Filed under: Austin, Photography, Rain, Seasons, Texas, The Kindness of Strangers
Wet Mid-Afternoon; Can’t Distinguish Days
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
The wind started howling in the wee hours of the morning when I should have been asleep. It made me happy to snuggle further into the warmth of my comforter. The rain tapped harshly against the windows and I felt as though I was in the prow of a ship sluicing through heavy waves, being rocked into slumber. As my eyelids fluttered, my cell phone started buzzing with a text-message from my ex-boyfriend warning me not to drive on the roads the next day because my tires needed replacing and Austinites don’t know how to deal with the cold.
I woke up to morning, the outside world hidden by foggy windows. I lay in my comfortable bed and tried to convince myself that I was sick and couldn’t go to work. But since I wasn’t, I found myself desperately checking bus schedules and running — a microwaved burrito bursting in my hand — to catch the bus with seven minutes to spare.
The good thing about being on the verge of missing something is that you focus less on the weather, pretending that like a superman you can just dash through it and it won’t affect you at all. A car passed me and then backed up and rolled down its passenger window. “Do you need a ride?” the driver asked.
I stood contemplating this question because this was one of those things you are supposed to say no to by pure instinct, just like you say no to strangers offering you lollipops. I calculated how many more blocks at I had to run before I reached the bus stop and how many minutes I would have to wait if I missed the bus.
“Yes, please, thank you” I said gratefully opening the door. “Good,” she said, smiling, “It’s cold outside.” It was then I raised my cold hands to feel my cold cheeks, burnt by the wind and probably as pink as my winter hat with ear flaps. Thirty seconds later she deposited me on a street corner and I emerged revelling in the fact that not all strangers want to eat you for dinner garnished with paprika and parsley. In fact some just want to be nice and helpful, as amazing as it may sound.
Students stood against the fence, huddling, trying to crawl into themselves for heat. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and pulled my hat down tighter over my wet hair. The wind whistled. This is the kind of weather that must make Texans dream of Costa Rica. The skies opened up and hard rain began to fall, bouncing on the street aggressively. A smartly-dressed girl opened up her pocket umbrella and offered me half of the space underneath as we shivered and laughed at ourselves, balls of rain pinging off our shoulders. I watched a tall man gallantly offer another girl space under his massive umbrella. And we waited.
The bus was warm and felt damp with everyone’s breath. I could barely see out the window as fuzzy landmarks and signs floated by. I found myself sighing before I could stop myself from the strain of cold weather.
Today is the kind of day when you should be obligated to stay inside and slurp tomato soup and crank the heat up, surrounded by all the colorful plants that until last night lived prosperously outside your front door, only venturing outside to make sure the tomato plant — which only in the last few weeks began to grow fruit — is still alright. I only think this way because you forget that winter exists when you live in Texas, when yesterday it was 80 degrees and I sweated in a short-sleeve shirt.
Fig
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
Someone else’s grocery list found on the ground by the grocery carts one evening after dark:
1. Sugar
2. Brown Sugar
3. Veggie Burgers
4. Bread
5. Chicken Nuggets
6. Eggs
7. Yogurt
8. Ham
9. Frozen Vegetables
10. 3 lbs Chicken
11. Limes
12. Arborio Rice
13. Green Olives
Gashes
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
I am making curlicue pasta. Water is boiling on the stove while I set about opening a tiny can of garlic tomato sauce. This should be easy, but the can opener keeps getting stuck.
Violent red sauce splats over the table and the butter dish as I wrestle with the machine against the can. I don’t think either are on my side. The edges are jagged from my efforts.
Finally, wiping my forehead, I put the can opener away and reach for a fork to ease the lid up. It resists me. I realize that bits of metal still attach it to the can on two sides.
I register that Paul Simon has started singing “Father & Daughter” on the radio as I try to pressure the top of the can from underneath with the fork. The cheap utensil bends under the pressure, splaying its poor prongs in every direction possible.
And I remember being a child in the single digits, little but old enough to be partially trusted with sharp tools. The sun had set and the kitchen glowed yellow. I was making dinner for our sweet mutt, opening a can of dog food for her.
The can opener wouldn’t go all the way around and I yelled this to my papa. He told me to wait, that he’d come help. I, of course, ignored his sage advice and kept fiddling with the lid. Pushing the fork underneath and prodding about, trying to lift it with my fingers.
