| Day 17 |
|
|
April 17, 2004 The theme of this month's 17th day was change. As in "A change would do you good." As in "Don't you go changing, to try and please me." As in "Everything will change." Not all change is for the better, of course, but we detect a sense of brave resignation to fate's hand in this month's entries. The weather seemed to lift spirits this month, as did motion, commitment and optimism. We took great heart from all this. Sarah Lyon (Washington, DC)
Rebecca Schuman (Brooklyn, New York)
Sonya Walker (Seattle, Washington)
Brian Minter (Brooklyn, New York)
Claire Zulkey (Chicago, Illinois)
Cheryl Huber (Brooklyn, New York)
Jenny Miller (Washington, DC)
Joe Janda (Long Island, New York)
Meredith Bragg (Washington, DC)
Elizabeth Edwards (Champaign, Illinois)
SARAH LYON
Dispatches from the Mt. Pleasant Neighborhood Library, Washington DC. (Children's Room, 2 p.m.) It is finally spring, here in Washington DC. I sit at the reference desk, ready to field questions about John Q. Adams and how to print Word documents. Despite peeling paint and fallen ceilings, the windows of this library reach high, way way up, to let in the afternoon sun. They are wide open, to let out the dusty remnants of a very long winter. I hear birds and traffic and shrieks of young laughter coming up from the street. A mom arrives with three exuberant daughters in tow. They get down on hands and knees, crawling among the low stacks to discover picture books. I can hear the low, even voice of Mom as she reads aloud. A book about the circus! Animated chirping voices chime in, asking impatient questions. I wouldn't shush them for the world.
REBECCA SHUMAN
M E M O R A N D U M To: Mr. Softee, mobile ice-cream purveyor to New York City
Dear Mr. Softee, Nobody can deny the refreshing delight of an ice-cream-esque substance on a hot summer day. Delish. However, I would like to suggest some variation in the music your trucks pump through my neighborhood between the approximiate hours of 7 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. every single frickin' Saturday, even if it's my only morning off in twenty-jabillion years. Now, Mr. Softee (if that is even your real name!!), I realize the song is your franchise's only current form of "brand identification." But really, as long as you keep using those insufferable twinkly-belly plink-plink get-your-kiddies-fat music box "instruments," you really don't need to use one song -- particularly a song that is only fifteen seconds long and repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats, until I go all the way crazy and kill someone. So how about something we haven't heard in awhile? Like "Hey Ya"? Or anything by Evanescence? Or something else that might make me want to stick my head all the way through a plate-glass window a few days sooner so that I may live out the rest of the summer in the glorious Mr. Softee-less silence that only death can bring? Keep up the good work! Sincerely,
SONYA WALKER
My boyfriend gets terrible night sweats. I started out the seventeenth day of the month with a generally clammy feeling all over. I like to think that I'm usually a nice, forgiving person. A nice, forgiving person understands that one can't help what one does in one's sleep, right? Wrong. A nice, forgiving person wants one's sweaty ass to move to the other side of the bed! Chop Chop! He's a sound enough sleeper that, if I can convince myself to make a physical effort (as opposed to a totally annoying and ineffective whining noise), I can roll him over like a body wrapped in a carpet. All I managed this morning was the whining noise and a few feeble kicks before I fell back asleep. We woke up together a few hours later. The first thing he said was, "Ew! Ha-Ha, you slept here on purpose!" :: website ::
BRIAN MINTER
Uptown Girls and Crosstown Trains On Saturday some friends of mine were in town from DC. It was their first trip to New York. They spent the day shopping and sightseeing, and after work I met them for dinner, at a fancy little restaurant near their hotel on the Upper West Side. It was all very uptown. "Are we going out?" they asked. I said yes, of course, but not here, because it was too uptown. "We're going to the East Village." Kristen didn't want to go that far, because she's completely uptown, but Liz talked her into it, because she's a little bit downtown. The first place we went was okay, but we didn't stay long. Then we walked around for a long time, and Kristen's feet started to hurt, so we went into a bar at random. I didn't know anywhere to go dancing, so Liz asked the bartender. Then we went to get pizza, but by then it was pretty late, and everyone wanted to go home. I felt sort of bad about that. "I'm sorry," I said. "I don't really know my way around New York yet." "We know," they said. Then they went back uptown in a cab, waving drunkenly, and I took the train home to Brooklyn. :: website ::
CLAIRE ZULKEY
On the 17th, my snobbery and laziness got the better of me. After a long day out doing Adult things, I had the option of going out to see a concert at a club with my boyfriend and some people I don't really know. Concerts can be a drag. Clubs can be noisy and smoky. Getting to know people in a noisy, smoky place is just about impossible. I stayed home and organized my stuff and watched TV. It needed to be done but I wish I had gone out. Not to the club but somewhere so I didn't feel like a loser as I listened to the parties rumbling around my apartment building. Is there a place to go out that's not expensive, loud, gropey but fun? The place to go out for people who don't really want to go out? Let me know. I'll see you there on Saturday. :: website ::
