first in awhile.

Lessons from Boys

He showed her that even in grey and a turtleneck, she was pretty. She would dance down the halls after seeing his smile, after seeing that he would drive three hours in a tiny truck with a love-struck couple for her. He taught her the meaning of flirting, although she didn’t realize it until later, when she needed it. His hair was red and ginger with a smile to match, and she would fall asleep sometimes dreaming of his grin. She didn’t realize that they were antics meant for middle school, not college. His attentions flustered her, and she waited each day for word from him, not able to sleep soundly if he didn’t say goodnight. She asked her friend one day, frustrated and angry, begging her to explain why boys had to exist. Yet he existed fervently. Once he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her towards the edge of the mountain, teasing that he would throw her over the side. She didn’t realize it was the edge. She only felt the simplicity of his cold, winter-warmed hands against her cheeks by the fire in the morning, the smell of wood smoke in the air, his eyes staring into hers, smiling.
And when they fell out of touch, as winter loves and youths tend to do, she kissed the love of her life. She first met him when his hand touched her mother's swollen belly. She had loved him for nearly as long. He kissed her on a summer night when the tops of her breasts were warm against the night pressing on the window panes. When she was seven, she had built a castle out of game pieces on his kitchen, and then she had laughed about it in his bed twelve years later. She spent one night in his arms, and one fervent morning trying to save the memory of what he was. She wouldn’t see him again, but his bed was where she first heard, “You are beautiful.”
One night in an attic of a house hidden in a street in Germany, she played a song that was too soft to reach the rafters. And he looked at her, a question, a half-smile on his lips, as if he couldn’t believe she had chosen this song for him. You’ve got me wrapped around your little finger—and she did, if only for a while. Not half a year later, he would meet a girl who was round and full and looked like a woman.

Sex. Not a fragment nor moment of beauty, but a single moment of feeling. Of realizing that it’s not always about giving away under the moment, but experiencing every tangible feeling and realization and thought in a single moment to make the experience fuller, bolder, shockingly dirty.

Car lights through the rivets of a bridge, or the flickering of a liking for him. Their laughter is ridiculous, and she wonders often if the sound of it means anything to him. She forgets what it’s like to feel attractive, because she can’t stop wondering who she is. If he sees her as this, and all these before him have seen her as this and this and this…what is she.

She lies in bed some nights, scared because she no longer believes in love.

gaps for the universe to leak through

He hasn't responded, and I imagine him building a boat to the moon. I don't know where he is or what he's doing, only that an hour ago he was telling me how much he missed my voice and my hands in his hair. I miss his hair, which is soft and gold like the stars. I imagine him in an ark high in the sky, sailing along the milky way. His hair will be ruffled with the wind--they say there's no breeze in space, that a man's footprint stays etched on the moon for forever, or that a flag remains frozen mid-air for eternity--but I know that space is forever in motion. Nebula breathe in and out, pulsating against spinning stars and infinitely expanding dimensions. Space is a never-ending dream, and his boat is another spiraling star in the swath of the universe.

He'll land on the moon quickly enough, because he's strong and brave. He'll call to me from atop a sandy crater, his words whistling through space and time to reach my ear--I miss you, please come to me. And I will; I'll take a running leap into the sea, finding a spinning sky instead of icy waves. From the moon will spin a rope of golden thread, and I'll grab for it, holding tightly as he pulls me to him. I'll see his figure, he'll grow closer, his hair shinning among the stars. There's his boat! It's beautiful, made of wood from the deepest forests of the Earth, with gaps between the boards to let the universe leak in. The masts spiral away into infinity and the crow's nest is buried far away in distant nebula. I ache to climb the ropes and peer out over the whole universe.

He's built a boat to the moon, and he's going to call for me soon. I miss you, he'll say, please come to me. And I'll take a running leap into the sea, spin into the sky, and he'll pull me to the moon.

Mr. Snufflebottoms was tired from translating German for five hours straight, especially considering that did not know German, save a few elementary words that coincided with the English forms of "the" and "a" and "to be." Mr. Snufflebottoms liked to pretend that he knew German, but he also like to pretend that he knew a lot of things.

