Writing, Running, Being.

The finish line is a shifty Thing and what is life, but reckoning?
Ani DiFranco

Friday, December 29, 2006

goodbye summer grove

Someone left a note under my windshield wiper shortly after I moved in. LEARN HOW TO PARK! I got it. Since then my parking jobs have been nothing short of perfect.
That parking lot had the perfect speed bumps for practicing bunny hops. I once spent a whole Saturday practicing. I remember the feel of adrenaline pumping through my veins as I would approach my favorite series of speed bumps, the ones on the east side of the building by the dumpsters. "This is it. It's all or nothing. Go for the kill"And I would pop smoothly over the bump at record breaking speed. I was well on my way to hopping up a curb, but I would try that another day.
Then there was the day the police came banging on my door, disrupting a quiet evening of reading. "Pamela Greenfield?"
"Uh, no, you have the wrong apartment"
"Is Pamela Greenfield here?"
"No. You have the wrong apartment"
"Mind if we look around?"
"Go for it"
Apparently Pamela Greenfield was threatening suicide and my apartment was her last known address. Whatever.
When Teresa and Erin visited we drank wine and rum and went on a food hunt in the middle of the night. All we could find were Donettes at Walgreens. Which, according to Erin, aren't even real donuts. They're like donuts with vaginas.
I never did have the smoke alarm hooked up. Two days after I moved in the battery started dying which made a loud beep every eight minutes. I took the thing down and never bothered to buy a new battery. Oh well, the next renter can deal with it.
Goodbye grueling staircase, where it never mattered how good of shape you were in, you would always be panting and clutching your chest at the top...
Goodbye tiny bathroom where i locked myself for two days after learning I was pregnant...
Goodbye laundry machines that you had to have a laundry card to use, and you could only put money on it during office hours, which never happened to include times you suddenly remembered you desperately needed to do laundry...
Goodbye old lady with walker who has made me late to work on several occasions by clogging up the hallway with slowness...
Goodbye little gym where i got to watch VH1 while running on the treadmill, unless that one guy already had it on BET...
Goodbye cheerful ladies in the office who always remembered that my mom is the one who sends packages in shoe boxes covered in duct tape....
Goodbye family of eight with the mother of eighteen down the hall...
Goodbye mother of eighteen knocking on my door trying to sell me makeup in Spanish...
Goodbye going down the stairs to get to the main floor and then going up to get to my floor...
Goodbye couple who walks their cats on leashes outside...
Goodbye same couple who drive a motortricycle with a Minnesota Viking on one side and "Not Fragile" on the other...
Goodbye deceiving name of "Summer Grove" where it was rarely summer and hardly a grove...
Goodbye.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

running on the treadmill at the Y

running on the treadmill at the Y

It is cold and snowless today. I ran on the treadmill at the Y to avoid nature's ornery climate. Like a hamster on its excercise wheel, I ran and ran until I finally got to where I was going. Nowhere. I finished in the same spot I started. And I, being the overanalytical philosophizer that I am; equated this concept to life. You're born. You die. You run around a lot inbetween. Ultimately you achieve the very status you claimed before you entered the world. Nonexistance. Christians might argue that you've always had a soul. Hindus might say you were something else, and something else you will become. But how do you know? You were not aware of yourself until roughly the age of four and you're probably even less self-aware by the time you hit seventy. That leaves adolescence, young adulthood and middle ages. Please tell me I am not the first image I noticed of myself. The wishy washy pimply fat girl with braces that saw the world so blurrily because she refused to wear glasses. Please tell me I am not who I am now, because I am someone that I should have figured out by now but am still utterly clueless about. Please tell me I am not who I think I will be in 20 years. Crazy mom in the returns line at Target wearing sweatpants and a fanny pack. Glowing with the leftover post-exercise high as I run my errands after another provocative workout on the treadmill at the Y.

ashes to ashes

dust to dust

Thursday, December 7, 2006

oops i got knocked up

it's true. yes. yes it is. Fat is inevitable. Sleeplessness is a given. Individuality is packing it's things. Youth is loading the van, Freedom is driving off into the sunset. I am barefoot on the porch, waving goodbye. Devastation pulls me inside. Dread lulls me to sleep. Hope persistently wakes me each morning.