The back seat of Dad's car is full of newspapers and discarded memos, some of them crumpled with shoe marks. There is a spot where I melted a crayon on the seat once, a long time ago, and I pick at it absently with my fingernails as he starts the engine.
“So she needs a car, we’ll get her a car for graduation,” Dad says, turning to Mom in the passenger seat.
“It’s not that simple, Julian. We don’t know where to get it – she needs a license for whatever state – is it going to be bought in California? Is it going to be bought in Pennsylvania? Is it going to be bought in Texas? How are we going to get it from one place to the other?” Her voice rises for the final word of each sentence, as if she’s annunciating for a small child or foreigner.
“Any of the above sound like wonderful options.” It’s hard to tell sometimes whether dad’s actually certain, or whether he just wants to end the conversation as soon as possible.
"Don't you hae anything productive to add at all?" she asks.
“I would be more than happy to buy a one-way ticket to The Woodlands and then…” Dad makes a left turn at the same time as the pick-up on his intended road merges left into his intended lane. “…drive the car for her – or with her, even – back to California.”
Mom looks at him incredulously. “Have you been listening at all? We’re talking about the beginning of the summer. You’d need to …”
“Dad!” I yell.
“…fly to California and then drive to… Julian! What are you doing?...”
Mom has become aware that we are solidly on the wrong side of the double yellow line, driving toward an unladened tractor trailer and just about the right distance from it to start imagining carnage. Dad waits for the pick-up to finish passing and then switches smoothly to the conventional side of the street.
“Are you trying to get us killed?” Mom stares at him for a few moments. He rolls his eyes and looks incredulously into the rearview mirror.
“Llllighten up,” he says, drawing out the L to show that he’s only playing at acting defensive.
Mom shakes her head. “I don’t think it’s funny,” she says.
“Aww, he didn’t really have a choice,” I chime in from the back.
“It’s not how I would drive,” she says, her mouth a grim line. There’s no way she was even watching when it happened. How would she know?
“Why do these things always happen to me when you guys are in the car?” Dad says in a stagey whine, now feigning incredulity. We sit in silence for a moment. “I mean, I think you bring trouble upon me.” He looks right, his eyes wide, one hand spread theatrically. When the silence continues, he snorts a couple times, half laughing. This usually cracks me up, but I won’t let it this time. He’s taking this too far. I’m not amused. Mom is less amused than I am.
She shakes her head and continues planning my future. “So anyway, the car’s one issue,” she says. Then she begins a long, one-sided discussion on whether I should come home to Pennsylvania between Texas and California, and whether Dad should take the divers that they coach to their summer competitions, which leads to a diatribe on how they both can’t leave, and how dad gets to go on most of the trips while she stays at home and holds down the fort, and how she’d like to get out more and… I don’t know. Other things.
“Fine.” Says Dad. “I’ll stay at home. You go on all the trips. You do whatever you want. I’m happy either way.”
“Julian, that’s not what I want. I want to talk about this civilly together. I know there are things that you want, and there are things that I want, and we should be able to make them work together…”
“I don’t know why you ask me for my opinion – I put in my two cents already, and it was shot down before I got the words out.” The anger, I think, is an unstaged emotion.
It’s time for me to chime in again. “But that’s because it was a stupid idea. And it was like, five minutes ago. You weren’t even listening,” I whine from the back. I don’t know why I like egging him on so much. Dad turns into the Hilton parking lot.
“So I guess we better go up to my room and figure all this stuff out,” I say to the car.
“Brilliant idea,” says dad. “You two figure it out – I’ll just be in my room.”
“Dad, aren’t you coming?”
Dad sets his face to confusion and blinks, shrugging and twitching between confusion, stubbornness, and blank idiocy. He likes behaving childishly to prove points. “I’m completely out of it. I’m useless. What use could you possibly have for me?” He pulls into the parking spot and turns off the engine.
“I don’t know why he fells like he should get out of this,” mutters mom to me as she closes the car door. It is, by no means, shut gently, but at least she doesn’t slam it.
Monday, April 23, 2007
The invisible food scene from Hook
Peter comes to dinner with the Lost Boys after a long day of doing things that should be fun, but aren’t because Peter is a severely repressed, old, dumpy lawyer instead of a fun-loving little boy. He sits down, clearly aching and miserable, hanging by a thread, that thread being his belief that a steak and a stiff Never-cocktail are immediately forthcoming. The Lost Boys crowd onto long benches before a table buried beneath steaming covered dishes. Rufio, the teen-aged leader, folds his black leather-gloved hands and lowers his red and black Mohawk. “Alright. Everybody say grace,” he says, as the score becomes momentarily reverent.