Mr. Snufflebottoms had a twenty-two year old son he hadn't seen in five years. Work at sixteen, out of the house by seventeen! Mr. Snufflebottoms always said. It was something he had heard in college, laughed over at the time, and deemed downright genius by the time his son had hit his teens. Children were incurable, Mr. Snufflebottoms knew, and they had to become adults before they could know anything. His son, Joshua Snufflebottoms, had his first job as a gardener, which was to say that he carried bags of mulch to soccer mom's minivans and mowed the lawn at the garden center. He attended community college, paying his way with his gardener's job and weekend beggary, and he lived with his girlfriend in her parent's house. Luckily, his girlfriend's parents liked Joshua, and although they did not consider him a son, per say, they did feed him peanut butter rice cakes and allow him to mow their lawn. He always does such a nice job, they'd tell their guests at dinner parties. See how beautifully he trimmed the edges by the south wall?

Joshua spoke German fluently, as he had been brought up by a German nanny who wore white aprons and black shoes that sounded like gunfire when she walked. Joshua hadn't seen his nanny since moving out of his father's house, but she still sent him cards for Nikolaustag, which had always been his favorite holiday. For thirteen years, he'd place his left tennis shoe outside his bedroom door and awake to find it filled with treats and toys left by St. Nicholas.

Mr. Snufflebottoms had spent his afternoon translating German exactly because of this German nanny. Mr. Snufflebottoms had developed something of an infatuation throughout the years of her service, especially now that Joshua had moved away and his wife had left him. His wife had actually left within the third year of Joshua's life, but Mr. Snufflebottoms didn't pay attention to these things. He had more important matters to concentrate on, such as translating thick books of German.

He had bought this particular text from a small second-hand bookstore at a "reduced" price. Mr. Snufflebottoms had told the store clerk that he spoke German fluently and was planning a trip to Germany to marry his German lover. The clerk had not contradicted him. Mr. Snufflebottoms, although having translated this text for five hours, had still not discerned that the work concerned horses, particularly their eating and mating habits.

Mr. Snufflebottoms knew everything, however, so he had nothing to fear. The man would figure it out soon enough.

The German nanny entered the room just as Mr. Snufflebottoms settled fully into his relaxing stupor. This habit meant the loosening of many restraints, such as his waistcoat over the substantial girth of his stomach and the ties of his very wide shoes. Mr. Snufflebottoms had a condition where he lacked a sense of smell. He was never bothered when untying his shoes.

when you want everything, what do you have?

She wanted everything. She wanted to touch the sky, riches, his skin, a dove's feathers, smooth metal, and countless crystals. She wanted to see the world, to breathe air by a volcano, to move her toes through sand of a different color, and to laugh under the shade of a rain forest. She wanted him and him and him. She wanted a lot of boys, and she didn't care if she wanted them at the same time. She wanted him because it reminded her of the first him, and she wanted him because he had hair like gold and a smile fit to break windows. She wanted to smash things. She wanted to run into an old factory and smash every old window in the building, and she wanted to scream as she did so. She wanted to watch the glass fall pitter patter to the ground through the silent air as mouth screamed wordlessly. She wanted silence. She wanted deafening noise. She wanted to be music, to have lyrics running through her skin and harmonies tangled in her hair. She wanted hair down to her waist so she could shave it all off one day and understand the meaning of loss. She wanted the world to be green and beautiful forever. She wanted to know the meaning of perfection and understand the truths of the world. She wanted to know why she was alive and what her purpose was as a human, as a creature, as a soul. She wanted to meet her soul, and she wanted to drink tea with it in Italy and bring it into the future laughing. She wanted to love. She wanted a rabbit to feed and watch wriggle his nose. She wanted to be a bird, or a leopard, and she wanted to run faster or fly more freely than anything else in the world.

She drew maps by the window in her room, sometimes stopping to crush an ant that crawled across her desk. She really needed to stop eating food in her room. The wall aside her bed was papered with maps; she had even drawn the lines for Europe onto the wall with pencil, with the intention of filling in Asia and then Africa. Her landlord would hardly approve, she was certain, but Alexandra couldn't bring herself to care. In fact, she was quite looking forward to the red glow of his face and his angry hand gestures. They reminded her of his orgasm face. She sighed, finishing the curve of France into Belgium. That dip was her very favorite part of Europe, above even the broken line of Norway's western coast.

