Jury duty. The little card arrives in the mail stamped in red, its official dates and directions printed with what looks like an old dot matrix. Your partially planned vacation is now on hold, you dread the date, but off you go on the clear bright morning when the calendar matches the card. Of course the weather is bright and cheerful, because you will be spending the day indoors bathed under institutional lighting.
Over a hundred people are called with you, and you all sit in metal folding chairs in the little room with clipboards and forms, and a grey stack of magazines on the windowsill. The cross-section of humanity reminds you of the library; a truly democratic place. Everyone was called to served their civic duty, and here they all share in the joy -- the retired grandmother, the unemployed skater, the over-employed and inconvenienced banker with his fat briefcase, the guy you swear you know from somewhere but can’t place, the woman with four kids who works from home stuffing envelopes. After filling out a form, you are thanked by the judge, and given instructions on what will happen next. When he exits, the room settles into a collective anxiousness. A man in front of you seals envelopes and completes his correspondence. The banker taps at his electronic organizer. Everyone is without their cellphones, and seems adrift in a sea of what-to-do without them. The mother cracks open a romance novel. A few people who recognize each other form conversational cliques. You read. The man in front of you takes out a knitting project, and you watch as each stitch is perfectly executed. You decide he must be a Virgo. His t-shirt looks ironed. The morning passes from quiet anxiousness to lethargy. The grey magazines are perused. Windows are propped open with clipboards.
You are one of the first to be drawn in the random lottery that is the first judge’s panel, and are trooped upstairs into a lustrous courtroom, filled with polished hardwood and an energy you can’t place. The plaintiff and defendant sit in silence as the plaintiff’s lawyer takes two hours to ask questions of the numbered potential jurors. It reminds you of the worst parts of school. A sunny day when your mind wandered, the teacher called on you and your brain fell into a “fight or flight” response. You answer when called. You listen to others respond, and like them less and less. You like the defendant and plaintiff less and less even though they haven’t said a word. You like yourself less for not liking anyone. Where has your kindness gone? You spend the rest of the time figuring out the armature behind the giant painting of Justice on the wall behind the judge’s desk. It has nine equilateral triangles in it.
After the defendant’s lawyer asks a very brief set of general questions, the two sides deliberate on their choices. Papers are passed between them. Finally, jurors are called to their seats. You are not one of them. The rejected return to the waiting room. You spend some time at the window. The trimmed lawn with its tufts of intermittent plantings, linear hedges grown fat into embarrassed forms, remind you that Americans can’t garden. An announcement is made that all are excused for the rest of the week. You walk back to your car in the parking garage with afternoon returned to you like a beloved lost pet, as the plaintiff and defendant dissolve from your mind and into the sun.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
What Messages Are Written in Air
A man carves a message into the trunk of a tree for a woman he has never met. She finds it years later while on a walk with the dog. She runs her fingers into the hollows of bark, memorizes the rough script, and spends the rest of her life looking for messages in the margins of books.
Monday, June 15, 2009
The Hold Steady
Driving through Lisle, New York on our way to Ithaca, we see a sign that reads “Father’s Day Cooked In Ground Beef.” The houses lean and sigh, look as if they’d like to exhale some of their incorrect geometry answers. Drying impatiens swing from flowerpots on sprawling porches, a backhoe digs up grass for next week’s “Mud Bog.” Trees flash by greengreengreen – a sign to drive faster and just go.
The music we hear that night in a cramped bar makes me want to get into a car and drive with the windows rolled down. I want to visit a place I love but don’t know yet. The lyrics remind me of postcards from a friend I don’t have, but whose words I crave in his or her scrawl.
At the door, my ID is checked (wow). The bouncer has taken the gauges out of his ears, and they speak a relaxed “O, O.” Most of the crowd is younger than we are, but not by much. Maybe five or ten years, and then there are a handful of really young music lovers whose hands are branded with big black Sharpie X’s, making them visible to the bartenders. I watch a skinny teen grin as he enters, then cross his arms to hide his brand from all the college girls. Castaways is packed by nine p.m. when the opening band starts to play. A few people sway, but most still talk and drink their beers. I watch the continual stream of people enter and get their wristbands Humanity is diverse. Where do all these people come from? Dreads, skinny jeans, grey hair, pink stockings with polka dot shoes, overweight, girls who remind me of all my sister’s college friends, purple hair, no hair, quiet, sad eyed.
