—Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir!
Thursday, July 2, 2009
On the Unreliable Narrator
"I'm making myself out to be a loony, unreliable narrator, which is the best kind of narrator to have, Jeeves. Allows you to get away with things, like not fact-checking. But he's not entirely unreliable. He's punctual and writes thank-you notes."
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Hadley Had a Boyfriend
When Hadley was five, her father got a new job and moved the family from Los Angeles to Connecticut. Hadley cried for hours after saying goodbye to her boyfriend, Jeremy. They had met in nursery school, where Hadley's favorite game was messing up Jeremy's floppy sand-colored hair until he reciprocated by yanking on her long braid. They had looked forward to stepping over the threshold of kindergarten together, not knowing what to expect but knowing they would face it together, holding hands—always with Hadley's other hand clutching her stuffed pony, Jeremy's other hand lost in his Dodgers glove.
Instead Hadley faced kindergarten alone, in the unfamiliar orange of a New England fall, in a town where the other kids all knew one another from nursery school or music class or swimming lessons. But she was bubbly and liked to share her chewing gum, and her isolation lasted only a few weeks. Soon she found herself in an unexpected flirtation with Brandon, who had accidentally slammed her foot in a car door at a particularly rushed carpool pickup one morning. Her foot was fine, but the flame of his apologetic gaze seared her heart.
Brandon held her hand until halfway through first grade, and he brought her laughter and joy and sometimes jellybeans, but he never succeeded in making her forget about her first love, and finally broke things off when she refused to stop referring to Jeremy as "my other boyfriend."
Hadley's dating life was uneventful for a while as she focused on grades and jazz dance and rebuffing mildly violent attacks from her older brother. Jeremy's parents and her parents had been friendly in California, and she would see Jeremy every couple of years when his family would visit New York and come up to Connecticut for Sunday brunch at Hadley's house. She would show him her swing set and her jazz dance moves, and they would play catch, even though she wasn't very athletic, which didn't matter at first because of the excitement of once again being in each other's company. She continued to refer to him as her boyfriend to her friends and family, though never in Jeremy's presence—there was no need.
But as she edged closer to puberty, Hadley found herself dreading rather than eagerly anticipating these occasional visits, for relationships based on occasional visits rarely work even for adults, much less for the young, with their ever-evolving personhood. Jeremy's obsession with his Little League stats proved tiresome (though she took heart in their agreement about the plain common sense of the designated hitter rule). Likewise, he found her love of horses too predictable for a girl, and struggled to pay attention when she showed off the wooden figurines she had painted and the photographs of her riding lessons. Her attempts at eliciting kisses brought nothing but a wrinkling of his nose in disgust.
Still, Hadley saw this awkwardness as only a phase in their relationship; they had always been fated to marry, after all, and all couples must endure hardships that will ultimately make their bond stronger. The slow fading of their parents' friendship and the cessation of Jeremy's visits brought relief—she loved him more easily from afar, at least for now. She would focus her energy on thinking of the perfect names for their children (she planned to surprise him by naming their first son Tommy, for Tommy Lasorda, a gesture he would never see coming!).
In middle school Hadley had no boyfriends, unless she counted Nick, who sat next to her in eighth-grade math and had a way of solving problems involving the speed of trains that made her feel a little faint. But that relationship progressed no further than sharing a table at lunchtime, and as much weight as lunchtime table-sharing carried in the eighth grade, Hadley still saw Nick as only a temporary distraction from her one true love.
The teen years, however, found Hadley's memories of Brandon fading, replaced by the immediacy of boys who touched her long strawberry blonde hair, or beamed with pride when she cheered them on at basketball games, or developed a sudden interest in acting when she won the lead in the senior class production of Spoon River Anthology. One boy did all three and earned the privilege of being the first to touch more than Hadley's hair, much more, a privilege she once had assumed would be Jeremy's, though she had imagined it only abstractly. At the moment it happened she suddenly thought of this old assumption and smiled at her youthful naivete, even as she felt a twinge of sadness at this new boy's not being Jeremy, and even as she began to plan her life with this new boy, from college through marriage and children and into old age, during which they would exchange grumpy-yet-loving banter in their own version of On Golden Pond.
