Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Well, looks like I missed November. But I swear it wasn't because of a bias towards Christmas (like the rest of the crazies who have Santas next to the candy corn in October). It's just been a roller coaster of school. And lots of time travel. 

Anyway, now it's December, and the first snow of the year is thinly coating the ground outside. It makes me think of this passage from The Wasteland (I love T.S. Eliot!! 3> 3> 3> )

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering	5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,	10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,	15
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

And that makes me think of this poem that I wrote for class last fall:

He Said, She Said

You were frightened. Was not.

Frightened. Liar.

I saw your eyes, Marie. Your eyes were closed.

While I steered? Yes.

Liar. You nearly hit that tree.

I told you to hang on, didn’t I? Idiot.

At least I didn’t cry. I DIDN’T CRY!

You cried. laughed at you more like.

Oh really? Yes.

Please. And stuffed snow down your collar.

Was this before or after you fell off? You promised not to tell!

But it was so funny. You didn’t tell me there’d be mountains.

Will you just let it go?

Marie.

I just wanted to be close.

                           To me? 

Like now.  Yes.

           

(Re)adjust {Halloween Style} - Part 2: Mirrored

Happy Halloween weekend everyone! I can't believe how fast October went. Here's a story to set your spine a-tingling:

DEELA

            When we are young, long nights are expected guests, welcomed and patted drunkenly on the back and perhaps even toasted if enough coherence exists in the room and a glass can be found that hasn’t been emptied of the last drop. As we get older, and sleep becomes more and more irresistible, a long night now means one of two things: extraordinary celebration or exceptional disaster. Unfortunately for Charlie Holman and myself, tonight falls into the latter category. Charlie’s girl has gone missing, and as his best mate it’s my duty to visit his house and bring a large enough supply of beer to distract his thoughts or at least provide a shoulder to cry on if he can’t find his way out of the gray in-between of intoxicated sentimentality. As far as I can tell, he is still fighting his way through the mist, and a look in his eyes tells me something more than blind sorrow is gnawing at him, making it impossible for the alcohol to numb his head. I wait for him to speak his mind, though. A mate shouldn’t pry, unless perhaps, he has good reason.

            “Magee,” Charlie says finally, as he peels the label on his fifth bottle. “What would you say if I told you I saw Deela today?”

            “Did you?” I start, nearly spilling my drink.

            “I don’t know...Yes? No, no, God I wish I could say.”

            “Well, did you tell the police? Where was she? Did you speak to her?” I can barely contain myself. It has been a week and half since anyone has heard from Deela. I’m suddenly furious at Charlie’s seeming confusion. “Pull yourself together man,” I snap. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

            Charlie’s face crumples. “No, I haven’t told anyone. I can’t even be sure. I can’t—” His eyes well with tears, and he swallows and looks towards the kitchen window to his left, but something he sees there seems to make him quiver even more.

            “Charlie, what’s going on?” I ask, beginning to wonder if perhaps this is only the work of exaggerated drunken irrationality. Perhaps he had simply come across her picture somewhere earlier and her tiny glossed face had stuck with him and grew into a full-bodied projection with every increase of his BAC.

            “I found her diary this morning,” Charlie says. “And I read it thinking maybe it could help, you know? Maybe I’d find some clue. I think I’m going mad.”

            “For reading her diary under these circumstances? I’d do it for less,” I tell him, running down the list of unreadable women who have baffled me throughout the years.

            “No, I mean after. But I’m not sure. Will you read it too? If you see it too then it’s not me. Then it has to be true.”

            “I don’t know what you’re going on about,” I say. “I’ll do whatever you want me to.”

            Charlie gets up from the table and goes into the living room. He returns a few minutes later with a little leather notebook, painted with a pretty swirl of colours and shapes like so many of the belongings of the opposite sex.

            “The first half is regular stuff,” says Charlie. “Day to day, nothing out of the ordinary, a little about me.” His face flushes and he coughs. I stifle a grin. “But here, start here” he says, pointing to an entry at the bottom of the page before resuming his seat and taking a gulp from his bottle. I sit back in my own chair and begin to read.

June 6, 2010

What an odd day. This morning I woke up in one of those melancholy moods where everything seems gray. I think it’s the weather. I just feel so sad sometimes, but I can’t figure out why. Yes, it has to be the weather. Isn’t there a name for that? Solar Affective Disorder? Or seasonal? I can’t remember. The acronym spells SAD though, which is funny. I wonder if they did that on purpose.

