A Strange Day on Planet Earth

It is the third night of the full moon. Last night, full moon proper, was cloudy and damp. I kept peering out the window over the kitchen door for some break in the clouds, but the moon remained carefully shrouded.

I lit dozens of candles and watched the apartment blossom into an undomesticated being: Whispers and shadows gathering in the corners, the appliances sighing sleepily. Only the soft thuds of my feet as I plod from room to room. I think I can feel the eyes of the original Italian tenants staring curiously from the ceilings, wondering at this strange woman and her strange oven clock.

Dark is a different dark every night: had I forgotten this? It is only in the surreality of clocks and electric switches we think one night is like the last. I lift my phone in candlelight to put it to sleep, and am sickened by the deathly pallor it casts on everything. How often do I stare into that artificial sun?

But it is more interesting to write about the moon, even when out of sight. The clouds sat pregnant and faintly aglow, those clouds that plotted to gather on a full moon, and then jealously keep her out of sight.

I burned dried sage and watched myself too become a different being, the animal that lives within the shell, waiting for a moment to leap forward. My face looks mischievous and tells me things I did not know.

I fall asleep reading by candlelight and wake with page creases on my right arm. The morning is still overcast but strangely bright. My dreams float like reflections in an undiluted pool, and for a moment I want to slip back into the other world and never awake. Must turn to the computer, send emails, and further propel the overt storyline of my life.

I draw water for tea and find a spider in the kitchen sink. Perfectly formed, eight arched legs. It would be good luck, but she seems to have drowned to death, rendering it an uncertain omen. I put on a heavy coat and carefully lay her to rest in the garden.

journal 2.24.14

Job applications:

Are you a self starter in the murder of your own soul?  Do you want to aid vapid people in making more money?  Do you work efficiently in depressed environments?  Do you suppress your emotions, down to the last detail?  Will you come be a desperate, shallow person groveling at the bottom of our ladder so we can feel better about being desperate, shallow people who groveled to the top?  Do you have seven years’ experience in this favored activity?

Image: from Mr. Grant Allen’s New Story by Grant Allen, 1893, via The British Library on flickr

journal 2.16.14

It is raining in the kitchen again, from three different places.

After hearing it indoors, I fear I may never again relax to the gentle pitter patter of rain.

journal 1.21.14

Snow, snow, thick sound-muffling snow, and all of us united in the battle for sure footing and dry socks.

I called 311 about a malfunctioning traffic light causing chaos on Knickerbocker Avenue and later, with a dead phone, convinced a business owner to call an ambulance for the man collapsed outside his door in a heap.  As snow gently covered him, pedestrians kept filing past like he was another piece of the sidewalk.

At home, boiled water and grated ginger for tea as my coat dried.  And considered what a fortunate creature I am, to return to hot radiators.

I visited the Genius Bar today. In my mind it always appears “Genie Bar,” where people perform mysteries deeds and speak in incantations that all seem to rhyme with RAM.

The Genie Bar woman said there is nothing wrong with my phone, save that it is seven operating systems behind. She showed me a button situated in the settings folder I must occasionally press. Now all the screens look different. I am impressed.

I also say mysterious things at the Genie Bar, where I get flustered at the first RAM-related word, and then develop a stutter. This is residual trauma from a Genie Bar man who spoke to me like I was a five-year-old for a whole 30 minutes, following a confession I mistrusted “clouds” and maintained a paper calendar.

Today was a little better. I am glad to know about the magic button sitting in the settings folder. My new-looking old phone is behaving well, and there is no bill.

The soil test results arrived last week, from Dr. Joshua Cheng of the Environmental Sciences Analytical Center.  There sitting innocuously in my inbox, a report with the deadening news the garden has lead.  That is, a lot of lead.  606 ppm.

I wrote back, “I have been eating from this soil all summer — can you give any further recommendations?”

No reply.

Not only have I been eating from this soil, I have been walking in it barefoot, scraping it from under my fingernails, and generally inhaling it day in and out. In my blissful oblivion, I thought the only question about soil was how well it grew stuff.  But all the years of lead-based gasoline are living in my backyard, like some gruesome fossil record.

It cost $10 to test the soil, and I can’t test my blood as I currently have no insurance.  Capitalismé.

journal: 9.15.13

I scrubbed the deck today, on my knees in galoshes, with buckets of hot water heated on the stove. It is slowly drying and looking quite pleased with itself.

As the days grow cooler the morning glories show their faces for longer stretches — the unutterable purple of it all.  The yellow rose bush created two perfect specimens and the red one is eagerly producing buds, despite its spindly body.

I am rereading Anne of Windy Poplars and already grieving its impending end. L.M. Montgomery did not have the rosy life she liked to commit to paper, but she never lost fluency in talking streams and kindred spirits.  It is strange thinking of all the Serious Men I read in high school English classes, when women most often tell the stories I want to remember.   I suppose because Montgomery used words like “belovedest” she could not make the canon of Great Grim Writing.

journal 9.4.13

It became humid again, the feeling the city is just one giant boil on an unkept foot.  And now cool air, the kind you want to slide into like fresh sheets.

Laborrrrrrr Day weekend seemed to go on and on; I had a headache and terrible longing to be alone.

What does it mean to be of the land when one lives in the city?  Here this yard has become my favorite place in all of the universe, but there’s no room to roll around.  On the streets the trees look like they would rather be somewhere else.

On the M train I was reading the book Caliban and the Witch.  When the woman next to me broke into spoken word I was impressed, until I realized she was rhyming about how I will burn in hell.

Later I was walking my neighbor’s dog, which is about six inches long, when we were attacked by a dog 600 feet long (approximate measurements).

Determined this day will have one fine memory, I have turned to the oven, which is not known to judge or bite.  Four cups flour, three tablespoons anise seed, one-third cup rum.  No need to rhyme when the words are sweet.