We get nearly all of our movies from the library. Why not? They have them. They are free. And the selection is quite diverse. Granted, the movies we check out are not usually new releases, but eventually, things in the rental stores make their way to the library.
Generally this system of requesting movies and picking them up at the bookmobile has worked well for us. Since summer we have caught up on and discovered quite a few really good films and though death seems to always be a theme - major or minor - I am convinced now that this has more to do with our sensitivity to the subject and the fact that death is one of the major life events (now there is an oxymoron), so it crops up a lot.
One thing about obtaining movies through the library that is quite irritating however is the fact that often they turn out to have been not handled very well by other library patrons. Children’s dvds in particular are frequently crusty (with what I decline to imagine although Rob told Katy that the crusty spots we found on a recent selection were buggers). The dvds are often scratched too, and this is true of most cd’s we check out as well. It really gets me to wondering why people are so careless with what is essentially a community asset that they are sharing. Does it come back to the “free” aspect? Things that we are not required to pay for have a lessened value in our eyes?
Rob and I tried to watch the movie Inside Man last night, and it was so hopelessly mauled that by mid movie the dvd player on the computer couldn’t be coaxed into completing the viewing. Frustrating. Moreso for Rob as his Virgoness tendency is to finish all things started whether he finds them interesting or not, so if you have seen the film and know how it ends - please don’t tell me as I know that Rob will find another copy of this movie and I will be watching the whole thing (because he won’t remember enough to just pick up where we left off) again.
Movies in bed on a Friday or Saturday night have become something of a ritual with us. We find new selections to check out by watching the sneak peeks and previews on whatever disc we have checked out. We have found some gems and some stinkers - as is the way of films. Rob has found a few films via the internet and there are some we simply remember from those dark times when neither of us were able to get out to see new movies in the theater and something will jog our memories about previews or reviews that caught our eye at the time and can be checked out to watch now.
Lying in bed and watching a movie is getting to be my preferred way to see them. Getting out to the theater is nice, but not as snuggly. I think we would be asked to leave a theater if we got as comfortable there as we do in the privacy of our bedroom.
It’s interesting, to me, how life has been boiled down to its simplest pleasures to the point that even a hopelessly pitted dvd cannot spoil.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Saturday, March 1, 2008
The Funeral
My third funeral since September was just this last week. People I either didn’t know at all or barely had the time to get to know. This last one was for Fraser, Rob’s father-in-law and Farron and Jordan’s grandfather. It was held at the United Church in Beaverlodge, which is not far from Grande Prairie, and as close to mile zero of the Alaskan Highway as a person can be without being there. The minister was European. Don’t ask me from where. English is his fifth language and as such his accent was fairly hard to place – even for Rob who is generally good at this type of thing. He was not your average Christian minister, bearing in mind here that my experience with Christian means Catholic and when I think “minister”, I see “priest”. He didn’t believe in the idea of being saved. He operates on the principle that we were saved by Christ’s dying on the cross, and our access to heaven was assured by the Resurrection. I found that surprising and refreshing. Surprising because I spent too long living among the Protestants in central Iowa who had this curious habit of disbelief when it comes to this idea of having been saved already, and refreshing because my own Catholic upbringing is so heavily guilt laden and filled with recriminations and doubt of worth. I could almost see myself attending worship if this guy was the minister in charge and if I didn’t suspect that organized religion was organized in the first place for reasons other than promoting the ideas they claim to represent.
Rob was asked to give the eulogy by Shelley’s brother, Jason and Fraser’s nephew, Brian. He did a good job. He’s a Virgo after all and spent time writing and rewriting and running his ideas by me, Jordan, Jason and Cory (Shelley’s nephew) and taking suggestions and incorporating them into revisions he wrote. It was a longer eulogy than one might expect from someone who doesn’t do that sort of thing for a living. I could hear an old man behind me doing that heavy sigh thing that Katy does when she is bored but doesn’t want to risk voicing her opinion. It went on until the man finally muttered to someone nearby, “It’s forty minutes already!” Not Rob’s eulogy, the entire service up to that point. I was a bit annoyed and if my back hadn’t been gripped in a series of agonizing spasms that afternoon, I’d have turned square around and given him the teacher stare I normally reserved for the hell spawn. As if forty minutes was too long a time to give up to remember someone, which for some of them would be the last time they bothered to at all because so many funeral attendees have put the passing behind them almost as soon as they exit the venue in search of the post-funeral chow down.
