In the Woods

"You are such a wimp, you know that?"
I'm sitting on a stump halfway up the brick-covered hill leading up to the Ridges, rubbing my legs. My lovely roommate probably isn't judging me too hard, more making fun of me than anything else, but she looks impatient to keep walking while I dawdle and complain.
"Well sorr-ee to have actual, legitimate medical problems that cramp your lifestyle. Great merciful Keeters, my poor, enbunioned feet and I apologize for ever having inflicted our presence upon you--"
"Oh, shut up."
"...I seriously am a wimp though. We're not even halfway there yet."
"Don't worry about it. We've got time."
"Damn. Look at that moon."
"Sure is bright tonight."
"It really is. I don't think we're going to get much star-watching done this time..."
"Eh. It'll still be cool."
"...Okay, I'm good. Let's get going."
......
"Dammit."
"What?"
"I did take us the wrong way. We should have taken the path at the bottom of the hill."
"I thought you said you'd been up here before."
"I have! Just because I can't remember the exact way after half a year and in the dark--"
"Chill, Julesy, I was joking."
"I know. Want to check out the tower up here anyway?"
"Eh, why not."
"On second thought, I think it's actually a silo, though I have no idea what they'd keep in it these days, there's not exactly much call for corn storage in an insane-asylum-turned-admin-and-research-facility--"
"Ssh."
"What did you grab me for?"
"There are people up here."
"Where? And why are you whispering?"
"Ssh! There. Look, there's a bunch of them all on the edge of the hill."
"No, seriously, where--oh! Holy crap, there are a lot of them."
"Jules, you are seriously the most unobservant person ever."
"Shut up."
"Isn't that right where the TB ward used to be? ...What are they doing?"
"I can't tell. I think they're just looking at us."
"Do you think they know we're here?"
"Well, we were being kind of obnoxious--"
"Ssh!"
"What?"
"They're all looking at us now. Maybe it's a cult. Maybe we stumbled upon one of their secret rituals, and they're using the TB ward to focus their spiritual energies or something! Holy crap, Jules, we found a cult. An actual cult."
"...Maybe we should move on."
"Maybe we should go talk to them."
"I really don't like that idea. Come on, Keeters, I know you want to investigate but two girls, alone in the woods on a Friday night with a bunch of figures dressed in black and possibly carrying out strange cultish rituals, that is not a good combination--"
"Hang on, I want to see if I can get a picture."
"You--! Seriously? It's way too dark for a shitty phone camera to get anything."
"Ssh. Maybe if we're quiet they'll think we've gone away."
...
"I am so not okay with this."
"Ssh! I just want to get a picture!"
"They know we haven't left, you idiot, they're still looking at us and I'm sure they can see us a little bit at least--holy shit."
"What is that? No, seriously, what is that?"
"It looks like a laser pointer. I guess it's foggy enough that we can see the whole beam... What's he doing with it though? Wait... he's scanning the whole top of the hill and oh my god it's coming toward us Keeters what if they're not a cult what if they're aliens and we're about to be beamed in to space holy shit...!"
"Ssh."
"...That was seriously the creepiest thing I've ever experienced."
"But really, though."
"It stopped right on you, they definitely know we're here and it's still way too dark for a picture so can we please get out of here?"
"Fine, fine... jeez, you'd think you'd never seen a cult before."
"Shut up. I've never had a cult do a friggin' area sweep with a green laser while I'm trying to hide in the shadow of a silo to get shitty night vision pictures before."
"...Look, we're fine. They're not even following us."
"God dammit, Keeters, I wasn't even thinking about that but now I am...!"
"Sorry."
"I blame you for every time I freak out about something for the rest of this hike."
"Oh hey, now... that deer was totally not my fault."
"Ha, you freaked out about that one too..."
"I didn't even hear it! You just grabbed me and went Sssshit! and I think my jump was totally justified."
....
"Moon sure is bright tonight."
"You said that before."
"It's still true."
"Sure is pretty, though."
"...Just watch, they'll be gone by the time we're hiking home and we'll never find out what they were doing. Maybe we could go talk to them..."
"Mmmmm.... you had a point earlier. Probably not the best idea."
"Oh, and like yours was? 'I just want a picture, Jules, something to prove we found an actual Athens cult, let's just get close enough...'"
"But we did! We found an actual cult!"
"It was probably just a bunch of bandos smoking a joint or something."
"Whatever. I say it was a cult."
"Sure, you do that... Makes for a better story anyway."
"Want to keep walking?"
"Yeah. I want to see at least some stars before the cult catches up with us."
"Ha. You're so funny I don't know how you stand it."
"Well, now that you mention it, I could sit down again..."
Our low voices and the sound of our feet on the dirt-and-gravel path are the only things to break the silence, while the moon shines brightly overhead.

