An Angel with a Switchblade.

One day, during approximately second grade, I was riding my bike home from my friend’s house. Like many little girls, I occasionally had the dreadful experience of unknowingly wrapping my shoelaces around the pedals of my bike. Never in my life have I heard of this happening to boys, but for whatever reason, almost every girl I know can tell a story of a bad fall on a bike due to shoelace wrapping gone unnoticed.

A phenomenon, perhaps. A curse, more likely.

Back to the story. One day, while riding my bike home, my shoelaces began to wrap around my bike pedals. I was riding my bike on the street, and there wasn’t a soft landing point for about another half of a block. I knew I was already past the point of no return–both feet were fully attached to my pedals. I had to decide: fall on the pavement and maintain the ability to manually untangle my shoelaces, or pedal further and magnify the tangling, but attempt to reach the grassy ditch at the end of the block for a softer landing?

I recall this entire decision making process quite vividly.

I decided to go for the ditch at the end of the block. I knew I wouldn’t be able to untangle my shoelaces without help, but it seemed better than falling on the pavement.

I barely made it to the grass.

By the time I wiped out on the grass my shoelaces were wrapped so tightly that I couldn’t even get my feet out of my shoes. I was literally fastened to my bike and completely helpless.

Luckily, I chose the ditch across the street from my friend Amber’s house. Even more luckily, she came outside while my bike and I, now a single unit, sat in the grassy ditch.

I called her over, and told her I needed her dad to come out and help me get my feet out of my shoes. Like a really good friend does, she told me her dad was busy and that he couldn’t help and went back inside. And left me there.

To die.

And then it started raining.

Of course.

By now, I was rather upset. I had been totally and completely abandoned in my time of need. I couldn’t move, and I didn’t know what to do. Plus, I had just taken a pretty bad fall. Little girls cry when they fall off bikes. Only I didn’t even have the luxury of falling off.

There I sat, alone in the rain. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, an old beater car pulled up next to me on the street. It was a really scary looking car, and inside the car was a really scary looking man. I remember he had a lot of chains hanging from him, and looked about 40 years old. He had long hair and a long beard–he looked the part of a stereotypical biker. Leather. Chains. Tall and scary.

He stopped the car, and simply looked at me. I was instantly terrified of him. I said every prayer in the book that this man would go away, and fast. A few seconds later, my prayer was answered and he drove off.

Relief.

Now, back to the issue at hand. How am I going to get myself out of this ditch and out of the rain and how am I going to get Amber to come back outside and help and—OH NO, HERE COMES THAT BEATER CAR WITH THE SCARY MAN, AGAIN!

That’s right, he was back.

This time, he stopped his car and got out; still tall, still scary, still leathery. Then, he reached into his coat and pulled out a knife. From my perspective, the knife was a giant switchblade, about five feet long. It might as well have been a sword, because I was a little girl, and a scary man in a scary car just pulled a knife on me.

I was literally paralyzed with fear.

He walked over to me. Neither of us spoke a single word. I don’t think he even looked me in the eye. He simply bent down, and cut my shoelaces.

He put his knife back into his coat pocket, walked back to the car, and drove away.

And that was it.

I brushed myself off, and walked my bike home. I never told anyone about the man with the knife.

I went to bed that night and wondered if maybe that was an angel sent to help me.

Maybe.

 

No Things

An excerpt from Billy Collin’s “No Things”

The leafless branches against the sky
will not save anyone from the infinity of death,
nor will the sugar bowl or the sugar spoon on the table.

So why bother with the checkerboard lighthouse?
Why waste time on the sparrow,
or the wildflowers along the roadside

when we should all be alone in our rooms
throwing ourselves against the wall of life
and opposite the wall of death,

the door locked behind us
as we hurl ourselves at the question of meaning,
and the enigma of our origins?

What good is the firefly,
the droplet running along the green leaf,
or even the bar of soap spinning around the bathtub

when ultimately we are meant to be
banging away on the mystery
as hard as we can and to hell with the neighbors?

banging away on nothingness itself,
some with their foreheads,
others with the maul of sense, the raised jawbone of poetry.

