May 30, 2004

• 'Yet I dread what a flash of madness might reveal
  If he said "Sir we have seen so much beauty spilled on the open
      street
  Or wasted in stately marriages or stained in railway carriages
  Or left untasted in villages or stifled in darkened chambers
  That if we are restless on winter nights, who can blame us?"'

  -Eliot, as always

  --------

  Thursday afternoon at my grandmother's house I complained ever-so-absently and
  all too often of the heat.

  "It's dreadfully hot, mother."

  "How hot it is outside. (no exclamation point)"

  "I can't stand this heat."

  And even just the lethargic,
  get-me-a-Mint-Julep-and-let's-get-on-with-it,-only-we-haven't-anything-to-do-but-fan-ourselves-and-swat-mosquitos
  "It's hot." The why      am 
  I even…     wastingenergy…    saying this?, helpless, hopeless, and
  infinitely unnecessary observation was repeated at least a dozen times as I
  pouted, buttered biscuits, watched my grandmother thin a cast iron skillet full
  of gravy with steak drippings then panic and thicken it again. After apron
  unknotting (“Gracious! Could you help me with this?” The strips of pale pink
  pinstriped linen had worked themselves into a tangle at the base of my back)
  and tea sweetening (“We’ll ask the men to help us! I never can remember how to
  get it just right…”), and with that I was shooed dining room-ward, bone china
  bowl holding butter beans in hand and a “don’t forget the trivet!” floating out
  from the kitchen after me.

  Mid-meal the men were drawling, brow knitting, searching
  both upward and back at once for tales we could all vaguely recall. The topic
  turned to armed service, and bell-like, my grandmother’s cry of “Oh! Speaking
  of the military!” caused foreheads resting thoughtfully between thumb and
  forefinger to ease her way, amused. “The youngest son of…” she began, clearly.
  Of their neighbors, across the street and one down to the right. Newly enlisted
  in the Marines and just returned from his three months at Paris
  Island. They had wished for me to
  write, but I tend to romanticize these things, and everything in my life’s
  already too delayed gratificationy, decentralized, and I haven’t really spoken
  with him since we enacted some make-believe rescue scene that we felt the need
  to perfect from atop the gracious, grassy slope in my grandparents’ front yard.
  Over and over he’d run in and save me, and tow-headed, lace-covered, I’d
  critique each approach.

   “Charlie’s there?!” my mother half-asked, half-restated suggestively, aiming her
  Mary Jane for my shin at the mention of the family’s dutiful, Doctor-to-be of
  an eldest son.

  Someone suggested that we ask them over for cake (chocolate
  iced with chocolate, bearing eighteen pink, yellow, and green candles in my honor), the
  dinner plates  (here lunch is dinner, dinner is supper) were cleared, the
  tattered teal address book was withdrawn from a drawer, I was directed rather
  shrilly to “Go to the back bathroom and put some lipstick on!”
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  --------
  

  There are other developments.
  

  -Guster June 15th.
  Stumbled across tickets at House of Blues last night. Glorious. If
  anyone wants to come along, you are more than welcome to. If you like
  Latin dance or Legos, added bonus--it's at Downtown Disney.
  
  
  -Two final frenzied training sessions for the new newspaper team. Not
  looking back. Will not be seduced (sidenote or sweeping Statement of
  Purpose? You tell me.)
  
  
  -I have been reading everything I can get my hands on but with a dire
  lack of direction. If anyone would like to chart a course of summer
  literary study for me, I would be obliged beyond belief.
  
  
  -I have a new best friend

  • 11:14 pm
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