Amy Loves Books

My mother was born late in her own mother’s life. She was a surprise, perhaps not a completely welcome one. As a result, my mother’s mother was old when I was born, older than most grandmothers. Though we did not know it at the time, she was in early stage Alzheimer's - a disease that would progressively close her in its vice-like grip. By the time I was eight or nine, she did not know who I was. She would ask me where I was from, and I would tell her that I was from Florida. Her eyes would glaze and she would nod. “I have relatives in Florida”, she would say. I would tell her that I was one of those relatives. She would smile, and forget again.

My memories of my grandmother are mostly hazy. I remember that she had impossibly soft skin, a trait that my uncle Richard claims all the women on our side of the family have. I remember that she reminded me a frightened bird. At dinner, she would barely touch her food, and my grandfather would scold her. "You eat like a bird", he would say. I looked at her and wondered if maybe she was a bird - like big bird, except more old lady-ish. She was thin, and nervous. She never seemed to stay in one place.

My grandmother ate baby cereal with lots of sugar. She collected figurines of gnomes. She had a drawer of buttons that she let me play with. In her bedroom, she had black velvet paintings of harlequins dancing that scared me so much that I slept in the dining room just to avoid being with the pictures in the dark. There was a summerhouse in her backyard, and a fish pond. At night, there were fireflies in the bushes.

The thing I remember most about my grandmother, is that her refrigerator that had doors that opened side-by-side. I had never seen a refrigerator like this before. When I came to visit, she always had my favorite things in her fridge: a box of banana popsicles, a box of root beer float popsicles, and bottles of strawberry pop. When we got to her house, after a two-day drive from Florida, I would immediately run to her fridge and look for the popsicles and soda. They were always there.

I saw that she had bought them just for me, and I felt the feeling that I craved more than anything in the world. I felt wanted there.

She was a good grandmother.

Her name was Winnie. She was kind.

i came to this city,
before the coffeehouses,
before the tattoo palace,
before I could breathe.
and several angels walked me,
right through the darkest alleys,
til I could tell what's holy,
outside a cathedral.
- Christine Kane



i love taking pictures of my friends wearing wings in the dark. i promise that i won't put the pictures on my blog without permission. i promise that, if they let me photograph them, i will email the images to them and not even keep a copy for myself.

trust me, i say.

afterwards, i show them the pictures. i say: see - look how beautiful you are. they tell me that if i want to, i can post one of the pictures after all.

i want to.

see, look how beautiful.

I have a stat counter program that shows me what link people followed to get to my blog. About two weeks ago, people started arriving after doing a google image search for "amy gargoyle" and pulling up this picture:

(me and George posing as gargoyles)

What is really strange is that, since then, I have gotten two or three hits a day - all from people looking for this picture - and all from different countries. Yesterday, it was the Netherlands and New York City (the only hit from America so far). The day before - Finland, Singapore, and Spain. The day before - Sweden.

My friend roar has been following my saga of strange, international amy gargoyle hits and thinks I should write a short story about it. Who is searching for amy gargoyle? Why?

Any theories?

for stephanie, who asked to see a picture of my tree.

the view from my back door:


i end each day with a glass of wine, sitting under his branches.
i start each day with coffee in the same spot.

late last night, a friend came over to talk. it started to rain.
we were covered by branches, and we did not get wet.
what you see when you look up:

i showed this picture to my friend and she said she wanted to superimpose her head, riding with me.

i thought about it and i realized - this would be pretty much how i define "friend": they keep you from riding alone.

yesterday:

lily - if i am really rich when i grow up, do you know what i will do?

me - no, what will you do?

lily - when i see someone who does not have any money, i will give them all my money. then, i will live in a box and sell my art.

When I became an adult, and my father felt confident that all my youthful rebellion was behind me, he confessed that he had a speech prepared that he had dubbed: “When Amy Comes To Tell Me She’s An Atheist”. He thanked me, because this was one talk that we never had to have.

It is impossible for me to be an atheist; I have proof that God is real. I may have doubted everything else about religion - but I never doubted the existence of God. When I was six years old, God answered me when I called out to him. I remember every detail of the day that I knew I was going to die. I remember every word of the prayer I prayed. I remember these things - and even now, I am amazed.

I attended Astoria Park Elementary School in Tallahassee, Florida. In kindergarten, I was tested and placed in the gifted program (a.k.a. College for Kids). Every week, they sent a group of us outside, where we waited under an orange metal awning for a bus to take us to Florida A&M University. It was the seventies. There were no seat belts in cars, or child safety lids on medicine bottles. We waited for the bus without adult supervision.

I was younger than the rest of my class, and I had grown up surrounded by Jesus Freaks and hippies. I talked to God and I talked to trees. The other kids thought I was strange. Mostly, I kept to myself.

One day, we were standing outside - waiting - and a small white spider landed on my arm and bit me. I was terrified of spiders, and I worried about everything. Even at age six, I had a tendency to get paranoid and panic. I was worried about the spider bite. I needed reassurance.

Every elementary school has that kid in it: The Smartest Kid In School. The one that ought to skip a few grades. The spelling-bee champion and science-fair winner. The kid that watches Nova for fun - that kid. Luckily for me, that kid was also waiting for the College for Kids bus. He was a small boy with bushy, white-blond hair and glasses. I was in awe of him.

I went over to where he was standing like a prophet with his group of devoted followers, and I told him about the spider. He was very interested. He asked me to describe the spider in detail. I told him that it was small and white. He thought for a moment, then he asked me if it was really small. I said it was - as small as the top of an eraser. He nodded knowingly, and he somberly gave me the bad news.

I had been bitten by The Most Deadly Spider In The World. I had about five minutes before the poison reached my brain. I could not believe it - and yet, I could. I mean, I had known when it landed on me that it was a bad, bad spider. I felt it - sensed it somehow. Now, I knew just how bad the spider was. In five minutes, I was going to die. The smartest boy in school assured me that my death would be quick and painless.

I took a moment to process this information. I wondered what I should do. Should I tell a teacher? Should I call home? If I did, my parents could not do anything because I lived more than five minutes from school. The situation appeared hopeless, and so, I decided I would just wait to die. At the time, it seemed like my only option.

I went over to the side of the walkway, and I put my arms around the orange pole that held up one side of the awning. I rested my forehead against the cool metal, and I began to pray.

