my boss tells me that they don't have enough volunteers, could i spend a couple of hours working in the river? i agree. i know that i won't get paid as much as the volunteers (they get $50 an hour for this branch but only 25 cents and hour for the others) but i like my job and i want to keep it. i pick out waders but am not sure what to do about my arms. my boyfriend is already in the water and he tells me to wear long underwear, i'll be able to move more freely and be fine. but i don't want the pollution to hurt my skin so i put on the heavy awkward waders and get my elbow-high rubber gloves to stay water tight by rubberbanding the tops to my arms. sufficiently protected, i go in. the water is warm and calm. the trees are healthy and full of life despite the frosted plastic ceilings above this indoor branch of the river. i reach in and start pulling out sludge and slime and seaweed but the handful. i look to the green shore and see a giant canopy bed that two girls are jumping and giggling on. it's a beautiful site and i would love to sleep next to a river like that. the girl, a former work-study student of mine, tells me that her dad bought it for her birthday.
in the hobby shop i am amazed by the selection. an asian woman is wandering around. i show her the paint room and she squeals with joy. she asks the owner where he get such big tubes of clay. i agree, they are very special. they would be wonderful high quality paints to have in bulk for a classroom. she takes out pictures painted by her son. they are very simple stick drawings done by a 4-6 year old. i get the feeling he's not alive. i show her the room of yarn and she just starts opening drawers and crying with joy. i point out another room of polished mohagony floors and furniture. inside every card catalog-like drawer there are thousands of tiny slivery metal figurines sculpted with insane minute details. i can't imagine what you would use them for, but i guess people are pretty into them.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
library, vaginal stenosis, murder, and violets
We are on a bus going to some place awesome. Where that is, what concert it is, doesn't really matter. I got the tickets for us because it's something we've always wanted to do together. And when he wanted his friend to come along, I even got her a ticket. But now, rather than sitting by me on our romantic bus tour, he is five or six rows up sitting with her and not me. I am not pleased. I decide that I am not going to sit through this and be angry, I'm going to go do something that I enjoy. I ask his friend if the bus goes by the library, I just remembered that I have to get something there. She tells me that we just passed the road leading to it. I ask the driver to stop please so that I may get off. everyone waits patiently while we argue. I tell my boyfriend that I know I'm not his dreamgirl and that I know he never really wanted to share this with me. I pull out my wallet, give him the tickets, and tell them to have a good time.
At the boarding school they play a new game that is sweeping the world. All the young girls join hands and the coach is in the middle with cloth attached to him/her for the girls to hang on to. The girls form a asterisk and fan out. Then the coach starts spinning and the girls walk in circles. There are dozens of them on the field, one team takes up yards spinning their stars faster and faster, but at a gradual pace. When it feels like a good time, a girl falls down and lays on the ground and the rest of her star's arm continues spinning. You don't win or lose, but you perfect your ability to move as a team and know when someone is going to drop off so that you keep moving without slowing down or faltering.
In the locker room: The lockers all have LCD screens with faces on them. Some are baby photos of my nieces and nephews. Some are orphan girls who are strangers, some are top secret agents, some are just there. They loop lines we have had in movies going one by one through each locker. When it gets to my face i am a 14 year old with long hair and big white teeth. My image says calmly with a smile "vaginal stenosis". The girls in the locker room giggle and tell me they are so jealous of my line and so proud of me for saying it so clearly and sincerely. I tell them it was nothing. It really was nothing.
We are gong through abandoned houses. We have to find the right one to make our own in time. They gave the rescue dog the wrong time so the dog is going to appear ready to save a life but there won't be a reason to for another hour. We don't want the dog to sit around, get bored, and leave before the real danger is here so we are in a hurry. There are magic tools, construction tools, and kitchen tools in the houses right where they were left. College flags are tacked to the walls. Couches are becoming dusty without use. We find the right house and set up the party.
