Alison McGhee's Blog, page 36

A Never Before Done Thing: Day Four

Day Four of the never before done challenge proves far more frustrating than the catwalk of Day Three (get it?), at least for me, since I can’t speak for my cat.

Take a look at that dashboard below.

That photo represents only part of the dashboard of the rental car which is mine for the week. There are all sorts of other electronic buttons all over the place in this car, but let’s focus on this particular screen shot. Pressing any one of those little icons at the bottom of the screen will cause a whole new screen to appear, each one full of indecipherable little icons.

Nice rental guy at the airport rental counter: We don’t have any full-size cars left, but we do have a Lincoln Continental for you!

Me (staring at him in fear): Wait, isn’t that like a really fancy car?

NRG (happy smile fading): It’s a luxury car, yes.

Me: Oh no. I don’t like fancy cars.

NRG: You don’t?

Me: Nope.

NRG: Hmm. Most people do. Well, I’m afraid it’s either the Lincoln or a Hyundai Accent.

At that point I picture the elder companions who are about to share this rental car with me for the coming week, during which we will be on a westward road trip. Here they are:

I ask myself this: Would these elder companions ride in a Hyundai Accent for a week without complaint?

Yes. They would.

Then I ask myself this: Would these elder companions like to ride in a luxury car for once in their lives?

Yes. They would.

NRG: Well, what do you think? Hyundai or Lincoln?

Me: Lincoln it is.

And so it happens that for the first time in my life, unless you count my first car, which was a Toyota that my friends and I eventually drilled the ignition out of so that it could be started with the butter knife that I kept on the floor of the driver’s seat, I find myself sitting in a car that I can’t start.

What is the point of a car key that doesn’t go into anything? I’m sure there are many, many cars in the world that now start with buttons, just like this cherry-red Lincoln Continental, but it’s a first for me.

It takes me a solid twenty minutes of sitting in the Lincoln, first jabbing the start button with the car “key,” then waving the “key” in front of the start button as if it has psychic powers that might cause the engine to ignite, then having an Aha moment in which I put the key aside entirely and press the start button with my finger, which lights up all the dashboard buttons and turns on the music and air conditioning but not the engine.

At this point I consider exiting the car and telling NRG that I’ll take the Hyundai after all. Then, in an unplanned and magical synchronicity of events, I happen to step on the brake at the same time as I’m pressing on the start button, and the engine comes to life.

Surely this is a sign from God that the elder companions and I were meant all along to rent this particular car. I pull out into the EXIT AIRPORT lane.

My youthful companion, who has a brand-new license and a lifelong love and appreciation of beautiful cars, something that she did not get from me, has been patiently waiting all this time in our own tiny, simple car, the one that she accompanied me to the airport in.

She follows me home and comes over to the Lincoln. I’m sitting in the driver’s seat, trying to figure out how to turn off the engine.

She stands there, shaking her head sadly.

YC: You’re driving an amazing car. And you don’t even know it, do you?

Me: Nope. I don’t.

What I know is that it took me twenty minutes to figure out how to turn the thing on, which I suppose is pretty amazing right there.

A Never Done Before Thing: Day Three

I blame this one on the youthful companion, as it was entirely her idea even if I was the one who ended up holding the leash.

See this cat?

His name is Hobbes. He looks serene and relaxed here in the living room, on the recliner that he leapt onto the minute the youthful companion exited the room (the very same recliner of doom that was featured in Day Two’s challenge), but he’s not.

Hobbes is highstrung, insatiably hungry and unable to govern his own caloric intake, difficult to pet because he claws and nips while being petted, and difficult to sleep next to because he thinks anyone next to him should get up at 3:30 a.m. and feed him breakfast.

He would also prefer to be an outdoor cat, but he doesn’t remember where he lives once he’s let out.

YC (months ago): I think we should get him a tiny harness and a tiny leash and take him on walks.

Me: Are you freaking kidding me?

YC: No! He’d love it!

Me: What if he did love it? Have you considered the fact that you would become known in the neighborhood as the weird girl who drags her cat around on a leash?

YC: Oh no I wouldn’t. But you would.

Me: You’re nuts.

Months pass and the YC keeps bringing up the idea, giggling maniacally each time she does so. Yesterday we find ourselves in the pet store, buying another bag of the super-expensive ultra-special cat litter that is the only cat litter that the cat will deign to use. (Denied this super-expensive litter, he pees on the YC’s backpack and duffel, but that’s another story.)

YC (holding up a wee little harness): Please?

Me: Absolutely not.

YC: It could be your one new thing of the day, though. Think about it.

Me (thinking about it): You know what? You’re right.

Later: let’s just say that sometimes, it’s immediately obvious that something you do once will never be done again.

 

 

A Never Before Done Thing: Day Two

Day Two of the month-long challenge proves rocky.