“Bless this O Lord,” begins Peter the dumpy lawyer.
“Grace!” The little boys shout reverently, and they begin to dig in.
The lids are raised from the pots with a flourish, revealing steam, screams of delight, and absolutely nothing in the way of tangible food. Grubby hands reach into empty containers as the boys proceed, in their own charming ways, to stuff their faces. The twins lift their tankards and slam them down again as one. Peter looks as if he may have an aneurism. A cherubic child gnaws like a rodent at what must be corn. The token fat kid looks at Peter with pure, unmediated glee before taking a bite so large that the insides must certainly have spurted out of his invisible sandwich. “MMmf tss GOOD,” the fat kid says. Peter looks as if he’d like to give someone else an aneurism.
“Are you gonna eat that?” asks the fat kid, pointing to Peter’s plate. Peter passes it over.
“Eat!” says Tinkerbell, stifling a burp.
“Eat what, there’s nothing here.” Says Peter, in a p.o’d half-whisper.
“If you can’t imagine yourself as Peter Pan, you’ll never be Peter Pan,” Tink yells convincingly, proud that she’s come up with such a statement.
Peter responds with something derogatory toward the whole state of affairs, and at this point, Rufio has had enough.
Rufio stands up, pushing his chair away from the table, and calls Peter something complicated and derogatory involving the words “Maggot,” and “Slime.”
“Bangerang!” Yell the appreciative Lost Boys.
“Someone has a severe caca mouth,” says Peter. The Lost Boys whistle and blow raspberries, making the international sound for falling-and-crashing.
The fight continues, Rufio shooting out spectacularly crass insults and Peter trying to be an adult until finally, Peter starts punching back. His insults – “substitute chemistry teacher”… “nearsighted gonocologist” … “paramecium brain”… get better and better until he beats Rufio at his own game.
“You are a moldy old burger crawling with maggots,” Rufio spits.
“You lewd crude rude bag of pre-chewed food dude!” Peter spits back.
“Bangerang Peter!” Shout the lost boys.
“Man!” You… You man…” Rufio makes several feeble attempts, but he’s got nothing. Peter makes the final sally, kicking him when he’s down.
“Oh Rufio – if I’m a burger, then why don’t you just Eat Me.” With that, Peter uses a spoon to slingshot some invisible food across the table. It hits Rufio square in the face, and in that moment, materializes into purple frosting. Peter looks on in amazement.
“You’re doing it Peter!” whispers the lad with cherubic curls.
“Doing what?”
“Using your imagination!”
Suddenly, Peter the dumpy lawyer becomes Peter Pan, man-boy.
“Bless this O Lord,” begins Peter the dumpy lawyer.
“Grace!” The little boys shout reverently, and they begin to dig in.
The lids are raised from the pots with a flourish, revealing steam, screams of delight, and absolutely nothing in the way of tangible food. Grubby hands reach into empty containers as the boys proceed, in their own charming ways, to stuff their faces. The twins lift their tankards and slam them down again as one. Peter looks as if he may have an aneurism. A cherubic child gnaws like a rodent at what must be corn. The token fat kid looks at Peter with pure, unmediated glee before taking a bite so large that the insides must certainly have spurted out of his invisible sandwich. “MMmf tss GOOD,” the fat kid says. Peter looks as if he’d like to give someone else an aneurism.
“Are you gonna eat that?” asks the fat kid, pointing to Peter’s plate. Peter passes it over.
“Eat!” says Tinkerbell, stifling a burp.
“Eat what, there’s nothing here.” Says Peter, in a p.o’d half-whisper.
“If you can’t imagine yourself as Peter Pan, you’ll never be Peter Pan,” Tink yells convincingly, proud that she’s come up with such a statement.
Peter responds with something derogatory toward the whole state of affairs, and at this point, Rufio has had enough.
Rufio stands up, pushing his chair away from the table, and calls Peter something complicated and derogatory involving the words “Maggot,” and “Slime.”
“Bangerang!” Yell the appreciative Lost Boys.
“Someone has a severe caca mouth,” says Peter. The Lost Boys whistle and blow raspberries, making the international sound for falling-and-crashing.
The fight continues, Rufio shooting out spectacularly crass insults and Peter trying to be an adult until finally, Peter starts punching back. His insults – “substitute chemistry teacher”… “nearsighted gonocologist” … “paramecium brain”… get better and better until he beats Rufio at his own game.