She did go to college and have marriage and children, not with that boy or any of the next three but with an older boy, a man in fact, who could not have looked or behaved more differently than Jeremy looked or behaved—or at least the way she imagined Jeremy did, during the rare moments when she still wondered where he was or what he looked like as a thirty-two-year-old or whether he had a family of his own.
In middle age, Hadley's divorce brought the usual regrets and self-doubts and wishes that she could click her heels and start over. Sometimes those wishes involved Jeremy, and "what if," but they couldn't progress much beyond that, as she knew nothing about him past the age of twelve. It was easier to imagine "what if" with the boyfriends who had come later, closer to adulthood, though it was also easier to see the folly of imagining such things; there were, after all, good reasons they had left her, or she had left them. It was nicer to think of Jeremy, as their romance remained unblemished by yucky adult goings-on. But it was also sadder, as the only reason she could think of that they had left each other was geographical. And geography was just another word for bad luck.
Also, she had her children, a boy and a girl—a man and a woman, now, with a few boys and girls of their own, who had little boyfriends and little girlfriends just as Hadley had Jeremy. So she couldn't wish that she had married Jeremy and named their son Tommy, not in any real way. Only in those occasional shameful moments when she looked at her son's face and imagined what he would look like with the nose of the father he might have had, the nose that used to wrinkle when she tried to kiss it, the nose that she liked to think hadn't changed a bit since Jeremy was her boyfriend.
Instead Hadley faced kindergarten alone, in the unfamiliar orange of a New England fall, in a town where the other kids all knew one another from nursery school or music class or swimming lessons. But she was bubbly and liked to share her chewing gum, and her isolation lasted only a few weeks. Soon she found herself in an unexpected flirtation with Brandon, who had accidentally slammed her foot in a car door at a particularly rushed carpool pickup one morning. Her foot was fine, but the flame of his apologetic gaze seared her heart.
Brandon held her hand until halfway through first grade, and he brought her laughter and joy and sometimes jellybeans, but he never succeeded in making her forget about her first love, and finally broke things off when she refused to stop referring to Jeremy as "my other boyfriend."
Hadley's dating life was uneventful for a while as she focused on grades and jazz dance and rebuffing mildly violent attacks from her older brother. Jeremy's parents and her parents had been friendly in California, and she would see Jeremy every couple of years when his family would visit New York and come up to Connecticut for Sunday brunch at Hadley's house. She would show him her swing set and her jazz dance moves, and they would play catch, even though she wasn't very athletic, which didn't matter at first because of the excitement of once again being in each other's company. She continued to refer to him as her boyfriend to her friends and family, though never in Jeremy's presence—there was no need.
But as she edged closer to puberty, Hadley found herself dreading rather than eagerly anticipating these occasional visits, for relationships based on occasional visits rarely work even for adults, much less for the young, with their ever-evolving personhood. Jeremy's obsession with his Little League stats proved tiresome (though she took heart in their agreement about the plain common sense of the designated hitter rule). Likewise, he found her love of horses too predictable for a girl, and struggled to pay attention when she showed off the wooden figurines she had painted and the photographs of her riding lessons. Her attempts at eliciting kisses brought nothing but a wrinkling of his nose in disgust.
Still, Hadley saw this awkwardness as only a phase in their relationship; they had always been fated to marry, after all, and all couples must endure hardships that will ultimately make their bond stronger. The slow fading of their parents' friendship and the cessation of Jeremy's visits brought relief—she loved him more easily from afar, at least for now. She would focus her energy on thinking of the perfect names for their children (she planned to surprise him by naming their first son Tommy, for Tommy Lasorda, a gesture he would never see coming!).
In middle school Hadley had no boyfriends, unless she counted Nick, who sat next to her in eighth-grade math and had a way of solving problems involving the speed of trains that made her feel a little faint. But that relationship progressed no further than sharing a table at lunchtime, and as much weight as lunchtime table-sharing carried in the eighth grade, Hadley still saw Nick as only a temporary distraction from her one true love.