I told God that I knew I was going to die, but that I did not mind. I was happy to know that I was going to be with Him soon. I knew that that He was waiting for me. I told Him that it was okay that the spider had bitten me. I was only sad about one thing: I was sad that I would not get to tell my family goodbye - I was sad that I had to wait to die alone.

I told God that I just wished there was some way he could come down and put his arms around me until it was over.

I stood there, hugging the pole, completely still. I was not crying; I was just repeating the last part of my prayer over and over again. I just wish you could come down and put your arms around me until it is over.

Suddenly, I felt myself wrapped in two arms. I opened my eyes and looked up, half-expecting to find myself in heaven. What I saw was the principal of my school. She noticed my disoriented expression, and she held me tighter. She whispered in my ear: “I looked out my window and saw you, and I thought to myself: That little girl needs a hug.”

My principal was not a touchy-feely administrator. She was not normally a hugger. As she held me in her arms, I broke down and began to cry.

Gently, she led me into her office to find out what was wrong. I told her about the spider, and about being scared. I did not tell her what really made me cry. I did not tell her that I had prayed for God to put his arms around me and that I knew - I knew without a shadow of a doubt that God had gone into her office, and pointed outside of her small rectangular window - at me. I knew that He had whispered in her ear: ” That little girl needs a hug”.

Not long afterwards, I read Matthew 6:25-34 - the verses in the Bible about worry. These are the verses that say: “Consider the birds of the air; Consider the lilies of the field”. They talk about small things. Birds and lilies seem inconsequential - but God sees and cares for them. This passage in Matthew became my favorite. Even as a child, I had it memorized.

I believe in these things.

I love a God that cares about small birds and lilies. I have faith in a God that heard the lonely prayer of a frightened six year old. I trust this God, who whispered in someone's ear:There is a little girl that needs a hug. Through the arms of an unknowing angel, God reached down when I needed him, and held me in strong and gentle arms.

There are many, many things that I might doubt - but I can never doubt Love like this.

i got a key:

and it opened this door:

my own classroom

i am a real teacher.

i also found out that i am going to be teaching ninth and tenth grade. now, i get to teach catcher in the rye.

El Diablo Verde

5. Walk the Railroad Tracks

Athens, Ga

It took me eleven years of being angry before I decided that I was not going to cook.

Everyone says that your first year of marriage is supposed to be terribly romantic. Later, they say things like: “the honeymoon is over”. The implication is that when you get married, for a while at least, everything is supposed to be perfect.

I have always had a difficult time with transitions, and marriage was no exception. Marriage stressed me out and made me irritable. I was stressed about all the stuff that comes with marriage: all the laundry, and “is there toilet paper under the sink” stuff. True, I had to do these things when I was single - but I missed the freedom of being able to do them when I felt like it. I resented that now, I had to do them for another person. Cutting open a tube of toothpaste to scrape out what little remains - just because you are feeling too lazy to run out and buy a new tube - is fine when it’s just you. When there is another person, you can’t be that selfish. But cleaning, and bathroom stocking, and laundry were not the things that bothered me the most. What I resented most was cooking.

Our cinderblock apartment in married student housing had a closet-like kitchen. I had been given gifts of blenders, and waffle irons, and crock-pots (I got seven crock pots). I knew that I was expected to use these things. I had attended showers and gotten these appliances and serving bowls all wrapped up like birthday gifts, and when I opened them, all of the women nodded approvingly and passed the domestic objects around the room as if they were really exciting and wonderful things. I knew that somehow, I was expected to grocery shop - with a list prepared in advance - so that I could have the ingredients that were necessary to prepare the sorts of foods that were cooked in waffle irons and crock pots, or served in casserole dishes. It was overwhelming.

I would stand in the kitchen and I would think: “This sucks.”

My husband offered to cook, but that seemed wrong somehow. I was not going to admit that I was a cooking failure. Besides, I am actually a very good cook. It’s not that I can’t cook (in which case accepting help would be completely justified); it’s that I don’t want to cook. I don’t feel like cooking. Not wanting to cook always felt wrong. Girls cook (I was actually in class the day they went over this). Girls cook, and they make sure there is always toilet paper under the sink. This is The Way.

I grew up with a mother that loved to cook. Maybe this is part of the reason that I feel slightly panicked when I am in the kitchen. My brother hates food preparation as well. He says that if they made such a thing, he would just take food pills and not even be bothered with eating I am not that extreme, but I think a bowl of cereal is the perfect dinner.

I went into Williams Sonoma the other day and saw a three-hundred dollar lavender mixer - with a matching lavender spatula. The idea of color-coordinated appliances would never occur to me. I go into Williams-Sonoma-ish stores and I wish that I was a girl that loved to cook. I wish that I could feel happy and fulfilled in the kitchen. I tried to develop a love of cooking. I even subscribed to Cook’s Illustrated magazine for a year. I loved Cook’s Illustrated because Christopher Kimball, the editor, wrote wonderful essays about life in small-town New England. I loved to read about the changing seasons, the big yellow dog, and his old pickup truck. At some point, I realized that my magazine would arrive and I would think, “Oh boy, an essay!” - and that this was wrong. This was defeating the purpose of my subscription. As penance, I tried some of the recipes. They were very good, but afterwards, I was still pissed about all the time I had spent cooking.

Some people love to cook. These people are gifted and blessed - like people who love exercise. I envy them, with their Calphalon dishes and exotic spices. I think it must be wonderful to enjoy cooking; it must make life so much easier. If it were just about people who love to cook and people who don’t love to cook, it would be easier to accept my aversion to cooking. I could just say that it was not my thing. But I know that my dislike of cooking indicates a serious character flaw. I know that it is the external manifestation of my selfishness, self-protection, and insecurity. I get convicted by people who don’t like to cook, but do it anyway.

I have selfish reasons for not cooking. I don’t like to cook because it seems like an awful way to use time. It takes so much time to cook. Then, afterwards, it takes even more time to clean up. Also, if I decide to cook something recipe-worthy, the ingredients are always expensive. It costs time and money. I add up the cost of all the ingredients in my head and I think, “I could just go out to dinner”. This is what I would rather do. This is what I feel like. I would always rather do something else. I balk at spending all that time just to make something that will be eaten and forgotten. If I am going to show you I love you, I want to give you something that will last. I want to spend time with you. I want to go out with you. I want to just sit and talk with you and not be concentrating on anything else. I don’t want to cook. I don’t want to put my time and energy into something you are going to eat. This thought is depressing. Truthfully, it scares me. It scares me to think about pouring part of myself into something that might get eaten and forgotten.