Anyway, Charlie and I were supposed to spend the day together, but he ended up having to go into the office even though it was Sunday.  I didn’t want to be cooped up in the house, so I thought I would go for a walk and maybe do some shopping. That always puts me in a better mood. I ended up downtown near this little antique shop I’ve been meaning to explore. There’s something about the atmosphere of antique shops that soothe me. I always feel safe in the cramped aisles with that mustiness—no, not mustiness per se, just the smell of, well I guess nostalgia. It reminds me of being a kid at Grandma’s house, the way there was always a particular smell of memory and familiarity. It always smells like patches of sun on a wood floor, even when it’s dark.

This place was lovely. Rows and rows of shelves full of china and silver, empty tins, boxes of postcards and yellowing prints. There was a cabinet of jewellery, shelves of those old books that look so pretty even if they’re completely worthless volumes of unknown people’s biographies and dried-up histories. Further back in the store was furniture and random knick-knacks—vases, paintings, toys, lamps, clothes. I always like to look at the clothes even though I’d never buy them from a place like this. They’re so raggedy and moth-eaten, and of course out of style. Still, it reminds me of how I used to play dress up when I was younger. Mom had a little chest in the basement with clothes and shoes she had probably picked up from a place like this. I always used to feel so beautiful. I’m sure the feminists would stone me, but I wouldn’t mind going back in time to when those long, poofy dresses were all the rage. Everyone was so glamorous then.

Anyway, right behind the rack of clothes was this big old fashioned mirror. It was a tall rectangle with a slight outward curve at the bottom and a high, ornate arch on the top. The edges were thick and gold-coloured, and carved in an elaborate design of vines with a blossom growing out of the top centre. In the middle of the petals was a small red stone, cut in a horizontal ellipse. It reminded me rather of an eye, and to be honest, it frightened me. This beautiful, antique mirror made me shiver. Of course, then I had to examine it more closely, because those things that make me uneasy have such a draw to them, that I can never resist the satisfaction of a good scare. Blame it on my nature, of human nature for that matter. We are afraid of ghost stories, but always wish we had our own to share.

There was enough of a gap between the clothes rack and the wall that I was able to squeeze behind and look at the mirror with only a couple of inches separating us. I ran my finger down the frame and looked into its glass, first only taking in the background—the soft overcoats padding my back against the poke of hangers and the front window of the shop like another little painting among the antiquities it revealed to the passer-bys. There was nothing scary there, unless of course, the reflection was hiding a shadowy figure reaching towards the back of my head, but a quick glance over my shoulder assured me I was quite safe. Then I turned my attention to my own face in the glass.

It sounds so vain, but I looked incredibly pretty. Mind you, I’m not the sort of girl who never feels ugly, I mean I am what I am, and I accept that. I’m definitely not unfortunate looking, but I’m not flawless. Only this mirror...made me flawless. Charlie always makes fun of my ‘chipmunk cheeks’ as he calls them (I just call them my chubby face) but somehow the shadows of the shop shaped them in delicate angles, and the curve of my chin led to a graceful slope of neck with no trace of the slight roll of fat that emerges when I forget to hold my head in just the right way. My eyes, which are always too squinty, were wide and shining, deep underwater green. My hair even looked bouncy and full even though it’s so thin and always going flat. I looked exquisite—even unearthly.

Of course it could’ve been anything. Like in photographs that capture you at your best with good light and a genuine expression—it’s just luck and a good photographer. But still, it was so interesting. I was rather curious how it would show me at home, and anyway, it would match the bedspread if I hung it up in our room, so I bought it. I showed it to Charlie when he came home for dinner, but I don’t think he really cared. I suppose that’s better than him hating it. I’ve hung it up next to the window so I can use it in the morning to do my makeup while Charlie’s in the bathroom. It seems so silly that I was ever afraid of it.

June 8, 2010

Oh my God, what is happening? This morning I woke up feeling ready to take on the world and now all I want to do is cry. I could kill whats-her-face big boob girl. I was in such a good mood I decided to surprise Charlie at lunchtime but when I got there that thing in her low cut little summer dress was actually sitting on his desk flirting with him. I knew she had the hots for him. Knew it, knew it, knew it! I should have told her off at the May Day barbeque, but I thought I WAS MAKING IT UP. False. She is a Slutty McSlut with no shame. Oh my God, the most embarrassing part is that I thought I was hot as hell when I walked in there, but then I caught a glimpse of my face in the glass wall and realized I looked like shit. My skin was all oily and my hair was sticking up like Medusa’s. I was so aghast that I couldn’t even say anything to her because girls like her always look radiant. FUCK!!! And of course Charlie couldn’t go to lunch. Said he had “some stuff to finish.” I’m going to throw up.

