Minor Details

Anastasia's Attic is a dream store.

Whenever I visit I walk with the reverence befitting a chapel. I weave in out of precious breakables and reach out my shaky fingers to touch gems and jewels and emerald hairpins and glass bell jars and tea cups and velvet hats with feathers in them. The big front door is heavy and old; it squeaks slightly when the handle is turned and the little bell at the top jingles a welcome. The first inhalation of Anastasia's air carries the heavy scent of mulberry and potpourri and soap and musky perfume.

I don't know anyone who has ever had an obsession with cake plates besides myself. The Attic is hostess to many different assortments. Each one is beautiful and unique-- irresistibly intricate and perfect. Lined carefully on white wall shelves are silver coffee pots. They make me giddy. Sachets and coin purses fill me with euphoria. I dance at the prospect of hardbound classic literature. It is all wonderful and it is all located in one place.

I was in middle school the first time I was bit by the decorative bug. It happened after Anastasia's Attic. Looking at beautiful things gives me a strange itch to recreate my known property and make it different; to make it lovely. Since that time I have covered boxes in handmade paper, sewn pillowcases and curtains, reupholstered a chair, created a homemade bed canopy and changed my sheets several thousand times.
I am on a quest to find the peace and contentment that comes from a world of beautiful places. It's the same feeling I get when I look at Pottery Barn magazines with Lindsay. It is my bed and breakfast dream. It is my bookstore vision. It is my destiny.

Pleasant things are found in unexpected places. For a beauty addict like myself, it is easy to adjust things just so and still be discontent. I want claw-footed tubs, afternoon tea in the garden, golden sunbursts, castles and marble halls. I fear that my materialistic ideals will consume me. How can I concentrate in class when my mind jumps from fondue to fondant in a matter of seconds? Shall I continue to pour over books? Or should I give up and join the ranks of women who hoard Martha Stewart suggestions in baskets and try to make a career of it?

There are many places on this Earth that I adore, but few hold such a lovely spell as this.

The Mind That Knows Itself

I like a good bath.

On a frigid evening, a steamy, aromatic bathtub is a girl's most valuable weapon against illness, unhappiness, and discontent. Whenever I make the effort to bathe, I do it thoroughly. I draw my bathwater up to the brim and fill it with bubbles that thicken and foam under the faucet. I can often languish under tropical bathing conditions until my fingers shrivel and turn purple; my tolerance for such heat has accumulated over the years. For me it is a time of reflection-- a time for genius and enlightenment and epiphanies.

I started reading in the bath in fifth grade. Chasing Redbird was constantly weighing on my mind; this is evidenced by the wet fingerprints that have left permanent wrinkle-marks on its pages. I suppose that most people don't make a habit of multi-tasking. I've slowed down the novel-reading since I've started college, and now limit myself to obsessively reading the backs of shampoo bottles. It's not nearly as interesting, but it's all I have.

Despite this, every once in a great while I have the good fortune to stumble across comical gems of various shapes and sizes in my tub at school. Ordinary, inanimate objects often carry disguised humor under incredibly droll circumstances. Because of this, the bath has become a whimsical place for me.

For example, a shaving cream bottle I found on the left side of the tub:

St. Eden SPA
Ladies Shave Cream

Green with Envy
Prevent razor irritation
Soften hair and skin

Direction:
Moisten legs and apply to the area to be shaved. In a thin light film.
Shave with a wet razor. Rinsing it often. After shaving, Wash entire
area. Will not stain.

Warning: For external use only. Avoid contact with eye. If condition
worsens, consult a doctor.

KEEP OUT OF CHILDREN

Made in China


Needless to say, I had a nice solitary laugh in the bath when I picked up this bottle and started reading. I'm sure that anyone in the proximity who happened to hear me giggling thought I was going slightly mental.

Perhaps I am.
Or, maybe I just always was.

Welcome to the Noosphere

Professor Drysdale likes class participation. He always has. He jumps at the slightest raised hand-- the tiniest flicker of the wrist excites him. He bounds across the front of the classroom, flipping his pencil in the air and cracking the knuckles of his long fingers against his thighs. When he talks his Adam's apple moves up and down and mesmerizes me from my front row seat.

I pay attention in class. I take notes. I don't lean back in my chair, I don't chew gum, and I don't talk to my neighbors.
I also don't contribute to discussions.
Drifting into senseless fantasies is perhaps one of my less obvious talents. I have dreamed up ridiculous visions in each of my classes. In more embarrassing scenarios they often involve characters in books that I have read, or in extreme cases, characters that I have created in my mind.
Needless to say, my talent is not obvious because I usually do not make it so.
It is an infallible principle; if the mouth never opens, nothing regrettable will ever come out.

And then my nose started to itch.

