mercuryfern

A Mind for Paper Cranes

Abby hates ideas. 

She didn’t always know this about herself, but has been figuring it out over the last year.  I am sympathetic to being wary of valuing theory over practice, but I do love me some theory.  Sometimes I dream of drowning happily in hypotheticals.  To be honest, though, when I’ve had the opportunity, the isolation chafes and I run screaming to some manual labor.

Her new self definition surprised me.  In college we took many of our classes together, usually two a semester. I loved discussion in classes with Abby best of all, because this girl combines irreverence and passion like no one I’ve ever known.  Talking to her, old pieces are hilarious, ridiculous, meaningful, but most of all, relevant.  Abby’s not just the first one to say the emperor has not clothes, but she does so with complete openness, with no malice whatsoever towards those of us inadvertently playing at the charade.

The three of us sat in their hot tub last night, stars and trees above, the wood stove keeping the half barrel nicely in the mid nineties.  We talked about our childhoods, strange how little I’ve told them.  I realized at the Hootenanny that Eli didn’t know I’d been institutionalized at 14, nor do any of my other fiends from that era.

The conversation turned to the Yiddish Volk from which Abby is lately returned, to Mensa, to books we have recently read.

“So, I picked up this book on homesteading, which is something Adam and I are pretty interested in, we read a fair number of these things.  This one, though, was, like, somebody’s thesis, I guess, and it was just a bunch of categories into which homesteaders could be put, and then expounding on those categories.  Y’know, the tell you what they are going to tell you, then they tell you, then they tell you what they told you.  I hate that shit.  I want to read about how exactly one particular family gets water or heats their house, or makes cheese or whatever, not a bunch of definitions some girl made up... 

“...My favorite books are cookbooks, origami books, and Yiddish English dictionaries.  Once you read a novel, you are done with it, you know?.. 

“...I always hated writing papers in college.  I could do it, I always got a’s and b’s because they were grammatically and structurally correct, but I never had any *ideas*...”

We went inside after a half hour or so; made a German pancakes from the CSA apples and one of the beloved cookbooks.

This morning, I went out for one of the walks I am failing to make a daily habit, and noticed a red and white crane sitting on the steps.  I’d planned to take pictures of a small pier jutting into a dried pond I’d found along an overgrown path last night, but I was entranced by this geometric litter.  My camera and I don’t quite get along yet, I miss the control I had over my manual silver gelatin baby. 

I spent what must have been close to an hour fiddling with the few options and the light and my position and the software and deleting everything to head back out again for more pictures; all the while thinking about the intersection of facts and ideas, how sometimes they intertwine pleasantly but other times are best consumed as separate dishes.

Too Young to Be Old

Pop culture’s never been my schtick. My mom didn’t allow us to watch much TV, and I never quite developed the media sophistication to strike the appropriate balance of allusion and cynicism in talking about what few shows I did watch. Even now, I’m not much of a connoisseur. Sometimes I’m in a TV watching mood, in which case any old thing, a commercial, whatever, is fascinating. Ooooh, the pictures move. And talk. The rest of the time, the thing gives me vertigo. A small dose of Fox News, soundtrack of my inlaw’s house, reminds me that the more you watch, the less you know. Terrorism! Obscure deadly diseases! Child kidnappings! Celebrities making ill-advised fashion decisions! You Are All Going to Die in Horrible Painful Ways!!!

One of the benefits of affiliating yourself with punk rock is that you are against everything, everything is crap, you get points for disassociating. I don’t watch TV, I don’t drink soda, I am a baddass extrodinaire.

I am living now with friends who are self proclaimed Luddites: a Boy Scout Park Ranger and his partner. They know about this cartoon thing which, and I quote, “everyone between the ages of twelve and fifty is following” What? Strong Mad? Huh? Not only had I not seen it until today, but I had no idea it existed. And, just in case my pariah status needs confirming, I don’t think it’s funny. Sure, some of the lines are certainly quotable later, but I like my humor to be amusing the first time around. These kids today...