Alexandra had never been to Europe, and she'd certainly never been to Asia, Africa, or any of other continents. Her very rich friends had all taken trips to Europe after college had ended, and the especially rich had taken trips to Africa. They'd all returned wearing scarves around their necks even when inside, and sighing together over days spent drinking cool drinks in outdoor cafes. Alexandra didn't speak much to them anymore. Perhaps it was because she didn't own any scarves save the woolen monstrosity her grandmother had knit her two winters ago. It was made of alpaca.

A knock came at the door. That would be Tony. He was a big teddy bear of a man she had met in a local Italian restaurant. She'd been with friends, and they'd all giggled and tittered over his tie and shiny shoes, regardless of the fact that every other waiter in the place had been wearing the same thing. Tony hadn't been Tony then, and the girls had spent all evening calling out male names as he walked by, trying to get him to react to one. He never did. While leaving, Alexandra approached the counter, tapped Tony on the shoulder, and asked him his name. He smiled. "Tony," he said, as if asking her a question.

Alexandra hadn't expected to see him ever again, but they ran into each other at the supermarket in the alcohol aisle and fell into bed that night. Tony wasn't very smart, she discovered, but that didn't matter when the lights were dimmed and all one needed was to not feel so alone.

Her pencil snapped on the paper, and she sighed, pushing her map off the desk to land on the floor. Probably on an ant nest too, she thought, before slamming her head onto the desk. Something rattled and another something fell to the floor and smashed. She had to stop that too--she'd lost too many tea mugs to slamming her head on her desk.

Five months later, Alexandra was in Canada. Her landlord had family there, and he couldn't bear to go along. Please Alexandra, he had begged. He hardly needed to put so much effort into asking; it's not as if she had anything else to do. Her bags were packed that night, and she flew the 293 miles to Toronto with a man whose favorite color she didn't know. He didn't have a favorite movie, she knew that much. Who didn't have a favorite movie? Everyone had a favorite movie, except maybe the hobbits who lived in caves and danced after rings.

Canada was perfectly ordinary. Everyone spoke English, and Alexandra found herself forgetting that she was in a foreign country at all. She was in a park one morning, having escaped the stuffy dryness of her landlord's bedroom, with the hopes of catching the sunrise. A map of Europe spread into the dirt before her, before she angrily spit on it. Her own metaphor disgusted her. She was trying too hard, and she vowed to rip down every map as soon as she returned home. She had been right about her landlord's reaction to the drawing of Europe. He had gotten all red in the face and angrily waved his hands, but he didn't seem to mind as much ten minutes later when they were tossing in the sheets. She had smiled then and kissed his hair, loving his predictability.

She wished she had predictability now. If life were practicable, Canada would be exotic and enticing, just as she had expected. Instead, she was in a park watching the same old sun rise over the same old horizon, drawing the same map of Europe that she drew every other day of her life. The map of Europe never changed. The dip of France into Belgium was always the same, and the western cost of Norway always looked as if it'd been torn apart by a rabid dog. If only life could be predictable. No, if only it weren't so predictable! She spit again on her dirt drawing and then danced over the ground until Spain became France and Russia ate all the rest of Europe

"I can't find the damn safety pin."

Maria knew that she should have brought more pins to college. She used them for everything--decorating her room, holding necklaces on her wall, securing awkward necklines on some of her favorite blouses. One blouse that was especially tricky was her transparent blue shift of a shirt. She had bought it in Europe, and she wore it once to the gardens of a yellow castle in Germany, as well as to a regal-sounding place by the name of Falkenlust. She'd only worn it a handful of times since then, but it always reminded her of dancing in the gardens and amid the trees on the way to Falkenlust. If she grew bored, she would play with the shirt's bow, smiling at the shirt's sparrow print. She often wore it with just a bra, despite its transparency, which made her feel foolish only sometimes. Mostly, she just felt free.