It began somewhere between a discussion about the Jonestown Massacre and the bystander intervention model. A tiny, creeping, pinprick of a nuisance entered my right nostril. At the time I believe I was thinking about horses-- Black Beauty to be exact-- and how fragile their ankles were. I thought about what it might feel like to be horse, and to have a bit placed in one's mouth and to pull a sleigh over white hills.
"Now, what would induce 38 people to simply..."
From the windows I could see the snow softly drift down to the Earth and muffle the grass in sparkling insulation. How sad to be a horse out in the snow! How sad to be a dead Ginger in the back of a cart!
"...brutally raped in murdered and not a single phone call to 9-1-1..."
I had cried while reading Black Beauty. I had found it undeniably saddening. All this long while my nose continued to itch. Without bothering to bring back my wandering mind, I casually reached up with my hand to brush the right side of my face (including the nose) and satisfy it all with a gentle scratch. As I lifted my hand, Mike Drysdale's exuberant voice permeated my reverie,
"Ah ha! Comment! What have you to say, Miss plaid scarf?"

I froze. I peered behind my left shoulder to stare at the girl who was not responding to the professor. I looked over my right shoulder and still saw no one in plaid. Then I looked down at the red and gray and black tied in a trendy little knot around my neck and looked up in horror to the front of the classroom.

"Um... nothing. No. Contribute. Not," I stammered. My voice squeaked and sounded unnaturally high.

"Very good!" said the professor, smacking his hands together and rubbing them warmly as he stared me down.
"I guess sometimes it's good to just raise your hand to say no," he said.

I closed my eyes and put my head down on the desk to dream about unicorns.

Pigeons on the grass-- alas!

NEGLIGIBLE old star.
Pour even.
It was a sad per cent.
Does on sun day.
Watch or water.
So soon a moon or a old heavy press.

I have officially had the pleasure of being formally introduced to the true nature of the English major. They may be a poetic genius, or a literature extraordinaire, but they are always-- in my opinion, at least-- completely bonkers.

I'm afraid it's beginning to have an effect on me.

The girls I sit next to in American literature history class are all English majors. They love Thoreau, and Wharton, and Chopin. They search for metaphors in one word poems. They have stringy hair, a pestiferous vocabulary, and strained eyes insulated with thick lenses for heavy reading. They use hand gestures when they talk. They fight all the time but never resolve their arguments. They are dynamic and caustic-- their debates create a cacophony of shrillness over which Evelyn Funda simply smiles and sways her hips and says, "tell me more, more, more."

Literature goes through cycles: romanticism, realism, naturalism, and modernism. The more innovation and progression that literature undergoes, the more freedom both author and reader have to write, experiment, and interpret.

For example, when I read Uncle Tom's Cabin, I felt the conspicuous presence of Harriet Beecher Stowe in my head. I was reading with the author's lingering breath moistening my ear. She had an odd way of placing her thumbs on the lobes of my brain and whispering, "This is a bad character! You don't like him! Here is the plot. Here is the problem. Now think THIS!"

Until I came to college, I was used to this type of reading. I did not read to find new meaning in someone else's work-- I read to gain information only. I read the world like an encyclopedia, a Dicken's novel, or a Sharon Creech book. I read to take; I never read to contribute.

And then there was James.

Henry James was different. When one reads Daisy Miller, one feels the decisive indifference of the author. Was it sad that Daisy perished in the end with no elaborate bedside scenes or fallen lovers? Frankly, it would seem that James simply didn't care. I undoubtedly did not either; I found the writing trite and egotistic and boring. When I opened the book, it seemed to me that James would immediately rise from his tea, tip his hat, and leave the room. Well, it's all well for you, Mr. James, but I am being force fed this nonsense, I would think.

He may remain indifferent, but the members of Evelyn Funda's English class could not.

And all the while the English majors would snip and snap and twist and take and talk and soak in all this terrible, terrible literature.

And then Ms. Stein popped into existence.

Gertrude Stein was the worst of all. When I read "The Making of Americans," I felt like I was in a glass box. Not only was the box glass, but it was a glass box with no holes, and no air, and no door. I read the words and tried to make sense of them-- words that are words and not much else; words that are abstract, that are the medium of the message, that are a perfect Picasso of words and nothing else--but I failed and failed because my brain cannot make order out of chaos. And all around the box was Gertrude Stein-- pressed hard against the glass, laughing, laughing, laughing-- and me inside trying and repeating and trying and repeating... and all the English majors were at war with each other, and there were papers and punches flying in every direction, and there was blood on the floor.

And serenely smiling over it all was Evelyn Funda, saying "more, more, more!"

I don't understand English majors or American literature. And yet, as sad, and as sorry, and as petty as it seems, I try very hard to fit in with them.

It will forever be my blight.

A LIGHT in the moon the only light is on Sunday. What was the sensible decision. The sensible decision was that notwithstanding many declarations and more music, not even withstanding the choice and a torch and a collection, notwithstanding the celebrating hat and a vacation and even more noise than cutting, notwithstanding Europe and Asia and being overbearing, not even notwithstanding an elephant and a strict occasion, not even withstanding more cultivation and some seasoning, not even with drowning and with the ocean being encircling, not even with more likeness and any cloud, not even with terrific sacrifice of pedestrianism and a special resolution, not even more likely to be pleasing. The care with which the rain is wrong and the green is wrong and the white is wrong, the care with which there is a chair and plenty of breathing. The care with which there is incredible justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent asparagus, and also a fountain.

