I fell in love when I was seven

I fell  in love for the first time when I was seven. The woman, though I suppose she was only 15 or so, was the daughter of a family friend's, who stayed with us for a week near our summer house. The day I first fell in love it was dreadfully hot. On the grass, gnats were swarming in and out of geometric shapes. Everything outside looked wilted, trees leaves were curling down, and the dog was lying in a the shadow of the house, panting as if he'd been running all afternoon.


The girl, Claire, didn't say anything to me as I played a game of war between my Transformers and some rubber dinosaurs. Who's to say who would win if it came to a fight between a T-Rex and an autobot? The T-Tex was larger, and I scooted him across the floor rather awkwardly because his tail was longer than his legs and struck the floor first, making walking naturally a near impossibility. This minor fact would eventually bring about the extinction of the dinosaurs though the details of that battle are now sketchy.



Claire sat in the corner of the room, at a bay window that gave a view of a gigantic oak that stretched up as if it might one day pierce the sky. She looked out the window pensively, the down on her cheeks was visible in the warm light. Was she beautiful? I don't really remember if she was aesthetically perfected, but I remember having a sense that she was beautiful. I had this feeling after watching her assemble a fleet of swans from a few sheets of scrap paper that she brought up to the room. While she stared out the window, probably thinking of some boy or her distant friends, her hands worked furiously turning the blank nothingness of a paper into swans. I understood then that she was made beautiful by the act of creation.



At first the swans were regular seeming swans that I've seen since in other people who were expert at origami. She produced three or four swans, similar looking, though upon closer inspection it was clear that she'd made a male swan and a female, arcing her neck ever so slightly to keep an eye on the two almost infinitesimally smaller swans, juveniles I suppose, who were behind her.


As the afternoon took shape, a slight breeze stirred the leaves of the oak and drove the gnats from the grass. That night we had a summer storm, with heat lightning and the deafening crack of thunder. But that was still hours away and as Claire worked the shapes grew increasingly more ornate and beautiful. Soon she was making replicas of the dinosaurs and Transformer that I was playing with, and, again upon closer inspection, a replica of me playing with the dinosaurs, now made so small as to be able to be cupped in my little paper hand. It took a magnifying glass to see the sort of craftsmanship that she was somehow capable of that afternoon. I searched this all out after she'd left the room, taking a short walk down by the deep blue lake water before the storm set in.

I'd like to think that love or falling in love is the sort of thing that makes sense, but the truth of the matter is that sometimes it comes for you wildly, suddenly, like a summer storm, rain pebbling the water that slaps against the dock. I became aware in a matter of a few minutes that Claire was capable of something that I'd never be capable of, a kind of creative spark that eludes me to this day, and so I did the next best thing I could think of, I fell in love with the hands of the creator, with the down on her cheeks, with the bit of red in her hair.


You would think year later that I'd never think of her, and in fact I don't all that often. I have children of my own and a wife. And yet sometimes I'll step outside and feel the warm air brushing past my forearms, goose pimpling my arms, and I'll think suddenly of that afternoon, of those small white hands creating a world that was wholly dependent and satisfied by itself. I think of that small paper boy, holding a small paper dinosaur, on a small rug, wasting away an afternoon under the watchful gaze of the Creator.

Observations on a certain day in January

When I was young we traveled to find snow. I remember one particular morning when my mother drove us up to the snow because we were all fighting in the back seat and she deemed us unfit for church. Instead, she drove forty five minutes up into Paradise or Forest Ranch, got out of the car and started pelting us with snow balls. She was a good mother.                         Last night S asked me to take out the trash. I wandered into the crisp night air, bag held out from my body, feet crunching through soft bit of snow. The sky was clear, but I didn't look up. I could see the moonlight on the snow, and in the alley, the reflection of the streetlights on the patches of ice that were like islands in a stream. I had one of those moments where you are transported back into childhood or some prior version of yourself. As my feet crunched through the snow I felt a certain dislocation. Surely I must have been staying at a cabin, making a special trip outside in the brisk air, taking in the cold and the snow as a kind of novelty. And yet, instead there I was doing the most mundane thing, taking out the trash, stepping through bits of something that used to be magical. For a moment though, I forgot that I was in my yard. Rather, the moment become full with time, and I pictured myself stepping through the snow of a decade or two ago, my feet making small indentations in pillows of snow. The night air cold and clear but soon to be left behind.I have somewhere warmer to be.