CHERYL HUBER
April 17, 2004 was about secrets. I felt all these THINGS, mostly icky things, but I couldn't really talk to anyone about them. The first real day of spring:
JENNY MILLER
9 a.m. -- Awakened by a herd of dogs running through the house. Shout obscenities. 10:30 a.m. --Write a story about a foolhardy excursion in the great outdoors. And existential ennui. And a cat named Kitty. 12:15 p.m. -- "With the second pick of the 2004 WNBA draft, the Washington Mystics select Alana Beard, of Duke." 1 p.m. -- Walk downtown, pass many drunks and crazies and mentally challenged individuals. I am saddened by the thought of them as not-yet-screwed-up children. Discover a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my bag, and eat it. 1:45 p.m. -- Sharkey's Cafe. I read the news today, oh boy. Am disappointed to find my gauva and mango smoothie tastes like dirt. 3 p.m. -- Am disappointed to find both the men's and women's clothes at the Gap still suck. All men's shorts are now equipped with designated cellphone pockets. How gay that is, I thought, with my third grade vocabulary. 4 p.m. -- Extended conversation with Bob about family guilt. 7 p.m. -- Extended conversation with a guy I'd just met about rape scenes in movies. 9 p.m. -- The streets are crowded with people enjoying the first warm night of the year. A tiny gay man is walking his gigantic pit bull. 9:15 p.m. -- Dine alone at the Black Cat. Eavesdrop on nearby table talking about my hometown. I am very defensive about my hometown, but am too out of sorts to defend it at this time. 10 p.m. -- Fall asleep on the bus, surrounded by drunks and and crazies and mentally challenged individuals. Miss my stop. 11 p.m. -- Bother my housemates while they wait for a pizza. Try on each of housemate's large collection of jackets. 11:30 p.m. -- Lie in bed, wondering what I will write about my day. Determine that I will not mention anything I ate. :: website ::
JOE JANDA
On Saturday I had big plans to go to a casino and win enough money to pay off all my debts. I woke up feeling lucky. I even did some work in the morning, and by noon I was spiffed up and ready to go play high roller. My gambling team, hand-picked for their enthusiasm and lack of fiscal restraint, one by one buckled under a kind of pre-gambling-guilt. Also, it was beautiful outside. And so the sun saved my paycheck from blackjack doom. I went shopping, and spent it on things I absolutely needed. The casino would have made a better story either way. Age makes one boring.
MEREDITH BRAGG
My handstamp could not disguise the fact that I had dirt under my nails from gardening. There are few things less indie-rock than gardening -- perhaps being an Avon salesman, but even then you are DIY. Believe me, I tried and tried to get all the evidence of mulching out, but soil has a way of finding every recess. I tried to compensate. I hung out with the cool kids. Sang along word for word. Drank gin. I know I wasn’t fooling anyone. I spent the better part of the day mowing, gardening and generally boosting the curb appeal of my duplex with my wife. We went to Home Depot, watched our cats rub their faces against window screens, talked to our neighbors about lawn care and thoroughly enjoyed the wonderful weather. Truth be told, if I didn’t like The Beauty Pill so much I wouldn’t have gone indoors. The Unsustainable Lifestyle indeed. :: website ::
ELIZABETH EDWARDS
A gorgeous Saturday- - the sort of day imbued with possibility from first light. We went to bed early-ish Friday night, and woke with the perking coffee and the sun streaming in through the covered windows. Waking up next to him in such a joy, lying there in the half-wake watching him in his half-sleep, his tousled blond head next to mine. It feels like forever, you know? This weekend was the Boneyard Arts Festival, and we decided to wander downtown in search of lunch on the newly-opened patio of Cowboy Monkey. We were an hour too late - they ran out of food at 2 -- not good planning on such a weekend. Apparently they weren't the only downtown business to make this mistake, so we ended up with sandwiches and coffee at one of my favorite coffeeshops. I love these days between spring and summer -- the days when everyone turns out to the park or the street or the cafe to soak up the first few days of warmth. We sat there for a long time, eating and reading and observing and just being quiet together. When we got home I took an afternoon nap, brought on by the warmth and sun and ease. The evening brought flip-flop shopping, diner food, and Kill Bill: Vol. 2. We dug through bins of sandals at Wal-Mart, each emerging with two pairs. Just outside the sliding doors we cast off our much-worn and beloved sandals, slipping on new flips that looked suspiciously like the old. The movie was good -- better than expected -- and I burrowed down in his grey jacket, holding his hand. We meant to stop for pie and coffee at the diner on the way home, but ended up with breakfast-for-dinner and the most attentive waitress ever. He expressed his disdain for the word "autobiographical," saying that true autobiography is fiction in and of itself. I suggested replacing "autobiographical" with "based on a true story," which I think would jazz up so many things. And then nighttime came and I fell asleep while he read. On days like this it's impossible to keep from getting totally lost in love. :: website :: |