Triangular Frosted Glass Window

When I look out a triangular frosted glass window into the parking lot I’m thinking, hey, this shit is kind of jazzy. Yeah, I’m just about having the time of my life, staring out this triangular frosted glass window. I mean, what’s next, a dancing frog? Yeah, frog, come dance with me in the sill of this triangular frosted glass window because that’s what it begs. And I’m thinking—I need a paradigm shift, a life change, a different funky base beat to go along with this triangular frosted glass window. I’m thinking, someone get me some smoooooooooooooth lemonade. I’m thinking, where’s a couple sassy fractions to dance with me? I’m thinking, this doctor’s office is where it’s at. And I don’t care if I’m waiting on test results, because I’m staring out this triangular frosted glass window and life is gooooood.

USURPED

My place on the family fridge had been usurped by my little brother which is fine, I mean, not that I care that mom and dad think his picture of a medieval guy riding up to a castle rendered in watercolor and totally out of proportion is better than my giraffe laughing in the sun rendered in crayon, because I don’t. I know that my giraffe laughing in the sun is really good and that mom and dad probably just didn’t see the subtleties, such as how laid back he is, and isn’t life just one lazy steel pan drum beat, and hey look there’s a giraffe on the fridge, laughing in the sun, and duh, giraffes aren’t supposed to laugh so therein lies the humor, and why can’t they absorb enough of that to reduce some of their adult grade silence at dinner?
But I’m always getting usurped by something. Like my brother’s medieval guy riding up to the castle, again, totally out of proportion, and also kind of dark and ominous and probably portending his future as a high school shooter. But if it’s not that then it’s that my sister finally got contacts. And everyone’s like, oh, Amy, you look like such a beautiful young woman. And I’m like, really? Cause to me she looks like that same bathroom hogging, tangle-haired banshee who throws all of those shrieky sleepovers which, mind you, I have never been invited to. And woe becomes the man who tries to sneak into one to take a gander at Mia Gusterson’s inner knee, because should he be found out, trying to pose as a perfectly reasonable lump under a blanket, no amount of nonchalant walking away will stem the blood curdling cries that will issue after him, or the reign of tired disapproval from mom.
But everyone is all like, Amy, you’re really growing up, and I’m still like, really? Because I don’t think that growing up is distinctive to the female of the species, other reluctant attendants of this household are growing up, as is evidenced by the obvious cultural acumen needed to render a vaguely Caribbean, definitely really wise, very cool giraffe laughing in the sun, with nods towards childhood whimsy, which is why I chose to use my adorably off-kilter kid hand when drawing said picture, instead of my precise drawing hand, currently being diverted and mostly employed in the learning of cursive.
Because I know just how efficiently an off-kilter kid drawing can warm the cockles of a tax doing, over extended married couple, and curry a relieved and life appreciating glint in their eye. I’ve been doing it my whole life! Every little long day for eight endless years. I’ve been cranking them out and serving them up. A dog chasing a cat. And palm tree lifting weights. A stick figure family in a canoe. An ant looking at an ant under a magnifying glass, only to see that that ant is also looking at an ant under a magnifying glass, ad infinitum. And then the penultimate—a giraffe laughing in the sun with a generally kind of gritty warmth and ripening joy, only to be usurped by my brother and his medieval guy walking up to a castle, at which point my drawing was demoted to the badlands of the lower half of the fridge, where nothing dwells except for a coffee stain and a smudgy veterinarian’s appointment magnet.
And there my drawing will stay, until I finally figure out a way to usurp the usurper with the ultimate drawing. One with the most mom and dad placating, wonky kid wizardry as to have ever descended upon this weary household, and which is already taking shape in my mind as this: a cat tailor, tailoring a dress for a mouse, with Thomas Jefferson in the background. Goodnight.

Daily Affirmations For An Ant

You are definitely a really hard worker, and every decision you’ve made has been the right one.

You’ve got some great segments!