~Gertrude Stein

The Perpetual Self

I knew I would give in before we even entered the park.

Over the past few weeks, I have kept an admirably steady strain of weak justifications as to why I should not ride the skycoaster at Lagoon. As talented as I am at rationalizing, however, I am simply no match for the power of persuasion.

Miss Packard and Miss Edge raised the question of the skycoaster long ago, and since the moment the idea was first introduced I stewed over my options and dreamt up many honorable excuses for their benefit.
The first stated concisely that I was afraid of heights. I was privately convinced that this phobia combined with the fear of free falling would certainly result in my spontaneous and tragically early death. Prior to this point I never considered myself a weak individual. Give me a crinkly old book or sit me at a desk all day, and I will survive the boredom. Poke me with pins, draw my blood, feed me on nothing but bread and water-- I will scrape through physical pain unscathed. But dangle me from a cord one hundred and fifty feet in the air and drop me head first at 80 miles per hour and I undoubtedly will extemporaneously expire from the sheer idea of an adrenaline rush.
That is who I am; I am soft of heart, mind, might, and body. It is this that caused me to look into the pouty faces of my friends and be converted against my will. I followed them to the gallows quite willingly, tripping behind with delayed steps and a very confusing mixture of pressurized fear, bewilderment, and rapidly vanishing dignity.
It only took one look-- one glance in my direction to flip flop my willpower-- one look from two pairs of ooey gooey eyes and I was unceremoniously suited up with a purple jacket and clipped to the left of Natalie Edge and Brittany Packard several feet above the ground. And then the cable began pulling us up.

I believe I closed my eyes as we were lifted, but not before I saw the trees fall quickly away, the hoards of amusement-seekers shrink into tiny colorful dots below, and the ground become sadly and uncomfortably distant. I death-gripped Natalie's arm and squeezed my eyes shut. "You can stop now!" Brittany continued to yell as we dangled from the rope.
And then we heard the fateful voice come over the gentle hum of atmospheric wind, "Are you ready? 3, 2, 1, fly!"
Brittany pulled the cord, hard and fast-- like a band aid. However, she paused one moment to say, "This is it!" and I felt my intestines retreat further into my body in the fearful anticipation of being splattered and smashed on the sidewalk.
And then we fell straight down-- it would be a quick, fast, painless death. I can't remember if I screamed or not. In my head I was yelling bloody murder, but I think I only was able to voice a weak and kitten-like mewling on the way down. I stopped as soon as we began swinging back and forth-- Peter Pan style-- but continued to leech myself to Natalie's arm and absolutely refused to extend my own.
Sooner than I could have possibly hoped, it was over. I was more or less in shock, and rather light headed from the fall-- but ultimately I was completely unharmed and utterly speechless.

Because of my dear friends, I have learned something new about thrill seeking. For those of us who don't normally look for excitement, a bit of regulated free-falling doesn't hurt a bit. Yes, it scares us to death-- but afterword we can happily fall upon the ground and kiss its stable beauty, and simultaneously walk taller than the trees.

Britt and Nat,
We are as good as blood sisters now.
Welcome to the club.

I knew I had red hair for a reason...

You're Anne of Green Gables!

by L.M. Montgomery

Bright, chipper, vivid, but with the emotional fortitude of cottage
cheese, you make quite an impression on everyone you meet. You're impulsive, rash,
honest, and probably don't have a great relationship with your parents. People hurt
your feelings constantly, but your brazen honestly doesn't exactly treat others with
kid gloves. Ultimately, though, you win the hearts and minds of everyone that matters.
You spell your name with an E and you want everyone to know about it.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Revenge of the Nite Bite

The basement freezer has always been a rank dungeon which houses the oddities and outcasts of the food world. Freezer burned dinner rolls, untouched, uncooked, and ill-assorted meats of all kinds flank the wire baskets lying within this big white casket for frozen food. Occasionally, however, a sweet treat can be found in the very deepest corners of this particular freezer.
It is here that I first discovered the Nite Bite.

They came as gifts from the diabetes camp management. Innocently wrapped in bright blue plastic with pink letters, they were the only colorful object in the freezer's grasp. Designed to keep little diabetics from getting midnight low downs, the colorful candies appeared to be delightful as well as tasty. Chocolaty brown with a texture similar to a tootsie roll, I unraveled my first Nite Bite with delight and sank my teeth into its frozen surface.

The first words that can possibly describe the sensation of eating a Nite Bite are a combination between chocolate, chalk, and mud. The Bite is thick, glutenous, and filled with the powdery sensation of protein packed grossness. Overwhelmingly sweet and undesirably preservable, the half-thawed goop sticks to the roof of my mouth, throat, esophogaus, and stomach.

In other words...

Bees sting,
Flies bite.
I just wanted
A Nite Bite...
But I learned my lesson the hard way.

Anecdotes of a Bereaved Flood Victim

My Grandma Dolli said that bad things always happen in sets of three.
Grandma's theory always worked. As pessimistic human beings searching for all the wrongs that have been done to us, it is easy to find two companions for every minor tragedy that marches in our direction. But early this morning I learned that every once in a while a real catastrophe occurs-- one that would be dimmed in comparison to any other problem, and whose terribleness cannot be classified in any category. My ability to complain over minor incidents has been demolished along with my bedroom ceiling; it is resting peacefully somewhere in a sea of broken drywall and scattered insulation.