I want to be a better person; I feel like I should be doing more cooking. It’s the way to the heart. It’s love made edible. It is the right thing to do. I get convicted by people who willingly sacrifice their time to cook for others. I look at all the non-cookers who cook anyway and I look inside myself, at the selfish core that still wants to say, “when I feel like it”. I decide that I am going to pull myself together. I am going to do what I don’t want to do. I am going to love like this.

I pull out cookbooks and make grocery lists. I go to the grocery store and try not to think about what I would have rather done with the money I am spending on food that is going to have to be cooked. I cook one or two dinners. Then, I get distracted, like a person afflicted with a culinary form of ADD. Weeks later, I am throwing out rotten red peppers and wilted basil. I feel like a double failure. I failed to cook and I wasted food. I know that this is a character flaw, this is evidence of how selfish I am. I love you, but I rebel against doing something I hate to do. I’ll do it when I feel like it. I would do it - if I felt like it. I don’t.

Eventually, after eleven years of being frustrated, and angry, and disappointed in myself - I surrendered. I told my husband that I was going to take him up on his offer to do the cooking. On the nights that he works, I just eat cereal. “Am I a horrible person?”, I ask him. He just laughs at me, because he likes to cook. He does not mind cooking. He never made me cook. He laughs, because all this time that I have been fighting, I have been fighting myself. Even now, it is hard to own up to the fact that I am one of those girls - those girls that do not cook.

Freedom is a funny thing. Now that I have been liberated from the idea that I always have to do it, I find myself wanting to cook. Sometimes.

When I hear that someone I love is going through a hard time, or I want to celebrate with them - I feel like cooking.

It does not bother me that I will be spending time on something that will just get eaten and forgotten. I want to love you like this: with sacrificial, unselfish, not asking anything in return love. I want to put aside my desire to do something historical and monumental. I want to love you simply and quietly. I want to cook for you.

I will set my love before you as a gift. I will give you real love - love that means giving up what I want, and not expecting anything in return. Love that might come back as an empty plate. Sacrifice that may be consumed and forgotten.

I don't have to cook anymore. I want to.

Sometimes.

Earlier this week:
How it feels to have a best friend.
They take your hand and you know that they are there.


Wednesday, in the car:

Arden - Lily has decided that she wants to do karate instead of ballet.

Lily - Yeah. Because I just loooove reptiles.

Me - What?

Lily - I just loooove reptiles: snakes, and frogs, and lizards.

Me - There are no reptiles in karate.

Arden (to Lily) - But you can have a reptile on your belt.

Lily - A real reptile?

Me - No, no, no. There are no reptiles in karate.

4. Make It Three


George was with me when I got my first tattoo. A week later, he introduced me to my husband. I already wanted another tattoo.

Chip was not quite so sure about me getting another tattoo.

And so, I promised to put space between tattoos. I would keep getting them, but I would space them out.

I ended up putting six years between the first and second. This time around, I put seven years in between.

Seven years from now, I will be forty.

And so, now I have a tree - my most detailed tattoo so far. I was planning to get it lower, in the center of my lower back, but I thought it would hurt (I was right), so I changed my mind and decided to put it higher - near my side.

This is my first tattoo that is directly about God.

I really, really like it.

This came in the mail today:

NOTICE TO APPLICANTS/EMPLOYEES: The Sedition and Subversive Activities Act of 1953 (Georgia Law 16-11-5 et seq.) requires each applicant/employee to complete and sign, prior to employment in State government, a questionaire which is designed to establish that there are no reasonable grounds to believe that he/she is a subversive person.

I saw this today at the old backwoods barbershop where I get my son's hair cut. At first, I thought it was a joke.

But no. It is (or was) a real product. I asked if I could take a picture. The barbers are all men in their sixties. They thought I was crazy - but they were sort of proud to have their can of "Wow! I've Got Hair!" photographed and put on the world wide web.

When I was in elementary school, I longed for Little House on the Prairie hair. I wanted long hair - hair like Laura Ingalls Wilder. I have always wished that my life could look and feel like a movie. When I imagined the fictionalized version of my perfect life, I always had long hair - two perfect braids, tied with ribbons. I wanted barrettes, and headbands, and ponytail holders with pompom balls on the end. I wanted my mother to brush and fix my hair each morning, the way other mothers did.

My mother had different ideas. To her, my hair was an inconvenience. She hated having to mess with it. She hated to brush my hair. She hated that I had a habit of chewing on my hair. She was always rushed and angry when she brushed it. She called called the tangles “rat’s nests”.

At some point, she simply cut my hair off.

She gave my brother and I identical bowl cuts in the kitchen. Literal bowl cuts. She stood us on newspaper and stuck a green Tupperware bowl on the top of our heads. She stuck masking tape on our hair where it met the bowl. Then, she took a pair of scissors and cut along the masking tape.

I cried. I cried the first time she cut my hair, and I cried every time she brought me into the kitchen and pulled out the masking tape. I would sit there and hate my mother. ”Please”, I would beg her. ”Please”.

I wanted long hair. I thought my hair looked ugly when it was short. My mother would get annoyed. “It is called a Pixie-cut”, she would say. She said that I looked like Dorothy Hammill, or Nadia Comaneci. I did not care. I wanted long dress-wearing, flower-picking hair. I wanted to be pretty.

With my hideous bowl cut, everyone assumed I was a boy. Strangers and salesmen called me “he”. My brother and I looked alike, and with our identical hair, people asked if we were twins. I wanted to scream. Can’t you see, I am a girl. I am four years older than him, and I am a girl.”

One afternoon, one of our elderly neighbors saw me riding my bike and called me “Jonathan”. I had had enough. I was furious. I rode my bike home and threw it down in the front yard. I stormed inside.

I told my mother that she was not allowed to cut my hair until I had breasts. That was my final word on the subject. No more masking tape, no more Tupperware. I was not asking - I was telling. I refused to have short hair until people could tell that I was a girl.

My mother sighed. She said fine. Fine. I won - but. I won, but she was not going to brush it or braid it or put it in ponytails. It would be my responsibility. Fine, I said. Fine.