As I tried to convince the can to yield to me, it sliced my hand right down the palm. It was one of those superficial cuts that stings momentarily to make way for blood to gush out. My recollection is that I didn’t cry and I didn’t make a fuss, but instead I watched the red flowing out of my hand, fascinated.
Tonight my father can’t come running to help staunch the blood, as I watch intrigued while it eats up the paper towel in my hand and our family dog looks on smiling and panting and waiting for food.
Instead I opt to return to the can opener and fight the tomato sauce that way. Maybe I didn’t cry then, but I might cry now. Besides as I clean the tomato sauce off the table, it looks a little like thick drops of blood.
Filed under: Austin, By Darkness of Night, By Light of Day, Imagination, Photography, Riding in Cars, Urban Landscapes
Cold Sky
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
At night I drive past a vacant lot hiding between glittering stores and condos that all remind me of Starbucks. Usually I pay the black hole no mind, but fixate instead on the sign for pizza beckoning me on the other side of the emptiness and every time I pass I think, “I’ll have to try that place out one of these days.”
Last week as I drove down this curvy road, tall shapes emerged in the hazy darkness, running parallel to each other. The Italian restaurant shone in the beyond and I envisioned that they were lining an avenue with poplar trees still wrapped and bulky in burlap. “What a beautiful idea” I thought, “To consider filling space with green instead of more buildings.” Imagine, to sip on a cappuccino on a patio overlooking those trees.
The boring reality is that those columns are concrete posts getting ready to support another condo. But after the sun has set — at least until construction gets underway — it’s possible to pretend otherwise.
Filed under: Parking Lots, Photography, Riding in Cars, Small Things That Take on Epic Proportions, Supermarkets, Thanksgiving, The Petty Grievance Department
It’s All About You
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
Note to self: Never ever think it’s okay to go to a supermarket the day before Thanksgiving.
Luckily, I was in a good mood. It was 2:30 in the afternoon on a pleasantly warm and pleasantly breezy day and I felt excited for no particular reason. Perhaps it was because the sunny was shining happily but not excessively and I’d just got off work hours early. I thought that I’d just pop by the market to pick up cranberry habanero jam to bear as a gift from Austin to my mother in Phoenix.
I pulled into a parking lot that served not only the supermarket but half a dozen other stores. Initially I failed to notice all the vehicles hovering about. Yes, like hawks. Waiting for their prey. Slowly stalking old ladies slowly pushing shopping carts full of groceries back to the trunks of their cars. Hands ready to flick on the blinkers at the right moment. Foot ready to gun the gas should anyone try to steal the newly opened precious parking space.
I didn’t notice. I was thinking blithely about Willie Nelson’s voice on the radio, wondering whether I should roll down my window because the car was warming up pretty quick under the sun. I took a left into a row of parking. No spaces. Not unusual. Then I noticed the SUVs parked in the emergency lanes. Not only were there no parking spaces, but all the illegal spots had also been canvassed. “Give it time,” I thought, “Just be patient. Something will open up.”
A woman loaded her children and bulging paper bags into a large minivan. “Ah ha!” I thought, then saw the sign: this spot was for families with children only. Just like getting on the plane. Thwarted! My car slunk on, devoid of the necessary rambunctious youngsters to win me the spot.
Every available bit of empty space had been snatched up. Claustrophobic with empty shiny vehicles, the two-way lanes now barely accomodated a compact car. Us car drivers smiled at each other, but in our hearts we knew that we’d sell our sister (or theirs) for a parking spot. The smiles were crafty. We were going to win this game.
I circled the lot, flapping my wings, eyeing the possibilities, zooming down on shoppers exiting the store. As I inched over a crosswalk, a pedestrian — who had decided that he’d avoid the crosswalk entirely — looked at me and glared. I glared back. This was taking up precious time, this waiting for him to cross.
And I thought that it was funny (somewhat) that on a daily basis as we all play both pedestrian and motorist, we entrench ourselves fully in whichever role we happen to be performing at the time. But it was only partially funny because right now I was tapping my right foot, ready to let up on the clutch with my left, waiting. This man was determined to dawdle, as though walking was like chewing your food twenty times before swallowing.
They did a study in prisons, switching guards with prisoners and they took on the characteristics and the power plays of their new positions. Just like that, we fume in irritation at the pedestrian who runs across the street in front of us when our light is already green. Ten minutes later, emerging from the parking garage, we bubble over in rage as a car takes a right turn on red just as we’re stepping into the street. You just can’t help it.
