Seasonal Produce

"'You've heard of the fury of a woman scorned, haven't you?'

'Yeah, I guess I have.'

'Well, that's nothing compared to the fury of a woman who has been cheated out of trick-or-treats. "

-from It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, 1966

Oh boy. Halloween is coming. Folks are hollowing out their turnips as we speak. There is going to be a parade. A carnival. A thousand people are going to come, dripping caramel. The wind is whisking the leaves in little spirals in anticipation. As for me, I am going to hide until the revelers have come and gone, the shrieks quiet, and the neighborhood wakes to find pumpkin guts strewn up and down the streets.

The Cytokine Hypothesis

It's been a few months full of tiny holes slowly leaking air.

I Hate to Be a Cynic

But if I am very, very honest with myself,

I find the company of Zinzi more therapeutic than the company of friends.

When it comes to breaking bread, though,

there is just no substitute for a familiar table.

Aim High in Steering

You are probably one of those people who likes to say "Look up! You might miss something!" when you see somebody walking with their head tilted downward. When things are good, they are glorious! The sun is radiant; the darkness is vast! I can just tell. You are one of those sorts.

I took your advice, you know. It wasn't just because of the scolicephobia, either. If anything, those worms are a reason to look down. No, I stopped staring at the sidewalk because you convinced me I was missing something. The sky. You convinced me that I must be sad, walking around like that, and that I was bound to bump into somebody. The implications were that it would be the wrong somebody, too. You pointed at the most shriveled, lonely people, hunched over and closed off. You told me I'd turn out just like them.

It wasn't just you, though. It was everybody. In Driver's Ed., which was mandatory for graduation even though I wasn't learning to drive, they made a point of telling me, every day for three months, everywhere I should be looking instead of the ground in front of me. Mostly I looked at a copy of The Brothers Karamazov, but sometimes I looked at the chalkboard, at dotted lines of sight and bold letters that said "AIM HIGH IN STEERING", and I listened to a man that I suspected was illiterate list off ten thousand mirrors and dials a driver was supposed to be looking at when they were driving down the highway, maintaing a speed of sixty-five miles per hour, aiming high, pointing their vehicle towards far-off horizons.

You probably like road trip stories, because people are always aiming high and steering for the West Coast, where there is Sky with a capitol "S" and giant sequoias reaching up to it. I cannot drive, of course, and I went to California when I was seven years old, and mostly I remember watching college students draw pictures in the sand after dark at Santa Cruz and watching Elena's Barbie Jeep almost drift to sea at Treasure Island. I remember sand in our Oreos. I do not recall, though there are photographs depicting it, the dim sequoia forest and my smallness in the face of its immensity. I did not have your taste for grand juxtapositions.

You told me that I was remembering it wrong, and that there were impressive, jagged stretches of coast that I once stood overlooking, and all the while I was preoccupied with little sea anemone in tide pools. You shamed me. You convinced me that detachment was only acceptable when it looked dreamy and faced upward and sunned its face. I think somebody once told you to get your own head out of the clouds, and you refused to listen, and it made this very charming story. I must have liked it, or I wouldn't have started looking up.

The problem was just that I kept stubbing my toes, and tripping over uneven pavement, and once last year I was hurrying through the rain to a lecture and stepped on a little worm. I felt it. Under my shoe, in that split-second, I felt it. I glanced to the ground, where I hadn't been looking, and at the sight of what I'd done I was immediately sick all over the muddy ground. With shaking hands and a churning stomach, I watched the flooded sidewalk and felt the consequences of your crummy advice until arriving, soaking wet, at the lecture hall.

I wonder if you remember the last time your shadow kept you company, and followed you around on a sunny day. It was probably a long time ago. You've probably been busy basking in the glorious warmth of that great celestial sphere. I'm sure that is a nice way to spend the afternoon. So is looking at moss, if you're interested. So is dipping your foot in a cool river on a hot day, and watching your footprints evaporate on the dusty, practically sizzling granite slabs of the shore. So is watching minnows in the reedy lake shallows, where they dart between ancient, twisted tree roots. So is wearing down a piece of sidewalk chalk until one section of driveway, pebbles and all, is vivid pink. Of course, you are right. I am probably missing something. For the life of me, I cannot find Orion's belt.

Photographs taken by my sister, who knows a thing or two about a thing or two.

Spiders

Soft Spots

I am in some kind of frenzy right now. My grandmother's class ring, gold and onyx-- not a thing like those blood diamonds they sell in catalogs nowadays-- slipped off my finger last night. It's because of the change in weather, probably. My fingers shrunk just the slightest bit, and it landed softly in the grass somewhere, without any small metallic clink to indicate its disappearance. Now I comb the lawn. The rug. The backseat of my mother's car. I look in every pocket.

It occurs to me that there is a very slight chance that it is some kind of magic ring. Now, because it slipped off in the change-of-seasons, I am searching every pocket in every fall jacket I have ever worn. Maybe it is there. There are bobby-pins. A hospital bracelet. A bicycle charm from a cheap bracelet that snapped on the tile floor of the choir room, sending beads and metal bouncing everywhere. I am starting to buy into this magic ring bit more and more, though, because I just learned how to ride a bike last week, and I just went to the emergency room today. These long-lost bits and bobs are very persuasive, when I am sifting though piles of seldom-worn coats. When I am frenzied.

Once, I wore this brown vest (that does not have a ring in its pocket) to Fell's Point, where I sat over the Bay and thought I was going to lose my little velvet shoe. I thought it was just going to slip right off, and land with a small watery plop below, and I'd watch it sink slowly to the bottom until I could see it no more. I took off my shoes and held them while I sat, feet dangling over the water. Should one have dropped into the Chesapeake, it would not have turned up later under the bed. What a ridiculous thought. They were no magic shoes.

This ring, though-- I am unconvinced. It slipped off my middle finger into the unknown, and there is room in that space for magic. There is room especially when significant folk-objects and the Qunicy High School Class of 1955's legacy are involved. The ring is on a soft spot somewhere, where no one heard it fall. There is no cement or cold, hard facts; no chilly bay or tiled floor. It could be anywhere. I look in every pocket.

Photographs presumably taken by my cousin Peter, at Fell's Point, some years ago