to me and ring true, something different. After all, I am only twenty-seven. Some people don’t get wizened until they’re old. Some people don’t at all. I wondered what I really meant by wizened . Did I mean bitter? Static? It is not necessary to think one thing and not another. It made sense, and felt good, to blame the tears on my newly churning hormones. It felt like something new, this unexpected lack of bleeding, a new something I had never before encountered, something of my own invention, that could not be thought up or done by anyone else, a thing that had nothing to do with
anyone else. This went on for a week or two. I felt light. I felt like a child. I felt full of potential, and it was great.
III: ANOTHER PERSON (MYSELF)
A long time ago, I guess it was before high school because I was still trying to find God, I was looking through my parents’ desk.They shared one. Her stuff was in the drawers on the left, and his in the drawers on the right. The surface was for bills only. I found my father’s old cigarette roller, the kind with the handle you pull, and tried to make it roll various office supplies into post-its, which didn’t work out so well. Then I found a couple chess pieces and some nail polish, so I painted faces on the chess pieces, which made them look downright demonic. Then I found my mother’s collection of fortunes from Chinese restaurants, which was old, I knew, because my father hated and hates all that is Chinese. The fortunes said that her life was going to turn out in ways it had not, not then, not now, and they told her she possessed virtues I’ve never witnessed.
I found six photographs of our house, each taken from the same spot in our yard, right in front of the maple tree where I spent hours scribbling on a yellow legal pad. At the time, I was working on a novel. I’d been reading about Nazis, and asked my mother, “Who is our enemy now?” and Mother had said, “We don’t have enemies anymore. The Russians, I guess.” In my novel, a family would hear someone breaking into their house and whisper, “The Russians are coming!” and for pages and pages they would hide and plot and then emerge, trying to beat the Russians back with pitchforks and garden hoes, but
the Russians would keep coming, so then the family got to live in the woods with kind animals.
In any case, the photos taken from in front of the maple tree preserved each color scheme in which the house had been painted—six colors—the primaries, a couple secondaries, even Williamsburg blue when that was the rage.All these colors and I was still just a kid, though I felt older. It was as if someone wanted to keep track of what they’d done, so they could check back, and see if they’d ever had it right. I remember thinking that they hadn’t, and that I didn’t even have a favorite. They hadn’t ever had it right.
I found a sketch my father had made of my mother holding me as an infant, but he’d never gotten around to my head. I found a box of cherry stems, in brittle knots. Buttons never returned to shirts. Rusty paper clips. Single, double, and quadruple gummed staples that would never do a thing because anyone who can afford a stapler can afford new staples. Idiocy, everywhere. Idiocy just crammed into a decent-seeming piece of furniture, and I remember every item of it, every bit of hidden, accumulated, puerile waste. An inventory of other people’s ideas.
That afternoon when I forgot I was looking for God and examined the items at hand, that afternoon stretches when I think of it and holds years of weight. A small period of time can mean years in a person’s life. A person knows only what a person knows, and time feels as big or small as it does according to how much space it takes up now , in a person’s heart and mind. The time I have been living through in this house is permanent in this way, and this is why I can call myself, why I can be, why I am old. History is all bunched up behind
me:
anyone else. This went on for a week or two. I felt light. I felt like a child. I felt full of potential, and it was great.
III: ANOTHER PERSON (MYSELF)
A long time ago, I guess it was before high school because I was still trying to find God, I was looking through my parents’ desk.They shared one. Her stuff was in the drawers on the left, and his in the drawers on the right. The surface was for bills only. I found my father’s old cigarette roller, the kind with the handle you pull, and tried to make it roll various office supplies into post-its, which didn’t work out so well. Then I found a couple chess pieces and some nail polish, so I painted faces on the chess pieces, which made them look downright demonic. Then I found my mother’s collection of fortunes from Chinese restaurants, which was old, I knew, because my father hated and hates all that is Chinese. The fortunes said that her life was going to turn out in ways it had not, not then, not now, and they told her she possessed virtues I’ve never witnessed.
I found six photographs of our house, each taken from the same spot in our yard, right in front of the maple tree where I spent hours scribbling on a yellow legal pad. At the time, I was working on a novel. I’d been reading about Nazis, and asked my mother, “Who is our enemy now?” and Mother had said, “We don’t have enemies anymore. The Russians, I guess.” In my novel, a family would hear someone breaking into their house and whisper, “The Russians are coming!” and for pages and pages they would hide and plot and then emerge, trying to beat the Russians back with pitchforks and garden hoes, but
the Russians would keep coming, so then the family got to live in the woods with kind animals.
In any case, the photos taken from in front of the maple tree preserved each color scheme in which the house had been painted—six colors—the primaries, a couple secondaries, even Williamsburg blue when that was the rage.All these colors and I was still just a kid, though I felt older. It was as if someone wanted to keep track of what they’d done, so they could check back, and see if they’d ever had it right. I remember thinking that they hadn’t, and that I didn’t even have a favorite. They hadn’t ever had it right.
I found a sketch my father had made of my mother holding me as an infant, but he’d never gotten around to my head. I found a box of cherry stems, in brittle knots. Buttons never returned to shirts. Rusty paper clips. Single, double, and quadruple gummed staples that would never do a thing because anyone who can afford a stapler can afford new staples. Idiocy, everywhere. Idiocy just crammed into a decent-seeming piece of furniture, and I remember every item of it, every bit of hidden, accumulated, puerile waste. An inventory of other people’s ideas.
That afternoon when I forgot I was looking for God and examined the items at hand, that afternoon stretches when I think of it and holds years of weight. A small period of time can mean years in a person’s life. A person knows only what a person knows, and time feels as big or small as it does according to how much space it takes up now , in a person’s heart and mind. The time I have been living through in this house is permanent in this way, and this is why I can call myself, why I can be, why I am old. History is all bunched up behind
me:
Similar Books
