Oct 01, 2006 10:09
In the forest, the trees are three times our age. Four o' clock sunlight bursts through the canopy and explodes into amber fireworks. Overlapping fractal mosaics, a three-dimensional negative space line drawing of an unforgettable fire, mirrorball patterns across the underbrush. Slowly, it changes shape in the passing afternoon. Slowly, it drifts counter-clockwise.
...
Friday night. A sea of scene kids, music nerds, partygoers. They float in an out the back door, filling the deck, spilling down the wooden steps in crisscrossing shadows and yellow porchlight, arranging themselves in porous clusters around the yard. Inside, the ends of serpentine patch cords find their way into amps that crackle and pop. Speakers squeal with feedback and hum to life. Impatient shouts from a guitar, the sporadic march time of a snare drum. Someone is plucking a violin.
Arya shouts my name from the deck, shakes my hand and pats me on the back, frantically introduces us to friends in the circle he's in. He chats for a while and disappears, cell phone to ear, off to different circles.
I haven't played with the band in a month, and it's been a while since I've been to a show. I am anticipating the volume, the heat, the wash of cymbals, the vibrations pulsing through the walls and beneath my feet. I am anticipating the release, the urge to dance, the feeling of those first few chords crunching to life, the simple, unexplainable phenomenon of a song transforming the room, a song pulling us collectively into brighter, louder space.
...
On the second day of September, the day I help Robert and Meagan move, the heat fills the room like hot breath in a paper bag. It presses on the walls, presses our shirts to our backs and says Hey, sit down, take it easy. Try again tomorrow. Today, it taunts, today is no good for you.
Noone I know likes to pack up and move. You find months, sometimes years worth of dust that has organized itself into a constantly shifting colony with its own will to live. It never stays in a pile. It attaches itself to corners and broom bristles, and when you finally pry it free, it sticks to your sweat and flies into your nose like it belongs there, like it's coming home.
You have to separate your things. These things you've tucked away and forgotten, these things you've dropped behind the sofa or shoved under the bed, thrown into the bottom drawer or left in the back of the fridge, it all comes out now, and for each one, you must make a decision. Take it or leave it. Keep it or throw it away. All of the accumulated material weight of your existence must now be accounted for. Of course, if you're like me, and you've waited until the last possible moment, you end up throwing most of it in a junk box or a plastic garbage bag. You haul it along with you, and it kind of bugs you until you forget about it again.
My job here, thankfully, is simply to lift and move things. There are no decisions to be made. Lift, move. Tilt it on end, fit it around the corner. Shift weight, grab hold, ease it down, get a grip, walk. Tilt it forward 90 degrees to get it out the door, slow and level down the steps, quickly across the yellowing grass. We are panting by the time we get to the curb.
It won't fit in Robert's van. Or it will, just not all of it. No matter the angle or the position of the seats, it juts from the rear like a goofy vestigial tail. We throw some heavy bags on the front end and Robert, lacking rope or bungee cord, ties the door latch to the bumper with a cat leash.
Warm red upholstery. I attach the stereo faceplate and Robert starts the engine, and Andrew Bird resumes an interrupted soliloquy on the damning attrition of daily life. I coax the window down with the duct-taped handle and light a cigarette. We pull forward in the thick heat and begin the slow, cautious journey over the hill.
...
Friday. I'm at the Clackamas Winco, sitting on the sidewalk that wraps around the side of the building, in the place I used to take my smoke breaks. Lines of cars and abandoned shopping carts glisten in the late September sun. I am waiting. Across the street is an RV lot, behind me there's a brick wall, to the right and left, stretches of parking lot and car dealerships, loan sharks and fast food, strip malls with signs clean people with white smiles, whispering promises of the comfortable life.
Passing through the automatic sliding doors, into the cheap fluorescent lighting, it all comes back. The grayness of this place. The rattling shopping carts, the steady stream of blips and bleeps echoing down miles of checkstands. The drone of the conveyor belt, an endless supply of groceries and sundries, coupons, bottle returns, produce codes, service codes, entry codes. Rigid bodies and rat maze claustrophobie, a stream of dot-matrix numbers and the dull burn of standing still. The numbing hypnosis of repetition. A quiet panic begins in the wings, a low-grade hysteria behind the stage, and you just want to escape.
I've been through the customer service line three times. I've made
um...more later maybe...i dunno if i'm getting this where i want it to go