The church was packed to the point of over-flow with seating set up in the basement for those who couldn’t be squeezed into the main church. Despite that the interment in the very wet, muddy cemetery outside of town was sparsely attended. Just immediate family and close friends while the rest of the mourners scurried ahead to the Rio Grande Hall to snap up the best parking and be first in line for the food. I find just about everything to do with wakes, funerals and funeral dinners – disturbing or disgusting. Peering at corpses who in no way look “natural” or “better than they had in years”. Socializing as though one was attending a family reunion. Eating. As I put it to my mother once during the last of our memorable arguments concerning my refusal to willingly attend funeral dinners – “Someone’s dead. So let’s eat?” I have never attended a single one of these functions since that time that has changed my opinion one iota. Despite this I allowed myself to be coerced into a visitation/wake for Will, my late husband. I spent the evening observing others as they chatted and gave vent to their grief but didn’t feel comforted or able to grieve myself. I gave comfort and was patted on the back for my efforts. And except for the wake and funeral of my 10-year-old cousin, I don’t think I have ever really attended an event where everyone was sad – visibly and demonstratively.
The dinner was held at one of the many community halls that dot the farming communities around Grande Prairie. Rio (Rye-o) Grande hall was a place that Rob could remember attending dances with Shelley. Between each dance couples would stroll around the hall hand in hand waiting for the next record to begin much like I remember doing at the roller skating rink when I was in junior high. Once as he and Shelley were strolling, the widowed mother of a classmate slipped her hand in his other and strolled with them. Shelley teased him about that for the rest of the night.
Family ended up parking on the side of the muddy road, as the parking lot was full and then making their way inside to find the line at the food tables snaking around the outer walls. To the family’s credit, we all cut the line and I filled a plate for Katy. Cheese strips, pickles and Timbits of which she ate the latter two. We didn’t stay long. Everyone was in a hurry to get back to the farm, which was less than two minutes away. People followed and rapidly filled the kitchen to overflowing and then the drinking began.
I have a lot to say about alcohol, given my personal history, but for now I will say that I don’t think much of the practice of funeral “after-parties”. Grief makes a poor mixer. Especially when last will and testament readings are involved.
Things finally began to settle a bit in terms of numbers about 9:30 that evening and by ten it was almost quiet enough for Katy to conk out in Jason’s old bedroom above the kitchen – though how she slept through the variable noise levels that followed with regularity until 7 the next morning, I don’t know because Rob and I didn’t.
I was exhausted enough by 10:30 that I managed to drop off but that was just until Rob woke me at 1:30AM in a cold rage and ready to pack up and head for home. I could see us getting about two hours of the six it takes to make the Fort and then sleeping on the side of the road for some super semi to plow into in the cold dark, so I talked him down until he could sleep. Then I was awake, listening to the inebriated mourners until closing in on four. Apparently, everyone was in bed by seven that morning and though we had planned to get an early start as Rob was going to help Jordan pick up her new car before the dealership closed, he decided that we should sleep in a bit and we did, not getting on the road proper until well after 10AM.
There is talk of a great gathering at the farm again on the May long weekend (Victoria Day) with a bonfire of all of the old out-buildings and yes, more drinking (I should note here that there is a considerable amount of wine left courtesy of Uncle Raymond that is now part of the legacy left for the children and grandchildren and since Ray’s still is intact and fully operational somewhere – there could be even more by May). We are doubtful for this gathering at this point, but things may be different then.
All in all, I am hoping we will have no more sad reasons to revisit Grande Prairie anytime soon.