The teen years, however, found Hadley's memories of Brandon fading, replaced by the immediacy of boys who touched her long strawberry blonde hair, or beamed with pride when she cheered them on at basketball games, or developed a sudden interest in acting when she won the lead in the senior class production of Spoon River Anthology. One boy did all three and earned the privilege of being the first to touch more than Hadley's hair, much more, a privilege she once had assumed would be Jeremy's, though she had imagined it only abstractly. At the moment it happened she suddenly thought of this old assumption and smiled at her youthful naivete, even as she felt a twinge of sadness at this new boy's not being Jeremy, and even as she began to plan her life with this new boy, from college through marriage and children and into old age, during which they would exchange grumpy-yet-loving banter in their own version of On Golden Pond.
She did go to college and have marriage and children, not with that boy or any of the next three but with an older boy, a man in fact, who could not have looked or behaved more differently than Jeremy looked or behaved—or at least the way she imagined Jeremy did, during the rare moments when she still wondered where he was or what he looked like as a thirty-two-year-old or whether he had a family of his own.
In middle age, Hadley's divorce brought the usual regrets and self-doubts and wishes that she could click her heels and start over. Sometimes those wishes involved Jeremy, and "what if," but they couldn't progress much beyond that, as she knew nothing about him past the age of twelve. It was easier to imagine "what if" with the boyfriends who had come later, closer to adulthood, though it was also easier to see the folly of imagining such things; there were, after all, good reasons they had left her, or she had left them. It was nicer to think of Jeremy, as their romance remained unblemished by yucky adult goings-on. But it was also sadder, as the only reason she could think of that they had left each other was geographical. And geography was just another word for bad luck.
Also, she had her children, a boy and a girl—a man and a woman, now, with a few boys and girls of their own, who had little boyfriends and little girlfriends just as Hadley had Jeremy. So she couldn't wish that she had married Jeremy and named their son Tommy, not in any real way. Only in those occasional shameful moments when she looked at her son's face and imagined what he would look like with the nose of the father he might have had, the nose that used to wrinkle when she tried to kiss it, the nose that she liked to think hadn't changed a bit since Jeremy was her boyfriend.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
The Only Limerick I'll Ever Write
These poems are said to be fun
So why don't I try to write one?
No rhyme scheme can scare me
But what rhymes with "scare me"?
Oh, someone please hand me a gun
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Being Petite
Being petite means more than being short, though short I am, at a respectable but below-average five feet two and a half. (One never says "six feet two and a half," does one? Unless one feels awkward at six feet three.) My wrists are too small to wear bracelets, and I add an extra hole to my leather watch bands and have links removed from my metal ones. Most rings slip off my skinny fingers, making street fairs less than fruitful. Unless I am lucky enough to find a "petite" style that eschews frumpiness, every pair of pants I buy needs to be shortened. I cannot wear shirts or dresses that are loose-fitting unless I want to resemble a little girl playing dress-up with Mommy's clothes. A hat pulled down properly on my head will likely cover my eyes. Shopping for sunglasses has become, in this era of gigantic sunglasses, a humiliating process for me and my petite face.
And that's just fashion. Only recently have I begun to wonder how my petiteness has shaped my personality, my relationships, my choices in life. A favorite pastime in my youth was the piano; I didn't have the singing voice to be a pop star, so romantic notions of concert pianism tickled the ivories of my imagination. When did those notions go quiet? When I found myself unable to play the most difficult jazz and classical pieces because my hands couldn't span the distance between notes? I tend to walk behind people rather than lead the way; could the shortness of my stride have conditioned me to do so? Would my relationship with my boyfriend be different if I weren't looking up at him all the time?
Sun-kissed cheeks make me feel healthier and more attractive. A fresh-out-of-the-salon haircut adds some extra sashay to my step. Sporadic periods of muscle tone bring with them sporadic spikes in self-confidence. Has the mind-body connection also caused the size of my frame to frame my view of the world? If so, I resolve to focus on the positive:
And that's just fashion. Only recently have I begun to wonder how my petiteness has shaped my personality, my relationships, my choices in life. A favorite pastime in my youth was the piano; I didn't have the singing voice to be a pop star, so romantic notions of concert pianism tickled the ivories of my imagination. When did those notions go quiet? When I found myself unable to play the most difficult jazz and classical pieces because my hands couldn't span the distance between notes? I tend to walk behind people rather than lead the way; could the shortness of my stride have conditioned me to do so? Would my relationship with my boyfriend be different if I weren't looking up at him all the time?
