skylines

I'm sitting beneath a ceiling fan and looking outside into the heat of the day. It's been one of the hottest in awhile: 86 Fahrenheit, which isn't too hot comparatively. This whole weekend I've been staying inside with fans or out under my canopy of trees that nearly covers the extent of my backyard (a very small one, mind you). Right now I'm watching the trees and houses that block my view of the mountains to the west. The trees are fluttering and covering themselves and are thankful they're once again protected from piercing eyes. In the winter, deciduous trees are so ugly here. I take that back, a good many are ugly. For some reason beyond comprehension, people around here don't trim their trees; they hack off their limbs so that in the cold months they look like crooked sticks thrust into the ground. I have yet to discover why people do this. In the summer they sprout little tufts of leaves, but they still look awkward among the rest on the block. I feel sorry for them, because they had no choice in the matter.

There is one ugly tree that I love even though it's ugly. There is a twisted old thing in front of a rather bad-looking set of housing projects. I pass this tree after I walk up from the cemetery just off of Route 33. It turns in every direction possible; the limbs are carved into lines like veins and reaches for Reservoir Street. I imagine if it didn't have roots it would grasp that dirty little street and carry it off.

The mountains are always beautiful. Now that the summer sun lights the valley until 9 or so, I get to walk towards them every day after work. The light from the sky or clouds shoot out behind the relief of their particular skyline. I can never bet what kind of color the mountains or the sky will be on a given day.

I've been blessed by good skylines in both of my jobs since grad school. In New York there was always the skyline of Manhattan to welcome my tired feet after a day of teaching. Now I have the promise of mountains to welcome my computer-eyes after a day of staring at machines, projectors and so forth. They are so different, yet they bring up the same question each time I look upon them: Why would you want to leave this place? How can anyone let themselves leave New York and push themselves west? How could anyone in the past desire to push past those mountains that cradled them with comfortable summers?

I guess I wouldn't have made a very good pioneer back in the day. If I were persecuted, then I'd go, but I don't think I'd have wherewithal otherwise.

rainy day people

Today Tom and I went on a bus ride to the most saddest of places: the Harrisonburg Valley Mall.

Actually, we were out there to buy spices from an Indian Food shop, but since the bus only comes every hour, we had to wait somewhere--and somewhere cool, because it was crazy humid. So, we went, cruised the stores full of stuff no one really needed but somehow I felt the need to buy anyway. I know, I know. Liberal hippie green elite beliefs. I know. We finally sat in the food court near the bus stop and smelled the tempting smells: fresh-baked pretzels, MSG Chinese food, coffee and an aroma that's usual for all malls: a kind of cross between that new car smell and something going a bit sour. The whole place just seemed sad. Everyone in their looked tired and shell-shocked and dressed in tight shirts and short shorts whether they were ten or fifty.

When I was in high school and middle school, the mall was The Place to Go. The Wichita Towne East (yes, that's not a typo--maybe they've dropped the e by now, who knows) mall had everything one could desire: clothes, food, books and the hope that some cute boys would notice us. The mall got even cooler when one of my friends got a car. Then we could go alone to Wichita, the biggest city in most of Kansas. It was an hour away, but that didn't seem much. Gas and space didn't cross minds. Rock Road was the main drag as far as shopping went. Downtown was pretty much a ghost town, though I remember a Christian coffee shop I went to a time or too. I can't recall the name--The Rock or something. But Rock Road was where the hipness was. It also was populated by these row houses and apartments that seemed so cosmopolitan to me. I figured the people who lived there had it all: good looks, a great boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife, money, a car, and maybe a swimming pool.

I think that may have been part of my fascination with New York. Almost everyone lived in apartments. Living in an apartment mean something I couldn't quite verbalize. Even now, as I look at my house that is at least five times as big as our apartment in Harlem, I feel a little less cooler than I had been during those years that are now past and gone until something happens that will resurrect it.

