'We brought bread and fall flowers'

We brought bread and fall flowers, even though it was summer and I’m gluten-free, but, hey. The party was at the House of the Future, which was a bit of a misnomer because the house was built in the ‘50s. I think the future of the ‘50s is much more interesting than the present of today. We have a lot fewer starburst clocks now.

My dad always says he wishes he could live long enough to see the end of the world. I never understood that. I remember the first time I found out the Earth was going to be swallowed up by the sun. I panicked. Then I heard it wasn’t going to happen for thousands — millions? billions? — of years and I relaxed. It doesn’t make sense, though, because either way I’m going to be dead.

One time I was watching a meteor shower with a roommate of mine and she explained some phenomenon that would essentially mean the Earth would be eliminated in the blink of an eye. Maybe by a black hole. I said I hoped that wouldn’t happen. She said we wouldn’t even notice it because it would be so fast. But I think I would notice. And I wouldn’t like it.

We brought bread and fall flowers to the party at the House of the Future. It was full of Burners — Burning Man fans. A group I finally realized I will never, ever, ever fit in with. Even if there was a  party at the House of the Future the day before the sun swallowed the Earth, I would still be the one in the corner wearing my Ann Taylor Loft walking shorts and wondering why people felt the need to wear balloons on their heads encased by pantyhose. Maybe if there was a joke in there I could understand? Some sort of sly reference to the plight of the bourgeoisie? Nope. Just balloons in pantyhose, floating on by.

One year at Burning Man I decided to join the playa choir because I thought it would give me a purpose out there in the desert. We practiced at 10 each morning. My lungs caked with dust as I belted out our hallelujahs. We performed in center camp on Sunday, the last day of the event. Bodies writhed in front of us, contorting in drug-fueled yoga poses. “Why does your wife look like she’s not happy?” someone said to my husband when he pointed me out from the audience.

One of our singers stood in front to give a speech. She started talking about how much Burning Man meant to her, and not only that, it had meant a lot to her dad. She was holding something in her hand. What was it? It looked like a pill bottle. Was she about to dose herself in front of us. She started talking about how much her dad had wanted to attend Burning Man this year. Hmm… She looked down at the pill bottle. No. no no no no no. This is not right. She opened the bottle. She explained that she had brought her father with her this year. Right here, in this bottle. Dad’s powdery ashes spilled out from the bottle in a semi-circle around her feet, right near where the bodies had been writhing before. After the performance I couldn’t help but walk to the front area to get off the risers. My feet shuffled through a combination of humanity and alkaline dust that I’m not likely to experience again in my lifetime.

'The morning sunlight advanced across the powder blue carpet'

The morning sunlight advanced across the powder blue carpet. She had chosen powder blue because it was soft. Not red like the carpet in the church, spilling its way up the altar for communion. The world was harsh, black and white and red. But her room was gentle. Just this one space in a house full of exposed beams, cobwebs, and the flickering of blue light from the TV.

Keep hand moving. Brain not working.

I didn’t see morning sunlight for a long time because I worked at the newspaper. My friends and family thought I could adapt my schedule on my off days. I said it would be like them deciding to get up at 3 in the morning on the weekend, but they never really understood that. I was so happy when I stopped working there and I could see not sunlight but sunsets. So, so pretty. My favorite time of the day. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds good.

The morning sunlight advanced across the powder blue carpet as she waited for her interview to start. This was the first time she had thought to work at a candy company. The carpet was powder blue, the tables were candy apple red, the chairs were sour apple green, and the receptionist was far too perky for 7 a.m. When Janie was told to have a sweet, sweet morning she knew this might not be the place for her. She also expected to see Gene Wilder’s wild hair peeking out from the hallway. Roald Dahl was quite an odd guy, wasn’t he? Janie thought about the dark books and movies she had been exposed to as a kid. They scared her and gave her depth at the same time. Willie Wonka into the cave of nightmares or whatever it was. Did everyone escape that? Remember that kid that got sucked into the chocolate tube? Oh my god, why am I here?