People start arriving in droves. I don't know any of them. We start playing the movie that will show the person arriving and the dog will distract him so that our friends can run him over with their car. People are BBQ-ing and the party is getting a little out of hand, so I ask an agent, why don't we just fast forward the movie? Someone accidentally recorded a children's show in between the beginning and end of our movie - why don't we just skip that and then the dog will be on time? Eventually the man is walking toward us. He is spotted down the street and I mention this. Everyone gets into their places, the couple gets in their car, but the guests keep on partying oblivious to the murder about to take place. My work is done, I can't do any more. A man walks in with a yellow plastic bag on his head as a hat. He goes into the bathroom, vomits in it, then comes out and ties it up and throws it in the trash.
This is not for me. Parties have never made me feel comfortable. I go outside into the large empty backyard. The grass is dry but there are thousands and thousands of pale wild violets covering the land. I start spinning until I feel like it would be the most pleasurable time to fall down. I do, and I just lay there alone in the violets staring at the overcast sky.
At the boarding school they play a new game that is sweeping the world. All the young girls join hands and the coach is in the middle with cloth attached to him/her for the girls to hang on to. The girls form a asterisk and fan out. Then the coach starts spinning and the girls walk in circles. There are dozens of them on the field, one team takes up yards spinning their stars faster and faster, but at a gradual pace. When it feels like a good time, a girl falls down and lays on the ground and the rest of her star's arm continues spinning. You don't win or lose, but you perfect your ability to move as a team and know when someone is going to drop off so that you keep moving without slowing down or faltering.
In the locker room: The lockers all have LCD screens with faces on them. Some are baby photos of my nieces and nephews. Some are orphan girls who are strangers, some are top secret agents, some are just there. They loop lines we have had in movies going one by one through each locker. When it gets to my face i am a 14 year old with long hair and big white teeth. My image says calmly with a smile "vaginal stenosis". The girls in the locker room giggle and tell me they are so jealous of my line and so proud of me for saying it so clearly and sincerely. I tell them it was nothing. It really was nothing.
We are gong through abandoned houses. We have to find the right one to make our own in time. They gave the rescue dog the wrong time so the dog is going to appear ready to save a life but there won't be a reason to for another hour. We don't want the dog to sit around, get bored, and leave before the real danger is here so we are in a hurry. There are magic tools, construction tools, and kitchen tools in the houses right where they were left. College flags are tacked to the walls. Couches are becoming dusty without use. We find the right house and set up the party.
People start arriving in droves. I don't know any of them. We start playing the movie that will show the person arriving and the dog will distract him so that our friends can run him over with their car. People are BBQ-ing and the party is getting a little out of hand, so I ask an agent, why don't we just fast forward the movie? Someone accidentally recorded a children's show in between the beginning and end of our movie - why don't we just skip that and then the dog will be on time? Eventually the man is walking toward us. He is spotted down the street and I mention this. Everyone gets into their places, the couple gets in their car, but the guests keep on partying oblivious to the murder about to take place. My work is done, I can't do any more. A man walks in with a yellow plastic bag on his head as a hat. He goes into the bathroom, vomits in it, then comes out and ties it up and throws it in the trash.
This is not for me. Parties have never made me feel comfortable. I go outside into the large empty backyard. The grass is dry but there are thousands and thousands of pale wild violets covering the land. I start spinning until I feel like it would be the most pleasurable time to fall down. I do, and I just lay there alone in the violets staring at the overcast sky.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Puppy Fish
It is a large rolling green space. There are merchants and activity, but it is not crowded. I have been sent out to gather the dogs. One of them may have ear mites or fleas and so they must all be sprayed. I hunt around, finding one of the black and brown muscular puppies and dropping it into a pail. I find another identical puppy and drop it in on top of the first. They lay there scrunched into a too-small space and let me spray them repeatedly with some type of cure-all. I look around some more but do not see others. I turn back to the pail left on a merchant's display and find that it no longer has my puppies, but now has three fish tails sticking out of ice. I explain to my boss that someone must have dumped them out and replaced them with fish. He sighs in relief and tells me, "Oh good, I was wondering how you got them to stay upside down like that."
