Tuesday Two Snaps

small miracles

Picasso

1.

One of the first questions on the questionnaire was what body of water means the most to you, a tear, a bath, a pool, a lake, an ocean. A tear? That’s not my favorite, but I was thinking the other day, as I was crying, two things: first of all how strange and miraculous it is to have such a strong feeling that a small bulb of water gets pushed out of your eye, and second, that I like feeling it come out. I like feeling the tear push its way over my eye lid and run down my face. Why is that? Maybe I am connecting with myself somehow. That body of water is holding something, baby me, child me. What would it look like under a microscope, all the memories: the history, the cars and trains, the beach with a plane in the sky above pulling a banner that says, This is you. In the movie of my life I see myself. I see the tear, the tiny body of water that spills. It holds music, the cello and piano from my grandmother’s music room. In there we used to sit and tape our voices on the big reel to reel tape recorder. Our little voices forever asking questions, why, when, what and why some more. Nan and Ahvie playing their instruments, the beauty of the cello and the light and sweet piano that sailed alongside. I remember too the bath, how the tub with it’s big claw feet, was so hard to climb into, the smell of rust through the pipes. Sometimes the water was brown and Nana said that’s okay, it’ll come through. All of us little people trying to make sense of what she just said. Water, how soft it is when you sit half submerged and run your finger tips along the surface. What am I saying? My favorite body of water. Right. I remember the pond near my grandparent’s house, Websters pond, it was brown and murky and surely there were snakes and slippery strong things that swam beneath the surface. I stood at the edge and screamed. My aunt laughed at the suddenness and somehow her laugh made me feel powerful, I did something funny, I showed my fear. I knew somehow it was a great thing, I felt no shame. A lake in Maine I remember that too, that was clear and bitter cold but it also felt deep and like it held me in a way I haven’t been held before or since. We washed our hair in it, sat on the deck with a bottle of blue liquid, squirted on our hands and jumped in. Froth floating on the top of the water, porcelain claws, cousins laughing, the sound of running through corn stalks, Nana’s cello, all the things that flowed and kept me conscious. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

2.

Every once in a while I think about this guy I knew in high school. His older brother had died in a car crash and he carried around with him a cloud of melancholy. It sounds trite to say, but it really was just like that: a cloud. Whenever you talked to him, you were not talking to him about something huge and obvious and devastating. He was forever known as the kid whose brother died and he accepted it. I have a picture of him in my head, smoking with his head down and one hand in his pocket. He had the longest eyelashes. I got to know him a little because he gave me a ride home from school on Tuesdays. He lived closer to me than my boyfriend did. I remember being surprised that he was so easy to talk to and that he was really funny. Once, towards the end of our last year when he dropped me off, he gave me a poem he had written that I liked, and while I sat there reading it, told me he wished I were his girlfriend. I don’t know if the memory is connected somehow to my own awkwardness before I said what? or his awkwardness at hearing me say it, but the scene drops into my head at the strangest times and it’s like I’m feeling it all over again. It’s not that I have any regrets or sentimental thoughts about something that should have happened, it’s more about that feeling of being so close to something that sweet without ever knowing it.

here’s the whole song

Also the first snap came from a prompt, a quote from Toni Morrison which is the last sentence of #1.