“You are a moldy old burger crawling with maggots,” Rufio spits.
“You lewd crude rude bag of pre-chewed food dude!” Peter spits back.
“Bangerang Peter!” Shout the lost boys.
“Man!” You… You man…” Rufio makes several feeble attempts, but he’s got nothing. Peter makes the final sally, kicking him when he’s down.
“Oh Rufio – if I’m a burger, then why don’t you just Eat Me.” With that, Peter uses a spoon to slingshot some invisible food across the table. It hits Rufio square in the face, and in that moment, materializes into purple frosting. Peter looks on in amazement.
“You’re doing it Peter!” whispers the lad with cherubic curls.
“Doing what?”
“Using your imagination!”
Suddenly, Peter the dumpy lawyer becomes Peter Pan, man-boy.
K-Town
Kennedy Township is a suburb to the west of Pittsburgh, although many of its residents couldn’t tell you exactly how close it is to the city (20 minutes) because many have never actually been there. The general consensus is pragmatic: “Why bother leaving when everything we need is right here?”
Kennedy Township is a deceptively gritty little bubble, signs of decline moving in as inconspicuously as the grime that attacks the once-glowing letters on the Shop-n-Save. It has one of the oldest populations in the state. Few people leave, but fewer people enter. There are no Mexican Restaurants in Kennedy Township. There is one Chinese Take-out, in the parking lot of the Shop-n-Save, which occupies one of the two Asian families known to reside in the area. There are at least three pizza joints. There is no Indian food. 98.64% of Kennedy Township is white, composed of stalwart Irishmen and Italians and Poles who’ve been holding down the territory since they immigrated in the 1900’s. In David E. Williams Middle School lingo, if a thing is bad, it is either “Gay” or “Jewish.” If there are any gay or Jewish kids in K-Town, they generally don’t speak up about it.
Kennedy Township holds row by row of practical split-level homes where the style of mailbox and color of vinyl siding are all that differ. Roads twist and turn through miles of evenly spaced boxes and unannounced cul-de-sacs, giving visitors the strange sensation of driving through a video game with a repeating background. Residents are born at Ohio Valley General Hospital, or occasionally McGee Woman’s. They start school at Forest Grove Elementary, where they learn to speak with Pittsburgh accents from their English teachers. The school district pretends to be one of the area’s best, believes deep down that it is solidly mediocre, and is actually, according to test scores, just under par. The teachers at Montour High School spend the first day of school taking attendance with glee – “Oh, Mancini! Panizzi! Kulik! Pastin!” – “What’s your brother doing?” “Are you related to a Sarah?” “I taught your mother!” “Your daddy and I had a fling once.” When it comes to hiring, nepotism runs rampant. The school board finds intellectual incest comforting.
After graduation, Kennedy-ites go to a university within three hours from home – Pitt or Penn State if they’re smart, Point Park, or Duquesne if they’re average, and CCAC or Robert Morris if they’d rather commute from home than deal with the possibility of living with new people in new places. Salmon swim further to spawn than most Montour kids travel for college. After college, they move home, or else they move to a house very close to home. They marry their childhood sweethearts, find work building things or demolishing things or driving things, and the process begins again.
In general, life is simple. Stay-at-home moms drive the stereotypical minivans to the stereotypical soccer games at the stereotypical park. No one walks anywhere except for shady characters with dangerously low pants going early to the Pine Hollow Inn and leaving late. There are no sidewalks. The first day of Deer Hunting Season, the Monday after thanksgiving, is a state holiday, and most good fathers take their sons and sometimes daughters out to shoot things every once in a while. During football seasons, entire extended families go to the Montour games, which are so horrendously bad that ESPN once enlisted the aid of celebrity coach Dick Butkus to bring the team from rags to riches. The season, which finished 1-8, outlasted Butkus, who threw up his hands and fled the neighborhood after 1-6. Kennedy Township can sometimes be difficult for outsiders to understand.
Kennedy Township is a deceptively gritty little bubble, signs of decline moving in as inconspicuously as the grime that attacks the once-glowing letters on the Shop-n-Save. It has one of the oldest populations in the state. Few people leave, but fewer people enter. There are no Mexican Restaurants in Kennedy Township. There is one Chinese Take-out, in the parking lot of the Shop-n-Save, which occupies one of the two Asian families known to reside in the area. There are at least three pizza joints. There is no Indian food. 98.64% of Kennedy Township is white, composed of stalwart Irishmen and Italians and Poles who’ve been holding down the territory since they immigrated in the 1900’s. In David E. Williams Middle School lingo, if a thing is bad, it is either “Gay” or “Jewish.” If there are any gay or Jewish kids in K-Town, they generally don’t speak up about it.