And so, I began to grow out my hair. As my hair grew, I was disappointed to discover that I had really horrible hair. My hair was not straight, and it was not curly. It was just messy. It was not the beautiful hair I imagined; it was hair that always looked unbrushed. I never knew what to do with it. It was not the kind of hair any character in any book that I had ever wanted to be had. It was not movie hair. I would brush it, and immediately - it looked unbrushed.

I stuck to my position though. I wanted long hair. I wove colored ribbons in and out of barrettes and pulled my bangs back. I hid my hair under a cool “Leon Lions” cap.

I fought with my hair for years. I have hated it for as long as I can remember. It frustrates me. I don’t know how to fix hair. I don’t know how other girls do it. Perhaps, I was absent the day they went over hair-fixing in class. I think this about alot of girl-related things: Maybe I was absent that day.

I don’t own hair gel or hairspray. If there are more hair-related products than gel and hairspray - I don’t even know what they are. I don’t understand how you are supposed to do the back of your hair with a curling iron when you can’t reach behind your own head. When I go to get a haircut and they ask me how I want it, I always say that I want to be able to wash it, not dry it, and have it look fine.

In college, I ended up cutting my own hair off. I had a short, chin-length bob for years. It was fine. Then, last year, I decided to let my hair grow again. I don't know why; I just suddenly had the urge to have long hair again. To my surprise, my hair has grown in different than it was before - different than it has ever been. For the first time in my life, my hair has a little bit of natural curl. It does not look messy all the time; it looks slightly curly.

I find that I keep putting hair images in my writing. It makes me think of finding something that has been lost for a long, long time. A few weeks ago, I started braiding the front of my hair.

Two straight braids. The girl I wanted to be.

Bad Hair Days

One Thanksgiving, I made this teepee out of sticks. I even made a bed out of sticks, and a cooking spit-thing out of sticks.

I would sit inside it and pretend to smoke a corncob pipe. I am not sure why I did this, or where I got the corncob pipe.

I do remember one thing: I was imagining that I was a castaway.

one more wish to cross off my list:

3. Finish What I Started

my research paper is written.

graduate school is officially over.

(until i decide i want another degree)

2. Hang Night Lights From My Friend's Branches

I have been studying for my (thankfully) open book final tomorrow morning.

I noticed that my notes slowly devolved over time. In the beginning, they were two or three pages long, with lots of meaningful details. By the last week of class, this is the sort of notes I was taking:

(what follows is an exact transcription of one class period's notes - line breaks are copied from the notes, which were written in black fine-tip ink on unlined composition book paper)

grammar
makes people nervous/mean
[will/shall]?
angry
standard textbook/usage

class markers

moe joe wiener
"done"
"would that he"

why - communication

mens room/ladies
morning

ugly flower ugly flowers (this was accompanied by a sketch of a thistle-like flower)

it took me eleven years
of being angry
before i decided that i did
not want to
cook

mid-afternoon-tired
nap

Not long ago, I took one of those multiple choice personality tests. I hate those tests. I hate them, because you always know what the bad answer is. The mentally unstable answer is obvious:

True or False
I receive messages that tell me what to do.
Most days, I find it difficult to get out of bed.
I feel like I am being watched.

I usually feel confident that most of my answers are going to fall in the “normal response” range. I try to answer honestly; I figure that one “yes” to the question: “I cry easily”, is not going to flag me as unstable. Surely, the test makes allowances for minor personality quirks and eccentricities.

But then, I got to this question - and I knew I was screwed:

I identify with lost and broken objects.

My answer to this question was the “wrong” answer. My answer was yes.

I identify with lost and broken things. Things that are cracked and rusted feel familiar, like an old friend. I love their strange, sad beauty. I have always been drawn to them.

This is why it is strange that George and I were such good friends. George was nothing like me. He was not introspective, and nothing ever seemed to bother him. I had a total of two serious conversations with George during the year that we were best friends. He just did not talk about things like that.

For George, life was easy, and simple, and fun. I was lost and broken when he met me. He was kind, and protective of me - but he never talked to me about it. He was just always there, and he always had a plan for something fun that we could do. Although I doubted that he really understood me, I never doubted that he loved me. And I do not doubt that his way of looking at the world was a gift. In many ways, he saved me.

The difference between George and me becomes clear when I think about K-Mart birds.

Birds in parking lots make me sad. They have always made me sad. In Florida, the parking lots are full of seagulls. As a child, I would look at those seagulls and wonder how they lost their way. I would think about them trapped in a hot, dirty parking lot when they were made to live at the beach. They should have been free. They should have been flying through air that tasted like wind and salt, not getting gray from car exhaust and heat. Instead of living with a view of sky and water, they were confined to street lamps and oil-stained asphalt. They ate the crumbs from discarded bags. Litter. As a child, I would listen to these birds, and their cries would sound like hopelessness.

I grew up this way, being sorry for the seagulls in parking lots. When I moved to Georgia, I found that the parking lots are full of small, brown birds. I don’t know what kind they are. George just called them “K-Mart birds”. He had this beautiful British accent and when we went places, he would always point out the birds in the parking lot and laugh at them. “Look!”, he would say. “More K-Mart birds.” He would shake his head: “Stupid birds”.

George was always looking for K-Mart birds. He pointed them out no matter where we went - in the parking lots at Waffle House, Target, downtown Athens, everywhere. He was fascinated by them. They made him shake his head and laugh.

Once, I asked him about it. Didn’t they have birds in parking lots in England? He said they did, but K-Mart birds were different. K-mart birds actually lived in the parking lots. I did not like it that George made fun of the birds. I thought that calling them “K-Mart birds” was offensive, like a bird-version of a racist joke.

“They are not K-Mart birds.”, I told him. “They are some other kind of bird that got stuck in a parking lot”. I told him that these birds made me sad. I told him about the lost seagulls in Florida. I hated thinking about birds living in parking lots. I hated seeing their nests tucked in the letters of a K-Mart sign. I told George that he should feel sorry for the birds - that he should call them sparrows, or wrens, or whatever kind of bird they really were.

George just laughed. He assured me that he was right to call them K-Mart birds. “There are trees across the street”, he said.

I thought about it, and I realized that George was right. There were trees just few hundred yards away. For some reason, the birds were choosing to sleep inside a sign and eat crumbs and scraps of trash. They were free to live on either side of the street, and they had picked the K-Mart side. I never thought of it this way before. It had never occurred to me that parking lot birds did not have to be parking lot birds.