Sun-kissed cheeks make me feel healthier and more attractive. A fresh-out-of-the-salon haircut adds some extra sashay to my step. Sporadic periods of muscle tone bring with them sporadic spikes in self-confidence. Has the mind-body connection also caused the size of my frame to frame my view of the world? If so, I resolve to focus on the positive:
- I can fit into narrow seats between large people on the subway.
- Sometimes I can buy capri pants and wear them as full-length pants.
- Animals and children like me, perhaps because I'm close to their level.
- It would be relatively easy for me to hide unnoticed in a closet if a psycho killer broke into my home.
- If I were tall I would always see the world from above, the big picture--but I might miss the details that cluster low to the ground. And climbing high into the Umbrian mountains to look down on vast, magnificent views might have felt a little less magnificent. A little. If I weren't petite.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Yoga for Neurotics
Me, over here, I'm new. No, not new to yoga, just to this class-- Up front? If I'd wanted to sit up front, I would have placed my mat up front. Bitch. Fine, now I'm up front. But I'm not new to yoga. So don't put your hands on me.
Why do they let so many people into this room? Those women came in eight minutes late; the rest of us should not have to shift our mats all over the place to fit them in. That's not fair. And it takes five minutes from our workout. And they look so happy and unapologetic. Why isn't this class in a bigger room? I always end up next to some hairy guy who's too wide for his mat and needs half of mine, too. His girlfriend probably makes him do yoga. He does not want to be here.
Oooooohhhmmm. Shoulders down. Shoulders down.
Why do they let so many people into this room? Those women came in eight minutes late; the rest of us should not have to shift our mats all over the place to fit them in. That's not fair. And it takes five minutes from our workout. And they look so happy and unapologetic. Why isn't this class in a bigger room? I always end up next to some hairy guy who's too wide for his mat and needs half of mine, too. His girlfriend probably makes him do yoga. He does not want to be here.
Oooooohhhmmm. Shoulders down. Shoulders down.
Are yoga teachers always this serene, or only in class? Does she always speak that way? I've never heard such a serene voice outside a yoga class. What bullshit. There's a reason that yoga teachers are always depicted in the movies as being full of shit. Shoulders down.
I used to be that flexible. Well, not that flexible, but I could flatten my hands on the floor without bending my knees. How much are my knees bent? I can never see that in the mirror. What if they're bent a lot? I'll look so out of shape. I can also never tell whether my back is perfectly straight and parallel to the floor. How is a person ever supposed to know that her back is perfectly horizontal without a three-way mirror? Stop, Christ, it doesn't matter; it's yoga class and I'm supposed to just "move in that direction" and no one's paying attention to me because they're all trying to straighten their own backs. Just close your eyes and inhale up, reach to the sky. Whoa, head rush.
Okay, when in downward-facing dog, I'm supposed to point my middle fingers forward, distribute my weight evenly among my ten fingers and my palms, straighten my arms, turn my upper arms out, straighten my legs and lower my heels toward the floor--shit, they're not touching, but probably they'll be touching after I loosen up, that always happens, relax--push my tailbone toward the sky and chest toward my legs, let my head hang... but I never know whether my eyes should be open or closed. A yoga teacher I had years ago told the class not to close our eyes during practice. I think some of the perfect women in my yoga videos close their eyes, but I can never frickin' see the TV when I'm in downward dog. I see only my legs, and the space between them, which always distracts me from the whole relaxation thing because it's such a weird thing to be looking at, so maybe I should close my eyes. But what if that teacher had it right and closing my eyes prevents me from being fully yogic? Oh shit, they're already in plank.
Focus on a point. Focus on a point. Focus on a point. Does everyone have this much trouble balancing in triangle pose? Just breathe. String extending from my left hand to the sky. Another string extending out from the top of my head. Strings pulling me in all directions--no, not in all directions, wrong image, just up, up. Stop wobbling. Oh please don't come over here now. Please don't touch me. If you make me fall over I'll kill you, bitch. What do you mean? My shoulders are rela--whoa. That is amazing. I am a wide-open, floating-on-air triangle.
