Category Archives: Portraits of People and Places

Sunday

Me and My Life, Portraits of People and Places

I wanted to go to church this morning. I didn’t go last week because I was getting sick. I didn’t go the week before because I had to work. So I wanted to go back, reconnect a little, and see some of the people I’m just starting to actually know there. But as I slowly started getting ready for the day, I realized that the hour-long drive there might actually be dangerous in my state, so I gave up and resigned myself to another long, tedious, miserable day on the couch staring at the same walls, thinking the same thoughts, and doing extensive cost-benefit analyses every time I contemplate getting up to do such strenuous things as make tea.

I knew this would start messing with my head, and sure enough, after a few hours spent resenting the sunshine and the texture on my walls and the unrelenting wasteland that is Sunday morning TV and the corduroy of the couch and… well, you get the idea. After a few hours of that I realized that I’d been miscalculating those costs and benefits and that the consequences of staying on the couch were far greater than those of getting out of the house.

Unfortunately, the coffee shop was so full that there wasn’t a seat to be had. Strangers were already making themselves as narrow as possible so as not to actually touch each other while sitting three across on the couches. Students and townies were already awkwardly sharing tables with each other. A few brave souls were even bundled up and sitting outside on the bank of four old theater seats (you know, the wooden kind where the seat part folds up to meet the back, and where it’s never quite clear who gets to use the arm rests).

“Cost. Benefit. I could go back home to stare at those textured walls, or I could try to take a walk,” I told myself. And so I bought some coffee (caffeinated, for the first time in weeks, because at this point moving is more important to me that being a purist) and set out on a walk. 40 minutes later, after having walked 4 blocks (thankfully the short sides of those blocks), rested on a park bench for about 10 minutes, and then walked back, there were seats open at the coffee shop.

And so here I am.

There are music wars going on behind the counter, so every few minutes the rock music stops abruptly in the middle of a riff and a mellow singer-songwriter type comes on. A few minutes later someone else will interrupt the long string of “My doctor says I’ll be fine, but I’m feelin’ blue. My doctor says I’m fine, but I’m feelin’ blue. Ooooh, my doctor says -” and back comes the driving beat and hoarse-voiced singer.

By now I’m pretty much the only post-collegiate adult here. Living so close to a college means that Sunday afternoons at the coffee shop means fighting for space amongst the chemistry textbooks, backpacks, highlighters, and laptops. One girl has brought an apple, complete with apple corer. The corer now rests on the rim of her empty water glass, the perfectly cylindrical core down in the glass itself, and she slowly and distractedly pops apple slices into her mouth in between highlighter swipes. Another girl has basically moved in and could probably survive here until Tuesday without leaving if it weren’t for her class schedule. She’s well-equipped with fruit, bags of nuts, a jar of Eucerine cream, her phone, her laptop, three or four notebooks, and a good twenty pounds of text books. Another girl is telling her friend, “I don’t know if legwarmers are in any more, but I’m wearing them anyway. It’s cold!”

And still the sun is shining. And I still resent its cheeriness. But at least there is no texture on these walls, and this couch is not made of corduroy. And I can amuse myself by trying to guess just how long before one of the employees will lose patience with the music. (Oh. There it went. Not long, then.) And so I think I’ll tackle some of the work that has to get done before tomorrow and then make my way back to the couch, where some ibuprofen will probably make short work of these aching legs (which are reminding me that they didn’t have a vote when I decided to go for that walk, earlier).

And still the sun is shining.

Rush

Portraits of People and Places

Somehow, even while doing such odd things as eating a potluck picnic while discussing Homer, whether or not Finnish is related to Japanese, Asterix and Obelix, and my cousin’s propensity to run out into traffic after frisbees, the strangest part of the day was watching wave upon wave of perspective sorority girls walk past us on their way to the next sorority house. I’d never witnessed a Rush day before. In fact, before today it had remained one of those hypothetical and borderline fictional parts of college life that makes its way into movies and TV shows but that had never yet intruded into my concept of reality. I couldn’t look away. It’s not every day fiction becomes manifest in the middle of a picnic.

Some of these prospective sorority sisters walked in large groups, competing for limited space in each sorority, but putting their differences aside long enough to cluster for comfort on the long walk between potential rejections. Others walked alone, seeming to mull their previous interviews over, point by point, to the rhythm of the passing blocks of pavement. Each one looked exactly like every magazine spread I’ve seen, perfectly straight hair falling just so, over-sized bags slung over their shoulders, flawless makeup. (Each one except one, that is. One was dressed in stylish jeans, an orange tank top, and flat sandals. She intrigued me.)

In the midst of these waves of girls, one set decided to cross the street in the middle of the block. First one girl darted out into the break in traffic, then two more, than five or six more, and soon the whole flock was trailing across the street. I could just imagine the mess of belts and oversized earrings, shoes and purses that would be on our hands when the guys driving (quite coincidentally, I’m sure) up and down the street and keeping his eyes on the girls rather than the lane in front of him, would miss the fact that some of the girls were actually in the road and would inadvertently send them flying toward the curb.

Incongruities

Portraits of People and Places

Ornate moldings covered every inch of wall and ceiling, thick crimson curtains filled the doorways into the box seats, and 5 rows up a balding man in a well-pressed suit stood up to survey the crowd.

Heavily subwoofered pre-concert music caused each of those ornate pieces of molding to shudder, setting up a complex counter-rhythm of rattling. Several hundred jeans-wearing concert-goers gazed back at the well-pressed man, fascinated, wondering if he had accidentally wandered into the wrong venue, wondering if he was going to find Business Time amusing.

Stubborn Spring

Portraits of People and Places

Saturday evening a petulant cloud started scattering tiny, frigid rain drops here and there. It was never enough to call for the use of an umbrella. In fact, using one would probably have drawn the disapproving look of hardier folk, folk who weren’t above putting up with a little rain, folk turn their heat up to 60 degrees in the winter just to appease the unprepared guest, folk who spend most of the summer figuring out ways to stay cool that don’t involve air conditioning.

That same day, all the branches of all the trees seemed to swell ever so slightly, seemed to take on a redder hue and wait, poised, for some signal the warm days were hiding behind the needling rain. A few worms crawled out of their damp holes to drown on the sidewalk.


On Sunday, everything hunkered down to wait. Everything, that is, except for the not-quite-rain which continued to splatter everything, aiming especially for eyes and books and iPods, occasionally gathering itself for a vindictive surge and then sinking again into minor petulance.

And so things could have continued, I suppose, but they did not. They never do. Dull roots, stirring with spring rain, defiantly push past April’s cruelty and the ease of dormancy. The thickening tree limbs split open to reveal tiny leaves, and little purple flowers rushed to carpet the woodland floor.