Putting ice on my leg bruises
I should be grateful for this laptop but these tinny speakers can't do any music justice. Lately I try to listen to songs I've heard before and my brain just fills in the parts that are missing. The Jesus and Mary Chain, Psychocandy, perfect for flopping around my hot apartment and thinking about all my first world problems.
My suitcase from camp is open in my kitchen. Back three days and still haven't bothered to put away clean clothes, picking out what I need and ignoring the rest.
My bed is hot and smells of unfamiliar sweat, have to change the sheets tomorrow. I wonder if I am smelling my Friday night stranger, an addled but handsome giant, who rolled off the bed and into my closet in his sleep. In the morning I thought he had left and started to make myself coffee. My apartment is small; I can see my bed easily from the kitchen. When he sat up confused I let out a yelp and we regarded each other with disorientation and terror, me by the suitcase, him naked on the floor tangled in my laundry, trying to remember each other's first names.
Camp is a community of wholesomeness and simplicity without the judgement or moral alienation I feared when I signed up earlier in the year. Genuine, kind, beautiful people volunteering to give a group of deserving kids and families a break. Sometimes I feel like I walk around with scarlet letters under my tank top: adulterer, skid, whore, hard drug user, smoker, drunk, narcissist, reject, poseur, punk. At camp none of it matters. I carry canoes for the kids and we paddle out and I lifeguard and teach swimming lessons and I play the clown all day in the wilderness. I'm not in the office and there's no tricks and there's no cell signal. At dusk I sit on the dock and watch cryptic bubbles and gnats on the lake and read Irving Layton and Carl Sandburg. At night I sleep as one who has tested her strength all day and eaten good food in the company of beautiful and intelligent women. It was so hard to leave.
Making coffee in my apartment is a bit precarious. Like the laptop, it's tough to complain when I have everything I need and more, and the system is technically functional, if barely. Heat water in the pot (the one with no handle is the perfect size). Use the mug to scoop the still-boiling water into the press (three to four scoops). Stir three times. Cajole and scrape the plunger down the pot. Say a blessing. Jump three feet as a naked construction worker emerges from your bedroom closet.
I fall in love so often and so easily and not always with those who deserve it. Pieces of my heart walk around outside of my body. In this misadventurous and loosely-connected episodic life I grow new hearts by learning and working and loving and reading and growing and sharing. One of my hearts moved to PEI without so much of a goodbye. She is going to be a dairy farmer and I like picturing her braids and scars and knuckle tattoos pulling on some udders in the middle of nowhere. Hard work and good food in the company of beautiful and intelligent people. I hope that she is happy. I hope that I am happy.
My suitcase from camp is open in my kitchen. Back three days and still haven't bothered to put away clean clothes, picking out what I need and ignoring the rest.
My bed is hot and smells of unfamiliar sweat, have to change the sheets tomorrow. I wonder if I am smelling my Friday night stranger, an addled but handsome giant, who rolled off the bed and into my closet in his sleep. In the morning I thought he had left and started to make myself coffee. My apartment is small; I can see my bed easily from the kitchen. When he sat up confused I let out a yelp and we regarded each other with disorientation and terror, me by the suitcase, him naked on the floor tangled in my laundry, trying to remember each other's first names.
Camp is a community of wholesomeness and simplicity without the judgement or moral alienation I feared when I signed up earlier in the year. Genuine, kind, beautiful people volunteering to give a group of deserving kids and families a break. Sometimes I feel like I walk around with scarlet letters under my tank top: adulterer, skid, whore, hard drug user, smoker, drunk, narcissist, reject, poseur, punk. At camp none of it matters. I carry canoes for the kids and we paddle out and I lifeguard and teach swimming lessons and I play the clown all day in the wilderness. I'm not in the office and there's no tricks and there's no cell signal. At dusk I sit on the dock and watch cryptic bubbles and gnats on the lake and read Irving Layton and Carl Sandburg. At night I sleep as one who has tested her strength all day and eaten good food in the company of beautiful and intelligent women. It was so hard to leave.
Making coffee in my apartment is a bit precarious. Like the laptop, it's tough to complain when I have everything I need and more, and the system is technically functional, if barely. Heat water in the pot (the one with no handle is the perfect size). Use the mug to scoop the still-boiling water into the press (three to four scoops). Stir three times. Cajole and scrape the plunger down the pot. Say a blessing. Jump three feet as a naked construction worker emerges from your bedroom closet.
I fall in love so often and so easily and not always with those who deserve it. Pieces of my heart walk around outside of my body. In this misadventurous and loosely-connected episodic life I grow new hearts by learning and working and loving and reading and growing and sharing. One of my hearts moved to PEI without so much of a goodbye. She is going to be a dairy farmer and I like picturing her braids and scars and knuckle tattoos pulling on some udders in the middle of nowhere. Hard work and good food in the company of beautiful and intelligent people. I hope that she is happy. I hope that I am happy.