I wake up wanting to do something major and heroic, something that involves the conquering of a lifelong fear. What I have in mind can’t be faced alone, so I lurk by the door waiting to ambush my youthful companion when she comes home.

Me to youthful companion: Thank God you’re home. You have to help me with today’s challenge.

YC: Why?

Me: I’m going to do a headstand and I can’t do it alone.

YC: Oh God! No!

Her reaction gives me pause. There is genuine consternation on her face. She is an extremely athletic person with very little physical fear. Can it be that the youthful companion is herself afraid of doing a headstand?

Me: Wait a minute. Are you afraid of doing a headstand?

YC: Hell yes! I’ve never done one.

Me: THAT IS NOT WHAT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SAY.

YC: Oops.

We forge on. Against the wall? Against the couch? In the middle of the room with YC grabbing my legs and hoisting them up?

We, meaning me, decide on the recliner, as it is the only chair in the house with a back tall enough to let me gradually slime down over the top of it so that my head will end up on the seat and my legs up in the air.

Are you out there reading this and thinking with scorn and derision, That’s not how you do a headstand!? If so, I don’t blame you, but still, that’s how my headstand was going to happen.

Was going to happen. Past tense.

YC, upon hearing of the plan: No! Don’t use the recliner!

Me: Why not?

YC: Because it reclines!

The YC is right. The recliner does recline. Not only does it recline, but it reclines fast and also tips entirely over, flinging me off and crashing me to the hardwood floor. MAJOR PAIN ENSUES. The one good outcome is that the YC rushes to my side to see if I’m okay, which makes me feel loved and cared for.

There is an actual dent in my leg from the mishap. We both peer at it in interest.

YC: You should ice that right away.

Me: Are you kidding? I haven’t done the damn headstand yet.

But guess what? All further attempts at a headstand prove fruitless. The YC comes up with a new plan, which involves a yoga chair pose followed by a gradual tip into a headstand. You know, the way yogis do it. This works right up until the gradual tip into a headstand part.

I decide that the tip myself up against the couch plan is, at this point, the best bet.

YC: Kick your legs up! Kick them!

Me: How? HOW?

All efforts prove futile. How do people do headstands, seriously? More to the point, why do they do them? Can’t your spinal cord get mushed, with all that weight on it?

YC: Can’t you please do something else?

Me: Like what?

YC: Have you ever planked?

Me: Oh for God’s sake. Anyone can plank.

YC: That’s not the point. The point is to do something you’ve never done before, right?

Right.

One new thing a day: 8 July 2012

Today’s my birthday, and I made a birthday vow to do something I’ve never done before every day for a month, starting today.

This something-never-done doesn’t have to be huge, like climbing Machu Picchu. It can be tiny, like trying an old-school cocktail that you’ve never had before. Such as this one, below.

This drink is called a Sidecar, and trust me, it’s extremely tasty. Not too sweet, even though it looks like it might be. Served in a martini glass, which is my favorite kind of drink glass. Kind of like a brandy gimlet, so if you’re a fan of vodka gimlets, take heed.

The something-never-done-before can be as simple as taking a right turn where you’ve never taken a right turn before, on a walk you do nearly every day, an hour+ walk so familiar to you that you literally know every single tree.

But take an unexpected right turn –something you probably wouldn’t have done if you hadn’t been on the lookout for something you’d never done before– and look where you end up:

Where you end up is a path through the woods that skirts the years-long familiar path you take with your dog, but which feels 20 degrees cooler and like an entirely new world, one running parallel to the world you walk in every day.

So many never-before-done things, right here in your own neighborhood. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Poem of the Week, by Lisel Mueller

What the Dog Perhaps Hears

- Lisel Mueller

If an inaudible whistle

blown between our lips

can send him home to us,

then silence is perhaps

the sound of spiders breathing

and roots mining the earth;

it may be asparagus heaving,

headfirst, into the light

and the long brown sound

of cracked cups, when it happens.

We would like to ask the dog

if there is a continuous whir

because the child in the house

keeps growing, if the snake

really stretches full length

without a click and the sun

breaks through clouds without

a decibel of effort,

whether in autumn, when the trees

dry up their wells, there isn’t a shudder

too high for us to hear.

What is it like up there

above the shut-off level

of our simple ears?

For us there was no birth cry,

the newborn bird is suddenly here,

the egg broken, the nest alive,

and we heard nothing when the world changed.

–

For more information on Lisel Mueller, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lisel-mueller

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Poem of the Week, by Sharon Olds

Little Things

- Sharon Olds

After she’s gone to camp, in the early

evening I clear our girl’s breakfast dishes

from the rosewood table, and find a small

crystallized pool of maple syrup, the

grains standing there, round, in the night. I

rub it with my fingertip

as if I could read it, this raised dot of

amber sugar, and this time

when I think of my father, I wonder why

I think of my father, of the beautiful blood-red

glass in his hand, or his black hair gleaming like a

broken-open coal. I think I learned to

love the little things about him

because of all the big things

I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.