I did not notice the watermark. It was a thin gray line, sneakily curved and just long enough to be mistaken for the shadow of the lavender that wrapped around the canopy of my bed. For days it had been growing, amassing and accumulating dirty water above my ceiling until it severed a tiny hole above my sleeping place. I was awakened early in the morning by the gentle drip, drip, drip of the hideous water as it fell from that tiny hole and onto my pillow. I sleepily squinted at the dark spot above, trying to register what exactly was happening. I grabbed a teacup from my nightstand and let it catch the drip.
The water was definitely yellow.
By the time I arrived back in my room with my mother and a more adequate container to catch the flow, the hole had stretched into an enormous and immensely ugly gash, now streaming water and bulging with more liquid. I froze, eyeing my room-- my beautiful room with the gently twisting wrought iron bed, the fluffy white down comforter, plants, flowers, perfume... the silver picture frames with yellow water dripping down their fronts--and began to cry.
We salvaged as much as we could before the ceiling broke. The black lines were spreading and impregnating themselves with water, and at last they split with a mighty crack. Wetness and gray insulation piled itself on top of my mattress, my carpet, and my little, curly, white nightstand and chair ensemble I had so lovingly developed. I stood in the middle of the floor and gazed forlornly into my attic through a four-foot long hole in my ceiling.
I sat down on several inches of dirty, gray fluff and cried.

And so I will spend the rest of today shoveling insulation and plaster into garbage bags. I will vacuum up what remains, let the plumber fix the leak, and sleep in the room across the hall until the hole in my ceiling is repaired. The gaping fissure doesn't rip at my heart as much as it initially did. I've safely moved my things away from the water, and draped the too heavy furniture with plastic for protection against further damage. All is well, and the fact that I have not been rendered unconscious by a falling piece of drywall makes me grateful indeed.

Bad things irrevocably come in threes. For every little snag I find, I will easily be able to summon two more with my pessimistic imagination.

But catastrophes need no exaggeration. They unalterably come in their full glory and terror-- completely and utterly alone.

The Undivided Self

South Jordan has morphed itself into quite a pleasantry. There is an area near the public library that is especially nice; it harbors four wrought iron swings under a tall gazebo and a sizable fountain of cool water. It is here that I became acquainted with Jacob.
I was sitting on one of the swings-- filling out my Hobby Lobby job application and talking on the phone-- when a minuscule girl and boy with dark hair and eyes crept up behind me and began to pelt me with unexpectedly friendly questions. I answered them kindly, and even ventured a few of my own. I learned their names were Isaac and Isabella, they hailed from California near a lake, and they are in town for the rest of this week to visit their cousins.
About halfway through the Hobby Lobby application, another child toddled towards me-- from the front this time. He had a grim expression on his face and he said with nonchalant melancholy,
"Izzy? I think I hurt my foot."
He had indeed. His second toe had been viciously slashed open by a glass bottle left near the fountain. The tendon was exposed, and blood oozed and bubbled profusely from it, dribbling menacingly onto the hot, white pavement.
Without warning, an undeniable motherly, nurturing instinct pushed me off the phone and off the swing. I grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the library.
"Come with me, hon" I said, quickening my pace, "let's try to find some bandages to stop the bleeding."
The librarian behind the counter was not pleased with me, or the little bleeding boy staining the carpet. She handed me two very large and awkward looking bandages, and I pulled my diminutive patient into the ladies restroom where I promptly set him on the counter and began washing his foot with soap and water. It was a horrible sight. Not only was the skin completely ripped off his toe, but a long and open sore ran along the full length of his foot pad. I asked him questions and talked to him to keep him calm, and afterwards I tried to wipe some of the blood off of his legs and feet and hands.
I'm not quite sure exactly what happened after that. Isabella and Isaac went next door to get their mother, and I decided it was time for me to quietly make my exit for Hobby Lobby. But as I left they all smiled and said,
"Thank you for helping us, lady!"

Good Samaritan moments are probably more prominent than we would like to believe. Sometimes we choose not to accept them, but they are always available. There is a very basic human instinct that calls each of us to help a fellow brother-- especially when service is needed, and one not only knows their care is wanted, but required.
I left the library today spattered with blood, sweat, and worry. But I also secretly held that creepy Christmas-service-giving feeling in my heart.
It is the best feeling in the world.

Toxic Girl

Today I encountered three separate moments in which I could step outside my body and see what it's really like to be me. Perhaps they were caused by excessive studying, or even lack of sleep.
Either way, it was bizarre.

The first proof came while I was studying in my bed. From my position, I could glance to the left and see my reflection in the mirror. I was wearing my square red glasses, perched low on my nose to further facilitate reading. My plaid pajamas were still on me, and my hair was skillfully crafted into a loose and mostly falling librarian bun.
As I glanced at the mirror to tuck a few liberated hairs back into my bun, an odd little voice-- not my own-- gave me a brief commentary about the girl I saw.