A few hours ago I was planning my impending trip to The Big City, getting the public transportation schedule all worked out, when it occurred to me that I am a bumpkin. I have not ridden a subway in ages. I was seventeen. That’s seven subwayless years for those of you doing the math at home. Sure, I’ve spent some time on Amtraks and airplanes, but I think we all know that doesn’t count. Clearly, I am going to make a fool of myself, possibly get irrevocably disoriented and sold into prostitution.

From tomorrow afternoon until Sunday morning, I will be visiting someone I’ve known since before I could vote or get tattoos, with whom I have not spent any significant amount of time in the last five years. In the interim, I’ve become an old married lady whose ignorance knows no bounds. What if, with his fancy Brooklyn life and his important dot org job, we have nothing left to talk about?

Llama Digest Revisited

The best thing about moving is that it forces you to confront the sentimental possessions you keep hidden away in boxes.  Confession time: I'm a packrat.  There are a few reasons, here's my favorite: I move a few hundred miles in one direction or another never less often than every two years.  We rebirth ourselves in a new environment, think of your freshman year in college.  That year happens over and over for me.  Everyone I've ever known is like your best friend from high school, slipping away despite the best of intentions.

So, I keep little pieces of of the people I've loved: a glass bottle from my grandmothers house, some paper cranes folded in a dorm room from fashion magazines.  The idea of going through all of this was that I might edit a bit.  Almost nothing was thrown away, though.  The best I could do was give some cheap and deteriorating jewelry to the neighbor girls to use as dress ups.

Under poorly fixed photos of the source of my first devastating heartbreak, I found a box that had been sealed by its own decoupage.  My husband insisted on opening this despite my wanting to pack it unopened.  It contained ancient crocus bulbs and beautiful point and shoot color photographs of the kids I took care of in West Philly, some desktop flotsam: tacks, paperclips.  Among these was a handwritten letter in old fashioned tight cursive falsely hinting at an elderly writer.  It begins: I was disgusted to read your article...

How I hated that newspaper, the entire three semesters I ran it.  The complainer may have been right: the article may have been worthy of only disgust.  I was never proud of anything I wrote there, and yet it occupied most of my time.  Such an awful feeling: to exhaust yourself making something inferior, to know that the public ridicule you are held to twice monthly is entirely deserved.  Knowing that I could not then muster anything good enough still makes me question my intelligence and competence.

During my small moments I don't care who is listening.  There are things I need to say for myself; my inner adolescent throws angst into the void.  When my stomach unties itself, I think that I'm practicing, that words will fall more gracefully as time passes.  In the meantime, I build calluses to silence and disgust.

Early: Up All Night

c: So are you going to the coffee thing or the sweatshop thing tomorrow?

m: I don't know, I guess the sweatshop thing. It all seems so dumb all of a sudden. I guess that's asinine with how much organizing we’ve been doing to get people to come, plus driving from Barrington and everything.

c: No, I hear you. We’re so isolated here. I mean, dude, I already drink fair-trade coffee, why do I need to go to a workshop on why I should drink fair trade coffee?

m: I know right? I hate these people. It’s a clique, a posturing thing. Everybody's whoring their socially conscious lifestyle choices. We are all just trying to impress each other with how goddamn pure we are. Nothing is going to change because of what happens here.

c: Fuck this ineffectual pretentious bullshit..

m: Ok, so what about tonight?

c: Let’s go to New Jersey.

m: What?

c: Yeah, I just thought of that now. Let’s go skinny-dipping in the ocean. I bet we’re only three or four hours away. Its September- the air is only gonna get colder. If we’re gonna get naked in a large body of water, we’d better do it now.

m: You, sir, are pure evil. Becca and Weasel are down no doubt, we’d better find ‘'em.