Later:

Okay, did not throw up, but something weird is going on. I looked like death when I looked in the bathroom mirror, but when I walked back to the bed where I’m sitting to write, I glanced in the gold mirror and I looked like I did in the antique shop. If I would have looked like that when I went into Charlie’s office, he wouldn’t have looked twice at McSlut. He wouldn’t have been able to keep his hands off me. It must be the glass. It’s made differently than the mirror in the bathroom. It has to be. God, I wish it was the real reflection.

June 10, 2010

Home early from work. I’m not well. I couldn’t stop looking at my face in the screen of my turned-off computer. I look positively ghastly. My skin is sagging, there are dark circles under my eyes and you can see the veins under my skin. I just need to sleep. I’m not well.

June 11, 2010

I slept all day yesterday, and I feel much better. Charlie was worried when I told him I came home from work sick, but he says I look fine. He says he wouldn’t have even guessed that I was sick. I’m going to believe him. I’m just going to go about my day without worrying about how I look. Charlie thinks I look fine. That is good enough for me.

June 12, 2010

It’s strange, but it as if I’m avoiding looking at myself. Even just walking past shop windows, my eyes seem to stare at the ground of their own accord. It’s as if they’re afraid of something that I’m unaware of. That’s silly isn’t it? Impossible. I can look at myself if I want to. In fact, I’ll do it right now.

Yes. There. I’m writing as I look in the bedroom mirror. There I am. Smiling. See? There’s nothing to be afraid of.

No.no.no.no.no.no.no.no. I can’t

No.

Naked in the bathroom mirror...

I’m old. I’m shrivelled and wrinkled and old.

Oh God, I’m untouchable!

Please let it be a lie a trick anything. Please, anything but this. Oh there. Look, this face, this beautiful, perfectly formed loveliness...She’s so young and vibrant. Just a girl, really. Forever just a lovely, lovely girl.

            I reread the last thing written in the diary and set it on the table. Charlie is staring at me.

            “It sounds to me like a case of low self-esteem,” I tell him. “Deela’s a cute girl. Not decrepit by any means.”

            “Deela was beautiful,” says Charlie.

            “Was?” I ask.

            Charlie traces a wood grain on the tabletop without saying anything. His forehead is shiny with sweat. What is he hiding?

            “Charlie, did she—were you—involved with that girl at work?”

            Charlie breaks. He lays his face on the table and sobs.

            “She found out and left you, didn’t she?” I press. “Why didn’t you say anything? People think she’s been kidnapped.”

            “She didn’t leave,” cries Charlie. “She didn’t leave.”

            He is too pathetic to contradict. I cross my arms and wait for him to get a hold of himself.  Finally, his sniffling subsides.

            “Come see the mirror,” he says. “Just come look at it. Please?”

            “Come on, man. I don’t want to be harsh, but you have to face up to the facts. She’s gone. Did she come back to get her things today? Is that when you saw her?”

            “Come see the mirror!” Charlie screams. He springs up from the table and runs upstairs. I follow him, scared of what he will do in his drunken mania. He runs into the open doorway at the end of the hall and comes to a dead stop in the middle of the darkened bedroom. I stop in the doorway and see Deela’s golden-framed mirror hung up on the wall in front of him, but Charlie isn’t looking at it. He’s staring at the floor.

            “What do you want me to see?” I ask.

            “What it shows,” says Charlie, pointing up at the mirror without looking at it. I flip the light switch next to the door and approach it. The red gem at the top glimmers. It really is like an eye. I run my fingers over the golden vines. The metal is warm to my touch. I look into the glass. I see my face looking exactly like it should. The bedroom behind me looking exactly like a bedroom should—Charlie behind me staring at the ground in rigid expectation.

            “It seems to be working fine, bud,” I say. This is going to be quite a funny story to retell when he’s sober.  Scared to death of a mirror. He’s going to be rolling. But for right now, it’s probably safer to put it away. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.  

            “I’ll just tuck it in the closet for now, yeah?” I say without turning around, as I take hold of the mirror’s edges and lift it up from the bracket it hangs on. I hear Charlie let out a gasp.

            “It’s alright, I got it.” I press the bottom edge against my waist while cradling it in my arms and look at the reflection of the ceiling and upper walls behind me.

            Deela scuttles across the ceiling like a voluptuous spider, ruby red lips full and plump with blood, her eyes dark and sparkling, wavy brown hair swaying as her upside-down face smiles at me. I scream and drop the mirror, whirling around with my arms above my head to shield myself. The ceiling is empty and white. I turn to Charlie. He lies crumpled on the floor, a few scattered shards of glass glinting like diamonds in the pool of blood flowing from the tear in his throat.

(Re)adjust {Halloween Style} - Part 1: Dracula Greets You at the Door

I have been waiting for this day for a long time. Months, actually. I sat in the summer heat, typing about love, and waiting for mystery. It's finally here. It's October. It is Autumn chill, and dead leaves, and dressing in costumes to run wild down dark streets. It's Halloween, baby. Bring on the fear.