Anyway, the mall in Harrisonburg had nothing of the glamour of Wichita's mall. The East Mall, at least. There was (perhaps still is) a Towne West Mall, but no one ever went there. It was in a "bad" part of the city, and when you did go there it was barren and full of people that seemed so sad. This is how Harrisonburg's mall felt to me today.

The bus came and we rode it to Food Lion, a big grocery chain in Virginia, and walked home. We did stop at Jess', a local greasy spoon downtown with the best fries around and the only place I can eat a hotdog without shame. We began to walk home. It started to sprinkle just before we came to 42. Then it started pouring. And blow some serious wind. Just as we crossed 42 it hit hard. I'm from Kansas, so I know wind. I often pooh pooh wind in Virginia, but this was a serious wind. My umbrella (they'd talked about rain on the radio before we left) was totally destroyed. At one point I was literally pushed back a few feet. I was sure there was a tornado approaching. We stumbled on, and I kept trying to look for a funnel cloud, but the rain was too blinding. As we approached our house, the sun came out. By the time we walked up the steps the light was blinding, the wind simply playing in the trees. Tom was soaked. I was soaked. The only part of my body that was dry was a patch on my backside. It glowed in the bathroom light as I peeled off my sticky skirt. My skirt was hand-dyed, so my legs were a pale pink from the russet that had played with my ankles before the rain pelted it against my legs and feet like a dog that circles you again and again, so happy to see you it doesn't understand your discomfort as its body sweeps and swirls around you.

place

It's only these last few years that I've really gotten a sense of place. The stories I sent in for grad school attempted to have stories that were good but have no place in particular to ground them in. I realized at Sarah Lawrence that exactly the opposite is needed to really engage the reader. I think it's a bit funny that now all my writing (on this blog and otherwise) depends on the place, that place is a character in the plot, not just an empty stage in a cheap off off off offff Broadway production. At least with the aforesaid cheap production, the writer can pull the audience in with words (if he or she has an ounce of talent) and make them truly see a setting. In prose of any kind, if you don't pull a reader in with a few words telling them where they're at, getting them to stick around is tough.

One of my teachers at Sarah Lawrence, the glorious Carolyn Ferrell, said the importance of place can be valuable in making a story not only entertaining, but in making it timeless. She gave the example of Seinfeld. In Seinfeld, New York is a part of the story. It is something to be dealt with, not ignored. That's how it differs from, say, Friends. Although I am a fan, Friends doesn't have the same power because the setting, though also in New York, doesn't interact with the storyline. It could just as easily be Chicago, Seattle, San Fransisco, etc. I have a feeling that Seinfeld episodes will still be airing after Friends has gathered dust in the DVD bin at Goodwill.

It really does all come back to Seinfeld.

It seems strange that I'm just beginning to realize this, since my life these last ten years have been wrapped in place. I grew up in Kansas, moved to Virginia for college, then moved to New York as a volunteer (a place I have written way too many posts about), then back to Harrisonburg for a job. I guess it partially is because age (I say this at the ripe age of 29). When I went to college, EMU was a insular little place that seemed like a ship rather than a place. Though I lived there, I still returned to my dock of Kansas for long periods of time. Though I stayed there a year after graduation, I was dealing with my surgery and had a lot of friends who were still at EMU, so it felt like I was still in college. When I moved to New York, it seemed a bit transient place to me, because as far as I knew, we wouldn't be there for more than a year or so. It wasn't until I realized through my workshops and moving from white white downtown to Harlem how much a place totally changes things. And now that I'm back in Harrisonburg, it's really reared its uncomfortable head again.

I believe Willa Cather didn't write about Nebraska until she'd moved away. She needed space from that place. I've felt the same about my writing. It wasn't until I wrote one story set in Kansas and saw how people were eager to know more that I realized that place was so important. I never wanted to write about Mennonites or Kansas until I was at school in Westchester County, a thirty minute train ride from New York.