She's reading about Napoleon, drinking Ovaltine, and listening to Regina Spektor-- and she likes it. How nerdy is that?

I saw the girl tidy up a few strands of hair, saw the hand move to straighten the crooked chignon-- but could not feel the fingers brush my face. It was surpassing odd.

"That isn't nerdy," I told the voice, "it's normal!"

Feeling a little embarrassed, I looked down at the textbooks and papers scrawled across my lap, littering my bed, and blowing gently in the rain-strewn wind from my open door.

I saw pages and pages listing the differences between Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, a picture of an elf wearing roller skates that I had drawn several months ago, and the protruding corner of a note with the words, "fanatical Jacobin Friar" scrawled hastily in the corner.

Who is this girl?

Glancing out the window, I notice an odd little bird perched nonchalantly on the balcony rail. Its markings are unfamiliar to me and I jump-- yes, there was air between my feet and the ground-- out of bed and sprint to the computer to learn more about my strange little visitor.

"Ah ha! A red-winged Blackbird!"

Oh no... Did I just say that out loud?

It is fortunate that no matter who comes and goes in our lives we will always have ourselves to keep us company. Considering the fact that I feel comfortable conversing with myself, have brain hallucinations, and am content to gaze out the window and bird watch guarantees I will never be lonely.

Joslynn's existential art crisis: an evaluation of nice things that don't look good

Art speaks to the human soul. It is the greatest creation of human beings; it forges a connection between us while enveloping beauty, creativity, and emotion.
However, there is such a thing as a bad painting. Because of this fact, I was inspired to embark on a quest to find the worst art ever.

I was fortunate enough to stumble upon these.

Vortex
Acquired by Scott Wilson from trash

Here we see a disembodied head, whose bleeding shadow screams with pain.
Don't drink the water.



Think Again

A Michael Jackson-like character presents to us the severed head of a horse which, I believe, exists simply because of the artist's inability to draw the animal's hindquarters.



Suicide

Clouds in an otherwise clear sky cry blood as the bovine beast dives, lemming like, and misses the phosphorescent, oily, swimming hole.





Reef Garden
Acquired by Scott Wilson from the Salvation Army Store

Here we are, witnessing the stage of a musical extravaganza. On a silent cue, one pulsating incubator bursts, hurtling an anxious and curiously aged little merman upwards to the unknown world above the surface. The dancer stares, hypnotizing the viewer. We find ourselves forced to stay -- feel the music or drown.

Mama and Babe
Donated by the artist

The hues of the skin and the presidential candidate-like bone structure of both Mama and Babe advertise the everlasting bond between parent and child-- much like a marionette and a puppeteer.

And last, the King of them all...

Lucy in the Field With Flowers
Unknown Artist

The motion, the sway of her body, the subtle hues of the sky, the expression on her face -- every detail cries out "masterpiece."

Polluting the air in more ways than one

The McCombies have been in Malibu for six months.
Each day of their absence, Renee Clark has faithfully gathered their mail and placed it in a plastic box where bit by bit it has amassed and accumulated to overflowing. Not only does the woman drive a large vehicle to pick up the letters from the McCombie's mailbox fifty feet from her front door, but she also almost always has a skinny cigarette clamped securely between her faded and sagging lips.
From my front porch vantage point, I can periodically witness the antics of my singular neighbor. Today, as I unstrapped my running shoes and stretched my legs, I smiled to myself and thought:
Ah, she gets better everyday.

In which I am visited by St. Patrick, the Mistress Witch of McClure, and Darius's Squadron of Benevolent Butterflies

As I stood in the check-out line with my mom and sister, I espied me an elderly woman with flaming red hair and dangle earrings shaped like foaming green beer mugs. She looked the perfect picture of an Irish Sidhe. I imagined her in a fairy rath, and the thought summoned a familiar ache in my heart-- the ache I always feel when I hear bagpipes.
We made eye contact, and I gave her a smile.
"I like your earrings," I said, "they're very festive."
Her eyes brightened as she patted her titian tresses and sighed,
"Thank you! You are the first to have noticed them today."
I kept my eyes on her the entire time-- determined that if she was a real leprechaun, this magnificent creature would have to share her gold with me.

Mirror, mirror...

We've all heard horror stories. Cornflakes stuck to the chin during sacrament talks, faces plastered with snot, and bleached eyebrows are just a few of many terrible instances. But I learned today that breaches of personal hygiene aren't truly influential until they happen to you personally.
When I arrived home from school today, I promptly headed upstairs to change my clothes before going to my violin lesson(yes, I did go). As I slipped a T-shirt over my head, I glanced at the mirror and noticed something peculiar glinting on my neck. May it be universally known that my room is very sunny at this time of day, and nothing reveals physical flaws like natural light. Thanks to this, upon closer inspection I discovered the shiny something to be a hair-- an unnaturally long and straight hair-- growing out of my neck. You can imagine my reaction. I made a beeline for my tweezers, and extracted the little bugger quickly. It was incredible, and probably should have been framed. The thing was so long it had more split ends than any hair growing out of my head. And then I saw it: another culprit, shorter than the first but much darker. I removed it as well, feeling rather unnerved and curious as to what could have spawned such a monster.
All I can say is this: either I have failed in the plucking industry or my hormones are severely screwed up.
The mirror tells no lies.