Rob was asked to give the eulogy by Shelley’s brother, Jason and Fraser’s nephew, Brian. He did a good job. He’s a Virgo after all and spent time writing and rewriting and running his ideas by me, Jordan, Jason and Cory (Shelley’s nephew) and taking suggestions and incorporating them into revisions he wrote. It was a longer eulogy than one might expect from someone who doesn’t do that sort of thing for a living. I could hear an old man behind me doing that heavy sigh thing that Katy does when she is bored but doesn’t want to risk voicing her opinion. It went on until the man finally muttered to someone nearby, “It’s forty minutes already!” Not Rob’s eulogy, the entire service up to that point. I was a bit annoyed and if my back hadn’t been gripped in a series of agonizing spasms that afternoon, I’d have turned square around and given him the teacher stare I normally reserved for the hell spawn. As if forty minutes was too long a time to give up to remember someone, which for some of them would be the last time they bothered to at all because so many funeral attendees have put the passing behind them almost as soon as they exit the venue in search of the post-funeral chow down.
The church was packed to the point of over-flow with seating set up in the basement for those who couldn’t be squeezed into the main church. Despite that the interment in the very wet, muddy cemetery outside of town was sparsely attended. Just immediate family and close friends while the rest of the mourners scurried ahead to the Rio Grande Hall to snap up the best parking and be first in line for the food. I find just about everything to do with wakes, funerals and funeral dinners – disturbing or disgusting. Peering at corpses who in no way look “natural” or “better than they had in years”. Socializing as though one was attending a family reunion. Eating. As I put it to my mother once during the last of our memorable arguments concerning my refusal to willingly attend funeral dinners – “Someone’s dead. So let’s eat?” I have never attended a single one of these functions since that time that has changed my opinion one iota. Despite this I allowed myself to be coerced into a visitation/wake for Will, my late husband. I spent the evening observing others as they chatted and gave vent to their grief but didn’t feel comforted or able to grieve myself. I gave comfort and was patted on the back for my efforts. And except for the wake and funeral of my 10-year-old cousin, I don’t think I have ever really attended an event where everyone was sad – visibly and demonstratively.
The dinner was held at one of the many community halls that dot the farming communities around Grande Prairie. Rio (Rye-o) Grande hall was a place that Rob could remember attending dances with Shelley. Between each dance couples would stroll around the hall hand in hand waiting for the next record to begin much like I remember doing at the roller skating rink when I was in junior high. Once as he and Shelley were strolling, the widowed mother of a classmate slipped her hand in his other and strolled with them. Shelley teased him about that for the rest of the night.
Family ended up parking on the side of the muddy road, as the parking lot was full and then making their way inside to find the line at the food tables snaking around the outer walls. To the family’s credit, we all cut the line and I filled a plate for Katy. Cheese strips, pickles and Timbits of which she ate the latter two. We didn’t stay long. Everyone was in a hurry to get back to the farm, which was less than two minutes away. People followed and rapidly filled the kitchen to overflowing and then the drinking began.
I have a lot to say about alcohol, given my personal history, but for now I will say that I don’t think much of the practice of funeral “after-parties”. Grief makes a poor mixer. Especially when last will and testament readings are involved.
Things finally began to settle a bit in terms of numbers about 9:30 that evening and by ten it was almost quiet enough for Katy to conk out in Jason’s old bedroom above the kitchen – though how she slept through the variable noise levels that followed with regularity until 7 the next morning, I don’t know because Rob and I didn’t.
I was exhausted enough by 10:30 that I managed to drop off but that was just until Rob woke me at 1:30AM in a cold rage and ready to pack up and head for home. I could see us getting about two hours of the six it takes to make the Fort and then sleeping on the side of the road for some super semi to plow into in the cold dark, so I talked him down until he could sleep. Then I was awake, listening to the inebriated mourners until closing in on four. Apparently, everyone was in bed by seven that morning and though we had planned to get an early start as Rob was going to help Jordan pick up her new car before the dealership closed, he decided that we should sleep in a bit and we did, not getting on the road proper until well after 10AM.
There is talk of a great gathering at the farm again on the May long weekend (Victoria Day) with a bonfire of all of the old out-buildings and yes, more drinking (I should note here that there is a considerable amount of wine left courtesy of Uncle Raymond that is now part of the legacy left for the children and grandchildren and since Ray’s still is intact and fully operational somewhere – there could be even more by May). We are doubtful for this gathering at this point, but things may be different then.
All in all, I am hoping we will have no more sad reasons to revisit Grande Prairie anytime soon.