Before Janie’s thoughts could tumble into her running out of the room screaming, a woman appeared from the hallway. Hair not unlike Gene Wilder’s, Janie noticed. The woman introduced herself as Maria and shook Janie’s hand. Janie appreciated the handshake, just the right amount of pressure. People with weak handshakes made her suspicious. People with strong ones made her feel tiny. But Maria’s was just right, like the perfect combination of crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle that the food scientists say is the key to creating an addictive substance. Drugs, food, everyone is pushing something.

Janie again tried to get the negative thoughts out of her mind. She needed this job because she could barely keep regular food in her house, let alone sugary and/or savory frankenfood. She did realize, though, that the secrets of both sausage-making and candy-making should remain in the closet (She had helped her husband make sausage once. Since then the food processor attachment had sat alone at the back of the cupboard, a safe home for one or more enterprising spiders). With that thought in mind, Janie walked through the crossed candy canes that marked the entrance of Maria’s office and took a seat on a pleasant looking lollipop chair. 

“So,” Maria said. “What brings you to our land of candy?”

'Cigarettes smeared with lipstick'

Cigarettes smeared with lipstick. My mom says she used to like watching my grandmother smoke because of her long, elegant fingers. It was a shock to me to find out my grandma had lung cancer when I was 12 because she had stopped smoking around the time I was born. She had it, though, and hers was the second funeral I attended. My uncle had died of a heart attack 8 months earlier. He was 42 and a lawyer. There were rumors he had a malpractice suit looming over him. I don’t know if those were true. But I remember sitting in my aunt’s living room in a circle with family and friends, either before or after the funeral. A neighbor was talking about her 3 or 4 year old daughter who wanted to get a bunch of helium balloons together so she could fly up and go see Dan in heaven. I cried at that story, tears openly sliding down my face. My cousin told me later she was surprised I hadn’t gotten up and gone into the bathroom. No one needs to see that type of thing was the message.

I don’t know if I still believed in God at that point in my life, but if I continued to after I would have thought he was a cruel bastard. I attended half a dozen funerals between ages 12 and 17. A classmate who was accidentally shot by another classmate, a kid I babysat for who was severely disabled because of a car accident a few years earlier. His dad had taken him along the winding roads toward Horseshoe Bend. No carseat. No seatbelt. The dad survived just fine. The first time I babysat the child and his brother, I heard his parents asking as they left, “Did her friend tell her about him?” I think my friend had, but the parents hadn’t really told me what was going on with their child. “Sorry, we broke him.” They didn’t say that.

A 14-year-old friend I had gone a school trip to Russia with. Killed in the passenger seat when she and her brother were driving to see the new mall, the first mall ever in Boise. On that trip I think she may have been one of the cool girls who teased me but I’m not sure. I don’t think she was, but one of the girls who did make fun of my Garfield pajamas was at a funeral when I was 20. Her sister and her sister’s boyfriend had been killed on the road up to Riggins. A big-rig hit them head-on. Stacey was at her sister’s funeral and I hugged her and hugged her. The boyfriend had been a fellow RA at college. I sat in on one of his shifts that week. His dorm had the smart people in it (the academics, I should say). They were quite docile.

I told my mom at a certain point that I was done being sad and I wasn’t going to cry anymore. This was after my grandmother. It was hard to pull off but I was relatively successful. Mom could always see the strain in my eyes, though.

It was a surprise to me to grow up and realize I wouldn’t be going to a funeral every year or six months. Part of me keeps waiting for the terror to start again. The slow, lumbering, floral-arrangement-and-ham-and-cheese-sandwich-laden terror of another expression of grief without expression. A community coming together to look at themselves and wonder who’s next. I had a theory about the Mormon families I grew up around. They had too many kids. Kids who got hit by cars at 5 and killed, were riding in cars with their teenage friends and killed, were playing with guns and killed. It’s OK, we have a few more. Plenty to go around. 

I wish I had ended on a lighter note. Happy Thanksgiving. :)

'The moment I heard...'

