Once upon a time a season changed perceptibly from the hot passionate roller coaster of summer to the sober, pensive, emotionally raw fall. The people walking under the trees felt the leaves begin to die, though nothing let go yet. Nothing withered visibly. It was merely a change in the air, a death of such smallness, nobody actually registered what it was. Only they began stuffing sweatshirts and cardigans into the backseats of their cars next to balled up beach towels and sandy sticky grocery bags.
The ice cream truck circles the playground, a great white shark, and the music tinkles eerily, but the children cling to their mother's legs, and the toys in their hands tremble a little, but then they turn back to the game and the chalked out pavement, and the man behind the wheel knows his dominion is coming to an end.
It is this grand switchover that is my favorite time of year.
I love what power the wind begins to threaten.
It gets so strong and mischevious, pulling dogs down alleyways, birds like paper trash flapping and darting between branches and cars.
Couples stroll down the brick walkways, the heat no longer separating them with a layer of disgust, they let their bodies drift a little closer. She lets the breeze coil her hair around her and in his eyes. He lets the jacket whip around him, and thrill his arms with an idea of how much wings could weigh. They lean toward each other, wrap around like garments, button limb to limb and something in the air makes the other smell like promise and excitement and fear and plummeting and before the stomach can drop much further the kiss is already happening. Stunning. It's still out there. It's still making everyone crazy. It's just different. Falling in love in autumn is like nothing else in the world.
I miss maine at this time more than anything else.
Ah...such a good time to listen to the cure and daydream.
For now...i take it. The first shiver. And welcome it like the return of an old friend.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Bread Muse
Strange things happening as this summer begins to saunter more sedately down serious paths and treads with a step slightly wiser than may or june.
Beautiful...the way a moon in august is more like a pearl earring softly resting against the hollow of a smooth neck. Less sensual like the rotund bead of sweat moon from early july, not searing and dangerous like the red moons of october.
Running.
Running becoming part of me.
I like it. I like how strong it makes me feel, how capable. I like that I feel my body working for me, with me, and under me. My command and it falls like tree limbs, or roots i suppose, maybe not a tree at all but the wind in the tree. Nonsense. It's okay though. It's late, and my dreams are not a place I wish to return tonight.
The bakery.
I prop the door open during my late night shift. After Sara, the other night girl leaves, it's just me, the oven and the radio.
At ten, I take a breather. The last of the sour doughs is loaded. I have ten minutes before I should really finish mixing my starters and begin cleaning the place. The rocky soundtrack comes on the radio, and I take a hot, soft olive roll from the cooling rack, tear it into steaming halves and dip one in the reserved oil from this afternoon's garlic roasting pot. Sara left half a blood red tomato on the counter and I smash it between the hunks of warm bread, a clumsy pinch of salt, and I eat my dinner leaning against the open door watching clouds dart across the moon. My nails thick with paste, skin heavy under a mantle of sweat and oil and flour, clothes dusted white, legs aching, and this moment of solitude is perfect.
The first timer on the bread goes off.
I take a deep breath.
Jam the rest of the sandwich in my mouth, and on the way back to the oven I hear eye of the tiger begin. This is when my job feels like a fucking event. I jump up, grab the huge peel from the top of the oven, and crank open the top deck. The blast of heat whacks me in the face with the dry, slightly sour smell of the bread. Yeah bitches, it's plebian, it's a dirty job, it's hard and it makes me as energetic as a bowl of oatmeal when I get home, but at the end of the night, when I push the cooling racks out into the hallway and lock the door, I saw the genesis of something all the way through, and I can go home and sleep and battle the fucking mental chess pieces with a giant wooden peel.
Beautiful...the way a moon in august is more like a pearl earring softly resting against the hollow of a smooth neck. Less sensual like the rotund bead of sweat moon from early july, not searing and dangerous like the red moons of october.
Running.
Running becoming part of me.
I like it. I like how strong it makes me feel, how capable. I like that I feel my body working for me, with me, and under me. My command and it falls like tree limbs, or roots i suppose, maybe not a tree at all but the wind in the tree. Nonsense. It's okay though. It's late, and my dreams are not a place I wish to return tonight.