In honour of my favorite month, I will be doing a four part Halloween special. Firstly, you may have noticed the re-vamped blog design. Think of it as a haunted house, the peeling wallpaper and the cobwebs can hide whatever you want. Just open up your mind. What's possible? What's terror? What's the thrill that comes with? 


There will be four scary stories this month, one a week, but don't worry, we'll ease into it. Count Dracula will pull you in before you run off, too scared to continue. But viewer discretion advised as we proceed. There may be more blood-thirsty creatures to come. Bwa ha ha ha!

Counting

I caught Count Dracula and I’m keeping him in my bedroom closet right now. I draped a rosary on the door knob and duct taped cloves of garlic around the cracks. I have to sleep on the living room couch because the smell is awful, and he keeps scratching at the door with his nails and making my spine tingle. I’ve had four nights on the couch now, and I can’t turn my head without my neck muscles clenching up like an underwater foot cramp. I don’t know what else to do, though. If I let him go he might come back and creep into my bathroom when I’m showering or hide underneath my bed and grab my ankles when I have to go pee in the middle of the night. 

I thought about trying to kill him. I bought a wooden stake but I haven’t taken it out of the Ace Hardware sack yet. I wanted to do some research first, but I’m three seasons into Buffy the Vampire Slayer and even more daunted. On a scale of Wesley to Buffy, I’m about even with Wesley’s glasses. Practice makes perfect, sure, but I don’t really have anything stake-able lying around the house. And what if I’m wrong? I just feel rude stabbing someone in the heart, especially when I don’t know why they were loitering outside my bedroom window in the first place. What if he wasn’t planning to seduce me and drink my blood? The media gives plenty of wholesome people a bad rep. I have no idea what he’s really like outside all the hype, and I have to be sure. I can’t half-ass mortal combat with the undead.

And if he really is bad through and through, it’s not like I’d be dealing with some off-brand vamp. I would be fighting Count Dracula. The real deal. And we all know that no matter what the off-brand claims the real stuff is always better. Or I guess in this case, worse. The vamps Buffy knocks around are pretty clueless, but Count D, well, he’s been playing mind

games for centuries. He’s been in the good guys’ and good gals’ heads. He knows how we think. He knows.

Good God, I shouldn’t have stolen his cape when I found it draped over a lawn chair on the patio. I assumed he took it off because he realized I had noticed he was stalking me, and the loudness of the cape flapping in the wind kept giving away his position. I thought I was being clever when I picked up the black silk and tucked it in the back of my closet to lure him out from behind my neighbor’s swing-set. When he snuck into my room to get it back, I slammed the closet door shut and trapped him inside. I was so relieved I would know where he was at all times, but his silence—

The only sound is the occasional tickling of fingernails on wood like a bored child in a church pew. He didn’t even make a peep when I slammed the door shut on him. No hissing, no growling, no Transylvanian swearing. It was like he wanted me to shut the door, expected it like the laugh track on a rerun.

This is ridiculous. How could he have known? But as I sit here on the carpet, feeling the solidness of the door cool behind my back, there’s an unwanted answer echoing in my brain. It coils my lungs in a rubber-band embrace, and when I press my face into my knees I see it etched into the red of my eyelids. 

How could he have not?

It's a Hard-Knock Life

I don't know about you folks, but I feel like it's been a really long week and it's only Wednesday. Here's a little something something from the archives just to maybe give you a laugh, or at least a distraction from the pressing matters to which you should be attending. Hang in there, have a beer, and remember: it's almost Friday.

XOXO

Tail Feathers

By S.M. Kosch

               

                Apparently the birds are dying. I read about it in the paper. Birds dropping out of the sky in Arkansas, Japan, Sweden. Weird shit. They’re blaming it on fireworks, if you can believe that. Maybe they just say that because it’s a little bit funny. Can you imagine birds getting hit by fireworks? Hell, I can’t even hit ‘em with the Chevy.

                But there was this robin out in the yard the other day, just bouncing around as I washed out my coffee cup and stared out the window. Just as a joke, I said, “When are ya’ll going to stop making the news? I’m getting bird to death with it all.” I chuckled a bit and dried off my mug, but when I looked back out the window he was staring at me. Just frozen in place with his little glass eyes and his little orange beak looking cold and sharp. I felt like I do when I’m walking at night and hear the echo of my own footsteps: nervous, and stupid for feeling nervous because I know it’s just me. So I just stared at that bird waiting for him to go back to pecking for worms or flutter off somewhere.

But he kept fucking staring.

Then he flipped me the bird.