As we were driving home, I conceded that he had a point in calling them K-Mart birds since K-Mart birds were what they chose to be. George just nodded, turned up the radio, and sang along to the Pogues. He said we ought to go downtown because he wanted me to meet some of his friends. When I started to look sad, this was always his answer: Turn up the music. Go downtown. Come on, it will be fun.

George was the best friend I ever had. He was always by my side, and he made me feel safe. The way he loved me was completely unselfish. Still, I always felt a little bit lonely when I was with him. There were so many places in me that he just did not understand. I am grateful beyond words for the way George took me by the hand and made so many things better, but there are places in my heart that he never fit inside of.

I identify with lost and broken things; I know the language of asphalt and crumbs. This is why I sometimes fail to give the right answer on multiple choice psychology tests.

George thought that the birds were stupid because they lived in parking lots. In some ways, I suppose he was right. But I also think that parking lot birds are brave.

Brave, and sad, and beautiful. My heart understands them.

I know what it is like to try to make a nest in the hard neon angle of an unkind blue letter. George could never understand that sometimes, cages have bars that only the person inside the cage can see.

I want to learn the real names of the small, brown birds. I want to tell them that they are not really K-Mart birds. I want to remind them that they have better names.

I want to tell them that it is okay; there are trees right across the road.

They can find a better kind of free.

I have noticed that many of the bloggers I read have been making lists. I love these lists. I love the "Things I want to do" list, and the "50 things about me" list, and even that alphabet-style list. I want lists too. I try to make them.

But I am horrible at this task. I start to make a list and I freeze. Putting something on a list makes it important. Lists are hierarchical, and that seems unfair. How do I decide what is number four and what is number nine? How do I rate things like that? How do I know, for sure, that something is list-worthy? And really, I only have a few things that I love. I don’t think I could come up with fifty things that defined me if I tried all day.

Still, I long for a list - one I can look at and think: "Yes. That is me."

And finally, I succeeded. I have made a list of things I want to do.

I won’t tell you what is on it because each thing is like a wish - and you know what happens if you tell people your wishes....

Instead, I will post the things as they come true.

1. Watch Tadpoles Turn Into Frogs.

I have just been overwhelmed by school.

Today is my last day of classes. I have a grammar exam and paper due Monday, but still - it is my last day of classes. Tonight, I attend a "Congratulations, you have a master's degree" ceremony. My head has been measured for my graduation cap.

I could not be more thankful. I have felt a little bit like I was stuck on Survivor Island all summer, and I am just not a Survivor Island kind of girl. Alliances make me sad.

Now (at last) I am being called to tribal council. My torch will be put out. I can go Home.

Thank God.

self-portrait 7/14/04.
what looks like stars is water.

After All Has Been Said and Done

I had a dream, right before waking.

I met a young man who kept shoe boxes full of index cards and photographs.

He wrote little poems and paragraphs on the cards and pictures. Sometimes, the people in the photographs did not even know that their picture was being taken. He loved them anyway. He wrote beautiful words for them.

His boxes were sacred and lovely, like prayers.

I asked him why he did this. He said it was so he would know when he got to "after all has been said and done".

What will happen then? I asked.

He said that then, it would be time to go.

a few blocks from my house, there is an old downtown street that has a row of little shops and restaurants. there is a blues club, oz pizza, matilda bean burritos, and a little courtyard fenced in by a black iron gate and strung with christmas lights. a small antique store sits on the corner.

i stopped in today and looked around. the owner asked if i was looking for something special. i told him that i was always looking for old keys. he smiled, and pulled a worn wooden box out from behind the counter. he handed it to me.

"sit down" he said. "take your time and pick the ones you want".

the keys are heavy. they smell like rain on asphalt.

i hold them in my hands.

found.

i was on the top of a hill, scanning the horizon. it was cold outside.

windy, and cold, and bright with sunshine. i was nine years old and angry.

i was running away.

you came up beside me. i did not have to turn around to know that it was you.

i was wearing mittens.

you took off one of my mittens and held my hand; your hand was warm.

i never turned around, i just felt your hand in mine and i stopped walking.

i looked out, into the distance - where there was nothing but ocean and sky. blue meeting blue.

i wish we could find a sailboat, i said.

yes, you said. except we did not know how to sail.

i know, i said.

but i thought we could do it anyway.

a really wonderful door i saw today.

i love everything about it. especially the (or her)

Growing up, I was not allowed to wear a bikini. My mother told me that bellybuttons were a private part and should be kept hidden at all times. This may be part of the reason that, when I was in elementary school, I thought girls got pregnant by pressing their bellybuttons.

I decided that I would marry my friend Beth and we would have children - but I was told that it did not work that way. I put alot of thought into this. Since a person got pregnant by pressing their bellybutton, why couldn’t girls have babies with each other? There must be something I was missing. Eventually, I had the realization that (of course), a boy had to do the bellybutton pushing. And, you had to be married for it to work. I was very proud of the fact that I was able to figure out this big mystery all by myself. The bellybutton system worked for me. I was happy with it. I did not feel the need to ask questions.

I was in middle school before I learned about the vague generalities of sex. I was fifteen before I learned the specifics. I made an offhand comment to my mother and she realized that I did not have a very clear idea about the mechanics involved in procreation. I remember her telling me how it all actually fit together. I was very upset about this knowledge. Sex as she described it was so much more clinical and invasive than I had imagined it. Before this talk, I pictured sex in terms of metaphors and impressions - it was all based on things I saw in the movies or scraps of e.e. cummings poetry and song lyrics. Sex that came with a soundtrack and a fade to black. The things I cared the most about had been lost in her scientific translation: beauty, wonder, mystery. I felt sad.

Science has always just generally pissed me off. I hate it. From elementary school on, I never wanted to learn about things like gravity and atoms. I would have been happier not knowing that water and sky are not really blue - they just reflect blue; and that somehow there are not really colors - it is all just white light and frequencies or prisms or something. Science teachers start talking, and explaining, and I just want to put my head down and cover my ears. I don’t want to know. Really.

I don’t want to know about atoms and DNA and genes. I took botany in college and it was the only class that I ever failed. I just could not handle it. I took botany because of trees; I thought I would learn to name them and identify their leaves. But it was all science, and labeling parts, and how pesticides worked, and grafting plants together to make new plants. The professor got to the glow-in-the-dark corn hybrid experiments and I stopped going to class.

