hunting

"Hell, I'm not a suspicious man, but I don't go down near that lake until that sun's clear up past the trees."
"Well hey, I'm hearin' ya. Saw on the news a kid from out near Gettisburg was shot down just last week."
"I tell ya, Joe, I don't know what gets into them kids' heads these days."
"I don't know, Steve, I just don't know."
"Taking those drugs, I bet. All those kids up at the high school, all of them on drugs. When we were kids we made our own fun. Kids these days, they gotta buy it in pill form. It's a damn shame."
"Don't I know it."
"Uh-huh."
Silence fills the air as the men steady their guns. A finger on the trigger, an eyeball on the scope. Readying the kill. The deer emerges slowly, as though it senses the danger, or maybe deer at this point in time are genetically predisposed to question the safety of their surroundings. An animal born to die. As we all are. The deer moves more quickly. Light on its feet. Yesterday night Steve's 8-year-old daughter watched Bambi, an old TV recording on a VHS tape. The quality wasn't great. The deer stops. Its head turns. Joe shoots. The deer falls. The blood runs. The trees remain still. A tiny head, unmoving, is cradled in a pile of freshly fallen maple leaves. Meanwhile, at the lake, two high school students are stoned, dancing to a melody only they can hear, as the soft wind caresses the surface of the water.

art

This is my favorite painting. I saw it at the Denver Art Museum 2 years ago, and I still remember how much it affected me when I saw it. It's called "By June the Light Begins to Breathe" by Keith Jacobshagen and it's his interpretation of the Nebraska sky. Pretty beautiful.

Today I bought canvas paper and some acrylic paints and I tried to paint a mountain and it just kind of looks like a mountain, helen-keller style, as in if you were to describe a mountain to someone who is blind and/or severely visually impaired and told them to paint what they thought a mountain would look like. it's cool though. the guy at the art store said i'd be switching to oils in no time.

sun

The days are getting longer. I can tell by the way the sunlight lingers wistfully in the sky now, before it falls down below the horizon. It's not in a rush to get away, like it was in early December. Like it feels bad for us, leaving us down here on Earth at night in the freezing cold. But it disappears anyway. It pulls more shit up in Alaska, though. Disappears for months at a time and then, like an abusive spouse, it comes back and promises to stick around for a while, sticks around all day in fact, and all night, and then suddenly, just when you're getting used to it, just when things seem bearable again and you're thinking maybe-hey-this-could-be-great! it vanishes once again and it's just cold. but then, you have the northern lights. which i guess could be some form of adultery.

Thank god the sunlight here in the contiguous United States is more reliable.

angry

Conversation I had with my mother:

"Hey Mom, I have some really exciting news for you!"
"What??"
"It's not about work..."
"Okay.."
"I'm going to Spain in March with my friend Katie!"
"Oh. (long pause) I thought you were going to say that you had a boyfriend or something."
"No..."
"And now how do you think you're going to pay for that?"

Conversation with Melissa:
"So your aunt came over today to pick up my maternity clothes."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. She was talking about how she hopes you find a boyfriend soon."

It doesn't matter if you are the first one in the family to graduate from a 4-year college that you paid for mostly on your own, or to be the first one in the family to move away from rural Pennsylvania to New York City to accept a solid starter job, to make it on your own, on very little money, in a harsher world. That's not success. Success is having a boyfriend. So that your mom can tell everyone else that you aren't a freak. So she can show people pictures of you and your boyfriend, hang them on the fridge. Say things like, "Wonder when he's going to pop the question!" and "I hope the kids have his eyes!" Okay! Let me go pick out a boyfriend! He will be tall and have blue eyes and dark brown hair -- classically handsome, as Mom would like, nothing too extraordinary -- and he will be older than me and have a sister my age. I will hang out with her and she'll tell me embarrassing stories like how ___ used to pee his pants in the second grade and how ____ used to sing N Sync songs in the shower. We will go shopping together at ____. We will buy ____ and we will ______ and then we'll eat some ____ at ______. Me and ____ will have ____ children and we'll live in ____, _____. We will _____ twice a week and on Sundays we'll watch _____. Fill in the blanks. Use any word. It's all the same.