The moment I heard about the earthquake I was standing in a field full of cows. My cell phone rang. I had no idea I even got cell reception out here. At first a cow mooed and I couldn’t hear what was coming across on the line (do cell phones have “lines”?). Then I heard a voice, faintly familiar, telling me something had happened. I should have been there when it did but I wasn’t. I was here amongst the cows.

When I was 9 I was in a 7.5 quake in my home state of Idaho. I was standing at the bus stop when I heard a car approaching. No, it must be the bus. No…WHAT IS THAT?? The ground below me started moving. Ground wasn’t supposed to do that. I heard my mom calling to me from the house. She yelled my name and I started running to her. I looked down briefly and I could see the ground rolling beneath my feet. I felt like I was on the moon. 

One morning the cows from the pasture in back got loose. My mom noticed them when she walked out to get the paper with her flashlight and suddenly saw a big white face in the beam. The cows were cool, though. I imagine the grass tasted good.

When I got the news about this earthquake I realized it didn’t bother much as much as I might have in the past. I’d been through several quakes since living in Southern California, including on in Redondo Beach when my chair rolled softly on its wheels and the door to the patio swung gently. A couple of years ago I was working at the U-T on Easter and I thought I was going to die when the quake struck. The building is on rollers, so the quake went on and on and on. This was the big one, I was sure of it. Especially when my colleague said, “It’s not stopping.”

So when the big one hit it seemed kind of anticlimactic. I learned that no one I knew was hurt, the damage wasn’t quite as bad as had been predicted, and now it was over. It finally happened. No more hearing, “Why would you want to live down there with the earthquakes and the pollution and the crowds and the…”

There weren’t any crowds where I was standing now, unless you counted the cows, of course. I tried to approach one but she lumbered off when I got close. Cows aren’t cuddly, contrary to popular belief. Cows are cows. Big, soft, and slow.

I thought about the Idaho quake again recently when I viewed some home videos my brother had transferred to DVD. My husband watched with me and commented on how my childhood seemed idyllic. Except for that my stepdad would say things (on video) like, “Rachel, it’s time for you to put your boots away” … “before I throw them away with everything else.” I was quite compliant. Too compliant, I think now, until I’m reminded that kids have to do whatever they need to do to survive. Put up with emotional abuse that’s impossible to explain because it causes no visible scars. There are no cracks in the stairway like what happened at the U-T building. Walking down the stairwell I realized that it could all come tumbling down on top of me. Everything was built on fissures that we just couldn’t see until something got shaken up. I got shaken up. I left the paper 3 months later.

On Facebook a friend posted that she was receiving the command to “rest” from the universe, even though she felt like she should be out doing, doing, doing. A guy responded that value was only through action. Doing, doing, doing. What happens when you’re done doing? 

It feels like the building is shaking. Does anyone else feel that? Maybe it’s just someone next door. I always like the response, “It’s just a truck going by” when there’s actually an earthquake happening. Trucks aren’t that powerful, not even the triple trailers my husband seems so impressed with when we see them in Idaho. Nothing is more powerful than the little cracks in the surface that might bust open at any given moment. I’m kind of curious to see what’s underneath. Maybe just more of the same.

'I took the slow road home'

I took the slow road home. Why was it slow, you ask? I’m happy you asked because it doesn’t make much sense, does it? Why is one road slower than the other? Doesn’t it depend on the traveler of the road, not the road itself? What made this road particularly slow was that it was winding. Long and winding. No, not that road, although I did see a lot of Paul McCartney last night on the PBS Jimi Hendrix documentary. It was nice to see him applauding someone other than the Beatles.

I took the slow road home that night because I wanted to savor the moment. The road was dark, yet light enough that I could see the moss on the rocks and the moon trickling through the trees. I walked down the path that reminded me more than a little of the place Little Red Riding Hood sauntered down with her picnic basket. I always imagined that story in the daylight, though. Interesting because it’s a story about deception and loss.

I took the slow road home because I wanted to see what Robert Frost meant when he chose the one less traveled by. I didn’t encounter any travelers along the way that night, though I did hear an owl hooting and I swear I saw a mouse scamper in front of me. I don’t think it was blind. And there was only one.