Clocks

I'm supposed to be sitting and reading right now but the words don't even have the decency to blur on the page, they simply pass through my brain without leaving the slightest mark and I find I'm five pages away from where I started with no knowledge of what happened between the end of chapter nineteen and the start of twenty-one. I've been staring at the clock and kind of half-listening to the noise of it knocking gently on my eardrums, remembering the drawing in a comic I read some time ago with words where the numbers should be and a red second hand ticking off the time--You're. Still. Not. Dead. You're. Still. Not Dead. 

The clock is right next to the mirror and from where I sit I can see its reflection in the glass, the second hand going around and around backwards and ticking back in time. I wonder if the clocks in CS Lewis' Wonderland in Through the Looking Glass ticked backward, sending their observers further into the past while ours ticked forward into the future. I wonder if I stare long enough into the mirror-clock I'll start recovering lost time.

Time is a funny thing these days; so few people wear watches but we are no less choked by time. Alarms, timers, and calendar events clang, honk, blare, and ring out every moment with a great clamor and tell us where we are supposed to be. The girl hurrying by with an old-fashioned klaxon blaring from her pocket will not lose her harried expression even when she arrives at her lunch meeting three minutes ahead of time. If she stops on the way she is not marveling at the dark, smoky scent of coffee in the warm air of the shop, nor at the rich and bitter flavor as the first sip scalds her tongue; she fidgets, looking at her watch (a relic of an older time, its second hand still travels constantly into the future, it still has a second hand at all) and she begrudges her coffee the moments it takes to brew.

Yet when she hurried by me on my own sidewalk journey today, I paid her no more mind than a moment of annoyance for the noise of her blaring alarm, too busy myself with hurrying on my own way, checking my own wrist for the time before remembering my watch battery died six months ago and it matters nothing if my wrist says it is half past freckle-o-clock, however perfectly formed and a lovely brown color that freckle may be. My watch, digital rather than analogue, had no second hand, no metronome ticking off my time, but its weight was a comfort, a little piece of captive time clasping my wrist so comfortably that I only noticed it in its infrequent absence. I had worn a watch for almost a decade, had seldom been parted from one model or another from the time I was but ten years old, and the small device had once upon a time been such a part of me that if I lost my watch or broke it or seemingly let it be stolen like those few fretful days in fifth grade when I suffered separation anxiety for an object and found it necessary to comfort myself with the meager substitute of a thick hairband around the lonely wrist, though its squeeze was nothing compared to the feeling of recompletion when I bought another watch again.

But when my watch face ceased to show the time in March, lacking a means to replace the battery, I simply packed it away until I could take it to be repaired properly. There were many freckle-o-clock time checks in those first few days, but by the time I at last rememebred that I was supposed to be missing a watch I had ceased to notice the lack. I wear no watch now, but I tick nonetheless. The rhythm of life around me wanders or scurries or saunters by, sweeping around me even as I check my phone for the time.

Two minutes late. Luckily, while my mind has been wandering along far-off streets, my feet have hurried on.

The Gambler

"Slow down, we've got time left to be lazy..."