So when I fix on this tiny image of resin

or sweep together with the heel of my hand a

pile of my son’s sunburn peels like

insect wings, where I peeled his back the night before camp,

I am doing something I learned early to do, I am

paying attention to small beauties,

whatever I have -

as if it were our duty to

find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.

–

For more information about Sharon Olds, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/sharon-olds/

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Poem of the Week, by Bob Hicok

In Michael Robins’s class minus one

- Bob Hicok

At the desk where the boy sat, he sees the Chicago River.

It raises its hand.

It asks if metaphor should burn.

He says fire is the basis for all forms of the mouth.

He asks, why did you fill the boy with your going?

I didn’t know a boy had been added to me, the river says.

Would you have given him back if you knew?

I think so, the river says, I have so many boys in me,

I’m worn out stroking eyes looking up at the day.

Have you written a poem for us? he asks the river,

and the river reads its poem,

and the other students tell the river

it sounds like a poem the boy would have written,

that they smell the boy’s cigarettes

in the poem, they feel his teeth

biting the page.

And the river asks, did this boy dream of horses?

because I suddenly dream of horses, I suddenly dream.

They’re in a circle and the river says, I’ve never understood

round things, why would leaving come back

to itself?

And a girl makes a kiss with her mouth and leans it

against the river, and the kiss flows away

but the river wants it back, the river makes sounds

to go after the kiss.

And they all make sounds for the river to carry to the boy.

And the river promises to never surrender the boy’s shape

to the ocean.


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For more information about Bob Hicok, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/bob-hicok

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Poem of the Week, by Mary Karr

A Blessing from My Sixteen Years’ Son

- Mary Karr

I have this son who assembled inside me

during Hurricane Gloria. In a flash, he appeared,

in a heartbeat. Outside, pines toppled.

Phone lines snapped and hissed like cobras.

Inside, he was a raw pearl: microscopic, luminous.

Look at the muscled obelisk of him now

pawing through the icebox for more grapes.

Sixteen years and not a bone broken,

not a single stitch. By his age,

I was marked more ways, and small.

He’s a slouching six foot three,

with implausible blue eyes, which settle

on the pages of Emerson’s “Self Reliance”

with profound belligerence.

A girl with a navel ring

could make his cell phone go brr,

or an Afro’d boy leaning on a mop at Taco Bell –

creatures strange as dragons or eels.

Balanced on a kitchen stool, each gives counsel

arcane as any oracle’s. Bruce claims school

is harshing my mellow. Case longs to date

a tattooed girl, because he wants a woman

willing to do stuff she’ll regret.

They’ve come to lead my son

into his broadening spiral.

Someday soon, the tether

will snap. I birthed my own mom

into oblivion. The night my son smashed

the car fender, then rode home

in the rain-streaked cop car, he asked, Did you

and Dad screw up so much?

He’d let me tuck him in,

my grandmother’s wedding quilt

from 1912 drawn to his goateed chin. Don’t

blame us, I said. You’re your own

idiot now. At which he grinned.

The cop said the girl in the crimped Chevy

took it hard. He’d found my son

awkwardly holding her in the canted headlights,

where he’d draped his own coat

over her shaking shoulders. My fault,

he’d confessed right off.

Nice kid, said the cop.

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For more information on Mary Karr, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mary-karr

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In my father’s house there are many mansions

There’s a one-room shop in New York City that features dozens of cubbies, like dioramas, of perfect miniature rooms, complete to the last detail. Doll house furnishings unlike any you’ve ever seen before – a rolled-up newspaper, headlines and print readable, measuring half an inch. A wooden tray, the size of your pinky nail, containing a folded napkin, half a dozen chocolate chip cookies and a pitcher of milk.

It’s easy to spend an hour wandering around that quiet little store admiring its precisely wrought wares. Tiny houses charm you and always have. Airstreams. Houseboats. Vintage, single-wide trailers like the kind your grandmother lived in when you were growing up. One-room studio apartments with miniature appliances, a miniature fireplace, like one you once lived in.

You’ve always wanted a miniature house for yourself. Once you once spent a couple of hours at a marina on the Mississippi, pretending to be in the market for a houseboat so you could check out the ones that were for sale. So perfect, all of them, with their built-in drawers and appliances and cupboards and beds and tables and chairs.

When you were little, you and your sisters used to make elaborate houses out of big cardboard boxes, hay bales, an abandoned chicken coop, a blanket thrown over a card table. Every square inch counted in those houses, and no space went to waste.

Why, then, given this love of miniaturization, do you keep having one particular dream?

