novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- shelved like the cutlery dear l, i am babysitting but it is not like it usually is. one of the kids, the nine year old who talks to me about harry potter and how much she hates barbie, is out spending the night at a friend's house. (she and her friend just stopped by for clothes and i trailed after, asking lots of stupid questions just to get her to focus on me for a minute, i missed her, now i know why my mother does that very same thing.) the other kid, the thirteen year old who is trying to teach me how to play tony hawk pro skater, has a friend staying the night and they are huddled in the living room, in the dim evening dusk, staring at their respective gameboys. when he came into the kitchen for water i tried nonchalantly to engage him by showing him my swollen knuckle from yesterday's mishap, and even resorted to displaying the tattoo on my back, but to no avail. perhaps i should tell them i got the puffy knuckle in a bar brawl. so i am in the kitchen because whenever i'd go online, the boys would want to play computer games, and whenever i'd turn on "trading spaces" (i LOVE that show, i wish i had cable), they'd kick me out and watch cartoon network, annexing themselves from me because tonight it is understood that he doesn't want me in the same room as them. i hate being deemed uncool by kids i love. oh well. the kitchen table faces a wall made of glass that gazes over the pine trees and chimney tips, out past the oakland hills and into the bay- both bridges flicker faintly from weekend travellers' brake lights- and the skyscrapers light themselves up one by one as the sun sets and this afternoon's rainclouds come back from their lunch break for more tears. soon all but the center of the window darkens, obliterating foilage and roof, erasing the feeling that i am sitting in an eagle's nest or a fancy treehouse. only the bay and san francisco continue to be lit, continue to be encased by clouds, and at the tips of such emotional weather dense black sits. the aloof teenagers request more pizza; when i come back to my seat the window is streaked with rain, the air is filled with splattering dripping noises (which nicely covers up the humming refrigerator), and my view has shortened itself to one black rectangle with a bespeckled belly- the city sits in the center, a matrix of shining lights forming slight patterns, much like a lite brite. even the daytime has seen fit to leave me isolated in such a cold kitchen -- fine. i grab computer paper and spend the next two hours bent over an elaborately detailed drawing of a mermaid in love with elton john's music, done completely in washable marker*. i am feeling very waterlogged tonight. the rain, the bay before me and the ocean behind it, the mermaid, even the water-soluable markers. it offsets the pain in my left hand, the throbbing puffy knuckle which i did not hurt during brazen bar-themed fisticuffs but cracked on the steering wheel of my car, yesterday. i banged it at work and it didn't start to hurt until later last night at the future bible heroes show (which i so wished was the magnetic fields instead) when i drank strong drinks with two groups of different friends who had never met each other before. we were at bimbo's this amazing bar-lounge-concert hall built about fifty to sixty years ago. that is ironic, don't you think, that my knuckle --while technically not hurt inside bimbo's-- did even still BEGIN to hurt INSIDE bimbo's, and i really want to impress/joke with a thirteen year old by telling him that i got it hurt in a bar fight? see, it's almost the truth. now one of the boys is watching tv and the other is playing computer games so i couldn't leave my kitchen post if i tried. occaisionally i can hear a plane land or take off, which is strange because the oakland airport is miles and miles east of here. sound carries up the hills i guess, but it also reminds me of how- at every single house or apartment i've lived in- i could hear trains running late at night, even if there were no train tracks nearby. and now i'm thinking of living in portland, because our house there really did have a trainyard nearby. it has stopped raining. for the time being. it is supposed to rain off and on all weekend, even though all week has been humid and sunny. i never try to figure out the weather, though: it is as sporadic as my moods. they have been very drastically up and down all year and i don't know why. i guess i fear being caught at an impass. another plane just floated by. love, elka (**i would have included a picture of the mermaid portrait but my internet provider sucks. imagine: a finned tail and very, very large tinted glasses.) 12:03 am - 04.14.03 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||