She needed a safety pin today for much the same reason. She had a cardigan she wanted to wear to a dance, but the neckline was a little too risque for her liking. Her friends laughed at her. It's a dance, Maria, they said. We're going to a club, they said. But Maria felt no shame at wearing cardigans to bars, clubs, or dances. It wasn't as if she were uncomfortable with herself--obviously if that were the case, she wouldn't be walking around with transparent shirts. Her friends simply couldn't appreciate the idea of fine fashion.

Maria spent much of her time collecting small items from antique shops. She had boxes of pins on her dresser, each with dozens of decorated trinkets from across antique shops across the world. She hadn't left home without a pin in over five years. Her friends laughed at her for that too. They just didn't understand.
The floor of her closet was dark, and she couldn't bring herself to turn the light on, even as she crawled on the ground to search. She thought of stormy ocean waves illuminated by floodlights whenever she turned on a light, and she was in too awful a mood to think of an ocean storm tonight.

When she was eight, Maria had visited the ocean with her mother. They lived in a small house inland, so the trip was a momentous occasion for her and approached with much anticipation. But the drive was longer than expected, and they arrived late at the shore. A storm had started twenty minutes before their arrival, and the car had shook with the force of the windshield wipers and the rain. As they were crossing a bridge, a flash of lightening cut the sky, and Maria could feel it like the slash of the night. She screamed until her mother slapped her across the face. You need to be quiet, Maria, or I'll lose focus and we'll plunge off the bridge. They were crossing the bay, and the bridge towered over the choppy bay. Before them, sky met ocean in one heaving mass of grey and black. Maria didn't know where the ocean waves ended, and she whimpered. Isn't this beautiful, Maria? Her mother whispered, repeating her question faster and faster as the car approached the shore. They could scarcely see out the windows now, the rain was coming down too hard, and Maria began to believe that they had driven into the ocean. Any second now, water would drip through the cracks in the door, the windows would hake with pressure, and then car would collapse on itself, water streaming inward with a rush of broken glass and twisted metal. Her mother stopped the car before any explosion, but she pushed open the door to the screech of an unearthly howl. She stumbled out of the car, scarcely able to move for the all wind, and clawed her way over to Maria's side so she could rip her door open as well. A rushing wind tunnel sped through the car, and Maria grabbed frantically for a handhold while her mother pulled her from her seat into the wind and the rain. Her mother was already soaked, her long white dress transparent with the rain. Maria tried to look away, to find anything, anything of comfort, but her mother pulled her close, spreading both their hands into the sky. Look, Maria, look! she screamed. Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it gorgeous? But Maria couldn't distinguish her mother's voice from the wind. She began to sob, but she couldn't tell her tears from the rain. Everything shook, and she collapsed to the ground.
On her hands and knees on the hard carpet, a sharp pain suddenly came to Maria's finger. She pulled the safety pin from the floor, a button of blood already blossoming on her finger. See, Maria told her friends. I didn't need the light.

I hope that I'm the only person making to-do lists to keep herself occupied. Returning to normal life is not going well. The first two months of remembering Germany were a dream. Now I understand that I won't be going back. I am to remain here, in a tiny town that I outgrew three months after moving in. I'm trying to feel like my life is worth something, but it's difficult when I have nothing to do. It's even more difficult when I find myself struggling to understand what I could do that would be good and meaningful.

Most of my school lives through networking (but doesn't everyone?). Dress trashy, visit a frat, get trashed, so on and so forth. Greek life dominates the campus. And while I love my two non-partying friends, I wish I had more people to whom I could go. I wish two of my closest friends hadn't transferred. I wish my lovelies from home were around to love and cherish. Because life has to be more than this--escaping the drunken brigade with two fellow souls.

I wish here had the ocean. Because one never feels mindless or worthless when standing before her waves. She will accept you, take you, be there for you, even if you have no idea where your life is going or what living means.

Remember those to-do lists I mentioned? I try to arrive at tasks that mean something. "Clean out empty salsa jar" is at the top of the list. The highlight of my week was visiting the bank and falling through ice into a mud puddle.

What makes one's life worthwhile, meaningful, and good?