I


Observation #2
I was struck this morning by the absurdity of the locker room. I walked quickly through a set of double doors and immediately began shedding my clothes as if stripping your clothes off was an Olympic sport and the most natural thing in the world to do. It suddenly struck me as absurd, sitting on a bench amongst strangers in my underwear that I should be in such a rush to take off my clothes. Under any other circumstances such behavior would be considered pathological or grounds for disbarment. And yet, in a locker room, it's commonplace, the most natural thing in the world to strip down among strangers in the fashion of two teenage lovers. What absurdity? Of course, most of our customs are strange contrivances built sometimes over centuries. I suppose it was just one of those moments when the essential silliness of our existence is made plain.




Observation 3
The other day I got into an argument with a bus driver over whether he'd passed me by and whether I was able to stand in the street and knock on the door. I said some harsh things, and he said some harsher things. Later, we shook hands. Today I took the bus and did not argue with my bus driver. I sat quietly next to a young guy who was taking up 1.5 of the seat are and read a book quietly. My eyes passed over the words like God passes over the problems of evil, quickly and silently. I get sick when I read on the bus sometimes, a fact which is most prominent when the driver stops and starts like someone learning to drive stick the first time. But today I wasn't sick. Today I read a book on the bus, unwinding the scarf from around my neck as the world passed by outside my window, cold and white. I left the bus and traveled into the sun's rays of early morning, with no story to tell, no hand to shake, no face to remember. My story now was someone else's, mediated through the pages of the book. Perhaps I should argue with my bus driver every day, to undergo the act of sin and redemption, to have my fight or flight instinct kick in, my adrenaline rise, so that my mind can start whirring in an attempt to make sense of the morning. Instead, my mind is swimming with words until I am near drowning. I am paddling my way into the shores of the morning on words like indigo and fastidious and recalcitrant. I wonder where the bus driver is that I argued with on Friday morning, what things he's puzzled over today? If he to, like me, is suddenly lonely.

Top Ten Movies of 2014 or something close to it

Admittedly, I've hardly seen more than ten movies. However, I don't think that disqualifies me from recommending the roughly ten movies that I happened to catch this year. This is a lie. I watched at least 13 movies over break, which brought me up to 14 for the year. As usual, in particular order:

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel



I wrote a rather lengthy take down of Moonrise Kingdom a few years back, citing Anderson's obsession with naivete and nostalgia as problematic for adult film watchers. The movie was not as innocent as it wanted to be or too innocent by half. A friend of mine said that watching Anderson's films is like watching a version of history that has been scrubbed of problems like race and gender. The reason that Grand Budapest Hotel is great is that it retains Anderon's aesthetic while still having the texture and complexity of the real world. 

2-10 tied.

2. The Trip to Italy


This movie doesn't really have a traditional structure. Its venue, driving around Italy and sampling meals is a thin veneer for Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan to have comic offs. It's brilliant and roughly 90 percent funny and ten percent sad and introspective. Those are roughly the percentages that I'd like life to be. It isn't. But it's kind of that way for the 1:45 minutes or so that you're watching this movie. Oh, also it has beautiful shots from all over Italy including some incredible shots of the A-Malfi Coast. I want to go to there.

Brydon: (paraphrase) Do you ever use your fame to sleep with women?
Coogan: Yeah. You use everything at your disposal. People say, she only slept with you because you're famous, well, she only slept with you because you're young and handsome. 

3. Guardians of the Galaxy



Everyone in the galaxy has already seen this movie. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out just how fun this movie is. I'm not quite sure how it was done, but this movie managed to handle the saving the universe trope without making it seem too serious while simultaneously not resorting to camp.

4. Snowpiercer



Remember a month ago when Netflix got Snowpiercer and everyone watched it? Me neither. Snowpiercer is the taut action thriller that makes you think for a minute. Basically, a more fun version of Argo. How good is Tilda Swinton channeling her inner Kim-Jong Il? I haven't seen The Interview, but her Kim Jong was off the charts good. We don't need to talk about the rather opaque ending because the ride to get there is so interesting.