Kennedy Township holds row by row of practical split-level homes where the style of mailbox and color of vinyl siding are all that differ. Roads twist and turn through miles of evenly spaced boxes and unannounced cul-de-sacs, giving visitors the strange sensation of driving through a video game with a repeating background. Residents are born at Ohio Valley General Hospital, or occasionally McGee Woman’s. They start school at Forest Grove Elementary, where they learn to speak with Pittsburgh accents from their English teachers. The school district pretends to be one of the area’s best, believes deep down that it is solidly mediocre, and is actually, according to test scores, just under par. The teachers at Montour High School spend the first day of school taking attendance with glee – “Oh, Mancini! Panizzi! Kulik! Pastin!” – “What’s your brother doing?” “Are you related to a Sarah?” “I taught your mother!” “Your daddy and I had a fling once.” When it comes to hiring, nepotism runs rampant. The school board finds intellectual incest comforting.
After graduation, Kennedy-ites go to a university within three hours from home – Pitt or Penn State if they’re smart, Point Park, or Duquesne if they’re average, and CCAC or Robert Morris if they’d rather commute from home than deal with the possibility of living with new people in new places. Salmon swim further to spawn than most Montour kids travel for college. After college, they move home, or else they move to a house very close to home. They marry their childhood sweethearts, find work building things or demolishing things or driving things, and the process begins again.
In general, life is simple. Stay-at-home moms drive the stereotypical minivans to the stereotypical soccer games at the stereotypical park. No one walks anywhere except for shady characters with dangerously low pants going early to the Pine Hollow Inn and leaving late. There are no sidewalks. The first day of Deer Hunting Season, the Monday after thanksgiving, is a state holiday, and most good fathers take their sons and sometimes daughters out to shoot things every once in a while. During football seasons, entire extended families go to the Montour games, which are so horrendously bad that ESPN once enlisted the aid of celebrity coach Dick Butkus to bring the team from rags to riches. The season, which finished 1-8, outlasted Butkus, who threw up his hands and fled the neighborhood after 1-6. Kennedy Township can sometimes be difficult for outsiders to understand.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Giving Selfishly
In general, my interactions with Palo Alto’s street people usually involve some discomfort. I come out from dinner at Plutos, or Pasta?, and there they are, sitting on benches in front of Starbucks, bundled in tattered layers with matted hair and bad teeth, wielding shopping carts or sturdy backpacks.
Then there’s the euphemistic conversation:
“Have any spare change?” a walrus-y voice asks, hand outstretched, usually reaching up from a stoop. (This really means “Give me money.”) Then comes my answer – “No, sorry,” I mumble, face turned half away, my steps quick and jerky, my arm tight against purse or pocket. (This really means “Yes, I do have money, but I don’t want to give it to you, I won’t, I don’t trust your motives, get a job,” which I suspect, deep down, may really be short for, “Yes, I’m a selfish, greedy, sheltered little white girl.”) Then comes the final sally – “God bless you,” usually said quietly but with heart, as eyes follow me off along the sidewalk (This is meant to inspire guilt, and actually means “God have mercy on your soul, you liar and hypocrite. I am a person too.”)
I was filling out a scholarship application spring quarter of my senior year that left a whole page of space for “significant community service work.” I stared at my computer, winding my thumbs around each other and chewing on the bottom left corner of my mouth for a few long, spacey moments before starting to type. Twenty minutes later, the only bullet point read, “Participated in a collection of food, clothing, and miscellaneous items for the homeless and needy of our area.” (i.e. "threw some old clothes and an alarm clock into the homeless shelter bin last spring because I didn’t feel like packing them up and putting them in storage.") With the scholarship due in a few days, I replied to one of the “Volunteer!” (Meaning, “pad your resumes and applications with good-looking helpful stuff”) emails that get stuffed into my inbox semi-regularly. The project was feeding breakfast to a homeless shelter in Palo Alto.