12 Years Later

Home movies are often all the same – holidays, soccer games, birthday parties – so why do we make and watch so many of them? Maybe it's because the story they show, and the story they tell, are different.

Sometime in the mid-nineties Grandpa purchased a new and sleek Canon camcorder. Whenever he brought it out, my grandma would cover the side of her face and complain about how he followed her around, filming.
"Do you honestly think anyone is going to watch this, Coston? Why do you need to get everything on film? Are you that afraid you're going to forget something?"

My siblings and I were young then and excited about the prospect of seeing ourselves on the screen. We would take turns hogging the lens, each trying to give a word or a face to the camera ("We're bozos! Yeah, we're hogs!") before the shaky photographer took a break to film various sedentary objects and machinery.

My grandma was camera shy. She scowled upon film at family gatherings.
"There should be a law against those things. Can't it wait? It's all well for them, but what about us poor nobodies caught in the crossfire?"

After she died we took turns holding her various belongings to our noses. Grandma's coat. Grandma's sweater. Grandma's pillow. This is what people do when they're left with such paltry iconography-- they smell things, continuing long after the scent has faded, and there is nothing left to help you remember.
I never cried about my grandma's death. I locked everything up inside me and let it rot. It hurt more that way, but I couldn't bear to show emotion.

Last night I watched a home movie shot in 1995, at my father's birthday party. I witnessed myself in the most awkward stage of my life, decked out in jogging pants, with snarly brown hair and large front teeth. My parents and siblings were undeniably younger, and I couldn't remember how life was before everything changed.
I only glimpsed my grandma towards the end. It was such a small thing: grandma and grandpa and me, swinging on the swings in the backyard. She had on cotton polyester pants, and her hair looked exactly the way I remembered. The swings went back and forth, and through my loud unintelligible yelling on film I had an epiphany-- I was once again the six year old girl caught on camera, swinging with her grandparents.
It seemed to me like a miracle.
After it was over I hit the rewind button, and against my grandma's will I drew her back out to the swing set. She was mine now, captured on film and releasing dozens of repressed memories that came free as tears formed in my eyes. I sat there for a long time, only moving my eyes from her face to rewind it again and again.

For The Widows In Paradise; For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti

Every perfect day needs a topper-- an apex from which every blissful moment can delicately unfold before beginning its descent. But what happens when the day is flat lined on a negative scale with no hope of a point of increase?
Your tires get slashed.
It was bad that I could not find my carpool. It was worse that I was stuck in slippery heels without any way to contact my friends whom I was supposed to drive. But the climax-- the minimum point of my day, the anti-apex, if you will-- became tragedy when I coatlessly found the New Yorker sitting on a slope that allowed the rim of the back tire to kiss the asphalt in a most threatening manner.
Someday I would simply like to go home after school. That's it. No unclosable doors, no dead engines. Someday I would like to hop in my car and have it take me places without running the risk of suicide from an imploding radiator.
So I passed this anticlimax by standing in shock next to a car with peeling red paint and 'YSLER' glued in rusted silver letters across the back, utterly at a loss for action.
I decided that putting on a decent facade of knowledgeable tire-changing skills for the sophomores congregating on the driving range would be a good start. I opened up the trunk, where I knew a spare tire was kept. I pulled on it. It would not give. I tugged on the jack next to it. I have found that in calamities biceps and arm muscles are extremely useful. If nothing else, they give comfort in their existence. Mine exist, but only for a taut allowance of minimal tasks-- such as holding a spoon and waving at people in the hallways. My arms are not meant for manual labor.
With half my body immersed in the open trunk, my bare knees anchored on the sagging bumper, and my sleeves rolled past the elbow, I pulled and pulled at that blasted tire. By this time I had grime on my legs and hands, and was feeling extremely frustrated.
And then he came, an enormous angel who was extremely scary and simultaneously wonderful.
"Well, that sucks!" said Coach Gross, as he leaned over me to inspect what little progress I was able to make with the immovable tire.
He moved it with one hand, picked it up like he was picking up a plastic ball. He raised and lowered and unscrewed and basically lifted the entire car, while I stood back, shivering in my stupid little pink heels, feeling the negativity that comes with feminine helplessness-- or perhaps just my weakness and failure as a human being.
As I was driving home slowly on my newly changed, bike-sized back rear tire, I reflected on the goodness of human nature. Nobody had to stop to help me. I could have stood abandoned in the parking lot for a long, long, time.
Every perfect day has an apex.