p1

It’s raining outside as I pull into the jail’s parking lot. My mom has just bought a new car with the money from my grandmother’s will and the windshield wipers are superb, I must say. It’s as if it isn’t even raining, the way those rods spring into action, flicking the drops of water consistently, seamlessly back into the air from whence they came. Before, the wipers squeaked and left blurry streaks at the precise spots we needed to not be blurry. Then: why am I thinking about windshield wipers? I park next to a rusty truck, orange like the color of a half-rotted pumpkin. It’s fall in Pennsylvania and it’s raining and it smells like wet leaves and that omnipresent burning scent. What’s burning? Everything’s burning. Our lives are burning. The fall makes me melodramatic.

Inside the chairs are arranged so that we are all facing away from the visitation room, looking out at the street, as if we are an audience watching a play: the play of other people’s lives. Out there the cars are flying by. People are rushing to their destinations, home to eat dinner with their families and then to lie down on worn sofas, exhale deeply, flick through the channels. There’s not much action in this play though, so I’m examining the carpet. It’s a geometrical wonder of intersecting different-colored boxes, box upon box upon box next to box followed by box, boxes everywhere. We are in a giant box as well, a giant concrete box of a room with artificial leafy plants placed near the front window (the stage). There are no artificial plants behind us, just an ominous hallway leading past a coat rack (the dressing room?). Boxes upon boxes upon boxes. Someone’s kid is running loose all over the room; he’s picked up the “Caution: Wet Floor” sign and is carrying it around. The old couple next to me is laughing. I bet they are thinking, What an adorable child. I am thinking, tell your stupid kid to stop running around. Like a cat he senses my dislike and is therefore attracted to me. He places his sign by my foot and I deliberately ignore him. I know I look like a horrible person but it’s that melodrama in me: I didn’t come to the jail today to smile and be merry. I came to contemplate this disaster my brother has become, adorable children be damned.

In the visitation room I’m thinking about things I could talk about that wouldn’t be awkward. I think about telling him how I took a ride in our cousin’s new Lexus, and then wonder if it’s rude to talk about doing activities he can’t do. I decide it’s not. I think I’ll tell him how our parents are getting a dog, and then wonder if that seems like he’s being replaced. By a dog, nonetheless, not even something as jealousy-inducing or melancholy as an adopted child or a full-time babysitting gig. Just a miniature Pinscher named Chico. The dog bed will be in my brother’s room. I probably won’t tell him that part. The lady at the phone on my right offers me a Wet Wipe and I wipe down the receiver and, left with nothing else to do, the entire desk in front of me. The man on my left says, “That’s probably the cleanest that’s been in years.” This both horrifies and reassures me, so I just say, “I bet!”

Then the prisoners start coming through on the other side of the glass, a few at a time. I recognize a guy from my high school: a football player, graduated a year before me. I bet it’s DUI. Mark comes in and sits down on the other side of the glass. He is grinning. He picks up the receiver.

“Hey Megan, good to see ya.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I was in town so I figured I’d stop in. Plus I couldn’t come yesterday because they didn’t have my address.”

“Yeah.”

“So… how is it?”

He shrugs. “Eh, it’s not too bad. I just watch TV mostly, play cards with the other guys.”

“You have cable in there?”

“Yeah, we get all the channels. Even HBO.”

“Jesus. Doesn’t sound too bad.” The phone smells strongly like baby powder now. It's strange, the smell of innocence, in this place.

“Eh, it’s just kinda boring.”

"So what's Jason in for? I saw him walk by."

"Oh yeah. DUI."

"Yeah, okay. So how's the food?"