I dressed that morning in a tank top and skirt, then changed my mind and put on jeans and sleeves. Something about the concept of “Homeless Shelter” struck me as dirty, and covered skin felt like a safer shield from parasites and perverts. We’d cooked big vats of eggs the night before, cracking dozens and dozens into huge bowls to be scrambled. I kept getting yolk in my fingers and my fingers in the whites, and shells in the bowl, filled so deep with egg that each new batch of yolks was hard to find and crush and mix in with the rest. “It doesn’t matter if there are shells,” I’d thought. “It’s such a big bowl.” Or maybe the thought was something like, “What does it matter – they’re homeless. They’ll be grateful no matter what.” This hadn’t rested easily in my mind, and I’d shaken my head to rattle it out.
I was nervous – why should I be nervous? I climbed into the middle seat of a fairly ritzy car, and suddenly wondered how it how it would look when five charmed Stanford kids rolled up to the dilapidated building framed by peeling green paint and unstable loiterers (this was how the building looked in my mind) in this big Mercedes SUV, or whatever it was. The nerves kept making guerilla attacks on my consciousness. Or was it my conscience?
I stared out the window but noticed nothing on the short drive from campus to the shelter. What if they crowded around me and fought over breakfast? Would I meet them, or just serve food? Would they recognize me as being the girl who never gave money? Would they call me out? I’d read somewhere that a third of schizophrenics are homeless, or vice versa – maybe it was that a third of homeless people are schizophrenics. Maybe they’d be talking to themselves, rocking back and forth in line. The idea of being so close to madness fascinated me. I had a sudden urge to hear their stories. In my mind we sat at an old, rattling table with a dent in it and the edge of the tabletop peeling off, me and a wild-haired man with blue eyes, as he told me, in a toothless drawl mediated by tics and twitches, about a good life gone horribly wrong.
Palo Alto must be a fairly nice place for homeless people – warm most of the year, clean streets, rich yuppies and decorated trees. Back in Pittsburgh, I used to wonder why they didn’t migrate with the seasons – I’d see them on the streets in January, red from the cold, but a shade darker from dirt, and patchy where stubble grew on their chins and pavement eroded their cheeks. In Pittsburgh, they had gimmicks. Sombrero Man wore a big Mexican hat and sat on Forbes all day, shaking maracas at college students. Sometimes he slouched beneath the awning of Vera Cruz, with the lounging toreador painted on the side of it, as if he’d just finished posing for an outrageously dishonest portrait. There was another guy known for the box of candy – cheap candy, Halloween lollypops in November and candy canes in January – that always sat next to him. No one ever took the candy, of course and I used to wonder if he noticed how much we snubbed his gift.
My mind was still on full blast as we pulled to the curb in front of a surprisingly new looking building. As per my vision, there were a few unusual people standing around. One silently opened the door for us. Another smiled and tipped his head, but the third ignored us, staring out into the space above the street. I unloaded two foil-covered trays of eggs and one of pancakes and walked it to the door. As I was passing the door holder, my purse slipped down over my shoulder, and as I jerked toward him to keep the breakfast balanced, the purse fringe leaping out as if to taunt him, the tag thrust into his face. I was embarrassed. “Don’t worry,” I wanted to say, conspiratorially, “It’s not really Prada. I got it on a street corner of New York three summers ago.”
I walked inside slowly, giving the other members of my group enough time to catch up and cover my back. My eyebrows lifted as I passed a room labeled “daycare” with finger paintings on the walls and bright plastic bins of toys, then emerged onto a patio with several solid-looking white tables and a well-kept grassy arbor. Through unsmudged glass I saw rows of new computers. “I think people are hungry,” someone said. A clean-cut black man tilted his head to a long, neat, single-file line forming at one end of the tables.
Then there’s the euphemistic conversation:
“Have any spare change?” a walrus-y voice asks, hand outstretched, usually reaching up from a stoop. (This really means “Give me money.”) Then comes my answer – “No, sorry,” I mumble, face turned half away, my steps quick and jerky, my arm tight against purse or pocket. (This really means “Yes, I do have money, but I don’t want to give it to you, I won’t, I don’t trust your motives, get a job,” which I suspect, deep down, may really be short for, “Yes, I’m a selfish, greedy, sheltered little white girl.”) Then comes the final sally – “God bless you,” usually said quietly but with heart, as eyes follow me off along the sidewalk (This is meant to inspire guilt, and actually means “God have mercy on your soul, you liar and hypocrite. I am a person too.”)
