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March 9, 2008

Crayonate.

I bought my mother daffodils today because I like seeing them on the kitchen table. She put them in the blue vase even though I like them better in the purple one which I never realized was purple I always thought it was red. And then my dad and I got into an argument over whether or not purple is a mix of red and blue, and he brought up some very good points which severely rattled the foundations of everything I learned in kindergarten.

I set an alarm just so I could watch 1:59 EST turn into 3:00 EDT in New York City and Washington, DC on my phone’s world clock. But they just turned into 2:00 because my cell phone apparently didn’t get the memo. And the clock widget on my dashboard says that now New York is five hours ahead of here which makes no sense whatsoever. Did someone change the time zones and not tell me?

Today I lazed out on going to tennis again. And she just rolled her eyes at me and said, “I’m sure you know best” because she thought I was just being a stupid teenager again but I wasn’t telling her because it was my rationale for life, a rigid dogma that reigns over everyone else’s, it was more a justification of staying home because I don’t like to talk about the weight pressing down on my everything whenever I go there and the way my lungs catch and the way I want to give up on everything when the hardened white grip scrapes my palms and rattles my body because I’ve gone too long without caring to be worth a damn today.

The sunlight was slanting in my closet window so I could see all the dust swirling in the air, these things I breathe in and breathe out and it’s ice in here even if it’s in the seventies outside and that was what finally convinced me to drag my puffy eyes outside to see the day. I’m glad it’s getting later in the year because the sun used to set before five and then everything was over but now I can go out in the late afternoon and zoom down a hill on my bike with the western sun glaring in my face. I like that I look like a tomboy in my unfitted black band shirt and capris because it’s far far off of what I’ve ever been. I forgot to lock the front door because I was too busy thinking about how long my hair is getting and watching the side sprinklers water the mud and dead rosebushes because you can’t grow anything in the city. And when I got to the beach I realized I’d also forgotten that everyone comes here on Saturdays but they weren’t too much of a bother on the bike path. There was a little girl running along weaving across the asphalt and I heard her mother behind me call, “¡Be!¡A tu lado!” and then she turned around and saw me on my red contraption in too low a gear and I wobbled past because I never did have good bike skills. I looked down to see where my chain was because I have a tendency to drop it and when I looked up I had to swerve away from a head-on collision with a parked van. That was unsmart. I can be pretty unsmart about a lot of things like that. I did it twice more before I even reached the end of the block. Turns out I never figured out where my chain was either because I couldn’t make it any lower on my way home.

The prettiest thing about riding along the beach isn’t the sand or the waves, it’s the peninsula, the colossal mass of land rising out of the blue water, the glint of white houses nestled among trees on the tiered hillside. And as I marched up the steep ramp where I once stood to watch dolphins leaping in and out of the swells, I dared to wish I didn’t live here. I wish I could have discovered it on my own, taken the time to be enchanted by the palm-lined avenues and diverse architecture, the blue ocean on one horizon and snowcapped mountains on the other, the Goodyear blimp’s daily fly over and the white specks of the Hollywood sign in the distance. Because once you fall in love with it, you never leave, and I’m afraid I’ll stay here forever and miss the rest of the world because I’m too caught up in my cherry Coke swirl of bestness to consider subjecting myself to anything less perfect that might be worth knowing.

I didn’t know where I was going. I mean I knew where I was trying to go but I wasn’t completely sure about where exactly that was. I rode up and down the streets in parking lanes and on sidewalks and eventually found myself in a bank drive-through and the back parking lot of Trader Joe’s. I finally spotted the Jesus Man’s van and I have never talked to him but he sounds interesting. I went into Jamba Juice because I decided that was going to be my lunch since I ate lunch for breakfast and had breakfast afterward so it was time for lunch again. The girl behind the counter didn’t ask for my name which was okay because I didn’t feel like telling her my name was Emily because people always have trouble with my real one for some reason.

There was some old folded Spanish homework in my back pocket in case I wanted paper to write on at the black metal table outside the window, but instead I wandered around the parking lot, always keeping one eye on my bike because everyone has made me paranoid about it getting stolen. And I thought about buying those chocolate covered peanuts I loved but how much money did I have with me? Three dollars and sixty-seven cents? And then a lady walked by gripping what looked like asparagus but was really unopened flowers so I decided that would be much easier to carry home. It was very nice and practical of that man with the cane to let me go ahead of him because all I had to do was hand the lady my bundle of stalks and a dollar fifty and let her hand them back to me with a dime. He’s one person who gives me hope that not everyone is dumb and selfish.

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