The humming is incessant, antiquated southern torture device, just barely off beat of the heavy-moving tread of my grandmother's final swirl around the kitchen. I clench my teeth and push my top lip into my bottom in ape-like protest. I'm sure she knows it, she can sense my brow push up and eyes widen in frustration. She's just trying to get me to really commit, follow through, like she always says. From Ape to Planet of The. I think about flipping over the table and cursing at her in italian; about tearing her jewish book collection to shreds and shoveling the remains in my hampster cheeks; about running across the street and buying enough bud just to light up in the middle of the fucking living room, about shaving their dog and leaving trails of fur running down Calhoun. But I dont. God damnit, that fucking humming, it's all old tunes from musicals I don't know, ballads of love and other bullshit. I think about how Anna used to hum making coffee in the morning. I liked that, or maybe a half-dressed woman wrapped in the smell of espresso will cloud any annoyance. Dafna used to hum too, all the time actually, and generally there was no detectable song within the humming, but I liked it just the same. And my mom, yeah she hums, more of a singer though, even when ad-libbing lyrics was necessary, but it still felt like an exhale. I liked that too. Even grandma, yeah, now I remember her humming. Old and romantic and still so alive. It's not her tonight, really. It's just the lack of silence.
With this realization, I pocket fantasies about reenacting Katrina on this well-furnished house and instead I shuffle my shoulders down into the couch, pulling my father's book closer to my face. Second round in reading it. I was definitely too young the first go - didn't squirm at the nuances or moments of intergenerational beauty. Didn't get that we're not in fact one in the fucking same like i used to swear us to be. See extensive-game-show-and-trivia-knowledge for details. He has a Wendy too. First chapter, right there, quite a bitch of a character i might add, for the little i know about her. She's not like Chris' Wendy, who i imagine is reserved and brilliantly kind and uses her sparse words like a fucking bludgeon and will marry someone else in the end. She'd never babble like i do, and dad's Wendy may sell-out but at least she was an artist once. These are worlds of women i'll never be, wrapped in men i don't quite know. Shit's all in the name i'm sure.
I've been surrounded by words and noise recently, TV and authors and eavesdropping and that fucking relentless humming. Plus an ooh-shiny-thing mentality only exacerbated by my run-away life hasn't helped with any of the writing. There's been a recent insurgence of sayanythingeveryoneelsehasalreadysaid. Perhaps the dirty underbelly of impending revolution? Perhaps just a lack of all things creative. But I think the real itch is rooted in spending too much time window shopping for vulnerability and never buying. Lots of fantasy you see, makes a woman all goofy and muddled up on her insides. There's been a whole lot of gowithits and leaveitbe a-la-cartes and the whim-special just maybe ins't cooked all the way through, still frozen and bloody in the center. And, to pile it on, I found myself sleepwalking again, which, when I'm feeling overly analytic and freudically introspective, I take as a sign of my emotional discontent (and when I'm not feeling those things I find that I'm generally feeling drunk - the actual cause of my semi-conscious a'wanderings). Ended up in my aunt's bed this time. Wish I slept with more clothes. But discontent, that's gotta be the source of it somehow, no matter how deep-seated or generalized I have to make it. Oddly enough, while backstroking the dead center of this pool of discontent, I start to notice something. I notice that the humming and the strings of words and the muffled voice of my aunt talking to herself and the clever conversations of their sexy across the street neighbors and the TV and the whoosh of page flips shove my lips, ape-like or not, into a smile. Been that way all along. I laugh and hum a bit, out of tune, and grandma says good night.
With this realization, I pocket fantasies about reenacting Katrina on this well-furnished house and instead I shuffle my shoulders down into the couch, pulling my father's book closer to my face. Second round in reading it. I was definitely too young the first go - didn't squirm at the nuances or moments of intergenerational beauty. Didn't get that we're not in fact one in the fucking same like i used to swear us to be. See extensive-game-show-and-trivia-knowledge for details. He has a Wendy too. First chapter, right there, quite a bitch of a character i might add, for the little i know about her. She's not like Chris' Wendy, who i imagine is reserved and brilliantly kind and uses her sparse words like a fucking bludgeon and will marry someone else in the end. She'd never babble like i do, and dad's Wendy may sell-out but at least she was an artist once. These are worlds of women i'll never be, wrapped in men i don't quite know. Shit's all in the name i'm sure.
I've been surrounded by words and noise recently, TV and authors and eavesdropping and that fucking relentless humming. Plus an ooh-shiny-thing mentality only exacerbated by my run-away life hasn't helped with any of the writing. There's been a recent insurgence of sayanythingeveryoneelsehasalreadysaid. Perhaps the dirty underbelly of impending revolution? Perhaps just a lack of all things creative. But I think the real itch is rooted in spending too much time window shopping for vulnerability and never buying. Lots of fantasy you see, makes a woman all goofy and muddled up on her insides. There's been a whole lot of gowithits and leaveitbe a-la-cartes and the whim-special just maybe ins't cooked all the way through, still frozen and bloody in the center. And, to pile it on, I found myself sleepwalking again, which, when I'm feeling overly analytic and freudically introspective, I take as a sign of my emotional discontent (and when I'm not feeling those things I find that I'm generally feeling drunk - the actual cause of my semi-conscious a'wanderings). Ended up in my aunt's bed this time. Wish I slept with more clothes. But discontent, that's gotta be the source of it somehow, no matter how deep-seated or generalized I have to make it. Oddly enough, while backstroking the dead center of this pool of discontent, I start to notice something. I notice that the humming and the strings of words and the muffled voice of my aunt talking to herself and the clever conversations of their sexy across the street neighbors and the TV and the whoosh of page flips shove my lips, ape-like or not, into a smile. Been that way all along. I laugh and hum a bit, out of tune, and grandma says good night.
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