So, in five or so years I'll write about New York beyond my blog. But then, I don't know if I'll want to be away from it that long. There I go again, pining for New York.

plants and death (figurative and otherwise)

I believe I may be a plant killer. Some plants that more or less survived my awkward care in New York have lost their green. I'm unsure why. I suppose it has to do with simple sunlight. In our old place, there was a lot of sunlight because we had a huge picture window. Now, I have always hated picture windows, mostly because they are in those horrible ranch houses that line the streets of so many towns in America. But I am beginning to see the pluses in them. I have begun to take them out and set them on the patio during the day, and retrieve them at night. It's still a bit cold at night, and I feel they are somewhat lonely outside. I'm hoping that will work.

I've been reading an excellent book of short stories, The Family Markowitz, by Allegra Goodman. One of the editors at FSG suggested I read it for guidance in reworking my collection to be more novel-esque. In this book, there is one character, Ed, who is kind of a horrible person, but I like him more and more. He's an academic who studies Middle East politics, and in this particular story he is being interviewed about a book he wrote on the subject. At one point, the interviewer asked him about whether he thought the attack on the World Trade Center could be excused. Now, my thoughts were of the recent attack on the WTC, and I was a bit disturbed by his glib response--but then I realized this was written in 1996, so although still disturbed not quite so. Although, now that I think of it, that's pretty cold of me, to be less disturbed by one bombing over another. I guess that is what time does, at least to me.

Addendum: I wrote the above earlier. Since then, my plants are perking up, and Tom and I are also the proud parents of six tomato plants in addition to my other plants. We have left all of them out since we bought the tomatoes (since the tomatoes are in three five-gallon buckets) except for last night. The weather people were warning us about frost, so we huffed them inside--they seemed happy to be inside, but even happier to return to their true home this morning.

homesick

For the past few days I've been missing New York a lot.

I don't know where this came from. I mean, I always miss New York, but in a much more controlled way. Maybe it's the spring warmth. It's nice and warm here in spurts, and I'm thinking about how New York really becomes New Yorkish in summer. Summer in New York is really disgusting in a lot of ways. It is no wonder that people who had the means back in the days before air conditioning fled the city. It is no wonder that people who have the means now flee the city. The subways are stifling, buses are sweaty, everyone pares down to their skivvies (whether or not they have the bodies for it), etc. But it also is a time when you can sit in a park, watch people, sip a soda and read a good book next to a drug addict nodding out. It is a time when you can wander the city just to wander without the discomfort of bulky winter coats and scarves.

Not to say Harrisonburg doesn't have its charms. Today Tom and I walked to the tiny farmer's market, bought some plants I'm hoping will survive our care, walked to another plant sale, then walked to a thrift store, Gift and Thrift (have I mentioned that it's the best place for used furniture?), then to EMU to sit on the grass and wonder where all the students are. There's another walk we take after I get off work. It takes us through downtown up through a large cemetery that was started in 1850. I look at the gravestones, the things that Tom refers to, via Hamlet, as the marble jaws, and read the dates, and try to figure out how old they were when they died. Sounds morbid, but I find it somehow relaxing. Only the ones of children are the really sad. There's one near the entrance of a small boy, whose grave is surrounded by a little garden of tulips. I can see the loving work of a mama or a grandma creating this spot for someone who probably tramped around in dirt and laughed a lot.

And I actually like Harrisonburg. I think I like it even more this time around. As I walked the grass of EMU, I remembered all the times I crossed the lawns in a hurry for something or other, and I realize I didn't really know the city I lived in at all. The smell of the grass, the actual smell, made me feel like I was back in that time--and I didn't miss it at all. I miss the people, but not that time. I guess that's probably a good thing.

I like Harrisonburg, and I've even got into a routine here that is slowly getting more satisfying. I'm writing more (not on this blog, unfortunately) than I have since grad school, trying to get this damn book finished. But I think the actual realization of this routine has cemented me into this place, so I look longingly back to New York, to my New York routine.

One time my sister-in-law said something quite profound: you can't have everything you want in one place, but you can be happy in the place you are at. That's a bad paraphrase, but that's the gist of what she said.

So, I'm trying to keep that in mind.

how the mighty...