5. The Edge of Tomorrow



Wait a second, Internet. I know that Tom Cruise is in this movie, and the Internet doesn't like Tom Cruise because he married that girl from Dawson's Creek and tried to turn her into an alien God that rules of the universe. We've all had that significant other though. It's forgivable sin in someone as sure of himself as Tom Cruise. Anyhow, this movie is actually pretty damn good, exciting, fun, a little mind bending.

6. Take This Waltz




This movie is really quite beautiful. Right from the opening scene where the wonderful Michele Williams is cooking and the light is shining through the window on her face. It's a complicated movie that seems to have something to with art, some with life, and a lot with the confusion of love. This was one of the secretly very good movies that I watched this year.

7. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes



This movie is great because it has Kerri Russell in it. Remember, from Felicity? Kerri Russell! Yeah. I also appreciate this movie's attempt to create an authentic relationship within what we all know is just going to end up being one long battle scene. We eventually get to the fight scene with a boss battle and a sub boss battle. However, the movie makes a very strong effort to focus on the relationships and pretend like it isn't going to end up in a huge fight. Don't worry. It does.

8. The Fault in Our Stars



I already wrote a lengthy review of The Fault in Our Stars. I cried a shi- ton watching this movie. Mainly because the relationship between the two main actors was so believable and intense. Their relationship transcended the characters that were slightly less full. Anyhow, it's okay to cry, and it came rather naturally when I watched this movie.


9. The One I Love



I have a penchant and attraction for movies that have a twist or some small element of imagination. This is primarily because reality can be kind of soul crushing or monotonous, and it's hard to imagine anything beyond the fairly routine human experiences, birth, death, severance etc. changing the structure of our lives. Movies like The One I Love that introduce an element outside our normal human experience are then pleasurable and unique to watch. Of course, they also have to be good. And The One I Love is good. Elisabeth Moss from Mad Men is fantastic and the movie somehow winds up being a comedy more than a drama despite the hefty subject matter: a failing marriage. Kramer vs. Kramer this is not. 

10. About Time



I just said I like movies with a bit of  a twist. Well, this movie has time travel. It's also incredibly sweet. There are things in our life that we know to be truths but that allude us anyway. This movie is one of those continual lessons that's worth learning--we only get this one life, so we might as well live it with some grace. Yesterday I got into a dispute with a bus driver on Metro over whether he had stopped for me or not. The two of us exchanged heated words for almost a minute and then I suddenly stopped and asked myself whether I wanted to be a part of a world in which the two of us carried around a grudge against one another all day. The whole argument seemed silly, and I suddenly felt an overwhelming feeling of connectedness and love. I almost started laughing. When I got off the bus I walked past him, and he apologized, and I said I understood, and we shook hands. No one is perfect but if given the chance why not try and make life more beautiful? 

Honorable Mention:

X-Men Days of Future Past-I wish Bryan Singer took these movies a little less seriously. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Or I wish he took them seriously like Christopher Nolan. Either way, I'm probably whining about a movie that was ostensibly pretty good. It's just that he had a lot of material to work with, having the casts from both movies together with genuine death scenes for superheroes, which pretty much never happen. Of course they don't actually happen in this movie either because it's a movie.

The Lego Movie-This movie was manically funny and maniacally paced. The latter of which slightly detracted from it on a second viewing. It's extraordinarily fun and the twist at the end is a nice deus ex machina.

Chef-This movie is pleasurable on two levels. First: the scenes of beautiful and brilliant food that take up the screen. It's like a Pinterest board come to life. The latter is that the movie lasts for an hour or so without any real conflicts. You keep waiting for something to go wrong, for the boy to cut his hand or the mother to complain but nothing bad happens. This isn't sustainable for most movies, but it has its own road trip rickety charm.

Roman Holiday-I just saw this movie for the first time. But I think it came out a few decades ago. It's good. Also, not a lot of people know this but Audrey Hepburn is kind of cute.

That summer when we were younger

The truth of the matter is that none of us were happy that summer. For a while, Jackie insisted that she was, but we later came to understand that she was defining happiness in entirely the wrong way, if it is fair to say so. Besides which, she was sleeping with an older man who wore expensive watches. She had nothing in common with any of us anymore.