Finally, he reached the other side. I gave myself a reality check and gave up. I parked instead on a side street several blocks away. I had allowed myself to feed into the parking hysteria, but I was in a good mood and didn’t want that bubble to break. So now, from a hawk to a field mouse. At least I could switch roles and irritate the motorists with my blatant disregard of all painted arrows as I scampered to and fro.
Inside the supermarket, people overwhelmed the bulk grains and the Granny Smith apples. Little boys ran across the aisles like grapes falling off a table. Shopping carts narrowly missed each other. Grandmothers examined the different available yams and cans of pumpkin innards. Fathers simultaneously opened the freezer to check out different brands of pie crust.
For a moment I couldn’t think, as though needing to wait to allow one’s eyes to adjust to a sudden change in light. I watched the scene as though it was on a TV screen and I had nothing to do with it. I had to remember my mission. Normally this store enchanted me with its beautiful products. I could spend minutes falling in love with the goat cheese section. Going in to buy bananas often resulted me in me coming out with a new butter dish. That’s just how it was.
But not today. My normal inability to prevent excessive purchases of products I didn’t need had vanished, at least for the afternoon.
I gathered my strength and made sure my buoyant enjoyment of being out of work early was fully zipped on and I floated through to the correct aisle. I reached up and grabbed the jam I had in mind without any contemplation and I walked briskly, zig-zagging through confused shopping carts and their owners to stand behind Ten Items or Less behind an endless line of consumers, some smart enough to bring magazines.
A shopgirl approached me, calming in a subtle mauve sweater. “You can go over there,” she said and led me to the juice bar. The clerk was giving change to a woman with a blueberry flecked smoothie. “Can I help you?” she asked.
I smiled in sheer pleasure and then of course had to fumble several minutes to find my debit card in my purse. Then out I swayed, back into the autumn afternoon, back to the breeze on my face and full of utter gratitude that my shopping list hadn’t been any longer.
Filed under: Feeling It, Letting Go, Morning, Photography, Relationships, Riding in Cars
Man Underneath Clouds
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
This morning started out with black tea swirling tan with condensed milk, with the smell of my sweet car polluting the air, with a tight hug goodbye to my ex-boyfriend, our bodies divided by the corner of the porch, my foot stuck awkwardly against the wrong side. Loosening my foot, I fell slightly and accidently into his leg and felt like I was at a middle school dance. “Have a Happy Thanksgiving,” we told each other.
I gear-shifted off to greet the highway, pushing the cassette mix that a friend had just made me into the tape player and rewinding the Sam Cooke song over and over again, as the tape player made squiggly sounds.
This morning was the kind of bright morning where everything feels more intense. Intense in a humbling way: staring up at a pitch-black sky full of a trillions of vibrating stars. Intense in a vivid way: when the entire world appears as saturated as rain-soaked wood. Intense in a poignant way: where harmonies make your eyes well up and song lyrics punch holes in your heart as you identify with every single word.
The steering wheel was cold against my hands. My pulled-back hair was still wet from the shower. I squinted in the morning sun and stayed in the right lane. The car rumbled and shook a little, adjusting to 65 mph. The highway was beautiful at 8:36 AM and I was smiling and tears were considering forming in my eyes. I kept thinking, “It’s going to be okay.” For once, my brain ceased to worry about how the rest of my life was going to turn out.
I pulled into the parking lot by juvenile court, gathered papers and notes and flipped open my cell phone to answer a call from the office before setting off the metal detectors. I noticed myself again, eleven hours later, driving out of the parking garage near work and heading home, pushing the same cassette tape — made by the most impeccably dressed man I’ve ever met — back into the player. It was too far along to rewind back to Sam Cooke but I could count on Leonard Cohen to make my eyes fuzzy with, “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.”
And I thought about how all the intensity of the world had just flooded back, to drip off sign posts, to hang off my eyes likes weights. The flocks of birds had already gathered hours earlier to begin their nightly acrobatic shows and I hadn’t lifted my head to fall in love with them from my office window. The sky was now black and the other vehicles all around me maintained patience. Maybe they didn’t notice how the highway was stretching itself like a surrealist painting, almost too unbearably much to take in. They simply drove and passed me when I blocked their speed. I kept singing to Leonard Cohen and the thought lodged in me that maybe, just maybe I was finally learning to let go. The light by my doorway switched on as I drove up the driveway.