In high school, I was put on the AP track. I made it through the first semester of AP biology before I broke down. We were dissecting starfish. I thought I was going to die. Seriously. It was awful. I cut open the starfish and I started crying.

I cried, and I begged them to take me out of AP science. I did not want to dissect anything else. I did not want to tally up fruit fly deaths and births and count the ones with red eyes. I did not ever want to take chemistry. I wanted out of advanced science.

They ended up letting me take the general science classes, and I was happy. Instead of chemistry, I tool “ecology”, which was taught by a white-haired hippie that had a side-business making wooden dulcimers. He would bring his dulcimer to class and let us try to play it. I made a model of a solar-powered cabin. I did a report on recycling old buses and turning them into houses. It was the only science class I ever made an”A” in.

When I had to do science fair experiments, I always came up with topics that were basically excuses to get pet mice. I did one project on the effects of rock vs. classical music on mouse behavior. The next year, I put their cages inside of different colored boxes and recorded their behavior. Did the mice in the red box behave aggressively? Did the blue boxed mice seem sad? It was very scientific.

After two years of mice escaping from cages, my parents said that I was not allowed to do any more experiments involving animals. So, I did my last science fair project on ESP. My hypothesis was that ESP ability would decrease with age. I went all the way to state with this experiment- not because it was a well-done experiment - but because I was the only person in whatever category ESP fell under. I resisted actual science. I resisted learning about the way things work. I just wanted to know how things felt.

I understand that some people, science people , enjoy learning this stuff. It makes them happy (and if any science-type people read this site - God bless you). I just could not do it. I cringed when I walked into a science classroom. I wondered what mystery was going to be ruined for me that day. I tuned out. I wrote on the desks. I put my head down and fell asleep. I tried to block all the answers out. I wanted to hold onto the magic of it, to keep believing in oceans and skies painted blue by something too wonderful to explain. I wanted things held together by Love, not by protons and neutrons.

And so, when I found a coffee table made out of an old science desk - I fell in love with it. I think it is beautiful. Years and years of kids trying to escape science, and carving their names into the desk. I know how they felt. Scribbling frantic lines on the sides, where the teacher could not see. Trying to get the hell out there. Thinking about graduation, or who they loved. Writing song lyrics, or poetry. Using their dissecting instruments to dig words into the wood and black.

I bought this table yesterday. I am going to buy an Exacto knife and a drawing compass. When friends visit, I am going to ask them to carve their name.

I am going to make this table a reminder of everything mysterious and wonderful about the people I know.

I will look at it and smile. I will run my hand over the names and whisper prayers. I will wonder at the mystery of it all.

And I will say that we are not science. We are art.

We are held together by Love.

last week, i was driving with two friends and we started talking about marriage, how marriage meant giving up the idea that you could ever/would ever fall in love again. we talked about how marriage meant that you would never get to experience that thrill of meeting someone new.

i thought about it for a while.

and then i knew what i wanted to say.

i said that it was true that you gave up the idea that you would meet new romantic partner.

but.

but, you get to meet your kids. i am getting to meet my kids. everyday, i learn something new. they are the most amazing human beings i have ever known. the thrill of discovering them is ten thousand times better than the butterflies you feel on a first date. they captivate me. and they make me feel lucky. i am a lucky girl. i get to spend time with these fascinating, beautiful people.

when i was a little girl, i used to sleep hugging a pillow against my chest. later, i bought a huge stuffed grizzly bear (not a teddy bear - a grizzly bear. like gentle ben). i was working at a funky card/gift shop and i feel madly in love with this grizzly bear because it fit in my arms perfectly. i could tuck his grizzly head under my chin and it would rest slightly on my shoulder. his legs were made just right, so that my arm fit comfortably across his midsection. i named this bear “george” (after george emerson from the book room with a view - it would be years before i met my friend george). i slept with him for years - even after i was married.

i always imagined that someday, i would meet a man and it would feel like this to lie next to them and hold them. i imagined that it must be the best feeling in the world .

and one of the biggest disappointments in my life was finding out that men were just not very soft and pilllow-like to sleep on. and they were bigger than me. and i could not curl myself around them the way you see cats curl together - the way i always imagined love would feel when i had my grizzly bear neatly in my arms. a man is nice and lovely in his own way- but it is just not what i had imagined. it is a different feeling. nice, but different.

but now, on some mornings, my daughter comes and crawls in bed with me. she curls herself against me, like a cat. her small body fits there, i can wrap both arms around her. her head tucks under mine. the soles of her feet rest on my knees.

i hold her and i think: “this is it”. this is just what imagined it would feel like to hold someone while they slept. she feels the way my grizzly felt. she fits exactly.

i was wrong when i was a kid. the feeling that i imagined would be the best feeling in the world - it was not the feeling of embracing a boy or a lover.

it was the feeling of holding a child.

morning:
sitting at the computer, writing.



evening:

I have always had a hard time sleeping. Falling asleep, staying asleep - everything to do with sleep is difficult for me. I lie in bed and fight to quiet my mind down. I wake up at least three or four times a night - for no apparent reason. I do not have a single memory of sleeping through an entire night without waking up. As a result, I am always a little bit tired.

When things get stressful, and I shut down - or even worse - cry - this is my excuse. I’m just tired. One of my favorite lyrics is from (of course) Christine Kane:

and I pray to God
because I’m knocked down and I’m tired
and I’m old enough to be mended.

I put this song on repeat sometimes, and I drive to wherever I am going, and I think about how much I just want to sleep.

According to my mother, I never slept. Not even as a baby. She says that I gave up naps completely before I turned one. I am not sure why I did not sleep during the day. I would like to say it was because I was so intelligent and curious that I could not be bothered to nap, but knowing how I covet naps these days - I can’t bear to think that I ever rejected them out of sheer intellectual curiosity. I do know why I did not sleep at night. I was scared.

I was an easily terrified child, and I was always afraid at night. Always. There is another story about me, as a toddler, waking up to find that one of my stuffed animals had ripped open in the middle of the night. I was hysterical, thinking that the stuffing was bugs, or some other bad thing that was crawling around, trying to get me. My mother turned on the light and told me it was just foam rubber, so I should go back to sleep. I was about two years old at the time; I did not know what foam rubber was. I had no idea it was harmless. How could my mother dismiss it as if it were nothing? I had been in the dark, and felt it creep against my bare legs, and I knew that whatever it was - it was a bad thing. For weeks, I would wake up screaming with nightmares: “Foam Rubber in my Bed! Foam Rubber in my Bed!”. My parents would try to tell me that I was safe, and I would eventually fall asleep - but then I would wake again, and again.