Glory Us

Long time, no write. First order of business:

Haiku For You (I said I would, and I meant it. Thank you to the nine wonderful people who legitimately follow my blog. Let me take this moment to give form to my gratitude)

Moms, true fans always

even Easy-Bake Oven's

sadly scorched mistakes. 

Two aunts, one uncle

I sense a pattern forming.

Familial alms.

For my sister dear,

I would just like to utter
One syllable: Ni.

Poetress BC
authors like stunna shades stun,
coffee in hand.

Kirsten, have you heard?
Real lovers do it within
shrubberies. Oh yeah.

One day my household
will be Erin Carey plus
our dog Gonzo. Love!

Katie my Mo Mo
please watch out for the Po Po
and buy some knee pads.

As for the rest of you, just be jealous you don't get a cool haiku. And follow my blog.

Second order of business: a sneak peak into a poet's head. This is what happens when a Doctor Who fanatic takes a Classical Literature and Film Adaptation class after watching a Jack's Mannequin video and walking in the rain. Weird ideas collide and mesh and poop out random words like so:

Time Lords
By Sarah Kosch

What is glory, she asks, hair frazzled, red lipstick, hands slapping the podium. Can it survive the distillation of life?

Yes, professor, I decide. But only with time travel.

There, anything can be written —rewritten —erased:

Eras

writ

...dash—dash—… (pause.)

Come back. Please.

Tell me a story your story everyone's story.

Tell me while we run down streets and cut corners.

Tell me while you cry and I stare at your eye veins with rapt attention.

Tell me wrapped up in your vision of the marquee girl with her wet hair and duct-taped letters spelling 

     Glory Glory Glory

     Hallelujah

                                                            

                                                                     with ladder induced abeyance.

                                        Tell me that glory.

                           Read it from the stoop of her sad eyes.

                               Paint it in rain on the sidewalks.

Solitary Smiles

"The uncertainty of the future made them turn their hearts toward the past" (Gabriel Garcìa Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude).

Smells like nostalgia lately. The air outside feels like fall and leaves on the sidewalk and ghost stories and pumpkin patches. There's a crispness that puts a bounce in my step and makes me want to run invisible through the backyard at night like in the games of Hide-and-Go-Seek-in-the-Dark I played when I was a kid. There's such a freedom in the memories. Such space and open air.

If I'm going to talk about nostalgia, I have to talk about antique shops. I adore them. They're the equivalent of my Narnia wardrobe or a cardboard box time machine--anything can happen there. Magic exists in old, yellowed treasure maps and leather-bound trunks. My childhood is contained in the smell of dusty books.

I remember the room in my old house we called the Library with a spongy couch, a piano, and shelves of books. I remember looking at the covers of the books I was too young to understand  and making up my own stories from the pictures on them. A couple years ago, after we had moved and my siblings and I were all off doing our own thing, my lovely mother, bless her soul, was inspired to do some cleaning and got rid of most of them. The Three Investigators that were my imaginary best friends in third grade, the old fashioned set of Shakespeare, the books I had grown to appreciate for their content as well as their covers-- all carted to some thrift store or charity, never to be seen again.

Isn't that why we're nostalgic beings in the first place? The future can erase things, morph things, make us unrecognizable even to ourselves. But to look back on the past, that is an image that can stay sunny and soft and comfortably dust-filled if we want it to. Things never change. It's just an empty room we can return to walk through when we fancy. Antique shops are like those memories--those dreams--in solid form. 

I visited the Amana Colonies a few days ago with my bud Adam to go on a wine-tasting expedition. Our map was a little outdated and we ended up in Grapevine Antiques, which had taken the place of a relocated winery. I went back in time for twenty minutes. Polka music was playing in the background and the white-haired woman working was singing along as if she was the only one in the store. I had to stop myself from waltzing around through the china, lace, and leather ice-skates. It got me thinking about this poem I wrote last Fall for my poetry seminar.

Still

By Sarah M. Kosch

Remember the antique shop on State Street?
The one with the blue sign
in the front, I forget its name.
I was there in my dream last Saturday night,
entombed in the teetering towers of trinkets,

making a maze through lone lamp-shades and dressers.

Near paintings of black and white fruit and tin cans
I saw a watch on the table.
It had a crack in the glass face,
the hands standing still and the two unclasped
bands eagle-spread on either side.
It was half-past three two hours ago.

Back shelved books benign and shadowed
Underneath the yellow light.
I paused to peek at their spines

Searching for the gilded pages of Pilgrim’s Progress.
I had to have it, to own it, to make it my own

though I couldn’t work words into why.

A voice behind me hurt my ear drums.
The cushion of silence split.
“Here, take it,” he said.
He handed me the book but I stared at his eyes; black,
Smooth, sharp, glassy, alive,
Like the other side of a bedroom window at night.