Filed under: 2004, American Girls, Cartoons, Clothing, Conversation, Korean Boys, Photography
Filed under: 2005, Buda, Photography, Riding in Cars, San Antonio, Texas, Travel
Stereotypical Car Shot
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
It wasn’t until after eating pizza out of a cardboard box on a cliff overlooking a river, that it was discovered that I had never been to San Antonio.
“Oh no?” he said, “Let’s go!”
“Okay!” I said, feeling as though I was playing truth or dare and being double dared to trespass over a crochety neighbor’s fence.
We hopped in the 1960s forest green convertible and sped off through night into the approaching witching hour. The top was down. The wind wrestled my hair into knots. Edith Piaf sang from the radio.
“What do you want to do once we get there?” he asked.
“Drink a milkshake,” I replied. I envisioned some all-night diner, full of smoke and linoleum and bright lights that make you blink.
“I’ll get you back before you have to go to work tomorrow morning.”
I tried to calculate how I would function at work on no sleep. I hadn’t drunk coffee in several years, but maybe tomorrow would be the day to begin the habit anew.
Trucks domineered the highway but we weaved in between them. He drove like a madman but I wasn’t scared. My hair danced in all directions. I felt perfect. I smiled. I didn’t need sleep. If we could just keep driving and driving until we reached the end of the earth and could look over the precipice into nothingness, I would be content. As long as we could turn back around and then keep driving.
Gas stations and sex stores, car dealerships and Taco Cabanas flew past my line of vision.
“Oh no,” he said, twenty minutes outside of Austin, “Oh no.”
There was something wrong with the clutch. Didn’t feel right on his foot. We exited into the Sac-n-Pac parking lot.
“I don’t feel comfortable going any further, not when there’s a chance something could happen,” he said, “Sorry.”
We’d made it to Buda.
“That’s okay,” I said, “I didn’t think San Antonio really existed anyhow.”
“That’s right,” he said, “It’s just a myth.”
We were going to San Antonio but we ended up in Buda. And then we turned around. And the story was taken out of the oven too soon, like forgetting the punchline or that something more exciting is supposed to happen.
I slept some before work, but the next day I reaquainted myself with the jittery euphoria that coffee brings when you’re not used to it.
We never shared that milkshake, but we would always almost have San Antonio.
Filed under: Bagnaia, Directions, Getting Lost, Italy, Perugia, Photography, Relationships, Riding in Cars, Roads, Roma, Rome, Travel
The Long Way Back
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
You’d think, that because you’d been there before, you could get there again without losing yourself in the same nameless streets. But in Italy, all roads lead to Rome even when that’s not where you want to go. Signs pronouncing Roma contradict themselves and point in opposite directions.
My ex-boyfriend was late to pick me up at the Fiumicino Airport in Rome. The wedding guests had all arrived the day before, but I bought my ticket too late and it was significantly cheaper to travel on Sunday instead.
That morning I spent an hour in London drinking a latte as it turned cold and wondering in my journal what the trip would bring and then abruptly boarding my third flight of the day. I was just happy to be moving, it didn’t matter what direction I was moving in.
After finding my bright blue luggage and seeing no one there to greet me, I checked my messages on my cell phone. There was one from him asking me to please just take the train to Perugia, where I’d be picked up and taken to the village of Bagnaia. Turns out the town was not an hour away from Rome, but three. I called the German groom and heard his gruff voice. “What the hell is this about me getting on a train?!” I exclaimed, “He could have mentioned something before I left Austin!”
“Don’t worry,” I was told, “He thought you might check your voicemail in England.” My ex-boyfriend had left that morning after staying up all night with the rest of the jet-lagged crew. He’d taken all the German’s maps and zoomed off into the landscape, finally at harried peace sharing the roadway with like-minded Italian motorists. He arrived as I dozed against hard chairs. The rental car was red, his hair curled in all directions, there were crumbs on the seats, but no food. By the end of this trip my ex-boyfriend would be on his way to being a boyfriend again, but we would be no closer to finding anything in Italy but Rome.
We stayed there wandering until dusk swallowed up the city, we hiked up hills, tripped down stone paths, we drank more coffee, bought more water, took photos in the same photo booth that I’d been in five years earlier with a Brit on the way to an Version Original movie, we stood on a wall after pizza and admired the collosseum. He kissed me as we balanced five feet off the ground leaning our backs into iron wrought fencing. I kissed him back. We looked down and an Indian man stared up at us and asked us for directions. He showed us a hand-drawn map with arrows. We shrugged our shoulders. The man crumpled up the map and left, throwing the paper ball to the ground.