My earliest memories of not sleeping and trying to sleep start when I was in elementary school, when we moved to the house in the neighborhood. I was always scared. I dangled a pink Bible above my bed. I kept the closet door shut. I jumped into bed and always kept my legs and feet tucked under the covers, so that no part of me would dangle, and nothing lurking below could grab my ankles.

As much as I want it, as much as I physically crave it sometimes - sleep has always felt dangerous to me. I hated living alone, knowing that I would have to fall asleep in an apartment with nobody else there. I found boyfriends, and I avoided sleeping alone that way - although they brought with them a different kind of unsafety, and the panic and hurt that they left me with was worse than whatever it was that I had imagined foam rubber to be. It became more difficult to sleep; it became impossible to stay asleep.

I have a completely irrational fear of sleeping with exposed wrists. I don’t remember when or how this started. I have never attempted suicide, or anything that could explain my wrist-thing logically. I just know that having my wrists exposed makes me start to panic. If you think about sleeping - once you are on your side, there is one arm that will be facing wrist down. This does not bother me. The other arm is wrist up, and unless it stays under the covers (and I am always hot - so that is not a good option), this wrist is, by nature, exposed. I can’t stand this. I keep a t-shirt in bed to cover it with. I tie a sock around it. I can not sleep otherwise.

Sometimes, I think about how I got lost in my late teens and early twenties, how I ran from God and got so broken and sad. I think about finding God again and being healed, and it gets complicated. Because I know that, one the one hand, I had a spiritual
awakening/conversion/healing that was done in all the “right” ways. In church, and Bible studies, and prayer.

I also know, without a single doubt, that my friend George healed me. My non-Christian, crazy, wild, living--with-a- drug-dealer friend George - who got me started smoking and went to the laundromat with me at 2 am. It makes no sense, but I know that this boy was a gift. And when I think of how George loved me, I think that maybe I can begin to understand the way that Jesus loves me. And I wonder if it made me less of a person somehow - that I could not understand this, that I could not really get mended without God sending me a friend to actually show me how it feels to be loved like that. I only know that I needed George. That I did not understand how our relationship worked. That I was upset sometimes because I wanted him to be my boyfriend and did not want to see that his love was much deeper than that, that anything more would have been less. I feel like I fall short when I try to explain it, but the one thing that I know is that George was a gift. I needed him, and he helped me get through the dark alleys and wrong turns. And all the things I rationally understood about God, I began to feel and believe - all because of the way that George loved me.

George and I always slept together. We only kissed once, but from the beginning, we slept in the same bed. That first night, it was fall and it was raining, and George and I had been talking and had shared about our pasts, and I knew that we both had plenty we would have liked to forget. George told me that he hated sleeping alone, but that he always did because he felt uncomfortable sleeping with girls he dated. He told me that all he wanted was to not have to sleep alone in his little attic bedroom in the rain that night. The sound of the rain on the tin roof made him lonely. I understood this. Sleeping alone made me scared and sad too.

And so, every night, for the year that George and I were friends, we slept in the same bed. We never slept spooned together, like lovers. We slept facing each other, with a little bit of space in between. But we always held hands. And always, he would hold my wrist down hand in his, and then, he would take his palm and hold my other hand by the wrist. I was safe.

My favorite image of God is the image of being sheltered under his wings:

Psalm 61:4
Let me dwell in Your tent forever; Let me take refuge in the shelter of Your wings. Selah.

Psalm 57:1
Be gracious to me, O God, be gracious to me, For my soul takes refuge in You; And in the shadow of Your wings I will take refuge Until destruction passes by.

Psalm 17:8 Hide me in the shadow of Your wing.

When I am the most upset, this is the image I pray with. When it is the middle of the night, and I can’t sleep, and I am scared - this is what I ask. I ask to sleep in the shelter of His wings. I picture myself laying, facing Him, with just a little space in between. I imagine having Him reach out and place his hand over my wrist. I think of pressing my forehead against his chest, like a child asking for a blessing. I hear the sound of rain on a tin roof, and my chest un-tightens, and I begin to breathe again.

I picture myself in the dark, covered by the strong warmth of wings, and I feel safe. Safe enough to sleep.

And a whole lot to do before I sleep.

From my research - some fabulous quotes on writing, grammar, and language from the brilliant and beautiful Suzan-Lori Parks:

"'People ask me when I decided to become a playwright, and I tell them I decide to do it every day. Most days it's very hard because I'm frightened -- not frightened of writing a bad play, although that happens often with me. I'm frightened of encountering the wilderness of my own spirit, which is always , no matter how many plays I write, a new and uncharted place. Every day when I sit down to write, I can't remember how it's done."

"If you're one who writes sitting down, once before you die try dancing around as you write. It's the old world way of getting to the deep shit."

"I spend a lot of time reading the dictionary. The word 'grammar' is etymologically related to the word 'charm' Most words have fabulous etymologies. Thrilling histories. Because words are so old they hold; they have a big connection to what was. Words are spells in our mouths."

"Language is a physical act - something that involves yr whole bod.
Write with yr whole bod.
Read with yr whole bod.
Wake up."

Today at school, I was sitting with roar and dottielee. Between us, there is a range of eight years and three states. I graduated in 1988, and they both graduated in the 1990’s. We were talking about how we would handle the tense atmosphere of the next class. I said that I thought I would write letters. What kind of letters, they asked. I said letters to friends. Like notes. I wondered if I still knew how to fold notes.

And it was universal. The memories of notes. Of note-making, and passing, and folding. Could we still do it?

Roar pulled out three sheets of paper with Emily Dickinson poetry printed on it (for our first class) and we all put the sheets in front of us and began to work. Hesitant at first - but then instinct took over and we rushed through the last steps and set our neat little packaged notes on the table.

Three different graduation dates. Three different states. Identical note folding.

One of us commented that we just needed to write “pull” on the little triangle that tucked into the fold on the front. Then they would be perfect.

And we confessed to each other; we told of boxes of notes that we kept in attics. I think we all have these stashes of hidden notes. Narrative histories that we had folded neatly and tucked away. Things we want to remember. Always.