Friday, February 29, 2008
The Art of Playing
Jordan was remarking about her own willingness and ability to play with Katy. A friend had been asking her what it was like to have such a young step-sister and if she found it difficult to play imaginary games with her. Jordan admitted that she did find it hard and wondered when we lose the ability to do that and why. I have to admit that I didn’t have much of an answer for her though I share the dilemma. Katy is always after me to play with her. The game of choice where I am concerned is house, a game I didn’t play much at all when I was a child of five and find in more dull now. Unlike my daughter, I had chores from a young age. Making my bed, picking up my room every night, helping with supper dishes which progressed quickly to the point where at 9 or so, my sister and I were left with the supper remains to clear and wash up. House was not a game. It was a series of lesson designed to prepare me for my life’s eventual part-time and then full-time work. Or at least that is how my parents saw it.
I however that the real reason I lost my ability to play is that in choosing to marry and become a mother, I surrendered my right to down time. I wasn’t able to retreat to my own space anymore because I was sharing it all the time. Before, when I tired of company, conversation, interacting on any level – I could go home. To my apartment or my house. A place that was just mine and where I could do or not, read and write, go for a run or to the mall without taking anyone else’s needs or wants into account. In regards to the children I knew back then, I was much like an aunt or a grandparent in that I could leave when it wasn’t fun for me anymore. You can’t do that when it is your own child.
In terms of imagination, I haven’t lost mine anymore, I think, than Jordan has misplaced hers, it is just a grown-up’s version of one. No matter what we say, we all grow up and become conscious of the world around us. Our needs and interests change to reflect who we are becoming and however similar my imaginings may be to the child I was, I have other ways of expressing and meeting those needs now.
I think too that the grown-up disinterest in play as a child knows it is nature’s way of letting children develop that part of themselves without adult input and interference. Imagine if grown-ups did enjoy the long bouts of play that children demand. Children are already programmed to allow too much to be done for them. Would they develop any true self-interests or ability to think for themselves if bossy parents were inclined to play with them? Maybe that sounds self-serving. Maybe it is self-serving. I don’t remember my parents really playing with me beyond my father teaching me to play ball or my mother reading to me when I was very small. I don’t know that I knew any adults who played with children. So why do I sometimes feel bad that I don’t always play when Katy asks and that I often don’t find what she wants to do interesting?
Last weekend, we built a fort, and I enjoyed doing that with her, but once the fort was built and she wanted to continue playing clubhouse – I wasn’t as interested. And it’s not that I don’t have an imagination or that I don’t engage that side of myself anymore. I can lose myself in a daydream as easily now as I could as a child. I can create stories even more easily than I could way back when. I’m just not interested in being childlike. Which is interesting because isn’t that touted as this great attribute for artists to have? I am not so sure.
Still, an interesting question and on-going conundrum.
I however that the real reason I lost my ability to play is that in choosing to marry and become a mother, I surrendered my right to down time. I wasn’t able to retreat to my own space anymore because I was sharing it all the time. Before, when I tired of company, conversation, interacting on any level – I could go home. To my apartment or my house. A place that was just mine and where I could do or not, read and write, go for a run or to the mall without taking anyone else’s needs or wants into account. In regards to the children I knew back then, I was much like an aunt or a grandparent in that I could leave when it wasn’t fun for me anymore. You can’t do that when it is your own child.
In terms of imagination, I haven’t lost mine anymore, I think, than Jordan has misplaced hers, it is just a grown-up’s version of one. No matter what we say, we all grow up and become conscious of the world around us. Our needs and interests change to reflect who we are becoming and however similar my imaginings may be to the child I was, I have other ways of expressing and meeting those needs now.
I think too that the grown-up disinterest in play as a child knows it is nature’s way of letting children develop that part of themselves without adult input and interference. Imagine if grown-ups did enjoy the long bouts of play that children demand. Children are already programmed to allow too much to be done for them. Would they develop any true self-interests or ability to think for themselves if bossy parents were inclined to play with them? Maybe that sounds self-serving. Maybe it is self-serving. I don’t remember my parents really playing with me beyond my father teaching me to play ball or my mother reading to me when I was very small. I don’t know that I knew any adults who played with children. So why do I sometimes feel bad that I don’t always play when Katy asks and that I often don’t find what she wants to do interesting?