The song trips through my head as I climb the echoing stairs up to the top of Glidden Hall. Strains of muffled music drift through improperly soundproofed walls as I emerge onto the sixth floor--the practice rooms seem to hold a preponderance of trumpets tonight. I can hear them blaring through at least three different closed doors, their brassy, strident tones a contrast to the quiet tinkling of someone practicing a high piano solo on one end of the hall and the lilting strains of a violinst just starting to scrape through scales on the other.

I walk past the trumpets to the relatively quiet section furthest from the steps. There's only one light on in this small hall lined with rooms that are closer in square footage to large closets than anything else, just enough room for a piano that's just starting to drift out of tune. The Asian girl in the occupied room has a look of intense concentration on her face as her fingers dance over the keys, drawing forth chords and runs and chromatics the likes of which I could never hope to produce. But my sigh of envy is as silent as my wistful glance at the baby grand at the end of the hall as I step to the room opposite the virtuoso and close the door on my small upright, all I really need for tonight. I know enough to leave the real instruments to those who can properly use them.

I've always been an indifferent pianist--though I took lessons from age seven to age fifteen, I never really dedicated myself to learning any more than the basics of the art. Also, I've barely practiced for almost four years, so whatever skill I once might have possessed has mostly vanished under fingers that fumble where they once flew over eighty-eight black and white keys and a mind that remembers the theory but has lost the ability to apply it to life.

Nonetheless, I still enjoy playing, and while I may have let my skills with this particular instrument lapse into half-forgotten muscle memory, I can still manage to eke out a tune. And I have never lost the reverence, the love of being able to produce my own music just by pressing on a few keys in patterns handed down through generations of players that somehow still manage to sound like they're just for me.

"So just take my hand and know that I, will never leave your side..."

I've carried this song in my head all day and it's time to let it out. "The Gambler" is a relatively simple song, just a nine-chord progression with a few arpeggios added in to make things interesting without taking away from the lyrics. I found the music for free online and decided that dusting off my unused piano skills was just as good a method of procrastination as any other. It takes me a matter of ten minutes to plunk out the accompaniment, though my fingers still fumble if I think about it too hard. They're remembering, though--thumb goes here, B flat scale has two black keys, use your first finger so you can shift to the third for the next chord--and I know that if I practice the run-throughs enough the chords will be second nature before too long. As soon as I attempt to put words to music, though, both voice and fingers slip. The eternal problem of the singer: listen too hard to what you play and it's tough to sing the tune, but focus too hard on the lyrics and your hands seem to stop working properly.

The one thing I always forget about music is that if you don't practice it, you lose it. There's no way to get around this, unless you're the kind of virtuoso still racing over the keyboard across the hall--the rest of us need to go over things again and again and again to teach our fingers and our brain and our voice to remember where to go next. So I know it'll be a while before I can find the time to practice again and even when I do I'll have to go over the same chord progression, the same exercises, and I'll probably be sick of this song by the time I learn it properly and I'll certainly never be able to replicate the violin solo in the second verse or the horn chorus that comes in over the bridge--but then I remember my roommate practicing her violin and complaining about her lack of new material, the French horn player in Lincoln hall that I can hear practicing on Tuesday nights, and I smile, because if anything can bring people together, it's the chance to play. And even as I pack my already-wrinkled sheet music away in a folder bursting with pages and pages of thin black lines and tiny dots, music in its nascent form just waiting to be given birth by hand or breath or bow, I know that I'll be back.

I'm humming again as I head back to the stairs.

Hair

"It's the age of Aquari-u-uu-us....."

So Ackerman spends about a page and a half in her "Touch" section talking specifically about hair. How we use it as a symbol of social status or of social rebellion, how it is the last natural remnant of a mammal's body-covering pelt, how the tiny hairs on our bodies contribute to our sense of proprioception and the touch of our environment. Ironically enough, as I was reading this section I was laying on my futon with my head in a friend's lap, her hand almost unconsciously stroking my hair.