In search of pups (I know there are several, all identical) I go into a small coffee shop run by Kenyans. My advisor from grad school is there. She tells me that I can come back if I just take this test before Wednesday. She holds up several pieces of paper stapled together. It is a test that I had started years ago and I can already see her markings, her plans to fail me. I tell her that i have no interest in her test. I tell her that I have moved on. She says that she wants me to have a chance. I tell her that she does not. That she gave out several chances to people who were lazy and inattentive but she did not give me a chance. Not a real one. The Kenyans come over and whisper to her that they know I am telling the truth, they can sense it, and that she is stepping beyond her bounds. If she does not stop harassing me, she will no longer be welcome here. I get up and continue my search.
There is a fall in the land. What appears to be large slabs of rock piled hundreds of feet high is actually junk. I slide down, catching my foot on a glossy pink cardboard box on my way down into the warzone. There are families climbing down as well. A family picks up a toy and exclaims "It's exactly what he wanted!" A boy carefully places his feet in secure places without even taking notice of the tresure of toys surrounding him. I look up at the box that caught my slipping foot. It is a life-size Barbie doll. She looks just like the original, but she is labeled as a princess of some Middle-Eastern place. Her tiara is secretly an odd-shaped wireless mouse perfect for spying. The company was not given rights by Mattel to sell her and so, like what makes up the rest of this place, they threw the discontinued and unsafe toys here at the border between worlds.
I get to the bottom and go into a school. I am granted an interview. The place is dirty and the neighborhood violent, but I want to be doing something. The principal asks me if I can teach math and I admit that I cannot. Only up to 4th grade. Math has never been my thing. He asks about Scoial Sciences and I tell him absolutely, I can. I would love to. I am already flipping pages of books in my head. He nods decisively. I am hired. Just like that. They need male teachers like myself and so I think that they will keep me even if I am not good at first.
In search of pups (I know there are several, all identical) I go into a small coffee shop run by Kenyans. My advisor from grad school is there. She tells me that I can come back if I just take this test before Wednesday. She holds up several pieces of paper stapled together. It is a test that I had started years ago and I can already see her markings, her plans to fail me. I tell her that i have no interest in her test. I tell her that I have moved on. She says that she wants me to have a chance. I tell her that she does not. That she gave out several chances to people who were lazy and inattentive but she did not give me a chance. Not a real one. The Kenyans come over and whisper to her that they know I am telling the truth, they can sense it, and that she is stepping beyond her bounds. If she does not stop harassing me, she will no longer be welcome here. I get up and continue my search.
There is a fall in the land. What appears to be large slabs of rock piled hundreds of feet high is actually junk. I slide down, catching my foot on a glossy pink cardboard box on my way down into the warzone. There are families climbing down as well. A family picks up a toy and exclaims "It's exactly what he wanted!" A boy carefully places his feet in secure places without even taking notice of the tresure of toys surrounding him. I look up at the box that caught my slipping foot. It is a life-size Barbie doll. She looks just like the original, but she is labeled as a princess of some Middle-Eastern place. Her tiara is secretly an odd-shaped wireless mouse perfect for spying. The company was not given rights by Mattel to sell her and so, like what makes up the rest of this place, they threw the discontinued and unsafe toys here at the border between worlds.
I get to the bottom and go into a school. I am granted an interview. The place is dirty and the neighborhood violent, but I want to be doing something. The principal asks me if I can teach math and I admit that I cannot. Only up to 4th grade. Math has never been my thing. He asks about Scoial Sciences and I tell him absolutely, I can. I would love to. I am already flipping pages of books in my head. He nods decisively. I am hired. Just like that. They need male teachers like myself and so I think that they will keep me even if I am not good at first.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)