Last weekend, we built a fort, and I enjoyed doing that with her, but once the fort was built and she wanted to continue playing clubhouse – I wasn’t as interested. And it’s not that I don’t have an imagination or that I don’t engage that side of myself anymore. I can lose myself in a daydream as easily now as I could as a child. I can create stories even more easily than I could way back when. I’m just not interested in being childlike. Which is interesting because isn’t that touted as this great attribute for artists to have? I am not so sure.
Still, an interesting question and on-going conundrum.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Leslie
Lately I have been dreaming I am back in university. They are not the typical dreams one has of being back in school. I am not late for a test or trying to drop a class I didn’t know I had or have never been to in order to avoid a failing grade. And I am not naked despite the fact that in several of these dreams I appear to be married or dating Rob – who I not only didn’t know existed back in my real university days, but who was actually married himself at that time and a father of two. In these dreams I am not searching or being pursued. The scenarios are really quite mundane. Going to classes. Working in the dormitory dining hall. Hanging out. Walking around. There is a lot of walking from here to there. Up and down unfamiliar streets, running into people known to me at that time and from my present life as well. One dream stood out for its “dream-like” quality though. I was questing with a group of people – a mix of then and now – in an underground labyrinth straight out of World of Warcraft, creatures and all. And I was pregnant and if that isn’t classic dream-speak, what is? That one memorable dream aside, there is nothing spectacular about these university dreams except for the one constant in all of them. My friend Leslie.
I haven’t seen or heard from Leslie in pretty close to ten years now even though I am almost certain she still lives in Iowa City and is still involved in the art community there. I can’t say really why we fell out of touch. I think though it may have had a lot to do with the fact that by our late twenties/early thirties it was clear that she was the hip in crowd girl who had managed to parlay her bohemian college persona into a Sex minus the City type while I was just a spinsterish Midwestern school marm.
Even in our college days, we were an unlikely friendship match. We met as residents on East 2 of Currier Hall. My roommate was a hometown friend of hers and she lived next door to Sarah, a high school friend of mine. She was a year younger chronologically and years older in style and deportment. Impossibly beautiful with apple cheeks and a rounded nose that most of us outgrow, she smiled from deep inside in a way that produced a magnetic aura. A dancer for years, she was lean and willowy and long. Long neck. Long arms. Longer legs. She would dress herself in thrift shop finds that I don’t imagine mere mortal people ever run across. When I would peruse the thrift store with her, I would find old bowling shirts and men’s suit coats that looked stolen from mortuaries. She would find some darling little Audrey Hepburn cocktail dress.
Still, we called ourselves the “happy co-eds”. The punch line of running joke we had come up with on the way back to the dorm from the library one evening before we realized that if we wanted to accomplish anything by way of study that perhaps we shouldn’t go to the library together. We wasted more time at the library writing mildly pornographic Shakespearean sonnets and talking about boys then we did anything else there. One poem – which I think I still might have somewhere – spoke of “moist loins” and “yielding maidenhoods” was typical of the direction conversations would often turn. I think she was the one who coined the phrase “lost the power of speech” when speaking about sex. As in “he was so good, I lost the power of speech” or “so, did you lose your power of speech with SoNSo last night?” It was from an article in Cosmo magazine that detailed what happens to men and women during an orgasm. According to this article, people lost the power of speech when climaxing. Of course, we found this extremely funny and just a little bit scary and we had little actual experience on which to gauge the veracity of the information. I remember her telling me some time after this that it was only partially true. Her boyfriend’s roommate walked in on them one afternoon during an oral moment, and she related that while she couldn’t verbalize anything coherently – she made herself understood.