Why are no one else's legs shaking? Please don't let anyone be looking at my legs. Maybe the shaking is one of those things other people can't see. But that makes no sense. Is my eyesight better than everyone else's? Do my optic nerves recognize my legs as my legs and not someone else's and concentrate just a little bit harder so the shaking comes into focus? Maybe everyone else can see only their own legs shaking, too. Please make it stop. I've got Parkinson's. I can't believe I just thought that. I am a horrible person. And... relax.
I used to be that flexible. Well, not that flexible, but I could flatten my hands on the floor without bending my knees. How much are my knees bent? I can never see that in the mirror. What if they're bent a lot? I'll look so out of shape. I can also never tell whether my back is perfectly straight and parallel to the floor. How is a person ever supposed to know that her back is perfectly horizontal without a three-way mirror? Stop, Christ, it doesn't matter; it's yoga class and I'm supposed to just "move in that direction" and no one's paying attention to me because they're all trying to straighten their own backs. Just close your eyes and inhale up, reach to the sky. Whoa, head rush.
Okay, when in downward-facing dog, I'm supposed to point my middle fingers forward, distribute my weight evenly among my ten fingers and my palms, straighten my arms, turn my upper arms out, straighten my legs and lower my heels toward the floor--shit, they're not touching, but probably they'll be touching after I loosen up, that always happens, relax--push my tailbone toward the sky and chest toward my legs, let my head hang... but I never know whether my eyes should be open or closed. A yoga teacher I had years ago told the class not to close our eyes during practice. I think some of the perfect women in my yoga videos close their eyes, but I can never frickin' see the TV when I'm in downward dog. I see only my legs, and the space between them, which always distracts me from the whole relaxation thing because it's such a weird thing to be looking at, so maybe I should close my eyes. But what if that teacher had it right and closing my eyes prevents me from being fully yogic? Oh shit, they're already in plank.
Focus on a point. Focus on a point. Focus on a point. Does everyone have this much trouble balancing in triangle pose? Just breathe. String extending from my left hand to the sky. Another string extending out from the top of my head. Strings pulling me in all directions--no, not in all directions, wrong image, just up, up. Stop wobbling. Oh please don't come over here now. Please don't touch me. If you make me fall over I'll kill you, bitch. What do you mean? My shoulders are rela--whoa. That is amazing. I am a wide-open, floating-on-air triangle.
Why are no one else's legs shaking? Please don't let anyone be looking at my legs. Maybe the shaking is one of those things other people can't see. But that makes no sense. Is my eyesight better than everyone else's? Do my optic nerves recognize my legs as my legs and not someone else's and concentrate just a little bit harder so the shaking comes into focus? Maybe everyone else can see only their own legs shaking, too. Please make it stop. I've got Parkinson's. I can't believe I just thought that. I am a horrible person. And... relax.
I love shoulder stand. She's right; it really is a healing pose. Something about being upside down makes me see the world from a whole new perspective. If only my ponytail holder wasn't digging into my neck. Shit, I can't move my hand to fix it without falling over. Why do I always wear a ponytail to yoga when it's impossible to lie comfortably on one's back with a ponytail? It's okay, just observe the band digging into my neck, let the thought of it pass in and out of my mind, and... breathe.
Oh god... Oh god... rest. This is the most important part of the whole workout. Which means if I don't lie flat on my back correctly, the past hour has been a complete waste of time. That music is nice. Where's she padding around to now? She's walking around the room. Doing something to people. Please just leave me alone to rest. What's that smell? Incense. Incense makes me want to gag. Great. I feel like gagging during the most important part of the workout. OH she's touching my neck. Okay, that feels nice, but it's not nice to sneak up on people whose eyes are closed. Bitch. Move on so I can relax. There. I feel that space between breaths! I feel it! No, it's gone. It's gone because I thought about it. Damn.
Okay, I'm going. Can I take a minute to roll up my mat properly? Is that a problem for you and your rebounding friends? Jumping up and down on a trampoline, how sophisticated.
Wow, I love that post-yoga feeling. I am at peace with my life. All these other people on the street envy me and my yoga mat. I am a warrior goddess. A warrior goddess in noisy flip-flops. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Monday, June 15, 2009
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