Nothing New

I’ve always loved autumn, the way it smells and how the air feels. So lightly sweet my skin seems to taste it, all clear and bright. The season feels dusted with a layer of sugar or something; or that sparkle powder that thirteen-year-olds are so fond of.
I’m still fond of it, actually. I admit I really would wear it if it weren’t so widely considered to be juvenile and tacky. Though maybe it would hardly matter; who am I fooling, pretending to no longer be either one of those things?

I like to glimpse in my mind the day when we’re all grown up together, when it’s really just “us against the world”. Could we handle it? Cause I feel like a child still; sheepish guilty face and hiding the frogs I caught behind my back, an impish grin that makes real grown-ups feel the need to supervise.

It reminds me of those panicked childhood nights when Mom would catch Abby and I awake, talking past midnight. The fear in the pit of my stomach—the palpable fear of one caught in a crime—as we whispered desperate prayers that we wouldn’t “get in trouble” the next day. We seemed to get ourselves in those situations quite frequently—elementary adrenaline-junkies.

As a child, somewhere around six or eight, when I felt adventurous, I would follow the leaves in the gutter and decide to just keep walking—to follow that curb wherever it went. I imagined it wound all around Rolland Park, through downtown Kansas City and far away. I wouldn’t get lost; all I needed to do was turn around when I wished and it would lead me right back home. I was never brave enough to make it too far around the first corner, though, so I never discovered that following the same curb would only lead me around the block. I suppose I was right about one thing, though: it would lead me back home, whatever the case.

I’m rarely right about what I think something is going to be like, or where it will take me. It’s never what you thought it was going to be and you never quite know for sure if it’s supposed to be this way or not. At least I don’t. Not until it has already been, and faded away.

Did you know beauty marks literally fade away? I thought it was just an expression, beauty marks fading; the abstract concept of growing old. It’s true though; they dissolve with time. Those perfect little moles—just glorified freckles, really—settled in exactly the right place to heighten your cheekbones; to give your eyes a little more glint in certain lights. I had one when I was a child. I’d always liked it, the saucy character I thought it gave my face, even before my grandpa told me was it was called. I was privileged to wear it until around five years ago, when I noticed it had spread out from itself, leaving nothing but a vaguely pigmented spot on my cheek.

A shape undefined is nothing.

Lately I’ve had the worst case of writer’s block, as if I’ve already said everything I have to say. I just can’t force out any more fresh ideas, or recapture the flow I had going there for a few months. With no desire to be the author of tawdry thrills and no confidence that my efforts will amount to more than this, most of what worms its way from the wrinkles of my brain never makes it’s way to paper. Surely if it is mine it’s inadequate?
I’ve had artist’s block too, whatever the name for that is. I haven’t created a new piece in months. I seem to have other blocks as well, in my thoughts and disciplines and even my emotions. Like I had this reservoir of all of it, and it’s dried up. Or like I’m treading water, moving and moving and expending my efforts and stretching, pressing myself all the time yet I don’t get anywhere; I merely stay afloat. Which I suppose is more than can be said for some people out there, so I shouldn’t be complaining.
My frustrated fingers beg to blurt that even all of the above is no newborn brain-child, just old thoughts mashed up and hammered out again like recycled paper.

There is nothing new under the sun.

There is nothing new.

There is nothing.

My hair is brushing my shoulders again for the first time in years, and I only let it because I don’t know what else to do. It’s mattering less and less as my age increases, along with the standards expected of me. Months ago I speculated on how I might be different by the time my split ends tickled my collarbone. I didn’t consider that the only changes might be the length of my life and the length of my hair.

You try to get those experiences back, the ones that seemed so exciting two, five, ten years ago. But the veil over your eyes dissipates with the passage of time and eventually the tunnel-vision is gone; that short sight that only saw the magic in Christmas and blocked from your peripheral vision the expense and stress and pine needles stuck with sap to the carpet—it will have to be cleaned up later; just try not to step in it for now.

I think there’s potential for a little less cynicism in my future, though; I see myself being rather optimistic at around fifty years old. I think every girl has a tacky old lady inside of her, just waiting to get out; just waiting to grow a size or three for the sake of seconds on home-made macaroni & cheese, just waiting to wear snowman earrings and kitty sweaters, to laugh too loudly and just not care. Until the corners of my eyes sport crows’ feet, I will feel no right to such a relaxed state of mind.

Though I often tend to be high-strung, I seem lately to be exceptionally on edge. I washed a sizable moth down the drain a few nights ago, and ten minutes later watched it crawl back up into the sink while I brushed my teeth. I’ve never minded bugs, but for some reason my skin prickled when I saw those spindly legs wriggling up from the metal-rimmed hole, as if millions of those legs were creeping all over me. It’s antennae came next, reaching toward me like fumbling, hostile arms and my fingernails bit into my palms as I clenched my fists with a shudder. In a desperate panic I snatched up my deodorant and whacked the insect back down into the plumbing. I turned the faucet on and could have provided for a thirsty third-world village with the water I wasted in attempt to drown the moth. I eyed the sink in a skittish way as I completed my bedtime routine and saw no further sign of the creature. I plugged the drain before I went to sleep though, just in case.

What is the matter with me?

Maybe it was Ambien, maybe just the interrupted feeling of winding down and being all locked up and safe in the light while the wide world is dark outside—a void to swallow those brave enough to venture off of their front porches. I love being so embedded in my home at night. I love driving at night too, though when I drive at night home feels so much further away than it does when the sun has opened up the world for me. How I enjoy the unfamiliar look of my repetitive trek, as if I were driving across the country, or winding down through it, or anywhere farfarfar away.

My dorm room here can be distressing limbo sometimes; not “home” enough to comfort me yet too consistent—too fixed and stable and here—to rally my sense of adventure. There are some nights when this in-between seems more frightening than a free-fall.

Tonight in the dorms there is crying. Maybe someone’s TV; maybe not. I can hear it echoing, some faceless anguish thrumming in the air. When I went to sleep last night my room was my own cozy nook in the hall, but now? Now it is a heavy beast, breathing as windowpane teeth suck the night air greedily from outside. The building—the beast—creaks, its old bones readjusting. I am in its belly and I can feel it roiling, threatening to expel me; to vomit me up, exposed into the city to be assaulted by great chunks of sight and sound and light and smells and the shadows with lurking things. I love the idea of the city at night, but when actually faced with it—and all alone—I’m forced to ponder the differences between adventure under streetlamps and danger in the gutter.

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