You obviously don’t know the queen, because she is Her Highness, duh, but if you did know her, you guys would be best buds, and she would crown you hardest working ant in this whole damn colony.

Even though no one saw you carry an eyelash fully over a grape, you will always know you did it, and that’s what counts.

You’ve definitely got what it takes!

Every time you push a little piece of sand into place, it is the most amazing thing ever.

One day you will definitely realize your dream of owning an ant shack on a piece of bread.

They say it can’t happen, that your colony can never come across a puddle of honey on a red-checkered picnic cloth. They say it’s a pipe dream to keep you working! But you know it exists. You know that one day you’re going to do backstrokes in a puddle of honey while another ant sits on your face.

Bees can fly, yes, but can bees communicate through tiny electronic currents? Okay yes, but bees are unwieldy idiots.

Yes, it was very tragic when your friend crawled up onto a plastic ball and then that ball rolled over and crushed him. Everyone knows that. But you simply have to move on.

Remember when you were struggling to walk over all of those hairs on that old man’s arm? And then you made your way down his finger, cleared the nail, and hopped back onto the table and then down the wooden leg. That was awesome!

Remember when you got caught in that bulb of dew and played it off all casual?

You know what you see when you look up “Jaunty Ant With A Terrific Sense of Humor Who Does An Amazing Silent Tap Dance On A Pincushion” in the Ant Dictionary? A picture of you!

You practically invented the old adage, “A great day for an ant is a day with no breaks.”

Remember that fire ant named Betty you met about a foot away that time? Whoa. She knew what to do.

Just think, it will all be worth it when you’re floating down a stream on a leaf during your two hour retirement.

Diary of My Captivity With the Undermoon Sioux: Day 22

A chill rises from the east. I can’t tell if it’s just me, or if the days are really getting colder. I wish I had some innate, native American understanding of the weather, like some whittled down sense of an oncoming cold front. Is that racist?

I’ve made some incremental progress with whom I’m assuming is the tribe leader. He’s a formidable fellow named Wind Harness. Yesterday, he trotted up to my outpost and shoved a natty, stinky pelt off his saddle and onto the floor. I could tell it was meant to be a gift, so I was sure to make many gestures of grave gratitude. Then we sat down across from each other and began our slow form of communication.

Through a series of pictographs and hand gestures, he told me his story. Apparently, once, a long time ago, he caught the soul of a whale and now keeps it in a leather satchel. Either that, or he chucked the soul over a cliff. I wasn’t quite sure, but I kept my face in an expression of curiosity, as seemed appropriate to the situation. Then he was looking at me expectantly, and I understood that he wanted me to tell him my story. Soon I found myself, through a series of ever unwinding tangents leading farther and farther away from the original point, as is my conversational technique, trying to explain what it was like to be in a big box store like Target or Kohls.

I think I was trying to explain some emblematic experience of living on earth or something like that. Motioning wildly I was like, “Big, like the plains. But inside. And filled with boxes. And you can never find anything. And always too cold.”

Anyways, he wasn’t getting it. So I just drew a quick pictograph that indicated I’d been birthed by a pyramid and then set down here by a flaming Pterodactyl. By the way he was looking at me, I couldn’t tell if I’d said the exactly right or exactly wrong thing.

Before he went, he bestowed on me another gift. He opened his palm and inside was a tiny bug, lit up from in inside like our lightening bugs, except even more luminescent. He hummed three tones, and then the bug sparked into a small flame, and then almost immediately flared out. He put one of the bugs in my hand, it was warm, I go, “Thanks?” It was only after he’d ridden off that I realized, idiot that I am, that he’d given it to me so I could make a fire.

But I have been humming to the bug and it will not spark. I even went out and got kindling and everything. The bug just beetles around like it’s having time of his life. I guess I haven’t gotten the tones right. And it’s like trying to unlock a door with a faulty key where you just keep jamming it in and the thing you really need to do is stop, take a deep breath, and try it again…anyways, now I’m just blabbing.