Leslie lived the kind of life that the really cool characters in books and movies always seemed to have. The eclectic dwelling spaces with the quirky roommates. Better Funky Homes and Movies Set Gardens décor that she found at estate sales the way she stumbled across clothing finds at the thrift shop. The people she knew were in bands. They were artists and writers and activists. She had cool jobs in galleries or jewelry shops. And men straight out of romance novels pursued her. There was the pottery-making Scotsman from Edinbourough. A gay cheerleader who coveted her natural coolness to camouflage his completely artificial exterior. Her own boyfriend was a former body building interior designer who paid his bills plying the student population with all manner of recreational pharmaceuticals. Not cool in retrospect but in the mid-1980’s that sort of thing still seemed harmless in a TV sitcom sort of way. When we were all still living in the dorm, he did business right out of his room. I sat and watched he and his partner one day as they did their books and remarked that the little ledger would make some prosecuting attorney’s job all that easier someday. The looks on both their faces spoke volumes. Good little Gordon Gecko’s that they were it hadn’t occurred to them that what they say as just good business was a well-spring of potential trail evidence. I never saw that ledger again.
Of all the people I knew in school, and I knew many, many people although I can’t say that too many knew me, she was the one who was the least put off by my sometimes shell-shocked drifting through life exterior. I spent most of my time in university recovering from my teens and shaking off the years I had lived in the shadow of alcoholism. My standard survival mode was turtle and even during college I seldom poked my head out too far. Then, as now even at times, my preferred method of communication was writing. I was still writing. I hadn’t yet been told I wasn’t good enough, often enough, to put it away completely. While my other friends hadn’t time to sit and talk about things other than the guys they liked and the sex they were having and the parties they were going to, Leslie’s worldview was so blinkered. That I was bookish and quiet and needed instruction in things like hair, make-up and clothing – were not things that bothered her. I got the distinct impression from others that I was a bit hopeless that I didn’t get from her.
Over the years, I have tried to track her down. But she moved around a bit and eventually unlisted herself. During Google searches I would occasionally turn up evidence that she was still creating her metal creations and showing them in the various galleries in the area that would crop up and go out of business with regularity. She got involved in metalworking in between a series of aborted attempts to find a “real” career to please her family. I think she began as a dentistry student. At one point she may have been half-heartedly studying chemistry too. But it was the dance classes, the photography and finally metalworking that called to her loudly enough to drown out the Iowa practicality and the Catholic schoolgirl obedience. In a way, I think that was the thing about her that appealed to me most and that I most envied. She didn’t succumb to the “you need something to fall back on” mentality that we are all beaten into submission with by our parents and society. She followed her instincts and did what made her happy. And in the end I can’t really say that I would have been as content if I’d never been a teacher but stayed and gone to graduate school, as she did, and wrote. Rob made the comment to me the other day that I had suppressed my writing side for a long time and though that is a little true, what is probably closer to reality is that my inner writer was waiting for me to grow into myself. One must have confidence in oneself to chase after a goal like the one I have set for myself. I was too shy and uncertain of myself way back then to have withstood the criticism and the failures that are inevitable. My metal needed tempering.
Perhaps the meaning of Leslie is what she represented back then. An inner truth to stay true to. Dreams are not random as life is not random.
I haven’t seen or heard from Leslie in pretty close to ten years now even though I am almost certain she still lives in Iowa City and is still involved in the art community there. I can’t say really why we fell out of touch. I think though it may have had a lot to do with the fact that by our late twenties/early thirties it was clear that she was the hip in crowd girl who had managed to parlay her bohemian college persona into a Sex minus the City type while I was just a spinsterish Midwestern school marm.
Even in our college days, we were an unlikely friendship match. We met as residents on East 2 of Currier Hall. My roommate was a hometown friend of hers and she lived next door to Sarah, a high school friend of mine. She was a year younger chronologically and years older in style and deportment. Impossibly beautiful with apple cheeks and a rounded nose that most of us outgrow, she smiled from deep inside in a way that produced a magnetic aura. A dancer for years, she was lean and willowy and long. Long neck. Long arms. Longer legs. She would dress herself in thrift shop finds that I don’t imagine mere mortal people ever run across. When I would peruse the thrift store with her, I would find old bowling shirts and men’s suit coats that looked stolen from mortuaries. She would find some darling little Audrey Hepburn cocktail dress.