Friendship. Secrets. Trust.

Words that people gave us, like gifts. When they were not afraid to write them down, to give them weight and hand them to us on paper folded to fit in the palm of our hands. Sized to slip in a pocket. To carry with us and read when we were alone.

Words I was brave enough to write to others - back when I was fearless. Before I learned (the hard way) to fall out of trust.

We have all saved these notes and we treasure them. They are gifts.

I miss these friends. I miss these parts of myself too. I want to be a note-writer again:

Please call me when you get home.
I heard this song and thought of you.
I am having a bad day.
Help.
I'll wait for you.
Okay.
Can I borrow that, it is so cool.
I'll save you a seat.
I love your jacket.
Will you give me a ride home today?
Let's do something this weekend - how about a movie?
They'd be crazy not to like you.
You keep me sane. Thank you.
Let’s skip fourth period.
You are my best friend.
I’ll write you another note next period.
I would rather write you than listen to the lecture.

love,
amy

in the back row (left to right): michelle garcia, me, gwen.

gwen wrote the best notes.

roar(not lion) sent this quiz to me.

roar and her cool button jar.

athens, ga

I told my friends that we had to go and visit the tree that owns itself. I think they thought I was crazy.

Just wait, I told them. It really does own itself.

We turned off the main road, and drove up the only remaining cobblestone street in Athens. There, in middle of the road, was a small, round plot of earth, marked off by a chain. In the middle of the circle stood the tree, with eight feet of earth on either side of him - the amount of land that was left to him when Colonel Jackson died.

In front of the tree, there are two stone markers. One is the original, worn smooth by the rain and the seasons. The second marker was commissioned to replace the first - so that everyone could read the inscription that Colonel Jackson wrote, and had engraved, and gave as a gift to this tree - which he loved.

"For and in consideration of the great love I bear this tree and the great desire I have for its protection for all time, I convey entire possession of itself and the land within eight feet of it on all sides."

Perhaps, if I had been alive in the late nineteenth century, Colonel Jackson would have been my best friend. This man, that loved a tree, is my hero.

It is right that his beloved tree lives in Athens, at the intersection of two residential streets with poetic little names. It is right that you have travel up a hill to find it. It is right that the road is cobblestone, that it jostles your car and you have to drive slowly and intentionally to get to the tree.

Look up. Slow down.

This place is Holy.

Wave at this beautiful, beloved tree and read, once again, the inscription:

In consideration of

The Great Love

that I bear this tree.

And the great Desire I have,

For its protection

For all time.

I convey entire possession

of itself.

This has also been written about you.

You are Free.

Stretch your arms to the sky. Clap. Wave.

Love Him back.



visit the tree someday

in the cellar. loving books. the chair really was very nest-like.



the station wagon.



me. age seven. holding The Secret Garden.
and also - some jerk of a boy.

Despite all the talk of regeneration and blooming, I have never been a fan of springtime. In fact, I always hated spring and all that it foreshadowed. Spring meant that summer was coming: heat, and boredom, and bug spray. I did not feel hopeful when April rolled around; I felt dread.

It was always the fall that made me feel reborn. October is my favorite month, and not just because I was born on the second day. I have always liked the way that the air changes in October. I like the promise that whispers in the wind: something to look forward to . In Florida, October was the month when the first hint of cool began to seep into the morning air, and I knew that winter was coming. The trees would drop colored leaves and pecans like gifts and I would collect them in the fold of my dress or stuff them in my pockets. There was so much to look forward to - things like snow, and fireplaces. Of course, we never had snow or fireplaces in Florida - but I knew that snow and fires were indeed on the way to somewhere - and this thought made me happy.

Last year, I was walking to class and I passed a group of girls smoking on benches outside the library. One of the girls was smoking a clove cigarette, and her smoke mingled with the Marlboros and Camels of the others, and it hung in the air and mixed with the cool promise of the wind, and the dry smell of turning leaves. I inhaled the combination of wind and smoke and brown - and I was reminded of my friend George with such intensity that, for a moment, it was difficult to breathe. I expected to turn and see him there, perched on the brick column like a gargoyle, with his wild, unwashed hair and “I-dare-you-to-follow-me” eyes. The memory was so strong that I could not bring myself to go inside. I skipped class, and sat under a tree, and wrote down a list of things about him that I did not want to forget.

I am sensitive to the fact that I remember things through smells. Recently, I bought an old sewing kit stuffed inside a hatbox at a garage sale. I bought it because it was beautiful, with its odd assortment of buttons and needles and thread - but also, because of the way it smelled. With my eyes closed, the inside of the box smells like my grandmother’s house. It smells like hardwood floors, walnut furniture, windows kept closed, and time. An attic-like smell, it reminds me of things tucked away in boxes, of secrets whispered and then stitched into hidden seams.

Now, I make a conscious effort to notice the way things smell. I want to burn the evidence of their existence inside of me in a way that is deeper than images or words.

One of the things I love about having young children is the unrestricted access I have to hold and embrace them. I pull them to me, and bury my face in the nape of their neck - the place that I can smell them the best. I inhale their kid-smell and I think: “remember this, remember this”. Remember the smell of warm and salt and bark, with a hint of popsicle from their cherry shampoo. In time, their sweat will stop smelling like a playground, sun-hot metal monkey bars and grass and dirt. I want all of this to become a part of me; I want to carry it with me forever. To know that I held them in my arms, and they loved me like this.

Someday, I want us to meet in an airport. I want to be there when you are in between flights, and the ground does not feel quite right, and you are the most in need of a friend. I will be there - to take your hand, grab one of your bags, and help you navigate through the gates and the noise.

When I picture this meeting, I know that I will be so happy to see you that I will hold you tightly, and close my eyes, and rest my head on your shoulder just long enough to burn the physical memory of you inside my heart. We can sit and drink coffee, and talk the way that old friends do. Eventually, you will catch your next flight, and I'll wave from the expanse of an airport window as your plane disappears from my view.

I hope that one day, at the beginning of fall, the memory of this meeting will find me: an unexpected blessing in the promise-tinged wind.

Like cloves and smoke and gargoyles, the memory of you will bring me to my knees. I will pause, and turn my palms to face the branches and sky, and I will be thankful. With all my heart. Like fire and snow - I will know that you are somewhere, and be glad.