I reached out slowly, touched the curve of his chin.
Let my callused skin catch
On the sand paper hair.
His lips were chapped and smiling, closed and soft.
A stranger’s mouth, strange eyes.
But he tasted like broken candy canes when I kissed him,

and I knew that I knew him, knew him like Christmas lights,
always familiar, always
soft fleece on cold
winter nights when they glow pink and blue
and diffuse the ice cube breath
to lightning bug sparks that I caught in glass

jars and kept next to me on the wooden nightstand
when I slept on Grandma’s pull-out
bed and it smelled like window
screens when it rained, rusty like pine needles
and old. Like the soiled sweater on the shelf

that you found revolting but I buried my face in and breathed. 

Travel Writing Takes an Unexpected Turn

I'm not really sure what this is, but it makes me laugh. 

DRIVE TIME

Questionable...

THE CAST

Erin–a combo of peace signs and stilettos, punk and princess. We were best friends in grade school until she moved to Seattle, but somehow fate reunited us, five years later, five years wiser, and with a common ground graduated from an obsession with Arthur to an  obsession with boys.

Nancy Lynne–blonde-bombshell-high-school friend and now Chicago-living-bestie-in-possession-of-a-spring-break-destination-and-a-floor-to-crash-on.

Betsy Powell–The mooch. ‘Nuff said.

Myself–one cannot describe oneself without sounding unoriginal and/or pretentious as fuck.

SETTING

A gently curving red line on a US map during Spring Break 2010.

THE CURTAIN RISES

I am driving my old Chevy Lumina. I call him Elvis because it fits. Erin and Betsy are following in Erin’s little Honda with the GPS which I don’t need yet. At this point, I know where we’re headed. Iowa City, Iowa, my home for nine months out of the year and the convenient halfway point between Lincoln, NE (the escape from) and Chicago, IL (the escape to). We’ll spend one night, leave Erin’s car in my school parking spot and continue in Elvis to Chicago. It’s a five hour drive to IC, but I’m glad Betsy rode with Erin. It’s easier for me to absorb the golden shimmer of sunlight on wheat fields into my bones to save for later when it’s just Elvis and I humming radio tunes and tires on asphalt.

FAST-FORWARD : WELCOME TO IOWA CITY

It is an unexpected splash of white stone buildings and tie-dye neon signs in the midst of Iowa corn fields and open highways. It’s a city outsiders don’t believe is real until they walk down the pavement themselves and see the swirl of colour and noise. Here is the raging college co-league of frat boys and little size 0 girls in dresses I would have thought were meant to be shirts. Here are their bars with strobing lights and pumping beats and the touch and the sweat of bodies, bodies, bodies mashed together on a sticky floor moving until they pass out or find someone to leave with. Here are the hipsters drinking PBR in the ped mall and comparing beard length and wondering when Ragstock would get a new stock of skinny-but-not-too-skinny jeans. Here are the writers with their plaid shirts and moleskin notebooks tucked in their back pockets drinking red wine at The Mill and wanting the whole world to hear how talented they are from the single microphone on stage. Here are all these and everyone in between raising a toast to our oasis.

I paint the picture for Erin and Betsy, but there is one thing I forgot. A college town on spring break is a ghost town. It’s fine when we do our shopping in underground stores with new and used, touching shoulder straps and price tags. It’s fine when we eat our noodles and veggies at Z’marks. It’s fine when we sit on the steps of the capital building and watch the sun set between the stone columns.

But when night strikes, the dance floors are closed and our non-21-year-old selves can’t get a drink from the lonely bar tender if we wanted to.

Solution?

Vodka shots in my dorm room. #4443 Burge Hall with its two lofted beds, 2 desks, a futon and a fridge. We sit on the purple carpet and laugh about things we forgot we haven’t told each other in the months we’ve been apart at our separate Universities. We turn on the music. Betsy requests Lady Gaga. We tell her to shut the fuck up and turn on Jack’s Mannequin instead.

One shot, two shot, red shot, blue shot.

Shoot. I’m out of rhymes.

And everything is fuzzy and I want ice cream. Preferably chocolate. Erin and Betsy want  sandwiches. Jimmy John’s is next door to Coldstone Creamery...

THE LIGHTBULB TURNS ON

Ring, ring.

JJ: ‘Hello, Jimmy John’s. Subs so fast you’ll freak.’

Me: ‘Speaking of freaks, I have a weird question.’

JJ: (pause) ‘Oh...kay...?’

Me: ‘Well, my friend wants to order a sandwich and I really want ice cream, so I was wondering if there was any way you go could next door and get a “Gotta Have It” Birthday Cake Remix in a waffle cone and then deliver it and the sandwich to Burge Hall. I will tip very generously and you will ensure my endless devotion to Jimmy John’s.’