PRE-INTERNET FUCKING

In the middle of the day, on the sofa, in the quiet. Wind chimes tinkling. It’s like you’re both adults, you’re both hairy. You’re both really into it. She’s kind of guttural, but that’s cool. There’s a new community being built outside and it’s all good. You both decided to meet at home. You’re in your white slacks, and she’s in her puffy pastel shirt, and she looks good. And maybe her hair is in a French braid. And the light’s coming in and it’s all peaceful, on the outskirts of this new community. And maybe there’s a Navajo rug on the wall. But you’re not feeling burdened by anything because you’re making a living, actual money, from doing or creating something. And that’s how it’s supposed to be, but you don’t even know that’s how it’s supposed to be at the time because that’s the way it is.

And your lady, she knows what to do, and she’s not trying to be any certain way except the way she is. And maybe afterwards she’ll take off the big watch on your wrist and put it on her own wrist. And maybe she’ll sit in her underwear next to the couch and shake out a newspaper or look at a magazine. You’ll just pass the time like that. And you’ll drink iced tea, and it will be so leisurely that it’s like someone is just pouring you into the afternoon.

You live on a street called Falcon Street and there are construction sites around from the new community and you know how to fuck. You don’t question how to fuck because you haven’t seen a million other people fuck before you. And your lady knows how to fuck, too. And both of you fuck, in your air conditioned house, on the outskirts of a new community, on the sofa you bought with money you could see, in the middle of the day. And it feels great.

BOOK REVIEW: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

I will start by saying that this book was, to use a much overused but totally apt in this case word: amazing. I’d never read anything by Lionel Shriver before, and often had the feeling of, "Why isn’t this woman touted as one of the best living writers at work today?" And then I’d remember that just because I, myself, haven’t heard of or read a certain writer doesn’t mean they haven’t already been absorbed by the world at large. She is considered one of the greatest writers working today, and won the Orange prize, for, you know, female writers. As an extra bonus, she seems like a kind of nutcase, judging by some of the supplementary material in the back of the book I bought. She changed her name to the name she wanted when she was a kid. (Good thing I didn’t do that, or my name would now be either Crystal or Robyn or Charlie Rathbone).

Anyways. So the book, or prose was, by and large, and from an antiseptic, clinical viewpoint, outstanding. But it was also very difficult to read. I mean, actually, it was a page turner. I read it in about three days and was totally swallowed up. By difficult to read I mean that it was dark. Very incredibly awfully dark in a way that seemed to permeate my regular life. The sticky atmosphere of doom in WNTTAK seemed to become the atmosphere of my days, and that’s not something I was psyched about.

It’s about a young man who goes on a Columbine-esque killing spree at his high school with a crossbow. It’s written in the form of letters from the young man’s mother, Eva, to her now estranged husband after the whole thing has taken place. We hear about Kevin as a baby, a toddler, an adolescent, all the while displaying the kind of sociopathic, run for the hills qualities befitting one fucked up devil baby with a cold streak of sadism. In the letters Eva talks a lot about her original ambivalence about having a child. She wasn’t sure she wanted it in the first place and feels nothing when it’s born. She has to really try to form a connection to it. It’s a whole nature versus nurture, chicken before the egg type of deal where you wonder if the kid is crazy because he sensed his mother’s ambivalence from the get go, or if the mother’s ambivalence stemmed from an inate understanding that the kid is crazy.

So there’s all of that, but the thing that I liked most about this book, what most struck my soul gong, was Shriver’s high altitude insight into being a mother, into other people, into relationships, just about anything. I feel like I could listen to her talk about post-it notes and come away shattered by some new world unlocking perception. There is contained in this novel a rare ore that many books don’t have (although I don’t think a book necessarily needs this to be good): actual wisdom.

So yes. I definitely recommend WNTTAK. But be prepared to go into a not very pleasant head space for a while. And also, if you are, like me, a woman who thinks it might be nice to have a baby one day, be prepared to shelve that idea for the time being and start swallowing birth control by the fistful.