The bakery.
I prop the door open during my late night shift. After Sara, the other night girl leaves, it's just me, the oven and the radio.
At ten, I take a breather. The last of the sour doughs is loaded. I have ten minutes before I should really finish mixing my starters and begin cleaning the place. The rocky soundtrack comes on the radio, and I take a hot, soft olive roll from the cooling rack, tear it into steaming halves and dip one in the reserved oil from this afternoon's garlic roasting pot. Sara left half a blood red tomato on the counter and I smash it between the hunks of warm bread, a clumsy pinch of salt, and I eat my dinner leaning against the open door watching clouds dart across the moon. My nails thick with paste, skin heavy under a mantle of sweat and oil and flour, clothes dusted white, legs aching, and this moment of solitude is perfect.
The first timer on the bread goes off.
I take a deep breath.
Jam the rest of the sandwich in my mouth, and on the way back to the oven I hear eye of the tiger begin. This is when my job feels like a fucking event. I jump up, grab the huge peel from the top of the oven, and crank open the top deck. The blast of heat whacks me in the face with the dry, slightly sour smell of the bread. Yeah bitches, it's plebian, it's a dirty job, it's hard and it makes me as energetic as a bowl of oatmeal when I get home, but at the end of the night, when I push the cooling racks out into the hallway and lock the door, I saw the genesis of something all the way through, and I can go home and sleep and battle the fucking mental chess pieces with a giant wooden peel.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Vampires too hate sand in their picnic lunches
I'm feeling bret easton ellis withdrawal symptoms.
I have the desperate need to consume cocktails in the afternoon. I never want to take my sunglasses off, even in the midst of afternoon downpours. My lust for new items is beginning to consume me. My social commitments, starting in about a week's time, will exhaust me, and I simply have no host of vapid, soulless trend mongrels to lap up my uber savvy whinge-fests.
With all that being said, it's been a couple of years, BEE, time to dump another mind-bending, culture schlock, pain tome on the slavering masses.
Solitude...
like my daily multivitamin, is beginning to give me a vague sense of nausea, and I'm afraid I'm forgetting what either one is good for anymore.
I feel so removed from all things as they happen. Perhaps this is the preferred state of the author. I should, by all rights and purposes be writing my flour addled brain out. It's not as if I have an abundance of cognitive challenges in my current line of work. In fact, I am at the point where i no longer feel present in the bakery for most of my time there. I measure out the recipes, assess whether my employers are suffering any breakdowns and, provided the air is mostly clear, my conscious mind climbs out of my skull and goes walkabout. In the rare instances it does stick around it gets so bored, I find myself telling long wandering stories (not that I don't do that anyway) but I've begun tossing in full blown lies just to keep myself entertained.
I know how this one ends, I think petulantly, blah blah blah, and he frog walked out of the gymnasium on tiptoe...I might as well toss in a blood spattered pair of sneakers by the locker room, or some missing electrical tape-oh what the hell-"so that's when his crotch hemorrhaged and we had to use a back pack to keep back the fountain of blood nevermind Mr. Brault battling the vultures with an improvised jockstrap slingshot..."
I suppose I'm doing my brain absolutely no good coming home after work and watching Weeds online until I'm too tired to keep my eyes open anymore. Meh.
In other news, Bob and I are watching Roman Polanski's 1967 film The Fearless Vampire Killers. It's freaking hilarious. I think we have to find it for owning sometime. How our collection managed to survive this long without it is beyond me. It is a bit unnerving to see Sharon Tate in all her redheaded, 60's glamour, but Polanski himself is actually foil to the Professor Helsingish Vampire hunter in the movie, and he's just so bumbling and adorable and hilarious you can't help being sucked in (oh dear god I didn't see the pun until it was in writing, forgive me).
Life consists of gueurilla pastry gifting...doorknobs beware lest ye bear such strange fruits as scones, croissants and oatmeal cinnamon raisin rolls. I gave my downstairs neighbor a loaf of garlic sourdough, and she told me to swing by the edgewater for a margarita. I guess this means she's not a vampire.