How are we good people? Plato insists that there are forms to which we can aspire. He thinks that we can be good, even if his idea of goodness is more mechanical than humane. No emotion, little laughter, keine literature! Aristotle's Poetics argues that fine tragedy needs good people who are destroyed by their own faults. These  faults don't necessarily have to be bad character traits; they simply are the traits to which they cling and arrive at their downfall. Aristotle's idea of tragedy is frightening because it questions whether or not we are good. We spend our lives doing what we think is right, only to fall into tragedy through our own actions. Can people be good? Are there forms of perfection that we can strive to attain? Or are people struggling through their lives, thinking they are good while never recognizing their tragic flaw?

Tell me, please. What makes our lives worthwhile? Is it creation? Helping others? (But what truly helps them?) Living without thought and enjoying the gift of life? But there must be some greater good, there must be something beyond hedonism! Oscar Wilde shows us this.

I should take some philosophy courses. I need answers.

Life is better with love.

On the painfully slow days where the clouds seem glued to the sky and the trees move not a whisper, Germany feels very far away. Days in this small town are very slow. Putting cookies into a freshly-washed mason jar can be the highlight of my day. Falling through ice into a puddle of mud is the most interesting thing that's happened to me all week. And I've been wondering recently, if this is why we're so dependent on love. Our lives seem devoid of romanticism, so we go for something romantic is nature. Obviously being with a loved one makes the real world fall away. As Austen mentions in Sense and Sensibility, you're in a relationship, and you smile down on everyone else with pity, because you are experiencing bliss in a way they never will. Life is simply better with love.

The love doesn't have to be for a person. Society tries so hard to tell us that the perfect relationship is all we need. But this relationship can be between woman and book, child and sparkling grey rock, old man and the mountain air. Society tells us also, quite often, that such relationships are unhealthy. A book can't love us back. This is entirely false. A book is perfectly capable of giving more love and support than some people ever can. If the object fascinates, invites curiosity, or makes the world seem a bit brighter, than the object is half of the relationship making this life worth living.

All life is worth living, but it's the bright lives that are worth the most. The lives with the memories, the books, the sparkling grey rocks, and the mountain air--these are the lives with the relationships and the love. We need something to make the tedium of the slow days a bit more worthwhile. If this solace is found in a book rather than a person, all the more power to the person strong enough to make life interesting through their own means and imagination.

Sometimes I think I need to be back in the city. Not simply New York or a dirty new American city, but one of European tastes, where there's a Romanesque church on every corner and a museum on every street in between. I do miss Europe; I do miss Germany. But sometimes I think that that's having love too easy. Life is a lot of hard work, and Germany was a gift of time that allowed me to see what life could be like without the work. If I had infinite money and infinite time, I could have gone on living in Germany forever. But life means working, maybe earning money, or at least earning enough to keep oneself going. Returning to the slow tedium of life in small-town Pennsylvania reminds me of this. It reminds me I need to work harder; I need to find my solace in books. Perhaps I even need a break from trying to find love in people.

I traveled to Alabama before I discovered that life could be so easy, and I was shocked at how difficult life was in this beautiful southern state. Under all the Spanish moss and brilliantly-crisp starry nights lurks a lot of poverty. The true beauty of the state, however, is in the people who find love regardless. They work to create better schools, to devote themselves to religion, or to make a living in small, self-owned businesses. I was in one such business, a tiny boutique just beside an old house that had been converted into a bookstore, when I came across the most gorgeous grey coat. I tried it on, fell and love, and went to the cashier to pay. She still had hand-written receipts, and she always wrote down the location from which all of her customers came. I told her Pennsylvania, and she seemed surprised to find someone from out of state. She didn't know how to spell the state. I could tell she was embarrassed. I was too, because I couldn't tell her the proper spelling.

I'm still not sure that I would be comfortable spelling the word on a piece of paper, without the modern device known as spell checking. To be fair, it does look quite strange. Sometimes I try to remember Sylvia, and it helps me with the ending.

But we don't need spelling to be good. We don't need spelling to be in love. And if we look in the right places, sometimes love can help us with all that we need. Even if that means spelling.

(I don't want to stop writing. My hands are flying over the keys and the words feel beautiful.)