novembre
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all your little diamonds
among other things, there's a stack of back issues of the new yorker, creased and wrinkled on the rickety coffee table i bought for two dollars. piles of mismatched dishes; the plastic rocky plate, the angular wedding plate with silver script on its face saying you are special today. a green class fruit bowl filled with gala apples. a flighty toaster. fifteen coffee cups with random nonsensical slogans. geoff's brown jean jacket hanging on a vinyl kitchen chair, left months ago for me to mend its ripping shoulders. the "prohibited leisure activities" notice from 826 valencia that declares bear baiting is only ok on land. a fern laid to waste by biting cat. a blue trunk filled with bookbinding supplies. piles of what used to be on the walls: my fake mustache collection, lori's photographs, embroidered birds framed in wooden cages; calendars featuring nuns smoking, riding on a merry-go-round and playing skee-ball; joanne's paintings, judy's lithographs, a tiny square mirror with led zepplin painted on it, my spermatophytes poster diagramming the development of fruits... nesting in a box with ventura scrawled on its side is the extra feather comforter folded against the extra crocheted throw, white down on fuzz red, underneath a wrought-iron key holder shaped like nesting birds.
all my little boxes are lined up on top of my 1930s suitcases; the gilded tins and the dusty jewelry boxes, and a varnished redwood box lined in red velvet with a brass plaque reading sweetheart in cursive on its lid. at least twenty elephant figurines, a few scattered owls and other birds. my visible woman without any anatomy; just her shell arms at her sides palms up belly open for all to see through. a set of bose computer speakers i bought two years ago and forgot to ever take out of the box. a pile of old maps, graph paper, pink paper, red polka-dotted tissue, striped tissue and brown ribbon with tiny flecks of pink woven in. my dad's guild guitar. a postcard of the rolling stones that i won for a nickel at the musee de mechanique, a postcard of san franciscan sidewalk flower stands in the forties, a postcard of eva hesse, coupons for free coffee at peet's, colored pencils, graphite and charcoal sticks. the round brass bird-shaped box. a pile of dirty towels and sheets, all mismatched. a sixties teardrop lamp with its shade dented from when heather shipped it from georgia. nk's water noodles, boxes she never unpacked but just shoved into the closet when she moved from jersey last year. piles and piles of copies of short stories with feedback scrawled between their double-spaced lines, all written in at least 24 different styles of handwriting (accounting for at least 25 people). a vellum leaf from an old artists book i made about leaving kansas city. an electric guitar tuner without batteries. three dead AA batteries. pink shoelaces. a red plastic horse the size of my thumb. a battered set of aquarian tarot cards that were blessed ("this cleanses them of past energy") by the woman i bought them from at her yard sale in portland. three paint-by-numbers portraits of horses lazing in grassy fields, all painted probably thirty years ago. five scented candles, all different scents. italian soups. an oven mitt shaped like an ear of corn. a towering column of books. a smaller city of cds and a squat township of records. broken polaroid land cameras. toy cameras that divide 35mm film into four sections. pumas. three leather coats, all different colors, all with hoods. a stereo i spray painted blue when i was seventeen. a disposable camera with twelve pictures remaining. two jump ropes. one skateboard. plastic crates the size of overlarge shoeboxes filled with seven inch records. plastic airline bags. unbound artists books. prints. battered journals filled with found photographs, decoupage and entries typed on thin paper, pasted over, layering like sound. half-finished journals. tiny pads of paper never used. a framed picture of muffie playing bingo in a dark blue jacket. four pairs of scissors, three glue sticks, fifty pens and i have just unearthed stacks of photographs i've squirreled away: often i wish i could take pictures with my eyes. i haven't had a decent camera in years and therefore haven't been documenting my twenties as thoroughly as i did my teens, lending a murky transience to the last seven years. but here are polaroids of friends flitting in and out, a black and white portrait of my grandmother with alabaster skin and sharp eyes, and snapshots of my mother at my age in a burgundy velvet short suit, her blond hair loosened by curlers around her temples so that it falls lightly over her shoulders.
she is smiling her big smile, the one she still smiles today (though intermittently) to let you know when she is genuinely happy. i always come back to that smile.
3:41 pm - 05.24.05
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