I think Ackerman's observations about scientific studies that stroking pets decreases stress, etc. can be applied to petting people as well. If I am lucky enough to know people that I am comfortable with enough to cuddle with them, to play with their hair or massage their shoulders without tension or awkwardness, I am going to take advantage of that essential human bonding experience of touch. It doesn't need to be sexual; indeed, I think it's better if it isn't. I ended up almost falling asleep, laying there on that couch, because the feel of my friend's hand in my hair, light though it may have been, was the most soothing and relaxing thing I had felt all day. And an hour later, our positions were reversed, she leaning on me and my hand running automatically through her hair. It's a mutually beneficial give-and-take, this unconscious petting; I get to feel comforted by giving comfort, by feeling silky strands slide through my fingers, and she gets the mini-massage of the incredibly sensitive but rarely touched muscles on her scalp.

I remember in elementary school, we would gather in the library for story time. Twenty to twenty-five small children would crowd onto the soft carpet in the story corner, sit cross-legged or sprawl on their stomachs, and immediately commence playing with each others' hair. It was my favorite time of the week, because I could sit behind one of my classmates and attempt to braid her long tresses while another girl sat behind me and simply ran her fingers from my scalp to the tips of my hair like a comb. My teacher stopped us sometimes when we stopped paying attention to the story, but she never discouraged us or told us angrily to keep our hands to ourselves.

I fail to see why we shouldn't just pet and stroke and caress each other as a matter of daily life. Our culture demands physical separation; we get uncomfortable if a stranger so much as stands too close to us, "invades our personal space." That bubble of noli me tangere tends to shrink or even disappear with people we've known for a while, like family, or are consciously comfortable with, like good friends or significant others. But why does it exist at all? If touch is so important to our well-being and happiness, even our bodily health, why do we keep each other at arms' length?

Scent Memories

Listerine. The minty, slightly alcoholic scent of it pervaded their house, crept into corners and leapt out to surprise me at the strangest times. The wind could be blowing as if to batter the house down, forcing the pungent reek of half-rotted lake weed into my nose as I struggled up the stone path with more suitcases than was really advisable, but as soon as I opened the front door of that house by the lake all I smelled was Listerine.

My grandfather was the mouthwash aficionado in that house, and the smell of it followed him around like a shadow. He could be working in the garage, elbow-deep in the hood of one of his classic cars, and the young granddaughter that wandered up behind him would smell, amid the sharp bark of motor oil, the tang of antifreeze, the curiously enticing aroma of gasoline, the faintest hint of minty Listerine, even before he turned around and began to attempt to explain what he was doing with all the shiny wrenches. Later, a splotch of motor oil might still perfume his shirt or hands before my grandmother wiped its stain away, but mint mouthwash was once again paramount.

I would find him in his office, a dry, papery place with its own perfume of old books and dust, with a little bit of that crackly not-quite-a-smell-more-a-nose-feeling of heat in the air given its placement in a loft at the very top of the house. A hug there would waft those arid scents toward me from his hair and clothes, along with a whiff of his dandruff shampoo and, once again, the pervasive smell of Listerine. Its cool green aroma never lingered on our clothes and suitcases when my family took our leave from the lake house in Rochester, but when my grandparents came to visit us in Cleveland my grandfather brought his scent with him, perching it for a few days or a few weeks on the bathroom counter in the shape of a big green bottle of Listerine.

Short Takes, take two

"The Spinners," Michael Datcher

A lack of familial commitment in urban ghettoes seems to be the central theme of this essay, an epidemic begun in childhood and propogated in a vicious cycle of distrust and an inability to take responsibility. Datcher talks about the lack of fathers and how he and the boys who were his neighbors showed off in front of the neighborhood men, delighting in their attention but still unable to trust them, unable to get attached to them because, as Datcher says, "their personal lives screamed, "I'm lost toooooo." The way the essay simply ends, not trailing off but cutting off abruptly, is just one of the devices the author uses to illustrate his point.

"Winter," Larry Woiwode

This essay was a bit longer than some others that I have read, and in a dramatically different style. Woiwode tells the story of being snowed in at a North Dakota farmstead, with many digressions into such subjects as his son, the history of his farmstead, and the specifics of the furnace he installs. The point Woiwode comes to at the end of his essay, though, is an unexpected one about death and wanting to be remembered "by a row of words... or maybe not." The end of the essay resolves the conflict--the author will not freeze to death, he repairs his furnace--but the important questions has already been asked, if not answered. How does one accept death, if at all?