Hoarding it for Home

My life as a health addict has not always been severe. Our cupboards at home are usually decorated with Wasa crackers and various healthful condiments from foreign countries. But every once in a long, long while we go on a junk food binge that ultimately leaves us fat and panting for celery and chickpeas.
I remember one such sugar-spree in particular. My father was shuffling through the contents of our refrigerator in an attempt to find something to prepare for dinner. Towards the back of the second glass shelf-- between the Shiitake mushrooms and bell peppers-- he discovered an unnamed science experiment contained within the careful plastic of Glad's Tupperware. Holding the container cautiously over the sink, he slowly pulled the lid off to reveal a medley of molding green nastiness that had been shoved to the back of Leftover Corner and had gurgled happily there for Heaven only knows how many weeks. My mother was away visiting family at this time, and perhaps in a rash act of desperation and helplessness my father emptied the fridge completely of all the organic and easily perishable ingredients that my mother had carefully stocked upon its shelves prior to her departure. From my short perspective I could see a familiar glint come into my father's eyes which could only mean one thing-- chips.
Whenever my mom left town, my dad was left in charge of the grocery shopping. Buying food with Dad was like going on holiday. He is a bargain shopper, which means that he will tear down the cookie and cracker and cereal aisles and throw anything with a 2 for 1 special sign into the cart.
"Pop tarts? Frosted flakes? White bread? Throw it into the cart and let's get out of here!"
For a family who is accustomed to eating twelve grain wheat bread, flax oil, and fortified omega 3 eggs, junk food is a big deal. By the time Dad and the girls (everybody came along for the ride and to help load ice cream into the cart) arrived home, the backseat and trunk of the minivan were weighted down with bouquets and caboodles of sugary and salty snacks that yielded far more calories in one serving than what we were used to consuming in an entire day.
After the initial grocery trip life went downhill. I remember the first few days were glorious; we ate cold cereal for breakfast and bacon and chocolate and Heinz ketchup and other such foodstuffs that most true-blue Americans take for granted. After several meals of unending glory and sugary delight, the novelty of this American life would begin to atrophy and most family members were left feeling chubby and empty and fiber-less.
The crap food would be thrown out immediately before my mom's return, which would be greeted by an empty refrigerator that she would promptly replace with cucumbers, spinach, and mozzarella cheese. She would hustle and bustle and complain, exclaiming:
"For the life of me I can't figure out how you all go through so much food when I'm away!"
So break out the Wasa crackers again, Mom. Our eating habits are as dull as two dry toasts, because after all, you are what you eat.

Lutefisk: a little piece of Valhalla

My first encounter with 'Death in the Form of Fish' came at our annual Norwegian Christmas party, six years in the past.
The celebration took place in the basement of some shady building sometime in mid-December. The room was very cold, and filled with accented strangers who all wore sweaters and smelled like mushrooms. At last the talking ceased and dinner was served.
Fish.
Mary Hoblastad, a long time family friend, approached the table at which I was sitting and asked if I was going to eat anything. I stared down at the odoriferous goo on my plate, whose gelatinous texture and rancid oiliness rendered the whole creature completely inedible. I shook my head.
"You don't like fish?" she exclaimed wildly, attracting the attention of several suspicious old men passing by, plates loaded with cod, "And you call yourself Norsk! For shame!"
The situation was further worsened when I learned the history of the dish. It was a Scandinavian delicacy known as lutefisk - which means, literally, "cod soaked in plutonium."
I had given a report in Mrs. Powell's sixth grade class about Norway, and to the delight of the sick minded 12 year old boys I had mentioned the gross practices of harvesting the cod, wrapping it in toilet paper, greasing it in Vaseline and then burying it for several weeks to create lutefisk.
I had not cared to try it since.
Despite the fuss I made over the lutefisk- or perhaps because of it-I was persuaded to take one forkful. One bite, and that was all.
How to describe that first bite? It's a bit like describing passing a kidney stone. If you are talking to someone else who has lived through the experience, a nod will suffice to acknowledge your shared pain, but to explain it to the person who has not been there makes mere words seem inadequate to the task.
When I think of that fateful moment when the fork met my lips and the lutefisk touched my tongue, the phrases, "nauseating sordid gunk", "unimaginably horrific", and "lasting psychological damage" come to mind.
There is a reason why lutefisk is only eaten once a year: anything that has been soaked in chemicals and allowed to ferment should not be allowed to pass through the digestive system-- it does detrimental things to the body.
But these descriptions seem hollow compared to the actual experience, so I will have to resort to a recipe for a kind of metaphorical lutefisk to describe the experience.
First, take jet-puffed marshmallows made without any sugar, blend them together with overcooked Japanese noodles, some canola oil, and Parmesan cheese, then bathe the whole liberally in acetone. Let it marinate in cod liver oil for several days at room temperature. When it has achieved the appropriate consistency heat it to just above lukewarm, sprinkle in thousands of tiny, sharp, invisible fish bones, and serve. Voila! You have lutefisk, or at least a very close representation.
Now you can empathize.
And so if I ever create a ruckus over fish, you will know why. There is only one word to describe possibly the most abominable recipe created by mankind-- and it is lutefisk.
Viva la Norge!

They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!!

Holidays just aren't the same without the Francises.

In any ordinary suburban neighborhood New Year's Eve is celebrated by watching the ball drop on TV, making nugatory promises for the coming year, and toasting memories. These quiet, conventional, and thoroughly American customs have been tossed aside by the former residents of a certain dark and rather foreboding dead end street where I happen to live.
.........................................................................................................................................................................

