novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- she's a good girl, loves her mama 1. our cavernous 1920s apartment. i have paused mid-gutting: there are clusters of cleaning supplies, a corner filled with things to donate, sell or give away, and fantastic piles in the center of the living room and bedrooms. but i have not even started on the kitchen. i have taken everything off the walls except for the strings of tiny fabric flags i put up when we first moved in. half of my books are packed, layered into boxes between half of my clothes. i think the part of me that used to like moving packed up and shipped out years ago. i would get excited about being able to fit everything i owned into my volvo station wagon and heading to a new apartment (and sometimes a new state). but now i have a honda accord and furniture. now i entertain day dreams about owning one of the little stucco houses that cropped up in the bay area in the twenties and forties, as if i could ever afford real estate here. sometimes i let my heart move me and dave into one of the old mansions dotting the oakland and berkeley hills, or a victorian in san francisco. all that space. i'd have a writing room (why call it an office? offices are for business, sealed away from personal life) and an art studio. i'd have friends roosting in their own corners, visiting for months or living with me. we'd finish the attic and basement and i'd set up a letterpress. no, leave the attic unfinished. i like the exposed vaulted beams. just polish the floor and maybe put in a few skylights. or windows, thick storm windows plunked right in the middle of the roof, and you can open them so a breeze comes through the ceiling's slant on hot nights. and because this is a day dream, i can also afford an etching press and fabulous antique furniture. a yard, a small garden, grass, a creeping hill and towering trees. (oddly though i have this thought in the base of my spine that pipes up every now and again, and it tells me that i'll end up in a small wooded town in colorado. why colorado? i don't know. colorado. there's another thought kept near to my ankle who seems to have high hopes for maine, but i think that would only happen if i rocket through school and get my phd so i can become a spinster nutty professor. that thought hasn't been popping up very often lately.) i am hesitant about moving into a warehouse. it is not a house; can i make it my home? i'll hang my paint by numbers paintings of horses grazing and cross my fingers. i'll still entertain house dreams and maybe they will go stronger every time i edge my honda into the gated parking lot of the imposing gray building. or maybe i'll take it and make it mine. who knows. i'm not even finished packing. i haven't even moved in yet. exit trepidations and enter material object delirium; i am looking around and feeling claustrophobic by all this stuff and it makes me want to go on a hike through a grove of redwoods. really, more than anything i want to drive to tahoe and jump into lake donner. at night if the sky is clear you can float on the surface of the lake in an innertube, drink your beer and see right through to the bottom beneath you. i've always wanted to do that, float on the lake at night, but i never have. i just heard about it, and it's become a personal stand-in for whenever i feel inexplicible and just want to live in the moment, like a dog or any animal without opposable thumbs really. animals don't care about owning a ridiculous amount of things and they certainly don't worry about tomorrow. i'll get that inexplicible twinge at the base of my belly and if there's another person around my eyes will sparkle, and i'll tell them about lake donner. if i tell the story right it colors mythically and their eyes hopefully sparkle a little too. 2. i've always wanted to go on little trips, road trips, spur of the moment vacations. "hey, let's go to fucking canada. i know a couple of awesome people there." that sort of thing. every once in a while someone will have a good idea and we'll take off. i'll talk up plans with friends and our faces will get blissed out with hope and momentary resolve, but the best bits never happen. i think i've been waiting for someone to take off with, thinking all these years that more exciting things will happen if i find someone as exciting as my hopes. i know i've written about that here; a partner in crime. maybe a girl who acts like a guy in all the right ways and we spur each other on. hey batter batter. oh but i've got all sorts of partners for all sorts of crime already -- i should just make the best bits happen, myself. after a year working or going to school six or seven days a week, i'm only working 32 hours a week through june and july; i'll have three-day weekends. there will be many canoe trips and for some reason i want to ride a horse through half moon bay, my eyes peeled for neil young. i want to do things like find tom petty's house, just because he's effing tom petty, and i want to drive there and stand outside his wrought iron gates of rock and roll and sing "free fallin'" under my breath before driving away again. i want to find the hidden beaches up in the north bay and sit on a hill and watch the sun set over the rickety roller coasters in santa cruz. that one i've done, it was fun, i want to do that again. i want to go to reno. nk went to reno so many times that it was like her second home. i don't even gamble, i just want to go. i want to be able to drive to ventura and see my grandmother. hug my mother, see my boys. i'm not working during the month of august; i'm going to portland and seattle, los angeles and san diego. i'm flying to wisconsin for my family's 100 year barn-raising celebration. and i'm taking out extra financial aid so i can use school breaks to go to ireland to visit phil and jimmy, go to italy to pester wolfe's friends, go to new zealand to see amanda. and i will be alone. i used to be so afraid to travel to different countries alone. i want to just go. "You should never lose that, that sense that an impulse can become a real thing." 6:47 pm - 05.27.05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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