cool air

Today was scallops and asparagus, arugula salad, wine, and chocolate cake with fresh whipped cream. Today was about making plans. It was walking home and feeling the air- the crisp San Francisco air, air that is unlike the air I grew up with in that it does not represent a specific season. It is an air with a permanence, like a Sharpie. It is cool and fresh and your own. And his own. And hers. And it gives you a sense of individuality and community all at once. Like this city in general. Sometimes you feel isolated and connected in the same breath, and it's a weird sensation. And, it's one of the many things about this place that makes me feel things deep in my bones. Feeling is brave, terrifying, and vital. Feeling is accepting who you are and the world around you. It's being present and making peace. It's not always possible, but when I can, I try to let everything melt away, just slide right off my shoulder, so that I can feel myself feeling, just for a moment.

lunar

The moon is bright tonight. So bright. I love that space between silver and blue. Between light and dark. Where you can try to find where one thing ends and the other begins, but you won't be able to get there. That foggy space. I want to lie down in it, wrap myself up in it, let it weave through my fingers and hair. I want to watch things happen from both sides, get a different view with a simple turn of the head. I want to look inside, to play hide and seek without knowing what I'm seeking. To remove the veil. I want to separate and combine, to narrow and include. I want to be the part of the moon the sky likes to be closest to and the part of the sky where the moon always returns. I want light and time and space and presence and accountability. I am in between, teetering, in a good way.

first date, a story

“That’s right,” she said reaching for two non-matching bowls to put the finally-ready paella in. “We haven’t talked about music yet.”

She dished the mixture of yellow and green and red into the bowls and brought them to the little table by the window. “What kind of music do you like?”

I took a bigger than necessary bite of chicken and rice in order to buy time before responding to her question. When I couldn’t chew the paprika and saffron-coated morsel any longer, I swallowed, looked up, and attempted to own the only answer I had come up with.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” as if on cue. Mine was obviously not a satisfactory response.

“Well,” I said, dragging out the one syllable word and resisting the urge to fill my mouth to the brim with seasoned shrimp. “I like what’s playing now.” I hated how agreeable this sounded so I added, “I also like the Beatles.” The Beatles are like Girl Scout cookies; everybody likes them. Not to mention the fact that liking the Beatles now would imply a second coming of sorts, like I’ve been on quite the musical Tour De France, and I’m back around for yet another loop.

“What’s your favorite Beatles song?” she asks. I hate this question too. I consider my options. Nothing too sappy or pop-y or drug-y.

“Across the Universe,” I say but then I realize that it’s Rufus Wainwright’s version of that song that I really like, much more so than when the Beatles sing it. Does that even count? But I don’t want to say Rufus Wainwright because I only know like six songs of his, and I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t really constitute me as a fan since I haven’t sought out his “older stuff.” Or are the songs I like his “older stuff”?

I ask her about her taste in music, trying to sling the blinding gleam of the spotlight onto her. As the immanent sweat from my time in the interrogation chair subsides, she runs off a list of performer names, some I’ve heard and some I have not.

I don’t know what exactly it is, but I hate these music questions. I feel like I’m being judged no matter what I say, like the Jeopardy music is playing in the background and there is no question for this answer. It’s like a freakin’ online quiz: what kind of music are you? What liking this artist says about you. Genre preferences as connected to personality traits and intelligent quotients. If you chose mostly a’s, you are the dumbest person on the planet. If you chose mostly b’s, you live in an unrealistic universe and have your head permanently stuck in the clouds and cannot be trusted to uphold common responsibilities due to your perceived flightiness. If you chose mostly c’s, you are an inauthentic faker and you don’t deserve happiness and will never find love. I don’t see me proudly posting any of these results on my Facebook page for extended judgments.

I don’t want her to think I’m too mainstream, but I can’t say something obscure because I don’t really know anything obscure, and I don’t want to get caught up in a lie, like in sixth grade when some popular kids engineered this coolness barometer of asking not-so-popular kids, such as myself, if we’d heard of the band Crash. If we admitted we hadn’t, they would deem us lame and totally uncool and relentlessly tease us. If we said we had heard of the band, they would catch us- hook, line, and sinker- and mock us for saying we knew a band that didn’t really exist that they had made up all along.

I don’t want to pick something too sweet or too cynical or too weird or too loud or too stoner-ish, Nothing that means something, even if I don’t know what it means. I don’t want to subscribe to the wrong thing. Why is everyone so goddamn into music anyway?

I can’t wait until we talk about something else, something I know. Like chocolate.

beautiful places

Paris is:
-cheese and perfume in the air
-espresso and wine and tartare at a brasserie
-enjoying a croissant on a bench at the gardens
-a leisurely stroll down the Seine
-snails
-midnight picnics at the Eiffel Tower
-architecture, flowers, history
-gargoyles
-macaroons
-lavender
-street crepes
-the perfect souffle
-creme caramel, chocolate mousse, panna cotta, unearthly pastries
-magic

Puerto Vallarta is:
-that chocolate-covered, caramel-covered apple from the chocolate shop
-go-go boys and questionable photos
-shots of Corralejo, Cazadores on the rocks, Cajeta by the spoonful
-Ana’s guacamole
-parrots, pesos, pina coladas
-views, water, light
-drag shows, dancing
-being asked if you want to buy a hat when you are already wearing one
-Coronas on the beach, lots of lime
-sunscreen, sunglasses, sun
-seeing a turtle swimming in the Pacific while parasailing
-zip-lining through the jungle
-La Noche
-music videos in Espanol
-warmth

