Five For Today...ish
In which I build a tiny something off others' good ideas.
A few weeks back in Joanna Penn Cooper’s excellent Substack, (go subscribe!) she shared "Seven For Today", her own lyric essay that contained a list of 7 noticings over the course of twenty four hours. Joanna adapted the idea from poet, Linda Gregg, who had given the assignment of writing down 6 things that her students noticed over a day. I was immediately drawn in. I'm always interested in how we use other’s ideas and practices as scaffolding for our own build. Seizing something that attracts us and then making it our own, with any adaptions we need. I decided to a tweak because 6 or even Joanna's 7 didn't quite work. I'll try it again but because I wanted to do something, I wrote about 5 unremarkable things over a few days.
Walking briskly toward me, the man in the milky light is tanned and half naked. A cyborgian specimen of a human. He wears puffy Beatz head phones that give him the air of a mission but not one too serious given his nude torso. Despite his whiteness and purpose, I'm not nervous with his approach. (Funny, that. Since I have come to hate the silent white men who run at me full speed, long strides crowding a dark, narrow sidewalk.) I say "good morning," and he replies in kind as he passes by. A strong scent of cologne hangs in humid air. But just for a moment. It's vanished by the time I sniff again. Maybe tomorrow.
The sign says "books on backshelf $.49". I pick one title at random, look at the back cover reviews and flip open. I do this again and again. In minutes, I have a short pile, neat as pancakes. The majority are from the early-2000s published by Algonquin who has a Chapel Hill address. Their reviews are by Newsweek, Vogue, The New York Review of Books...not peer authors as seems to be the current trend. The books aren't marked by any symbol I can see so they don't seem to be remainders. And yet, brand new, spine unbroken, mint leftovers. I wonder how the author of one of these discards would feel if they saw their precious hours reduced to overstock in a bargain bin?
We turn the corner seventy feet from the crosswalk and I see it. A single, flat-topped like an old school rapper, plain vanilla colored mushroom. I'm hearing my friend but considering what it means to forage in the urban wild. I remember that only sixteen species of mushrooms are allowed in the state's restaurants. Could this solo queen be one of those precious few? I have no idea. It looks harmless, meaty even. The next instant, though, it's relegated to the rearview mirror of my brain as we walk off the dusty path toward the main road.
The mini mart has been gone for over a week. But the corner lot were it stood hasn’t been totally unrubbelled. Below the grit of the pulverized brick and uneven blocks of concrete is a layer of flooring. A typical black and white speckle that once supported a neighborhood of dreams and ritual. Bodies waiting to play their numbers or hoping to bum a cigarette. Workers in uniform with an end-of-the-day six pack. Pregnant mothers with a gallon of milk and crumpled dollar bills, shifting swollen feet as they linger in line. In the moment of considering what was, I yearn for a broom. An old-fashioned corn whisk one so I can remove the detritus and imagine the hurried but unimportant everyday bustle once again.
I've only gone a quarter mile when I see a flash of fluorescent green ahead of a setting sun on my dashboard. I glance carefully. Not on the dash, on the hood. A green anole, someone tells me, when I post a photo of it on Instagram. I signal and pull over but not before the tiny hitchhiker crosses the length of the car, determined. I get out and say "shoo!". Useless but what choice do I have with four miles until home? The little lizard darts down the side and I imagine her leaping off into a new wooded home. My daughter would delight with such a pretty pet. But she settles for a blurry photo souvenir when I pull up to the house. The green friend is gone.
a photo I took of the green anole ( a small green lizard) on the hood of my car.
What I’m reading:
“Insecurity is one of the biggest killers of art ,” -Alice Walker via her journals (in a new collection) via The New Yorker here.
Just finished In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. Yowza! Machado is a genius at replicating the fear and desire ying yang that so many survivors experience. Highly unnerving and recognizable. A read that stings.
You know how obsessed I am with friendships. More specifically around how we prioritize (or don’t) and why friendships in our greater community. This piece over at Elle had me thinking, especially this line: “When our cultural norms treat living with friends as a passing phase and our housing is designed for nuclear families, it takes imagination to dream up a life built around friends.” I’d love to hear how you do this: build a life where friends matter.
What’s On My Mind:
I read a terrific op-ed in The San Francisco Chronicle a few weeks back. At the end I clicked on the author’s website link in her bio. There was no way to stay in touch with her listed on the site. No contact page, no socials, no blog to follow. Such a missed opportunity for a writer with a memoir in progress.
However, you make your art or your way in the world, at some point you may want your actions to reach a bigger world. If so, leave a few breadcrumbs, Gretel! Breadcrumbs could be socials on a website or a snipit of a poem in a Story. Maybe a beautiful quote you designed shared on your Facebook. Your Substack link in the signature of your email. A slice of your delicious lemon icebox cake given to a neighbor. Even a sentence about your newest obsession in a catch-up conversation. You get the idea. It’s “marketing”, sure (when you are ready to share Your Big Thing, you have people already invested) but it’s also one more way to build community (who knew cousin Lola loved poetry so much?).
It’s hard to send anything out to the void of the internet but knowing you’re opening this post makes it easier. Thanks for being here.