notes on the next life
This week, in my next life, I want to be the girl at the coffee shop with the boy's name. In this life -- because I'm working on attainable goals -- I'd at least like her verve.
The part of me that's always been an old woman thinks that she may one day regret the cave drawing tattoo that runs the length of her left arm, though perhaps not the more delicate star on her upper right. The star that sits a few inches under a scab on her shoulder, the one she acquired after flying heels over handlebars a couple weeks ago, the one that matches the oval on her chin from the same flight. Or rather, the same crash landing. My inner poorly-permed and chubby thirteen-year-old thinks she's the most fearsome thing she's ever seen and yet can't stop looking. The now-me admires the bear hug she has on the moment, and then immediately regrets the use of the term "bear hug" because it's so grotesquely not the right image.
Last year, her hair was dreaded and blonde. Last week, it was as if a band of meth-crazed fairies had attacked it with pinking shears. Today, it's tucked away under a hat my grandmother would have worn, but she's now acquired a silver grill across the front of her lower teeth and when she smiles a pirate's tooth winks from one of her upper bicuspids.
Something old, something new. And just for the hell of it.
It seems to be all about balance.
Regularly, she takes to the park with a troupe of acrobatic poets who protest the war in Iraq by stacking themselves precariously on the fingertips, shoulders and kneecaps of their compatriots while reciting verse. I've never had the heart to tell them that their tights distract from their message. Color me callow.
She's been to West Africa to help the sick and shares the story without even the faintest breath of a whiff of self-congratulation.
She confesses to a dairy allergy and yet states, "But, you know, I don't have a need to be lactose intolerant."
She's given away the dress she wore to meet the Dali Lama and and admits regret, but sees it as a lesson in detachment.
She tells me that she thinks a group of us once met up at a show, but I don't remember the music she says we saw and I feel plainer for the experience I never banked. (Then again, maybe she's mistaken. And that would be unfortunate, too.)
Conversations with her, over the counter at the coffee shop, feel like really fabulous, but itchy clothes and sometimes, I can't quite hear her and I wonder if she's just a slice off from this physical dimension. A dimension in which I, too, have a nose piercing.
So I'll take her verve. And her seeming fearlessness. Her need to be no one but herself.
But, really, in my next life, I'd also like to be Latin.
The part of me that's always been an old woman thinks that she may one day regret the cave drawing tattoo that runs the length of her left arm, though perhaps not the more delicate star on her upper right. The star that sits a few inches under a scab on her shoulder, the one she acquired after flying heels over handlebars a couple weeks ago, the one that matches the oval on her chin from the same flight. Or rather, the same crash landing. My inner poorly-permed and chubby thirteen-year-old thinks she's the most fearsome thing she's ever seen and yet can't stop looking. The now-me admires the bear hug she has on the moment, and then immediately regrets the use of the term "bear hug" because it's so grotesquely not the right image.
Last year, her hair was dreaded and blonde. Last week, it was as if a band of meth-crazed fairies had attacked it with pinking shears. Today, it's tucked away under a hat my grandmother would have worn, but she's now acquired a silver grill across the front of her lower teeth and when she smiles a pirate's tooth winks from one of her upper bicuspids.
Something old, something new. And just for the hell of it.
It seems to be all about balance.
Regularly, she takes to the park with a troupe of acrobatic poets who protest the war in Iraq by stacking themselves precariously on the fingertips, shoulders and kneecaps of their compatriots while reciting verse. I've never had the heart to tell them that their tights distract from their message. Color me callow.
She's been to West Africa to help the sick and shares the story without even the faintest breath of a whiff of self-congratulation.
She confesses to a dairy allergy and yet states, "But, you know, I don't have a need to be lactose intolerant."
She's given away the dress she wore to meet the Dali Lama and and admits regret, but sees it as a lesson in detachment.
She tells me that she thinks a group of us once met up at a show, but I don't remember the music she says we saw and I feel plainer for the experience I never banked. (Then again, maybe she's mistaken. And that would be unfortunate, too.)
Conversations with her, over the counter at the coffee shop, feel like really fabulous, but itchy clothes and sometimes, I can't quite hear her and I wonder if she's just a slice off from this physical dimension. A dimension in which I, too, have a nose piercing.
So I'll take her verve. And her seeming fearlessness. Her need to be no one but herself.
But, really, in my next life, I'd also like to be Latin.
posted by jill at 7/01/2005 12:48:00 PM
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