Still, we called ourselves the “happy co-eds”. The punch line of running joke we had come up with on the way back to the dorm from the library one evening before we realized that if we wanted to accomplish anything by way of study that perhaps we shouldn’t go to the library together. We wasted more time at the library writing mildly pornographic Shakespearean sonnets and talking about boys then we did anything else there. One poem – which I think I still might have somewhere – spoke of “moist loins” and “yielding maidenhoods” was typical of the direction conversations would often turn. I think she was the one who coined the phrase “lost the power of speech” when speaking about sex. As in “he was so good, I lost the power of speech” or “so, did you lose your power of speech with SoNSo last night?” It was from an article in Cosmo magazine that detailed what happens to men and women during an orgasm. According to this article, people lost the power of speech when climaxing. Of course, we found this extremely funny and just a little bit scary and we had little actual experience on which to gauge the veracity of the information. I remember her telling me some time after this that it was only partially true. Her boyfriend’s roommate walked in on them one afternoon during an oral moment, and she related that while she couldn’t verbalize anything coherently – she made herself understood.
Leslie lived the kind of life that the really cool characters in books and movies always seemed to have. The eclectic dwelling spaces with the quirky roommates. Better Funky Homes and Movies Set Gardens décor that she found at estate sales the way she stumbled across clothing finds at the thrift shop. The people she knew were in bands. They were artists and writers and activists. She had cool jobs in galleries or jewelry shops. And men straight out of romance novels pursued her. There was the pottery-making Scotsman from Edinbourough. A gay cheerleader who coveted her natural coolness to camouflage his completely artificial exterior. Her own boyfriend was a former body building interior designer who paid his bills plying the student population with all manner of recreational pharmaceuticals. Not cool in retrospect but in the mid-1980’s that sort of thing still seemed harmless in a TV sitcom sort of way. When we were all still living in the dorm, he did business right out of his room. I sat and watched he and his partner one day as they did their books and remarked that the little ledger would make some prosecuting attorney’s job all that easier someday. The looks on both their faces spoke volumes. Good little Gordon Gecko’s that they were it hadn’t occurred to them that what they say as just good business was a well-spring of potential trail evidence. I never saw that ledger again.
Of all the people I knew in school, and I knew many, many people although I can’t say that too many knew me, she was the one who was the least put off by my sometimes shell-shocked drifting through life exterior. I spent most of my time in university recovering from my teens and shaking off the years I had lived in the shadow of alcoholism. My standard survival mode was turtle and even during college I seldom poked my head out too far. Then, as now even at times, my preferred method of communication was writing. I was still writing. I hadn’t yet been told I wasn’t good enough, often enough, to put it away completely. While my other friends hadn’t time to sit and talk about things other than the guys they liked and the sex they were having and the parties they were going to, Leslie’s worldview was so blinkered. That I was bookish and quiet and needed instruction in things like hair, make-up and clothing – were not things that bothered her. I got the distinct impression from others that I was a bit hopeless that I didn’t get from her.
Over the years, I have tried to track her down. But she moved around a bit and eventually unlisted herself. During Google searches I would occasionally turn up evidence that she was still creating her metal creations and showing them in the various galleries in the area that would crop up and go out of business with regularity. She got involved in metalworking in between a series of aborted attempts to find a “real” career to please her family. I think she began as a dentistry student. At one point she may have been half-heartedly studying chemistry too. But it was the dance classes, the photography and finally metalworking that called to her loudly enough to drown out the Iowa practicality and the Catholic schoolgirl obedience. In a way, I think that was the thing about her that appealed to me most and that I most envied. She didn’t succumb to the “you need something to fall back on” mentality that we are all beaten into submission with by our parents and society. She followed her instincts and did what made her happy. And in the end I can’t really say that I would have been as content if I’d never been a teacher but stayed and gone to graduate school, as she did, and wrote. Rob made the comment to me the other day that I had suppressed my writing side for a long time and though that is a little true, what is probably closer to reality is that my inner writer was waiting for me to grow into myself. One must have confidence in oneself to chase after a goal like the one I have set for myself. I was too shy and uncertain of myself way back then to have withstood the criticism and the failures that are inevitable. My metal needed tempering.
Perhaps the meaning of Leslie is what she represented back then. An inner truth to stay true to. Dreams are not random as life is not random.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