San Francisco is:
-houses on hills
-puppies in the park
-wine on rooftops
-the bridge and the bay and the boats and the fog
-sitting at the top of Dolores Park watching downtown turn into a series of sparkles
-sleepovers
-friends, such amazing friends
-celebratory and surprising
-home

sweet, a poem

Laughing, bugging, twittering, speeding
You to me
So easy
Like a cotton candy machine
Rolling, fluffing, spitting
Sugar
Spin like laundry
Speak like the ocean
Listen like snowfall
Gaze sleepily
Awake slowly
Stretch your mouth into a “u”
Broad, unintentional,
Contagious

in paris

Like the good former Girl Scout she was, she made sure all of her friends got on their appropriate trains back to their balconied hotel rooms. She casually strolled the corridor that would lead to her designated train- the one that would take her from the twinkly Eiffel Tower to another stop she couldn’t pronounce where she would transfer to another train which would shuttle her to the Montmartre where she would quietly sneak into the shared room of her hostel and dream of remaining in Paris indefinitely between the snores of her top bunk Swedish roommate.

She inspected the billboards in the tunnel, their funny French faces and phrases and the overwhelming deliciousness of getting to invent what combinations of letters might mean.

Arriving at her stop, she saw her train- solid and dark. She peered inside to empty seats where street musicians had so recently been conducting a traveling concert for cramped commuters and wide-eyed tourists. An older man spoke to her in French one word which could only mean ‘closed’.

Hmm, she thought. She wound her way out of the underground maze and puzzled over a bus map. A young man, her own age, asked in broken English if he could help. She explained she’d missed her subway, and he tried to help her plan a route. As they waited together for the bus, he asked if she might want some whiskey, and she found that she did, so the two passed his flask back and forth and marveled over the city’s lights.

When the bus approached, she thanked the man who had helped her, but told him that she was planning to walk.

“It’s quite a long way,” he warned. “It will take a long time.”

“That’s ok,” she replied. “This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, and it would be a privilege to spend the whole night walking through it.”

“Have you cab fare?” he asked. “I can give you Euros.”

Touched by his offer, she gave him a fleeting hug. “Thank you,” she said. “I have enough.”

“Be careful, Mademoiselle,” he said boarding the bus.

They watched each other- he through the elevated window, her from the bus shelter on the corner of the street. Then, he was gone, and she proceeded.

on the road

It’s about a two hour drive one way from Hampstead, Maryland to Fairfax, Virginia. My parents said Uncle Charlie, my step-grandmother’s son-in-law, who I had never met until his gloved hands were reaching into forced open mouth with sharp instruments, was giving them a really good deal on my braces. It must have been some heck of a bargain between the cost of gas and my dad taking off time from work to transport me to appointments, but however my parents came to the decision, that commute became part of mine and Dad’s bimonthly routine. A roadtrip to promote straighter teeth.

Packing for such trips involved the Jess & Dad mix tape, a spiral notebook, plenty of pens, and a brand new box of tissues, as I was prone to nose bleeds and Dad always feared we would run out if we relied on a previously opened box.

We would spend nearly the entire trip listening and singing to the cassette, which included favorites such as “Under the Boardwalk,” “Sad Movies Always Make Me Cry,” “The Locomotion,” “Big John,” “I’m So Hurt,” and “Splish, Splash,” while we watched for out-of-state license plates for me to record.

Depending on how much coffee my father had drank that morning, we might need to pull the car over to the side of the highway so my father could relieve himself in the bushes. Generally, when he returned I would have locked him out of the car, and we would both laugh as he banged on the driver’s side door to be let in.

Short of the red clown nose, Uncle Charlie was the Patch Adams of orthodontistry. Inside his office were toys and gadgets galore. Appealing to my Dad’s love of all things plastic, neon, and free: wind-up teeth, creatures with googly eyes, Where’s Waldo books, and Magic Eye posters would entertain him while I reclined in an exam chair with a bright light in my face and the supposed taste of “bubble gum” lingering from some kind of gunky mold.

We always left Uncle Charlie’s with a pretty extensive goodie bag that encompassed more than just a free toothbrush and floss. Everyone in the office loved my father, and to show their appreciation for us coming such a long way, all of the receptionists and assistants would spoil us to pieces with homemade sweets, Frisbees, smiley face key chains, Silly Putty, balloons and other Dr. Charles Price and Associates paraphernalia. We had gone to get my braces tightened, and it looked like we had left a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.

There was this pretty amazing frozen custard shop at a strip mall near Uncle Charlie’s. We would go there after every visit, but not without getting lost first, even though it was just around the corner from the office. Our driving in circles was part of the routine, and we both respected tradition.

The drive home would be pretty much a replica of the drive there. Same tape, same loud, obnoxious singing, same license plate games. Sometimes, as long as Mom wasn’t waiting with dinner, my dad would take the long way home so we could drive past the huge, beautiful Mormon church.

Upon arriving home, we would be immersed again in the goings on of the rest of my family, and I would have to go to my room to do homework. But, while traveling to and from the orthodontist’s, the road would belong just to us.