JJ: (pause) ‘They sell Ben and Jerry’s at the Kum & Go down the street.’

Me: ‘But I don’t want to walk.’

JJ: ‘Sorry, we can’t do that.’

Me: ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’

JJ: ‘Have a good night.’

Me: ‘Without ice cream?’

Click

‘Fine, fuck you Jimmy John’s. Next time I want a sandwich, I’m going to Subway.’

Erin and Betsy: wild cheering

I don’t have the heart or the humility to tell them they were the only ones who heard me.

We settle for dry cereal and a discussion of who we’re currently in love with.

ENTER DAY 2

On the road by eleven. Erin rides shotgun. Betsy’s asleep in the backseat with my duffel bag as a pillow. She doesn’t stir as Erin and I perform an enthusiastic rendition of the “Elephant Song Medley” from Moulin Rouge, complete with as many dance moves as are possible in seat belts.

The GPS is plugged in and set to the British man voice. Erin and I have decided to christen him Leopold. He directs us to continue along I80 and seems positively offended when we take an unexpected exit to visit The World’s Largest Truck Stop. We pass by cars and cars lined up at twenty gas pumps, and then enter through the automatic doors of a place that takes pride in the unnecessary. There are shelves and shelves of knickknacks and things no sane person would drive to a truck stop to purchase. Example: ‘Oh what a gorgeous ring. Oh thanks, darling, Bobby got it at the truck stop. He got me this ‘World’s Largest Truck Stop’ t-shirt too! Or What beautiful China! It must be from WLTS.

We find the toilet, stop at the food court for lunch (Erin’s Wendy’s hamburger is raw, but a busload of grade schoolers have stopped for lunch as well and we don’t feel like waiting in line to complain) and get back on Leopold’s plotted course.

Past flat plains,

Past sunny lanes,

Past a toll booth, and another, and another

Psst, pass me a dime, I’m out of change.

A CHANGE OF SCENERY

The Chicago skyline cuts across the sky.

Enter tall grey buildings.

Enter the former Sears Tower that is newly named but I don’t know to what.

Enter a knot of criss-crossing roads spilling cars and angry honking. I ask Leopold for help but he throws up his metaphoric hands and tells me I’m on my own.

Forty-five minutes of start and stop traffic, a missed turn, and several outbursts of wild cursing, I park Elvis in front of Nancy’s apartment and release my white-knuckle hold of the steering wheel. We’ve arrived.

CHICAGO

is cold. And windy. And it’s snowing.

I almost wish we’d stayed in Iowa City for Spring break.

More than a Headline

When I heard about the attacks in Norway, I thought: "This is terrible." I thought: "Why do we hurt each other like this?" I thought: "How much longer until I get off work?"

When tragedy happens somewhere else in the world, it's so easy to express the appropriate amount of sympathy and then move on. What else can we do? It only touched us for a moment. I feel guilty about my short-lived sorrow, but to give all the the tragedies in the world the proper reaction would be a full time job, and I feel helpless to do anything to ease the pain. So I live my life, where my individual actions have an immediate impact.

Maybe we just need more pictures. Pictures that show people just like me living their lives, lives that have been turned upside down in a moment or even extinguished. I still don't know what I can do to help, but today I cried for a stranger. Maybe that counts for something?

The link below has photos from the aftermath in Norway. Warning: They do not hold back. But I think that's key. They make this more than just a news story.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/07/tragedy-in-norway/100113/

Home on the Plains

This same exact sign used to hang above I80 as I crossed the invisible line between Council Bluffs and Omaha. Somehow in all the construction going on it got taken down, which makes my drive from Iowa City to Lincoln seem somewhat less monumental. It had been an official 'welcome home' in the midst of interstate cement and scary drivers. 

A recent conversation about home towns and small town claims to fame (ie: Welcome to Pocahontas, Iowa : a real place, I swear.

)

and finishing Willa Cather's My Antonia (a novel about Nebraska in the days of sod houses and wagons), I feel like 'Home on the Plains' is a perfect topic for this week's blog. When I was in London, I took a module called "Creative Writing and Place," which ended up being the most broad-ended, open-genre class I've ever taken. My classmates were everything from travel writers to poets and as long as our work somehow related to 'place' (in whatever way we interpreted that) we could write whatever we pleased. I wrote surprisingly a lot about Nebraska and Iowa. It wasn't that I was homesick per se, it was just whenever I sat down to write about a place, interstates and sunsets over cornfields weighed heavier on my mind than Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower. Maybe it was because people already consider Europe gorgeous and I wanted to prove the Midwest is too. Maybe that's why Willa Cather wrote My Antonia. But that's beside the point.