Man oh man I am loving me some Billy Collins right now. I read that poem yesterday when I was at Starbucks, and I was smiling so big by the end of the poem that I actually lifted the book to my face to cover my expression, long enough so that my expression faded to a size that my hand was capable of hiding.

Later, a group of young girls assembled nearby, and in my mind I played a little game called “Cheerleaders or Small Group?” A game not too different from another favorite, “Hipster or Homeless?” I was on the line about this particular group, but then they started reading aloud from an Anne Lammot book, each taking a page to read before passing it to the person on their left.

Small Group.

It reminded me of the days I spent sitting in a similar circle of similar girls but with way more conservative material–all fond memories, regardless. We were always reading relationship type stuff, namely, “When God Writes Your Love Story.” No, I won’t get all cynical on you in light of what’s been written about me thus far. Cynical is boring and lazy. I just wanted to take you on an awkward detour to get to the next quote I read yesterday. I can’t remember if it was from Dan Allender or from Elizabeth Gilbert (an unlikely pair of people to be confused, but I read from both of their books yesterday. And if you want me to be honest, the two really aren’t that different from each other.) It’s one of those things that will drive me crazy enough to actually re-read both books, just so I can find one quote. I’ve probably re-read Catcher in the Rye a dozen times, on that basis alone. I know the quote I’m looking for is on the left-hand side of the page. And that if you broke the words up into fifths, it’d be the fourth fifth. And part of the sentence is in italics.

Point is, it told me this: it’s much better to imperfectly be yourself than to perfectly be who you aren’t.

 

An honest day’s work; the sound of your own breathing.

One may make a unique observation or suggest a creative idea, and only those who do the same know right then that it was contrived. It wasn’t necessarily contrived in the sense that they are not unique or creative, but contrived in an attempt to prove that they, in fact, are unique and creative.

A lilac trying to be conscious of its own lilac scent in order to know that it is a lilac.

A dog barking to assure itself that it is a dog.

It doesn’t make them any less of a flower or an animal that they occasionally check in, just to make sure they are the same thing that they were the last time they looked inward.

 

On Ryan Adams:

 

J.D. Salinger

To the point: I happen to know, possibly none better, that an ecstatically happy writing person is often a totally draining type to have around. Of course, the poets in this state are by far the most “difficult,” but even the prose writer similarly seized hasn’t any real choice of behavior in decent company; divine or not, a seizure’s a seizure. In the wake of anything as large and consuming as happiness, he necessarily forfeits the much smaller, but for a writer, always rather exquisite pleasure of appearing on the page serenely sitting on a fence. Worst of all, I think, he’s no longer in a position to look after the reader’s most immediate want; namely, to see the author get the hell on with this story. …but I fully intend, from time to time, to jump up personally on the reader’s back when I see something off the beaten plot line that looks exciting or interesting and worth steering toward. Speed here, God save my American hide, means nothing whatever to me. There are, however, readers who seriously require only the most restrained, most classical, and possibly deftest methods of having their attention drawn, and I suggest–as honestly as a writer can sugest this sort of thing–that they leave now, while, I can imagine, the leaving’s good and easy. I’ll probably continue to point out available exits as we move along, but I’m not sure I’ll pretend to put my heart into it again.

 

honest thieves

honest thieves are most definitely my favorite.

 

a poem from Billy Collins

I asked them to take a poem and hold it up to the light
Like a color slide
Or press an ear against its hive
I say, drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out
Or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch
I want them to water ski across the surface of a poem,
Waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

-Billy Collins

 

slow day

It’s 4.30pm and my day thus far has consisted of two phone calls, french press, and this playlist.

The song titles alone make me sigh.

 

cal/daley

cal & daley; two of my favorites. took this on the bus. edited by daley, duh.

 

email highlight

My favorite email received this week:

L.A. has been asking about you. Those electronic signs above the freeway, the ones that usually say “15 mins to 405.” L.A. doesn’t use Twitter, evidently.