we’d get along, the mice and I. Unless, of course, my dad tromped in with his caulking gun and my mom swept in with her broom until nothing remained of my dreams but a puffy white scar in the corner and a lone chicken-flavored pellet that had avoided the dustpan.  



Thursday, September 13, 2012

Blue Room, by Peggy Adams


Streamlined.  Uncluttered.  Spare.  Soothing.  My blue bedroom seems empty, though it’s not — it’s a matter of comparison.  In any of my four graduate school bedrooms, I had to push stacks of books aside to get into bed.  I didn’t climb into bed as I do now — I fell over onto the single mattress on the floor, where I read, and then slept with Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, Virginia Woolf, or Ralph Waldo Emerson.
My book-filled room was festooned with clothes that never made it to the closet, but formed layers on the back of my desk chair.  My last grad school bedroom had a big closet, but instead of hanging up my clothes, I tacked up on the long wall all the rejection letters I got for college teaching jobs — I had a lot of wallpaper before I was hired to teach in Flint, Michigan.
Now I climb up into my queen’s bed and hang up my clothes, and most of my current reading is in a basket by my bed.  I still sleep with a few of my books — right now I’m sharing a pillow with P. L. Travers, not the Mary Poppins books, but her essays on myth and story, What the Bee Knows.
My blue room has no closet, no dresser — just a pine armoire, a chair, a bedside table.  No clutter.  Colorful Chinese boxes are stacked on the armoire, but they’re empty.  Up there is also my Chinese mud figure — he’s a traditional character, a protector — the ghost catcher.  Only he and I know he holds a big sword behind his back.  I like that, it’s good to have a secret weapon.
The blue of the walls is perfect — azure, cerulean, sky blue — I don’t know, but I haven’t repainted in twenty-five years.  My east window often looks out toward blue — the sky above Cornell and East Hill, the Inlet reflecting the sky. 
The prints on the walls are blue, too — the big one called Summer Ithaca, beyond the lake the hills fading back.  And the little one of the lake from the fifth floor of the Johnson, a great vantage for blue.  Above my bed, more blue — the robe of Jim Hardesty’s Kwan Yin of the Flowers, a portrait of my girl, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion.  I like her there, she who hears the cries of the world. 
I love going to bed in my room.  Even though I live alone, I have a sense of shedding my effortful selves when I put my knee up to get into bed.  I don’t have to be anybody — I’m done for the day.  It’s tiring, being somebody.  I’m glad I have my blue room, where I can put all that down.