Anyway, one day in class we were reading a travel essay out loud about...IOWA. My English classmates seriously examined the way in which Bill Bryson had portrayed this country so different from their own, while I nearly went into hysterics laughing to myself in the corner. The essay was an account of the Des Moines-born Bryson who was back in America after twenty years in the United Kingdom. He was retracing the route his father drove to get to his grandparents' house in Winfield, Iowa, and making comments such as: "Apart from the ceaseless fidgeting of the corn, there is not a sound. Somebody could sneeze in a house three miles away and you would hear it (Bless you! Thank you!),” or “Small towns are equally unhelpful in offering distinguishing features. About all the separates them are their names. They always have a gas station, a grocery store, a grain elevator, a place selling farm equipment and fertilizers, and something improbable like a microwave-oven dealer or a dry-cleaner’s, so you can say to yourself as you glide through the town: ‘Now what would they be doing with a dry-cleaner’s in Fungus City?’” (Bill Bryson, ‘More Fat Girls in Des Moines).

I think my English classmates and tutor (English-term for professor) felt it would be rude to laugh, and I wonder how I would have reacted if they had. I feel perfectly at ease cracking jokes about my home (and I consider both Nebraska and Iowa home – even though I will be cheering for the Huskers next Thanksgiving [dear God, please don’t let the Hawkeyes kill me]), but I find myself so offended when people who aren’t aren't actually from these states make the same jokes. My response was to write the following for class:

THE GOOD LIFE

By Sarah M. Kosch

I know it’s not fair for me to make jokes at the expense of my home and then get offended when others do the same. But I do. I know Nebraska as a friend, a companion for twenty-one years. We’ve had our quarrels; I’ve stormed out on multiple occasions, but I always come back eventually. I never stop loving the place in all its infuriating smallness.

 But those people who know Nebraska by name only, or in passing—even if I smile and accept your jibes about the flatness, the dull expanse, the belief in a backwards country with horse-drawn buggies and no electricity— there is a sadness around my lungs. I can still breathe, but I wish you would breathe with me, and we could merge into one, just for a moment, so I could paint you a memory and together we could remember that Nebraska is beautiful.

               

I think I would paint you this one.

A long yellow line, sloping across the page.

I know it’s not much. No mountains, no forests, no desert. It is not extreme here. Just gentle. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Right now, we’re driving on the interstate. It’s an easy drive, although I admit, it does get a bit long. But sometimes, when clouds brush on blue in just the right way, or the pinks of a sunset melt like strawberry ice cream, they crown these open fields with gold. The wheat is alive, expanding - inhaling and exhaling. The fields stretch. Cornstalks dance. It is life in the simple. In the yellow. Keep inside the fading lines and drive onwards into a new canvas.

A light blue watercolor. Translucent shimmer.

Sunrise in a gauzy gown. So light she barely feels it. So light it barely hides the curves and pale skin of her body. She is walking down a gravel road in the country. I don’t know the name. There is farmland on each side of her. The stalks and leaves are sequined with dew drops, and the damp cool whispers on her bare arms. Soon the smell of dust and the touch of heat will waltz through the dirt rows and leap onto the road to join her. She will hold their hands, and together they will sprint over the hill and disappear.

Now, the crisscross weave of a screen door painted with thin silver.

I think it has always creaked. I think it has always smelled like remembering  what was: a kitchen  the color of toast and orange juice, a bedroom of pillow fights and little girls missing teeth, a living room with the best armchair for naps, a basement where bank robbers and restaurant owners danced to polkas and sold purses for plastic money. I think Grandma can’t be lonely surrounded by all the fond memories, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they are better seen from a distance. On Grandpa's last Fourth of July he sat on the back patio while the rest of us, the children and grandchildren, stood past the trees where we could see the sky. I went inside to get a drink of water, and when I came out I asked Grandpa why he didn't sit closer. He told me he could see fine from where he was.

A gentle breath; let it dry.

For every stereotype, there is a grain of truth. This is what is true about Nebraskans. We like to sit around campfires out in the middle of nowhere. We love to drink beer, but it is an acquired taste. We start out with cheap vodka and rum. We listen to twangy guitar music about love and loss, but we also listen to bumpy beats and rhythms that make our hips want to swing on their own accord. We love and lose. We cry sometimes. We drive our cars with the windows down. We like to look at the sky at night and be able to see the Big Dipper and Orion’s belt. We wish we knew the names of the rest. Some of us find out. Some don’t.  But there is a thread stitched onto our backs that tugs us when we walk too far. We cannot see it, but I think it is yellow. Or blue so light it is invisible.

Tune in next week for some Travel Writing about I-O-W-A!