Essay – Page 4 – Open (Open (Close)

Just Like Old Times

July 20, 2007 1 Comment

I found myself walking alongside Highway 61 like I have so many times before; the speeding cars whipping up cold currents with the scent of pine trees and massive Lake Superior, which permeates just about everything in Northern Minnesota — from the temperature to the gift shops to the way you set about your day, clear-brained, sparse, alert. I had set out to buy a Fruits of the Forest pie from the Northern Lights restaurant. My mother, sister, and stepdad were putting a dinner together back in the cabin.

“Why is this different now?” I wondered, wading through a patch of wild daisies and snap dragons. “What’s changed so much about this place?” There was a feeling I was searching for: something comfortable and familiar, unselfconscious, natural. It had departed slowly over the years, out the back door so that I couldn’t detect its absence until I’d specifically called upon it.

Suddenly it hit me. Breasts. It’s the goddamn breasts that have done it.

Essay

The Cult-Following Type

July 11, 2007 4 Comments

I think I may have a problem. It occurred to me the first time a few months ago in a yoga studio, as I lay prostrate on the hardwood floor repeating some mantra about surrender, and then again last week, as I was pumping my fist in the air at the stage and feverishly chanting love, love, love . . . that maybe I’m a little overly able to “get into” things. Corny things. Bougie things. Happy things, that in the end, really spell out trouble and money loss.

To be honest, I hadn’t even really wanted to go to the concert that night. It shames me to admit this — but I am not the concert-going type: I get awkward, or I get bored, or my feet get tired, or the artist’s personality/engagement is disappointing, and generally I’d just prefer to stay home with my headphones and avoid spending the twenty-five to fifty bucks. But I do have a list of three or so acts that I’ve always wanted to see in person, for various idolizing and/or personal reasons, and one of them was The Polyphonic Spree.

“We have to go!” I told Jurvis a month ago. “It’ll be a crazy freaking show! They’ve got like, twenty-five people in that band, and a freaking orchestra, and they all wear white robes and sing about the sun.” (What can I say. Culture is meaningless to me, but I’m a big sucker for spectacles.) We purchased the tickets and promptly forgot about the whole thing for the next four weeks, and of course by the time that Monday night rolled around I was just tired and cranky and wanting some combination of a beer and sweatshirt, but we’d already paid, and so we we were obligated to push ourselves onto the subway and rocket into the night to be dumped somewhere near the bright lights of Fenway, where, coincidentally, a game had started not an hour before.

“Is that . . . the club?” I asked, pointing at a shadowed sign. Two lonely, skinny bouncers sat on stools underneath it, sucking wanly on cigarettes. There was the sound of a giant crack, like a hollow head hitting pavement, and across the street, the impossibly far-away crowd cheered.

Let’s go Red Sox! (Clap clap, clapclapclap.)

I was not excited, even then, with the ethereal glow of major league baseball spilling onto our skin and the darkness of the club beckoning like a prostitute on the curb. We slipped fingers over our IDs and filed dutifully into The Avalon.

In this fashion the street swallowed us up.

Dear Diary, Essay

The Wind on Tybee Island

April 2, 2007 No Comments

We had no idea what we were getting into when we left the condo that afternoon. The clouds were a little skitterish in the sky, yes; but it seemed otherwise warm. Beneath our feet on the deck, two teenagers pedaled by on bicycles, happily screaming undecipherable words at each other.

It was our first real day of vacation, and we weren’t quite sure what to do with ourselves yet. Each time you have to relearn it, rediscover how it was when you were young. Sleep? Check. Eat breakfast? Check. Get dressed, brush teeth? Check and check. Having attended to these basic duties, we were left with the overwhelming task of tasklessness.

A walk alongside the ocean seemed like a sensible idea, a vacation-like idea, relaxing, sunny.

He and I left the condo, and just as we crossed the bridge over the sand dunes and onto the beach is when the wind hit.

“Whoa!” he cried, grey shirt whipping a violent web around his torso. I promptly fell over.

There is something about unusual weather that inspires joy. Maybe it is how landscapes change, seem completely different from what you’d expected. Maybe it is this newness, this feeling of being the explorer, compounded by the temporality of the situation: this world will disappear in an hour or so, and everything will go back to what it was before. You’ve been let in the secret passageway. Someone has melted the looking-glass. Here you were, chosen to witness this strange otherworld! You have to report back to the others, tell the tribe what you’ve seen!

I took my shoes off and they blew away. “Hah!” I cried.

We pressed onward, directly into the wind. The beach was swept flat, sand whipping across its surface in speeding golden currents, burying our feet as we walked, grains pummeling into our ankles and between our teeth. I could feel it driving itself under my fingernails, into the crevices of my clothing. At one point we looked up and saw three men moving sporadically like lame birds across the barren landscape. They had harnessed themselves into enormous, brightly-colored kites and were attempting to steer with their arms, pulling on thick black ropes and elevating unsteadily for a few moments only to come to a crash running-landing. We did not acknowledge one another as we passed, but pressed further into the wind.

Suddenly, it seemed we’d reached a dead-end. How can the beach end? There was endless blue tumult in front and to the left of us, and a few concrete blocks to our right. Behind us was the battle we had waged. We stood there, on the edge of the water, for a few moments, uncertain where to turn.

“Did you get it?” She’d popped out of no where. I immediately fall in love with women who do this, because I become convinced that they are magical, and part of me still believes in fairies.

“Get what?”

“Did you get the sand blowing over the beach? On your camera? Is it digital?” She hadn’t tied her hair back in the wind, and it was making an auburn hurricane around her head. That is all I can think of when I try to remember her face.

“Yes! Yes I think so. Let me see, we’ll show you.” He had taken a video of the sand moving, and we couldn’t figure out how to make it play back on the preview screen. She stood there, waiting awkwardly a few moments, and then shrugged and laughed. “It’s okay,” she said, “I just wanted to make sure you got it.” And she ran off.

We decided to make our way back soon after, the wind pushing at our backs, blowing us home. Our heads pounded and our ears rang, our eyes grimy with sand particles. It was like how I imagined the moon to be, it was like how I imagine it now, that I’ve seen it. Barren, endless, beautiful. And as we crossed the wooden bridge over the dunes, the wind abruptly stopped. The parking lot in front of us was still and peaceful. After such a violent atmosphere, walking down those stairs was like stepping into sleep. What a relief.

Early the next morning, I took my iPod and walked by myself, all the way back to where the beach ended and the girl had appeared. I sat down by the edge of the water and waited for her. But everything looked completely different: calm, smooth, littered with shell fragments, birds, fishermen, everything usual and earthly, and I knew she wouldn’t come.