Okay, it's probably not fair of me to say that all of were not happy that summer. James was working as a trainer in an old boxing gym, teaching kids off the street how to land a proper jab. We all knew for a fact that James didn't know shi- about boxing, but these kids didn't know any better, and who were we to blame him for being caught up with the idea of a better version of himself as projected by these kids. Something about this relationship between perception and reality seemed vitally important. None of us knew enough about boxing to be able to tell by the end of the summer that James hadn't become a really good trainer. Though, to be honest, we watched one of his little charges get his ass handed to him, losing by TKO in the second round after taking a series of left hooks to the head that left him floored until the eight count and on his feet but not on this planet by the time the ref called the fight. Afterwards, we took the kid, who turned out to be a little shi-, and we almost felt sort of bad that James had put so much stock in these kids opinions, out for ice cream and he tried to touch Jackie's breasts.

The real point is that we were all unhappy for causes unknown. Sydney had gotten into a motorcycle accident in the spring, and, as a result, she'd ended up with her jaw wired shut for the better part of three months. And you wouldn't believe the sort of things we'd all say to her knowing that she couldn't answer back, just turn beat red and stamp off way down along the beach where a bunch of druggies hung out beneath the bridge. And she'd pout down there for hours, to no avail, trying to get good and high off second hand smoke before she came back to glare at us all.

We were, most of us, in the early part of our twenties working at dead end jobs in retail stores and public libraries stocking books, waiting for the summer to be over, so we could forget that we were supposed to be making something of ourselves. Those days that last forever gave us all too much time to think about the positions we were in, and the failures we were fast becoming. Laura would usually bring cigarettes and those of us who smoked would cup our hands in the wind against the wind and toss the butts into the ocean and not one of us even dared to try our hand at a metaphor.

Derek would usually bring just enough beers to leave us all disappointed that there weren't more, and we'd occasionally make a camp fire and try and keep the smoke out of our eyes while we bitched about the people we wanted to love us the most. When we grew bored and our eyes were all stinging from all that damn smoke from the wet logs we'd put together we'd talk about whoever hadn't come that night, speculate about the sorts of things that could keep them from our nightly funereal engagement. And that's what it was, I now see, way before the thing with Jimmy, which, I suppose, was perhaps preordained after all those ashes had burned away, and we were left with the bare light of the moon on our ageless faces.

 

Three attempts

#1

I wrote a long note to you that included some choice words about goats but only in the margins. I tore it into a thousand pieces. I'm not lying. I counted. I put them on the hearth, which was cold, numbingly so, and I ate them one by one. You'll be surprised to learn that l's taste best, they have the distinct flavor of ice tea, and bring to mind screen porches and old apple trees, this despite the dearth of l's in a words like screen and porches. Up until this point in my life I had always thought that I was in love with e. It is strange, is it not, how wrong we can still be about ourselves.

#2

Remember that time we were in that little cafe on the corner of 23rd and Whittier. Me neither. In fact, in staring at a map of the surrounding area that we used to frequent I can see that 23rd and Whittier don't even intersect. A fact which casts a great pall of doubt in my mind about whether I had something candy cane flavored that day or not. I suppose it could cast the whole day into a sort of shadow, could it not? None of these details are important though. The existence of street corners or little black baskets made of brass that held pink pansies. I remember that we were arguing about the integrity of the ending of something. I was hell bent on convincing you that it was not only aesthetically pleasing, but artistically moral, (the two don't always go hand in hand) if the main character died. It was raining by this point in time, and I remember your right hand was on top of your head because the wind was high, and you didn't want to lose your hat. I can see that I was wrong now, about any number of things.

#3

We were reading to each other in bed, even though we didn't have the slightest interest in one another, think Dante and levels of hell, when suddenly, it occurred to me that the two of us could amend the many differences we'd been discussing by changing the proximity of our bodies. I don't remember the angle of the sun changing at all. From up close, I could see that there was something amiss with your right eye, an asymmetry, and not of the pleasing sort. And the whole time we were in situ I kept thinking about that imperfection, trying to rationalize my way into believing that it was a beauty mark. I thought of a mother explaining a birth mark to her child, that it was just a more unique thing to love about them. I don't know whether it is unfortunate that parents lie to their children or whether it is unfortunate that the world lies to children about things their parents have told them. Either way, the sex was terrible.