Friday Night Lights

 

It's a Waning Gibbous Moon tonight. This happens after the moon is "Full", and has just begun to turn its face away from the Earth's in its rotation, relative to ours. Sometimes the Waning Gibbous is mistaken for a "Full" moon because of how large and tangible it appears in the night sky. I feel like I am a Waning Gibbous tonight: tangible and big, but not really filled.

  

   There are kids outside playing night games right now. I saw them on my drive home, catching fireflies and holding them like secrets, close to their bantam, pounding chests. It's 1:16 on a Friday night in June, and their older cousins are still in the bars two miles away, hoping that someone will think they are worth some heightened breathing. 

    I almost convinced myself, today, to purchase two things: A beautiful Schwinn Varsity bicycle in space-age sparkle green (you know the type that looks like it's brand new, even though it's probably older than my own parents). The other thing was a baby's high chair. It was wooden and obviously had seen the feedings of many, many children over the years, most of whom are now wizened old timers themselves. What a heritage. Neither of these two items would actually fit my (financial or emotional) budget, and neither of them was a real match for my life, but I spent a substantial time talking myself down from the nerves of walking away from them. I'm still thinking about them at 1:19 on a Friday night. They seem, somehow, to represent more to me than just objects.

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    There is a house up the block from mine where very fat women live. They wear boldly colored frocks and seem incredibly sweaty and full. They aren't particularly smart or friendly, except with one another. There are probably eight of them crammed into that tiny space that was built by and for small, malnourished German refugee immigrants in the early 1910's. That's what this place looks like with its history. 

     

    Every day, the fat women come out to their porch and sit for a few hours in the late morning. They always get hungry around 1:30, and they always convene in the shade of their fledgeling Chinese Maple that grows in the patch of grass between the road (which ends as a dead end at the railroad tracks two houses down). They have a picnic table set up there for their lunches. They are never outside after 3:00, unless it is after 6:30. They are usually back by then, all sitting around again, wondering aloud about the moon and their old stuffed animals. I have heard them. They seem to be extravagant women whose lives revolve around one thing: joy. It is remarkable to see such a gathering, really. I used to hate them for their bonds. Tonight, though, as I drove past the fat women's street, I saw those firefly gatherers on the other side of the road, and felt happy for them all. I looked down to the fat ladies' table, hoping (as I always do when I pass their street) to catch a glimpse of their clown-car life. They had apparently all gone to bed (afterall, it was 1:04 on a Friday night). But set up and gleaming on the table was a single, long candle set in a candlestick. It was miraculously lit, and blowing gently in the constant breeze that seems to be pregnant with impending storm. I was reminded of the advice that I was given about buying candlesticks, and then was forced (again) to re-revisit my thoughts about that baby chair and the bicycle. A professor told me before I went to Europe, to invest some substantial money into some fine Italian silver candlesticks, and that I would thank myself when I was an old lady with children who needed something to remember me by.

  

    But I don't want to be remembered for candlesticks. I want to be remembered for chasing fireflies at 1:16 on Friday nights in June with little legs, and for that well-worn chair, and for wanting to bike everywhere I could desire to travel.

    And then I let myself cry for the first time in too long to this song. I wasn't really sad, just sort of whelmed and needing to let something go. At 1:10 on a Friday night in June.

    And the crickets and cicadas have begun their music again for the summer.

I do my best when I shouldn't be.

I like driving. I sometimes think I like it more than normal people should, but I don't believe in should any more. Should breeds guilt and insecurity, and I'm not into that business.
It stays light for longer here than anywhere I have lived, except in Alaska, where the sun licked the shore for at least 20 hours. Those were the longest days and the incongruously best nights I have ever had. But Prairie light is different, it's diffused over the country and seems softer and brighter at once, and for so much longer. Tonight, it was light until 8m at least, and the prettiest juxtaposition of complimentary colors. Blue. Orange. Pink. Cyan.
The light of the world.
And then it all melted.
Into a backyard with a stream running through the middle of it and a waving neighbor lady. Big groups of us swarmed there, joking about fish, and forgetting the lesson, and exposing our secrets to one another. We are so tender. I've been so honest lately.

I declined the first hug in over a year and a half tonight, but I made up for it with all that honesty.

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Before I left, I drove for a while. I parked behind this apartment building and watched the prairie wind push the grass around and defy the dissolved stillness of that diffused light. It seemed like every piece, every blade was animated and it jumped around with ferocity in all directions. It reminded me of those fake candle lights that flicker until their battery runs out.

(Imagine this as a gif, where every blade is animated in a different direction. Spring is alright in the middle.) 

Horses made noises in the field down the road near where that body was found.

Who was it?

Who was it?

I thought about that body while I watched the grass dancing. I was reminded of that scene in that book I loved first, where the girl sees the wretched old man with holey shoes, and can only think about his mother kissing those same feet as a baby boy. Who kissed the feet of that body?
It led me to thinking about my own baby-foot-kissing-mother. I came inside and looked at that dress that was sent to me: She was so tiny! So full! What was she like? I used to spend hours and hours thinking about my parents. I used to wonder if we would have been friends and how they probably looked and what they liked to eat when they were my age. It's probably normal kid stuff, but I haven't honestly been so fixed on the idea of them in years. How many years? I remember asking both of them what they loved about each other first: she was a great conversationalist, and he was sincere. His hands were cold, and her smile was killer.

I tried on her gloves and then I put on some perfume and thought more about that body. I turned on the A/C earlier this week and then forgot about it; the heat is desultory here I am learning.  So tonight, the vents puffed out soft tufts of faux-chill.
Diffusion of light, diffusion of force (is that what wind is?), diffusion of chemistry in my bedroom, diffusion of a corpse in the field.

In my mind, it all looks the way broccoli looks from the top of the "tree" but with more colors. They are pastel and dusty and taste like chalk. Call me morose, I guess.

And now my hair smells like the last time she hugged me before I left, minus the scent of the beach and tobacco.


*oh, and in 100% unrelated news,  this is something I did recently. The "co" of "co-curator Amber Mohr" is me.

thnxxxgiv 2k11

I embark tomorrow morning for the great (not yet) white north land.
My hopes are high, mostly because north = reunion with Marge, whom I love immensely.
I am armed with music in my pocket from a sweet boy, a homemade map and a tank full of gas.

Also I learned to sing Jingle Bells in German today. It''s good to remember the languages you learn.

I will conquer the prairie in the morning.