On Masala chai and coming home

Chai, the Hindi word for tea, has in recent decades become the term used in Western cultures to refer to a flavored milk tea drink made by brewing black tea with milk infused with Indian herbs and spices. Cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and occasionally ginger and even pepper can be added to the infusion and left to simmer and let their flavor permeate the milk and tea mixture. Then the spices and tea are strained out, leaving the finished product to be sweetened into a delicious brew redolent with gentle but aromatic flavors that are a delight to the nose and tongue.
That said, despite the growing popularity of chai in coffee houses across America and other nations, my mother makes the best chai I have ever tasted, and has been doing so for as long as I can remember.

When I was young, the height of my culinary joys was coming home from a long, hard day of elementary school to find the subtle but delicious scent of milk and spices gently greet me upon opening the front door. I immediately knew that Mom was making chai, and that if I had arrived at the right point in the process, there would be a small but dainty teacup full of spiced milk waiting for me on the dining room table. She would always make chai the same way, simmering the milk, sugar and spices on the stove for a longer period of time before adding the loose leaf tea that, at the tender age of six or seven, was wisely deemed too caffeinated for me.

Instead, my younger sister and I would sit and sip delicately from our little cups, the small teacups decorated with the New York skyline that resided in the cupboard for every other occasion except this, the creation of the rare and lovely beverage of spiced milk. Even before the brew cooled enough to drink, we would inhale the wisps of steam that rose gently from the cups, "sipping" at the air through mouth and nose and catching ever newer and more subtle scents and flavors as the tea brewed in the kitchen and the spiced milk cooled gently in our cups. We would exchange secretive smiles between sips, wondering when we would be old enough to drink proper chai like Mom and Dad and Auntie Palmo. Even after the spiced milk was gone, we would stand in the kitchen and sniff at the simmering pot with its forbidden brew, drinking in the small differences that marked this as the grown-ups' drink. The smoky scent of loose black Indian tea combined with the sweetness of the sugared milk, the fiery hint of cinnamon, the smoky-bitter musk of cloves, and the sharp green scent of cardamom to make something that seemed utterly foreign and fascinating, something familiar but just that little bit different than our white-bread lives.

It took some years before I realized that the scent of chai, of Indian herbs and spices, reminded me of my Aunt Palmo for a reason other than that Mom always seemed to make it when Auntie Po was visiting. My mother's next eldest sister, Catherine Rybicki had rebelled against her strict Catholic upbringing in a decidedly stronger manner than that of her other younger siblings. In her travels around Asia after leaving college, she had converted to Buddhism and, in time, changed her name to Ani Palmo and taken vows as a Buddhist nun. In my youth she lived and taught classes on meditation and compassion in an apartment in the city of Cleveland proper, a three-room paradise full of things I was forbidden to play with but that endlessly fascinated me--altars, figurines, mandalas and tapestries--and permeated with the scents of incence and spices. These spices and incense permeated the robes she wore, emanated from the thermos of chai she often carried, and made me think paradoxically of far-away places at the same time they reminded me of coming home to find my mother humming while a pot of steaming milk simmered on the stove.

When I first came to college, I brought with me a small packet of ingredients for chai. Whole cardamom, cinnamon sticks, black tea bags, and whole cloves, packed lovingly by my mother amongst many other supplies for the care and feeding of her college student. I knew she had packed it for me, I had asked her to and had watched her as she did, but in of those first few weeks of missing home enough to be lonely but not enough to want to leave this brand new world, stumbling suddenly upon the small bag of chai makings in a desk drawer was almost enough to make me cry. I remember sitting on my bed, closing my eyes and opening that bag, and as the smell of tea and spices drifted out I was once again back in that perfect moment of opening the door at home and having my mother and my aunt waft out to embrace me in the delicious, subtle scent of chai.