That night we made good time to Perugia pulling into one of its roundabouts at midnight and we sighed a breath of relief upon entering the town. Now it was just 20 minutes to Bagnaia! Or would have been had there been street signs. Instead there were signs pointing to schools, to the hospital, to the church and yes of course, to Rome. The roads were lonely and empty except for prostitutes in flourescent colors. I flipped maps around, looking for some landmark to help me locate ourselves, but nothing. We desperately needed a “You Are Here!” sign, blinking and bright.
“Haven’t we been here before?” I muttered. In sheer exhaustion, I started giggling, then laughing uncontrollably. We pulled up and idled directly in front of a smorgsaboard of signs. Then we noticed two women frozen in the headlights of our car, wearing heavy coats, but quite possibly nothing underneath. “Shall we pick one of them up?” I asked, “Maybe they can tell us where to go?” And then I laughed.
An hour and a half later, through pure luck and pure mishap, through many worried calls from Germans, we pulled into the palazzo parking lot, black bundled shapes of buildings and poplar trees, car wheels on gravel, the radio fizzing out, my breath icing up when it touched the sky, I was still laughing. Inside they told us there was still no hot water but all I wanted was sleep.
After that we thought we’d found the way and sometimes after daily adventures in the countryside we made it back to Bagnaia without much melodramatic turning around. But, this photo was taken after the wedding ceremony and after coffee in the square, the day before we all returned to Rome. I sat in the back while my ex-boyfriend, who I was now sharing a bed with, and his best friend filled up the gas tank and argued over directions. We had taken a wrong turn, gone in the exact opposite direction. And now twenty minutes after we took that turn, we were no closer to Bagnaia.
I sat in the back and ceased to voice my opinion. It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t get us there any sooner. That was in March. And looking at that picture, I remember how I felt. Vaguely content. Vaguely resigned. Vaguely bored. Vaguely excited because after all it was still a part of my adventures in a foreign country. Eventually these would become nostalgic memories in which I romanticised the good, the bad and the ugly into a tale of bemused bittersweetness. I’d remember the trip through the random details and the deja vu emotions that would come to me in the midst of doing something else.
And now in November as I watch my boyfriend turn into an ex-boyfriend again, I keep remembering that trip and that all roads still lead to Rome even when you think you want to go some place else.
Filed under: Age, Confessions, Gray Hair, Photography, Small Things That Take on Epic Proportions
Purple Stripes
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
I found my first gray hair while standing in the bathroom on my 21st birthday. “This is a bit premature, isn’t it?” I thought to myself, as I examined the strand in the mirror. I remembered that my grandpa had a full head of white hair and wondered if somehow this might happen to me by the time I turned 30. Then I forgot about it unless someone staring at my scalp decided to point it out.
Now it generally seems that people either don’t believe that I have gray hairs (they’ve multiplied a few times now, through some combination of genetics and stress I guess, but are most obvious under flourescent lighting) or they are astonished that I’ve done nothing to curb their growing number. Some people echo my sentiment on the matter: they just don’t care.
I had a boyfriend once who took it upon himself — and for some reason I didn’t resist — to cut each one. But then they grew back. And gray hairs are stiffer than the other hairs, so for a while there I was stuck with an inch or two sticking straight up, definitely more obvious than before. And indeed rather silly-looking. I felt like a mad-woman. I swore never to let him near my head with scissors again. And then we broke up not long after. He had no hair on his head at all, so maybe he was just averse to it.
Not too long ago I walked into some salon in the mall for a cheap haircut. The portly man who spent the entire time discussing cocktail drinks with his fellow hairdresser, told me that I could easily straighten my hair if I just bought an iron from Wal-Mart. “Sure,” I said, “But then I’d have to buy a blow dryer too right?” He was silent for a moment and then emitted a pithy laugh.
He lifted my wet hair into his hands and exclaimed, “You have gray hairs! Don’t you want to do something about this?”
“Well,” I replied, “I don’t want to dye my hair. I’m not plucking them. I’m certainly not cutting them. What would you suggest?”
He didn’t say, but began trimming my hair. I’m must have appeared a hopeless case. I already told him my morning routine: shower, brush my hair, pull it back, leave the house. In his world I was already lost.
What I find amusing is that most people think I look young even for my already quite young age (yes, I am a whole quarter of a century old), so I figure, what’s the problem if I have a few distinguishing gray hairs that you can’t see half the time anyway? Besides, what’s so bad about gray hairs? They certainly look great on my grandpa.