Well, there's some scuttlebut in Albany. If you don't already know, the governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer, has been caught trying to procure a lady of the night in DC. My first verbal reaction was: What the fuck? I think a lot of people had the same reaction. In his bid for governor, Spitzer promised change and a new way of thinking, etc. I and 70% (according to NPR) of New York State was enamored by his winds of change. Now he's become another scheister politician. How do these people get the idea that they won't be found out? Are they that delusional? Could he have waited a few years with his pants zipped up instead of down?

manhattan blues

I really miss New York.

Tonight I've been a little down for various reasons. One of which is the above statement. I guess it's because Tom is moving down here tomorrow. I'm glad that he's coming, obviously. More than glad. But it also means my connection with New York has closed for good.

I thought I'd cheer myself up by watching Woody Allen's "Manhattan," but it only made me feel worse. There's one part at the end where Woody Allen's character, Harold, is running past Gramarcy Park. And for one brief second I felt that I was there with him, running beside those buildings that once were my own.

It's so stupid, to care that much for a place. And it's so stereotypical, this mooning about New York. There are plenty of beautiful places in this world--one of which I'm sitting in at this very moment--but this fascination with that little piece of earth really gets at that deep place I never knew existed until now.

I have this sinking feeling that I'll never feel at home anywhere else. I hope that's not true, but I feel it anyway. I thought that this move would bring me to my "settle down" place. But now I wonder if it's possible, really. Once you've breathed that toxic air it may be impossible to become a person who settles down. All I could think while I watched "Manhattan" was: I'll come back. Someday.

a prodigal daughter, of sorts

Much has happened since the last time I graced your computer screens. The single major thing is that I've moved back to Harrisonburg, VA, the home of my alma mater, Eastern Mennonite University. How this came to pass is both long and boring. Basically, a job I'd applied for at Rosetta Stone (a language learning software company), a year ago (and was turned down) opened again back in December. I applied again, and so here I am.

My job is a writer in the content development department. I'm in the middle of training, so I feel somewhat useless, but I suppose it'll eventually pass. I've been at the job for about three weeks, sans Tom. He's in New York until the 16th, when he (along with my brothers) will move our worldly goods from our evil studio in Harlem to our angelic two-bedroom on Shenandoah Ave. Right now I'm sort of rattling around in the house. I have a borrowed mattress, a borrowed desk, a chair and a sofa (which just arrived this afternoon, thanks to BJV's husband and two of his brothers) to fill a rather large (to me) house. I'm probably paying way too much in rent for this place, but compared to New York, it's a steal. It's less than a 10 minute walk from work and downtown (which boasts three coffee shops, a thrift store, a wine shop, a weird neo new age shop, a decent pizza joint and a pretty good restaurant), has a nice porch, a little backyard patio and (most importantly) a washer and dryer! No more hauling laundry to the basement early in the morning so we can beat the old ladies and their mountains of laundry! No more dealing with security guards who close the laundry room early! No more weird guys lurking around the basement making suggestive comments!

It was hard to say goodbye to New York--harder than expected. I found myself crying when I said goodbye to Lady L. I came close to weeping when Tom saw me off at the airport. As she left our apartment, Lady L said that if anyone really knew how hard certain decisions would be, no one would ever do anything at all. Which is probably true.

We decided to do this for many reasons: my current job sucked (as much as liked my students), Tom was feeling burnt out from dealing with users, we couldn't save any money, etc. And Harrisonburg has a lot of friends to return to. And, as my little brother pointed out, New York will always be there. Which is comforting. I watched Angels in America last night, and it made me happy (despite the sadness in the play) to see places that I loved again.

I'm getting back into the swing of things here. I have an after-work routine. The coffee shop I'm in right now has free wireless. I work with people that are as weird and misfit as I am. I don't understand why there aren't more people walking around or visiting the coffee shop (what the fuck do people do around here, anyway?), but that's a question I'll leave to the sages. Once Tom arrives things will improve. I don't like having an entire house to myself. It seems rather wasteful. If I was single, I would choose an apartment over a house any day of the week. Americans are space hogs, I've decided.