In this dream, you’re in a house, a house that you live in. You like the house but you don’t love it, maybe because there’s somehow not quite enough room in it.

Then, in the dream, you suddenly discover that there’s a whole part of the house that you never knew about. The new part is usually circular, built in a ring around the outside of the house you’ve been living in. It’s made of wood, and very dusty, and the furniture in it –it comes fully furnished– is covered with white sheets. It’s been closed up for a long time.

You walk around opening door after door, peering into room after room. Balconies and hallways. Windows. High ceilings. So much room!

Whenever you have this dream, you wake up restless, half happy and half frustrated. Where is all that room? Where is the whole hidden enormous house that’s somewhere, somehow, part of the house you already live in?

When you were a kid you wanted a house like the one Batman lived in, with secret compartments and bookcases that revolved at a touch of a button to reveal a whole new wing of the mansion, including the Bat Cave where the Bat Car waited.

Last week you were at your shack in the Green Mountains with a big list of things to do, tasks involving a shovel, a spade, a pitchfork, a hatchet, an axe, a scythe and a wheelbarrow.

At under 200 square feet, the shack is tiny. It began life as a pile of labeled wood with instructions that you bought off eBay, kind of like a giant Lincoln Log kit. Over four days, one sunny November years ago, you and your friends framed it up on a smoothed and leveled patch of gravel.

The shack sits in a small clearing surrounded by towering pines, next to a sunny slope set amongst ravines and bluffs and woods and creeks. That’s it up there at the top of this page. It’s more faded now. If you don’t do something to the wood soon it will keep fading more and more until it’s a silvery color.

Inside it smells like pine and earth, like concentration of woods.

You built the shack thinking that it was the beginning of a future real house. The first step in a long dream of life in Vermont.

Last week you constructed an indoor sink out of a jug and a bucket and a  cart, and the whole arrangement was so pleasing that you ended up washing your hands and brushing your teeth much more than usual, just to use the new sink.

In the tiny pitched-roof sleeping loft, an air mattress spread with a quilt is a bed. At night you can turn out the light and lie by the window sipping whiskey and looking out at the stars through the pine branches.

There’s a heater at the shack, and a couch, and many books. There’s a miniature refrigerator and a toaster and a well with a pump. There’s an outhouse. There’s a tent for guests, not that you’ve had any. There’s peanut butter and Jim Beam. There’s soap and a toothbrush and towels. There’s a table with a pen and paper.

There’s a hammock hung between two pines. It’s possible to spend half an hour watching an inchworm make its way across the entire, enormous-to-an-inchworm width of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is the inchworm brave? Dumb? Is it acting purely on instinct and, if so, is it braver or dumber than a human being who tries to plot out its life from start to finish? Does it know where it’s going? Does it  know it’s going anywhere? Is it going somewhere, or is movement itself the biological destiny of an inchworm? Does an inchworm stop inching to sleep, or rest, or take a short nap?

These are some of the questions you wondered about as you sat in the hammock last week, watching the inchworm. Early on in the watching you decided that no matter what, you wouldn’t interfere with the inchworm. Neither by helping nor hindering would you influence the outcome of this journey, whatever that journey was.

The entire time you watched the inchworm, it never stopped moving, or trying to move, even when it reached a particularly deep fold in the fabric of the hammock. When that happened, it stretched itself out as far as possible and then flung as much of its body as it could over the abyss.

When you returned to the city you showed your youthful companion a tiny video you took of the inchworm, inching, and before three seconds went by she said, “Honestly? I’ve always really admired inchworms,” and you had to agree.

At some point you lay back in the hammock and looked straight up, into the crowns of the white pines and the blue sky beyond. You heard nothing but birds and crickets and bees and the faint drone of an invisible airplane.

Suddenly you realized that the shack isn’t a shack. It isn’t the beginning of a much bigger future house. It’s not the start of a dream; it’s a miniature house, complete in itself.

Why did this never occur to you before?

All you had to do, in order to turn the shack into the miniature house you’ve always wanted, was see it in a new way. Your whole life you’ve dreamed of a miniature house, and all this time you already had one.

It comes to you then, looking up at those trees, that there’s so much space in your miniature house. And on the hammock. So much space in the trees, arching toward the sky, and so much space in the sky.

So many rooms in everything, and everyone.

Poem of the Week, by Seamus Heaney

Postscript

- Seamus Heaney
And some time make the time to drive out west

Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,

In September or October, when the wind

And the light are working off each other

So that the ocean on one side is wild

With foam and glitter, and inland among stones

The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit

By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,

Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,

Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads

Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.

Useless to think you’ll park or capture it

More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,

A hurry through which known and strange things pass

As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways

And catch the heart off guard and blow it open

–

For more information about Seamus Heaney, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/seamus-heaney

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