Yesterday my journalism class was walking around outside of City Hall in unbelievably bitter cold as Clark talked about the statuary, and my body was in flux. Outside in the crisp air i was round and padded, trying to catch all the places where chill was sneaking past my defenses. As we moved into the building my defenses were forgotten as the four stories of freestanding concrete stairs crept up through the soles of my shoes to leave my whole body gray and heavy as i plodded upward. At the top we walked into cool marble halls, and again i went through a sort of transmutation, everything sliding past me without leaving a mark. Finally, we found our way into the Mayor’s conference room, and i was as wooden as the carvings in the spectacular mantle — solid, but not resistant to the changes that had been worn into me since i was last in that room — almost three years ago with my chopped-off-ponytail hair and my weary sunburnt cheeks, looking unbelievably forward to college.
It’s been twenty four more hours now, but i still feel so much that that mahogany… smooth and polished surface that is hard but malleable… that belies the concentric rings underneath.
Each one shows how much i’ve grown.
day in the life
There we were, on the median of Broad Street with nearly three thousand dollars of camera equipment, and it had suddenly gotten so dark that we were raising the exposure between every shot. And then, just when i was expecting a downpour of icy rain to trickle into every nook and cranny of our digital camera, down came a smattering of cottony white flakes.
Snow against the stunning red brick of the building was perfect contrast, and i was set on shooting through the storm so we wouldn’t have any continuity breaks in our footage. However, within minutes the smattering had turned into a horizontal blanket of white, and even with my jacket wrapped around the camera and my hands cupped around the viewfinder it was obvious that nature had gotten the best of us. We packed it in and sprinted for the stairs to the subway so we could wipe off the dissolving white flakes from the silvery surface of our Sony.
By the time my trolley came up from underground we were back down to an F-Stop of 8 — the sun was out in force, reflecting back up from tiny puddles lying on darkened cement. I smacked myself squarely in the foreheard with the end of my tripod.
I’d given up before the most beautiful part.
Weird spectral gray overlapping spring-like warmth wrapped in wind that delivers howl upon howl. Isn’t it supposed to be warm, she kept asking as i slung my scarf over one shoulder (as if we were owed another down payment on spring, you know?). It was supposed to be something else, of that i’m pretty sure. Strange five second downpour erupting so fast as to catch my back with its stray drippy claw as i slid into the main building. Later i found it clawing at my roof as i was lying curled in my bed under the eave, just listening and playing Dorothy. “Somewhere,” you know? But, there weren’t any blue skies to be found at the time, and just the normal amounts of technicolor outside when i slid out to check. The gray had given away to purple night, and accompanying it was just wind … bitter wind delving in-between my fingers and down to my toes.
I can wait like this, i thought.
I stood out on the front porch and sang at the top of my lungs — first songs i love, and then songs i wrote, and then just riffing backwards over myself in a human loop of feedback. I wrapped my voice around me as if it would keep me warmer than my slowly disintegrating mod-squad jacket, letting each quaver wrap me tightly in another sonic layer of warmth. People on the block were playing an open/close of musical doors so that someone was on another porch at any given time, but no one seemed to hear me.
You’ve got a very nice voice, a man said as he walked by wrapped tightly against the wind. My surprised thank you took flight on the breeze like a single snowflake, unique and forgettable.
Hands back to pockets, keys to unlock door: maybe i would rather wait inside.
The first time it goes off is around six in the morning, for no discernible reason. I mean, it obviously goes off because i set it to go off then, but Lindsay is constantly asking me why i set my alarm to ring four hours ahead of time. No reason other than it’s like a two-minute warning for having to wake up and deal with another day.
I was happy to have the warning this morning, since the day seemed especially dreary. I didn’t even need to look out of my tiny back window to know; i could feel the chill sliding in through the cracks and twisting up to raise goose-bumps on my legs. Deciding to sleep through my first two classes was not the most wrenching decision i’ve ever had to make.
The other thing Lindsay can’t seem to understand is why my alarm rings over and over again. I tell her it’s a warning… life ahead in four hours… three hours… until finally it’s just “Time to wake up. Fucking Blastoff.” Apparently, one ring is enough to convey the message to her. Today the blastoff ring was #6, and the reason i got me out of bed was because the sun had decided to accompany it. I was up and navigating the mess of my floor to turn down the alarm before Courtney could start screaming, and i could feel the diffuse runny-egg yellow of a damp sun on my back. The day had made an ugly duckling transformation for me, and i felt as though i was headed for something not entirely dissimilar.
It’s strange to go from kneading a palmful of shampoo past damp curls down to the suffocated scalp beneath to sliding a dime sized drop down the middle of centimeter long strands on the top of my head. It’s the shortest my hair has ever been. Stepping out past my fish-curtain i caught my nude reflection in the mirror, and something seemed different other than my hair. No new pimples, no unexpected muscles. It was something about how the slope of my shoulders changes, the line of my neck becomes smoother. And, something else as well — as if my haircut was emblematic of some greater change that was working its way out from my heart and up through the skin.
I wasn’t sure of what the change might be, but i hoped it would go well with my grey turtleneck and sexy jeans.
It wasn’t until i had gotten halfway to my destination of skipping class that i started feeling the way my reflection looked. Nothing tangible, but my change in carriage had seeped down from my neck and shoulders and out from my gut to pervade my whole being. By the time i got down to the Green Room i definitely felt different, although to everyone in the room it read as something closer to narcissistic conceit. Really, could i help wanting to have attention paid to me? I had Changed and they wanted to talk about midterms. Ridiculous.
Amazing what a $10 haircut, losing three pounds, and being in my scientifically determined sexual prime can do for morale. Whatever. I try not to dissect the positive moments of life too much. I just felt … fuckable. And, not just hot or easy or anything like that, but like someone covetable. Someone other people have strong opinions on. And, well, fuckable sounded like a good adjective at the time, but now that i’m looking at it in writing i can see where that narcissistic angle came in.
So, maybe it wasn’t so different from most other days, really, but usually i’m more of a pity fuck, you know?
Nevermind.
What, me sleep?
Today kicked my ass, which is pretty sobering because Monday is the day i don’t have any classes. Part of the problem seems to be that i am physically incapable of waking up earlier than 11AM, or 10:20 if i have class at eleven. Considering that i was waking up like clockwork at nine every day last semester, this is not any improvement in my quality of life. Of course, last semester i wasn’t spending three hours a night sitting behind a tile-topped desk staring blankly at rehearsal from behind the ‘Props and Lighting’ stage-book. All that sitting leaves me wound up with nothing to do when i get home, and so i wind up surfing the internet until i’m in arm’s reach of dawn before i finally relent and snuggle up tightly for bed.
Tonight would appear to be no different, despite the thorough whupping Monday dealt out to me. Tomorrow awaits to be lived, though, and between here and there i am sure there must be dreams.