Filed under: Photography
Feeling This Way
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
I was halfway to somewhere when I checked my voicemail and discovered that no one would be there. And I was left stuck in traffic, slightly harried because I rushed out of the office in order to be on time.
I sat in a cafe and glowered over a cup of coffee and finished the last story in a collection. I didn’t need caffeine at 5:30 in the evening, but it seems more reasonable than paying for a tea bag and hot water in a cup.
Last week I told a friend that I’ve grown more emotional over the past year or so. Not PMS, just easily touched by people, by the news, by certain songs on the radio. I find my eyes welling up as I drive down the road, and I can’t help it. This, coming from the girl, who in middle school refused to cry over Romeo & Juliet.
And so it had been that kind of day. It was sunny and breezy and beautiful and the employees of the parking garage were whistling as usual, but someone had turned up the volume on my emotions and I almost had to put my hands over my ears to quiet them.
Then the voicemail just pushed me into stopping. I drove home and checked the mail. The postman had delivered an air mail letter from Europe to my house instead of the same numbered house a street over. I decided to walk over, sandals unfastened, to hand deliver the letter. I shook hands with a man, two children running about, a tricycle on the path to the front door.
As I walked back, I thought that there were all these things I could now do, but I didn’t want to do any of them. Instead I ironed most of my wrinkled pile of clean clothes, my voice escaping out the screen door as I sang along perhaps too loudly to Patty Griffin.
Green Grass
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
I straddled my bike waiting for the light to turn green. I could hear a siren off in the distance. It grew closer and as the lights turned, I looked to the left and saw an ambulance barreling down the street I wanted to cross. And so, I waited.
The woman in the little red car next to me however, apparently had places to be. She shot me a dirty look and sped across the intersection, a few seconds before the ambulance. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I yelled after her, surprised at myself, because normally I don’t vocalize my irritation. But this was involuntary. I couldn’t help myself.
I remembered a few years ago when I lived in Spain. I was walking up the sidewalk and saw an ambulance emerge from a small street, its siren blaring, being blocked and ignored entirely by two cars pointed in opposite directions, whose drivers had realized they knew each other and had stopped to chat. In that situation, I looked on in shock and surprise, thinking, “Is this how they do things in Europe?”
In this situation, I was just angry. The day was beautiful, the weather just right. I’d been up to Mount Bonnell enjoying the breeze and the view. And I was going to have a lovely afternoon, my pink towel on the grass, a book in my hands, my hair drying off from a local pool. But still, in that moment, I wanted to catch up to that car, bang on its windows and throw a small tantrum.
Luckily, I was too far behind. Instead I went home, made a mango-banana milkshake, chatted with my father on the phone and forgot all about it, until just now.
Ocean
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
7:01 PM
“Hello, hello. Well, I don’t know where you are, but you have a right to be wherever you are. Whatever, you’re doing, have a good one.”
[For the record, I was at a crosswalk, biking back from the supermarket with a backpack full of bananas, two mangos, a white onion, and fresh mozzarella cheese, searching through my bag trying to find my cell phone.]
Marigold Scent on my Fingers
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
Piece I: My high heels make a comforting sound as I stride across hallways and sidewalks. Somehow the click and clack of the heels against hard ground gives a purpose to my walk. High heels and a skirt are enough to allow me to feign being an adult. Later it’s amusing when I have to navigate expanses of dirt to get to a picnic table or the wide slats in my porch. Then I lose all professionalism and turn into a screwball comedy waiting to happen.
Piece 2: The air conditioning in my car is the same temperature as the air outside. I ride with the windows down and sweat beads forming on my forehead, gasping for a breeze as I switch between NPR and KGSR. When I get in the car and the heat immediately fogs up my glasses. I have to wipe them off on my shirt. And it’s only May. Somehow I made it through last summer.
Piece 3: I spent the early evening sitting at a picnic table in a park helping a 12-year-old girl write a letter to her mother for Mother’s Day. As we returned to the car, we observed a man performing stretching exercises in sporty spandex on the grass.
“Look,” said the girl, “He’s flexible. Either that or he’s gay.”
I began to extoll the virtues of stretching before exercise, because I’d already launched many times before into the theme that you can’t control who you fall in love with. She looked at me and nodded complacently and I wondered if she was listening. On the other hand, I like this idea that by being homosexual you are automatically bestowed with the gift of flexibility.
Piece 4: I just finished the last episode of the last season of Northern Exposure, which I’ve been renting from Netlix for maybe six months now. I’ve had the DVD at my house for almost a month, but I just couldn’t bear to watch the last episode, just like all of a sudden slowing down when you reach the final pages of a good book. I sat on my couch, sniffling a little, listening to the theme music and watching the credits, feeling overwhelmingly sad. Who knew it would be so hard to say goodbye to characters on a TV show?