I took the slow road home because I had an epiphany in a dream last night that time doesn’t exist. It’s only our perception of it that makes it real (perhaps it was a fever dream brought on my daylight savings lag). What would happen to our perception of time if we lived on a disk instead of a sphere, hurtling through the universe randomly with the sun on one side for a bit, then the other, flipping around at odd times. We’d be trying to dry clothes in the sun when suddenly darkness would engulf the yard. Damn. What time would it be then?

I took the slow road home because I wanted to hear that song one more time. This was before MP3s and YouTube, after all. My life revolved around KCRW anyway. Might as well take another turn around the neighborhood to rock in my Nissan Sentra.

I took the slow road home because the fast road was traffic-jammed. Think about it.

I took the slow road home because I didn’t want to get home too quickly. Then they might be suspicious. Better to leave them wondering where I was than provide proof I existed. Who wants to be monotonous when they be mysterious?

I took the slow road home because it’s hard to write a narrative in first person, apparently. Last week it was easier when we had a character to write about. It was easier to put words and actions into her life than to think of this “I.” Who am I? Am I a character? Someone told me once I should be a standup comedian. I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

She took the slow road home because she wanted to see what was there. It had been several years since she’d returned to her hometown and things were different. Where once there were cow pastures there were now Ikeas. Where wide open spaces gave off the faint scent of green there was the smell of rain on the pavement. The slow road had become fast. Her life kept on spinning. Back and forth and back and forth, and back to a place that no longer existed.

'Martha worked as a model to pay her tuition'

Martha worked as a model to pay her tuition. Her name was Martha, which was kind of weird because how many models do you know with the name Martha? Anyway, she worked as a model because she didn’t know what else to do with her life and she was pretty. Isn’t that why most models get work?

One day Martha was going to a photo shoot when she got a call from Tyra Banks. Yup, a direct call from Tyra Banks. Tyra wanted her to be on America’s Next Top Model, but Martha wasn’t sure because she was a rather private person. Even when she flaunted her body for the camera she still kept a small part of herself secret. They could have her body but the couldn’t have her mind. If she went on the show, her image would be in the hand of editors, and Martha didn’t think she could trust them.

Martha had a mother who worried about her and a sister and brother she helped support financially. They were ungrateful but Martha didn’t care. She knew that one day all of her good deeds would come back to her, in what form she did not know.

While Martha was considering the offer from Tyra Banks she enlisted the help of her best friend, Georgia. Georgia was also a model and she nearly hit the floor when Martha told her about Tyra’s call. Georgia felt a bit jealous, but mostly she felt happy for her friend. Georgia advised her to do it. Why not? It would help Martha with her career, and who knows what else might come from the opportunity. Martha trusted Georgia and said she would think about it. Georgia said she only hoped Martha would remember her after she became rich and famous.

Martha did think about it, and the next day she called Tyra back. The process went quickly from there, with Martha being swept up by a limo that weekend and taken to the model house. Martha was cast into a group of women she knew nothing about. After meeting a couple of them she wasn’t sure she wanted to know more. One woman told Martha that she “wasn’t here to make friends.” Martha had heard that one before.

Another model bragged about how she had gotten a personal call from Tyra Banks. Martha said nothing as the other girls oo’d and aah’d. It was going to be a long cycle, Martha thought. When she went to look for her room, Martha ran across a woman who was dragging her suitcase awkwardly down the hall. “Can I help you?” Martha said.

“Oh, no, it’s ok,” the other model laughed. “I could have used help when I was trying to decide what to bring, but that’s beside the point now.”

Martha smiled and introduced herself. The other woman said her name was Maggie and she was from Washington state. Martha didn’t ask whether she had gotten a personal call from Tyra, and Maggie didn’t tell.

Martha found her room a few minutes later. When she walked in she noticed something on her bed, an envelope. It took a moment before she realized its significance. “Hey, everyone! We’ve got a note from Tyra!” She ripped open the envelope and scanned the first words of her new adventure...