Also running in the morning down by the willows I enjoy the views of Salem's fattest; the yacht club, SUV driving, oversized sunglass camouflaged trash rubbing shoulders with hispanic barbecue parties at ten in the morning with lots of little girls with incredibly long dark hair in many variations of ponytail screeching and running while fast food trash blows by like tumbleweeds amongst the geriatric ocean gazers literally out to pasture while their scrub-clad caretakers smoke and curse by the arcade. I run beside bitchy girls on cell phones slumping off to the filthy beach, beer bellied fathers giggling as their yoohoo bellied sons taunt the seagulls, every variety of soccer mom running faster than me, and the somehow still pure and perfect tiny children toting sand buckets, eating popsicles, digging at their ill-fitting bathing suits and crying while their parents rub gallons of sunscreen into their flesh.
This is summer in massachusetts.
I have the desperate need to consume cocktails in the afternoon. I never want to take my sunglasses off, even in the midst of afternoon downpours. My lust for new items is beginning to consume me. My social commitments, starting in about a week's time, will exhaust me, and I simply have no host of vapid, soulless trend mongrels to lap up my uber savvy whinge-fests.
With all that being said, it's been a couple of years, BEE, time to dump another mind-bending, culture schlock, pain tome on the slavering masses.
Solitude...
like my daily multivitamin, is beginning to give me a vague sense of nausea, and I'm afraid I'm forgetting what either one is good for anymore.
I feel so removed from all things as they happen. Perhaps this is the preferred state of the author. I should, by all rights and purposes be writing my flour addled brain out. It's not as if I have an abundance of cognitive challenges in my current line of work. In fact, I am at the point where i no longer feel present in the bakery for most of my time there. I measure out the recipes, assess whether my employers are suffering any breakdowns and, provided the air is mostly clear, my conscious mind climbs out of my skull and goes walkabout. In the rare instances it does stick around it gets so bored, I find myself telling long wandering stories (not that I don't do that anyway) but I've begun tossing in full blown lies just to keep myself entertained.
I know how this one ends, I think petulantly, blah blah blah, and he frog walked out of the gymnasium on tiptoe...I might as well toss in a blood spattered pair of sneakers by the locker room, or some missing electrical tape-oh what the hell-"so that's when his crotch hemorrhaged and we had to use a back pack to keep back the fountain of blood nevermind Mr. Brault battling the vultures with an improvised jockstrap slingshot..."
I suppose I'm doing my brain absolutely no good coming home after work and watching Weeds online until I'm too tired to keep my eyes open anymore. Meh.
In other news, Bob and I are watching Roman Polanski's 1967 film The Fearless Vampire Killers. It's freaking hilarious. I think we have to find it for owning sometime. How our collection managed to survive this long without it is beyond me. It is a bit unnerving to see Sharon Tate in all her redheaded, 60's glamour, but Polanski himself is actually foil to the Professor Helsingish Vampire hunter in the movie, and he's just so bumbling and adorable and hilarious you can't help being sucked in (oh dear god I didn't see the pun until it was in writing, forgive me).
Life consists of gueurilla pastry gifting...doorknobs beware lest ye bear such strange fruits as scones, croissants and oatmeal cinnamon raisin rolls. I gave my downstairs neighbor a loaf of garlic sourdough, and she told me to swing by the edgewater for a margarita. I guess this means she's not a vampire.
Also running in the morning down by the willows I enjoy the views of Salem's fattest; the yacht club, SUV driving, oversized sunglass camouflaged trash rubbing shoulders with hispanic barbecue parties at ten in the morning with lots of little girls with incredibly long dark hair in many variations of ponytail screeching and running while fast food trash blows by like tumbleweeds amongst the geriatric ocean gazers literally out to pasture while their scrub-clad caretakers smoke and curse by the arcade. I run beside bitchy girls on cell phones slumping off to the filthy beach, beer bellied fathers giggling as their yoohoo bellied sons taunt the seagulls, every variety of soccer mom running faster than me, and the somehow still pure and perfect tiny children toting sand buckets, eating popsicles, digging at their ill-fitting bathing suits and crying while their parents rub gallons of sunscreen into their flesh.
This is summer in massachusetts.
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