There were five boys in the Francis family. Each one was taller and crazier than the next, with long lanky legs and ashen complexions from drinking too much alcohol and staying up late every night. They dropped dummies on passing cars, swam in the putrid canal, vandalized fence posts, and stole Ron Lewis's freshly killed bloody sheep head out of his barn and mounted it for all to see on a pole in their front yard. They were hooligans and hellions in every respect. Every time a dog was poisoned or a shed caught fire the residents of my road pointed their fingers at the infamous Francis Five.
They were the bane of 10755, the annual hosts of the New Year's Insanity, and they lived across the street from me.

Every New Year I recall as a child was ushered in by the raucous parties they would throw. Sleeping on this special night was difficult when Beastie Boys kept pervading my dreams and every time I looked out my window I could see my neighbors chain smoking and drinking beer on their front lawn. Often illegal fireworks were added to the mess of drugs and music and dancing, but if they were unattainable there would surely be an added bonus show of colored lights from homemade rockets and various explosive chemicals.

Life with untrustworthy neighbors is not easy. Young and innocent children are easily impressed upon. Because of this I was absolutely forbidden to associate with the Francises; I was not allowed to approach, speak, or even so much as to look at them. Because I was sheltered-- or perhaps to spite that fact-- I could not deny a lurid fascination with them. I enjoyed analyzing them because it was like gazing into bent glass: the reflection was completely contorted and twisted and crazy, but I could still see a bit of the original shape in the image.

The Francises moved away years ago. They simply packed up and left unexpectedly, taking only what they could fit in the bed of a pick-up truck and returning for the rest later.
After they left, the neighborhood gossips congregated in my kitchen and surmised the cause of this sudden departure. They ended the discussion with the assumption that Donna had gotten pregnant, or Tex had been expelled from high school, or the boys had started making a bomb in the basement and the toxic fumes had forced the whole family to leave.
I suppose we will never know the truth.
.......................................................................................................................................................................
Today is New Year's Eve once again. All is still and peaceful-- a completely different greeting for the New Year than what the residents of my neighborhood have come to expect. There are no fires, no rowdy boys riding goats, no fireworks, and no boom boxes blasting Duran Duran.
Even so, on nights like this I hear in my head the faint beat of a drum and the elusive whine of a synthesizer a little way down the road. The Francises are gone, but their obstreperous ways will forever haunt 10755 every New Year's Eve until the city inevitably decides to take a steamroller to this hill-- causing my quirky neighborhood to be evened out and average once again.

It's Christmas! Let's be glad.

Even today the slightest mention of Christmas shopping leaves an empty gnawing in my stomach-- a dull and colorless pain that reminds me of fluorescent department store lights and tube socks. It is no wonder that after years of enduring The Christensen Family Christmas Crisis I have grown to despise the holidays with the same deep antipathy that one usually reserves for truly horrendous things: like racism, terrorism, and corporate fraud.
All my life I have been trying to reconcile this phenomenal event--the incarnation of God-- with Santa Clause and blue-light specials at Kmart and the weird preoccupation people have with buying a lot of junk and giving it to each other every twenty-fifth of December. There is something incredibly phony about Christmas. Or maybe it's just the commercialized holiday cheer speaking.
And then again, I can be a bit of a curmudgeon at this time of year.
The guest bedroom in my house is present-wrapping central. Idle hands in the month of December earns any family member several locked hours in this gift wrap purgatory, with no hope of release until that day's load is safely bundled in brightly colored paper. This crinkly, gaudy, and extraneous material will litter the living room floor on Christmas morning, and then will quickly be torn into millions of shreds by The Babes. Then the gift wrap crumb shavings will sit and sit and catch on jeans as people try to wade through the mess and then will float and slide under the couches and rugs until it is eaten eventually by the vacuum sometime in mid-January. This is just like the pine needles from the fake Christmas tree (that we didn't put up this year) that become embedded in the carpet where the cat finds and eats them, and then gets sick and throws up.
The worst part of Christmas is not the hoarfrost on the windshield or the schmaltzy yuletide carols on the radio or even the extra thick eggnog and fruitcake. The very worst part of Christmas is how it is advantageously stuck between Thanksgiving and New Years, and how when you least expect it, it tiptoes from behind and bites until you bleed... until you bleed money and sleep and health out your wallet and eyes and nose and before you know it you are completely obliterated and Christmas is still three days away.
And then it sinks in-- something that I privately refer to as, "that Creepy Christmas Feeling".
It comes around when families act out the nativity scene and we picture the baby Jesus wrapped up in swaddling clothes- burping and spitting and smiling- a supreme being come to the Earth to save mankind from their sins. It comes on bright snowy nights when every sound is muffled by whiteness and everything is clear and cool and perfect, and the houses are lit up by a hodgepodge of blinking colored lights strung haphazardly from rooftops with the most tacky best intentions. It comes on Christmas Eve when I am lying in my bed, and even in my most mature state and Scrooge-like persona I can't close my eyes because that Creepy Christmas Feeling has spread from my chest to every appendage and extremity of my body until my heart is feverish with the warmth that comes with the Creepiness of Christmas.
Bah humbug!