“It’s all right. It’s kinda gross. We get 3 meals a day but the last one is served at 4 o'clock, so if you don’t buy a snack at the commissary you’re pretty much starving later.” He grimaces at this, as if he feels entitled to better treatment. Dinner at 6, perhaps, and milk and cookies before bedtime.

“What kinds of snacks do they have at the commissary?”

“Oh, ya know. Combos and shit. Like gas-station type of snacks. No liquids though, but they have this powdered drink mix you can put into the water.”

I say, God maybe you should just stay there and he laughs and then I laugh and then we fall silent. He looks thinner than he did when he went in, just a few weeks ago. He has a rash on his arms, says it’s from the water. I could make a joke about not dropping the soap but it seems too real here to be funny. We talk about card games, the new house. I say, take care of yourself. He says, I’m trying. I say, I gotta go. The attendant just came in and told us we have to leave. I love you. He says, I love you too. I walk away and look back. His face is contorted, his mouth a twisted smile, his eyes glossy. He waves and shuffles out of sight. I walk out, too: this play is over. For now.

so

if, maybe, the air were a little thicker, or the leaves a little fuller. if the sun's rays were a little harsher or the sky a little less brilliantly blue, if the smog were more present. if it were a day like that, and not a day like this, then maybe the news could have buried itself in the humidity, and dripped onto her face in small little drops, one at a time, so that by the time it had all fallen down it wasn't a downpour but more of a steam bath or a refreshing spritz.

when it rains in Pennsylvania it pours and the earthworms are the first to take notice. we are hidden inside of our homes, watching TV, sedentary, staring out the window. the worms are tunneling through the surface. we shield ourselves from the sky and, when we must go out, cover our heads with plastic. we know what happens: the water makes us wet. that's all, but that's everything. these worms, they come up for the water, they don't hide from it. they come up to meet it, they let it wash them over the soil and relocate them to driveways, streets, old horseshoe pits. they let their immediate future -- their fate, at times -- be determined by higher powers, the clouds. the freedom they have in that, in not making their own decisions, is sometimes enviable.

review

this is the first of 10 reviews that I'm doing for this guide coming out called Thirsty? New York... it's being published in January. I'm not getting paid (shitty) but I am getting some good clips, which is decidedly not shitty. anyway... yeah.

Date of visit for review: 9/10

Neighborhood: West Village

Business name: Grounded

Tag line: Get wired at this laid-back Village cafe

Avg. cost for a drink: $5 and under

Street Address: 28 Jane Street at 8^th Avenue; take the A,C, E, L to 14^th st/8^th Avenue and walk south

Phone: 212-647-0943

Web site: www.groundedcoffee.com

Hours: 7 AM – 8 PM weekdays; 7:30 AM – 8 PM weekends

Tucked into a side street in the heart of the West Village, Grounded is a good respite for city-weary coffee lovers, as you won’t feel like you’re in Manhattan in this cozy spot. The casual cafe draws a student-heavy crowd who come for the great music selection, surprisingly large assortment of tables and the free wireless internet. Doubling as an art space – check out an opening and you’ll also snag some gratis wine and hors d’oeuvres – Grounded serves up organic loose teas and coffee in all the expected forms: latte, espresso, cappuccino and café au lait. What sets it apart are its specialty lattes, like the café aloha (espresso with steamed coconut and regular milk), and its seasonal selections, like fall’s Canadian latte (fresh maple syrup, 2 shots of espresso and steamed milk). Light fare is available, including a selection of baked goods and bagels from local favorite Murray’s, as well as a recently introduced selection of ice cream and sorbets, handmade at the café in small batches. Flavors include coconut lime, honeydew peach and, of course, house espresso. If it’s smoothies you’re after, swallow your dignity and order the Just Dew Me!, a unlikely mix of honeydew melon, fresh lime, ginger ale, mint and honey. And if you can handle it, try the Cowboy Cappuccino: after swigging down that triple shot of espresso, you’ll be gittin’ those dogies along well into the night.