I was filling out a scholarship application spring quarter of my senior year that left a whole page of space for “significant community service work.” I stared at my computer, winding my thumbs around each other and chewing on the bottom left corner of my mouth for a few long, spacey moments before starting to type. Twenty minutes later, the only bullet point read, “Participated in a collection of food, clothing, and miscellaneous items for the homeless and needy of our area.” (i.e. "threw some old clothes and an alarm clock into the homeless shelter bin last spring because I didn’t feel like packing them up and putting them in storage.") With the scholarship due in a few days, I replied to one of the “Volunteer!” (Meaning, “pad your resumes and applications with good-looking helpful stuff”) emails that get stuffed into my inbox semi-regularly. The project was feeding breakfast to a homeless shelter in Palo Alto.
I dressed that morning in a tank top and skirt, then changed my mind and put on jeans and sleeves. Something about the concept of “Homeless Shelter” struck me as dirty, and covered skin felt like a safer shield from parasites and perverts. We’d cooked big vats of eggs the night before, cracking dozens and dozens into huge bowls to be scrambled. I kept getting yolk in my fingers and my fingers in the whites, and shells in the bowl, filled so deep with egg that each new batch of yolks was hard to find and crush and mix in with the rest. “It doesn’t matter if there are shells,” I’d thought. “It’s such a big bowl.” Or maybe the thought was something like, “What does it matter – they’re homeless. They’ll be grateful no matter what.” This hadn’t rested easily in my mind, and I’d shaken my head to rattle it out.
I was nervous – why should I be nervous? I climbed into the middle seat of a fairly ritzy car, and suddenly wondered how it how it would look when five charmed Stanford kids rolled up to the dilapidated building framed by peeling green paint and unstable loiterers (this was how the building looked in my mind) in this big Mercedes SUV, or whatever it was. The nerves kept making guerilla attacks on my consciousness. Or was it my conscience?
I stared out the window but noticed nothing on the short drive from campus to the shelter. What if they crowded around me and fought over breakfast? Would I meet them, or just serve food? Would they recognize me as being the girl who never gave money? Would they call me out? I’d read somewhere that a third of schizophrenics are homeless, or vice versa – maybe it was that a third of homeless people are schizophrenics. Maybe they’d be talking to themselves, rocking back and forth in line. The idea of being so close to madness fascinated me. I had a sudden urge to hear their stories. In my mind we sat at an old, rattling table with a dent in it and the edge of the tabletop peeling off, me and a wild-haired man with blue eyes, as he told me, in a toothless drawl mediated by tics and twitches, about a good life gone horribly wrong.
Palo Alto must be a fairly nice place for homeless people – warm most of the year, clean streets, rich yuppies and decorated trees. Back in Pittsburgh, I used to wonder why they didn’t migrate with the seasons – I’d see them on the streets in January, red from the cold, but a shade darker from dirt, and patchy where stubble grew on their chins and pavement eroded their cheeks. In Pittsburgh, they had gimmicks. Sombrero Man wore a big Mexican hat and sat on Forbes all day, shaking maracas at college students. Sometimes he slouched beneath the awning of Vera Cruz, with the lounging toreador painted on the side of it, as if he’d just finished posing for an outrageously dishonest portrait. There was another guy known for the box of candy – cheap candy, Halloween lollypops in November and candy canes in January – that always sat next to him. No one ever took the candy, of course and I used to wonder if he noticed how much we snubbed his gift.
My mind was still on full blast as we pulled to the curb in front of a surprisingly new looking building. As per my vision, there were a few unusual people standing around. One silently opened the door for us. Another smiled and tipped his head, but the third ignored us, staring out into the space above the street. I unloaded two foil-covered trays of eggs and one of pancakes and walked it to the door. As I was passing the door holder, my purse slipped down over my shoulder, and as I jerked toward him to keep the breakfast balanced, the purse fringe leaping out as if to taunt him, the tag thrust into his face. I was embarrassed. “Don’t worry,” I wanted to say, conspiratorially, “It’s not really Prada. I got it on a street corner of New York three summers ago.”
I walked inside slowly, giving the other members of my group enough time to catch up and cover my back. My eyebrows lifted as I passed a room labeled “daycare” with finger paintings on the walls and bright plastic bins of toys, then emerged onto a patio with several solid-looking white tables and a well-kept grassy arbor. Through unsmudged glass I saw rows of new computers. “I think people are hungry,” someone said. A clean-cut black man tilted his head to a long, neat, single-file line forming at one end of the tables.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Why's it called that?
Creative Nonfiction seems like a way of learning... writing... understanding... more from something. The facts are solid, but the spaces between the facts - we can influence, expand, contract, color, sand, mold, or torch them. Why? In order to let more or less light in, to add meaning to reality, and to show what's really there.
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