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m: Dude, wasn’t your birthday over the summer?

c: Yeah.

m: So we’re both eighteen. We’re real people instead of chattel now, how cool is that? I bet Becca and Weasel are jealous of our sophistication and maturity.

c: And our legal access to porn. Look, it only took them four hours to fall asleep. Lazy fuckers.

m: Slacking in the pursuit of adventure, bad form. Don’t forget our legal right to coat our lungs in tar.

c: Thinks of all the new perfectly legal opportunities to get permanent etching in our skin.

m: And to change the course of civilization with our ever so effectual voting rights.

c: Oh, of course. Plus we can get married.

m: True. But we’ve been able to do that in the Deep South for a few years.

c: How much like Las Vegas is Atlantic City?

m: I don't know, I've never been. I always picture it as kind of a mini Las Vegas, only seedier.

c: Seedy enough to have twenty-four hour Elvis wedding chapels?

m: God I hope so. Can the world ever have enough twenty-four hour Elvis wedding chapels?

c: Will you marry me?

m: Not if you ask me like that. C’mon now, you’ve got to get down on your knees and really grovel. Plus I want a ring.

c: Woman, we have to get married. It will be hilarious.

m: You realize we must both be in drag.

c: Of course. Becca and Weasel, as our best man and woman, must both wear tutus and fairy wings.

m: Hmmm, that's pretty good, except we don't have any tutus or fairy wings. I vote for them in drag as well.

c: Well, I bet we can buy some similarly campy shit in ac.

m: Hey, look, you got nothin' until I get a rock.

c: Anything for you, my sweet. Let’s see what they've got here.

m: A gas station vending machine ring? I just love it when you get all ironic like that. Oh you really are getting on your knees, mother of god, you are the craziest person I have ever known..

c: Fern Mercury, light of my life, fire of my loins, will you do me the honor of becoming my lawfully wedding wife, tonight, in Atlantic City, in front of our friends and allot of very drunk gambling addicts?

m: You know it baby. This will be the best piece of performance art ever. A fag and a quasidyke, sticking it to the man, showing the institution for the ridiculous joke that it is. Hah! Atlantic City won’t know what hit it!

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c: Oh, hey, look, a building that kind of looks like a fake French Quarter.

m: And some sort of pyramid thing. Doesn't Donald Trump own that or something?

c: Yeah, I think so. Um, I‘m becoming concerned about the dearth of wedding chapels, though.

m: Let’s go into one of the casinos and ask. They'll know where everything is.

c: Oh right, we’re allowed to gamble now, too, huh?

m: Almost forgot about that one, didn’t you?

c: God, this is kind of depressing.

m: And the carpet is really ugly.

c: Not in a gloriously tacky way, either. In a boring airport terminal way.

m: Seriously, they’ve failed to embrace their seediness here. You are Atlantic City, you can only fail at achieving class, why try?

c: And look at how empty this place is. Are they even open?

m: Well, we got in. Besides, why bother gambling if it isn’t four am. Excuse me, ma’am? Where are the Elvis wedding chapels?

lady: The what?

m: Well, we want to get married, you know, on a whim, and we can’t find the wedding chapels.

lady: You want to get married on a whim? Do you think that's a good idea?

m: Oh, no, we think it’s a very bad idea. That's why we want to do it. Preferably with Elvis. Y’know, gambling, heavy drug use, an ill-advised marriage. Doesn't it sound romantic?

lady: We don't allow drugs here.

m: Oh that's good, because actually we’re in love.

c: -and we need to get married tonight. We can’t stand to wait another second.  We drove all the way from New Haven, that’s how in love we are.

lady: We don’t do that business here.

c: I thought you were like Las Vegas only smaller.

m: Nah, dude, Las Vegas is like Atlantic City only bigger, where’s your East Coast pride?

lady: Look, if you kids want to get married in New Jersey, you have to go to the justice of the peace and get a marriage license under a New Jersey address. The office opens in three hours, but since I'm guessing neither of you is a New Jersey resident, you probably can’t do it anyway. Better just get married in your home state.

m: Um, thanks.

c: That sucks.

m: I feel like such a dumbass. Do I even have a home state?

c: Not one with 24-hour instawedding Elvis chapels. It was worth a try. Wanna play the slots?

m: Not remotely. It looks tedious. Let’s go to the beach, watch the sunrise or something. We’ll have to make pretty good time coming back. I’ve got class in six hours.

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Weasel: *yawn* where are we?

c: I95 north.

Becca: North?  argh.  Whadwe miss?

m: You nearly missed the adventure of the century, but the universe is giving you a chance to make it up to us. When we get back to school, we need to start working on fairy wings and tutus for both of you.

c: And the four of us are driving to Las Vegas over winter break. Have you met my fiancé?