During the performance of The Hold Steady, I jump, dance, clap and revel behind a frat boy and his friend who like to jump, clap and dance too, only with more vigor, elbows and heavy feet. A high school girl and her boyfriend who look like they’ve stepped out of a Hollister ad try to wriggle their way through the crowd but their charm doesn’t get them far and they get stuck just a few ahead of us. When the music starts and people scream and jump around, they become as still as frightened deer. A young man just in front of me stands for most of the show looking like a cross between a Dr. Seuss character and a 1950’s sitcom father until his favorite song is played and then he leaps and pumps his fist in the air. Beer is sprayed, confetti cheers and settles onto the sweaty breasts of young women. Jim goes into a ecstatic trance for most of the show and loses his voice. I feel the sweat drip off his arm. Matt swings his head and his hair sweeps like pages in a book. He whoops and raises his arms as if every song is a touchdown, which it is. Dan listens to every lyric, squeezes my hand. The Hold Steady hold steady with charisma. Feet peek above heads in front as a body is carried through the crowd. The encore is a half an hour long. The bar is sticky, packed, and full of positive energy. Joy. The music makes me want to visit a place I love but don’t know yet, because its rooms and landscapes are now a place I love and know. Oh to be 40 forever.
The music we hear that night in a cramped bar makes me want to get into a car and drive with the windows rolled down. I want to visit a place I love but don’t know yet. The lyrics remind me of postcards from a friend I don’t have, but whose words I crave in his or her scrawl.
At the door, my ID is checked (wow). The bouncer has taken the gauges out of his ears, and they speak a relaxed “O, O.” Most of the crowd is younger than we are, but not by much. Maybe five or ten years, and then there are a handful of really young music lovers whose hands are branded with big black Sharpie X’s, making them visible to the bartenders. I watch a skinny teen grin as he enters, then cross his arms to hide his brand from all the college girls. Castaways is packed by nine p.m. when the opening band starts to play. A few people sway, but most still talk and drink their beers. I watch the continual stream of people enter and get their wristbands Humanity is diverse. Where do all these people come from? Dreads, skinny jeans, grey hair, pink stockings with polka dot shoes, overweight, girls who remind me of all my sister’s college friends, purple hair, no hair, quiet, sad eyed.
During the performance of The Hold Steady, I jump, dance, clap and revel behind a frat boy and his friend who like to jump, clap and dance too, only with more vigor, elbows and heavy feet. A high school girl and her boyfriend who look like they’ve stepped out of a Hollister ad try to wriggle their way through the crowd but their charm doesn’t get them far and they get stuck just a few ahead of us. When the music starts and people scream and jump around, they become as still as frightened deer. A young man just in front of me stands for most of the show looking like a cross between a Dr. Seuss character and a 1950’s sitcom father until his favorite song is played and then he leaps and pumps his fist in the air. Beer is sprayed, confetti cheers and settles onto the sweaty breasts of young women. Jim goes into a ecstatic trance for most of the show and loses his voice. I feel the sweat drip off his arm. Matt swings his head and his hair sweeps like pages in a book. He whoops and raises his arms as if every song is a touchdown, which it is. Dan listens to every lyric, squeezes my hand. The Hold Steady hold steady with charisma. Feet peek above heads in front as a body is carried through the crowd. The encore is a half an hour long. The bar is sticky, packed, and full of positive energy. Joy. The music makes me want to visit a place I love but don’t know yet, because its rooms and landscapes are now a place I love and know. Oh to be 40 forever.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Very Rural Pennsylvania Haibun
chickens in the road
a barn cat slinks into grass
dandelions exhale
It takes me three days to settle into a place that should feel immediately like home. At night, the air is cool and smells like an uprooted carrot. Cowbirds imitate the calls of their neighbors and wait inside shrubbery to burgle nests. There is no mall for miles, no television where I sleep at night. I grew up this way – hours to wander and think, but I’ve forgotten it all, and find myself anxious without my family.
picking blackberries
fingers and lips stained blue
scent of sweetfern
It takes three days for the rhythm of this place to relax into a beat with my heart. Poppies bow their fuzzy, sleepy heads, a peony releases its sweetness into dusk. The donkey is the rude uncle of the pasture – he honks and heehaws toward all the magnificent horses as they graze. His ears are as soft and as big as slippers. I imagine slipping my feet into them, as if into two jewel cases, thanks to Neruda. Fences turn fields of clipped grass and turned dirt into geometry problems.
horse grinds down grass
strong jaw and grey muzzle
nuzzles the world’s body
At a small crossroads store where men stop for coffee, Sanka, and the news, a giant wheel of cheese sits on the counter. Every day the wheel shrinks a little as slices of its cheddarness bid farewell on rafts of sandwiches. Homemade sticky buns and Lepp cookies wait for a sweet tooth. I resist. I remember the comfort of our town’s little store, the aisles of dusty cans, the butcher’s bloody apron, racks of candybars, conversations and local gossip.
Flavors of comfort –
potato, yam, and coffee,
stories of hometown.
a barn cat slinks into grass
dandelions exhale
It takes me three days to settle into a place that should feel immediately like home. At night, the air is cool and smells like an uprooted carrot. Cowbirds imitate the calls of their neighbors and wait inside shrubbery to burgle nests. There is no mall for miles, no television where I sleep at night. I grew up this way – hours to wander and think, but I’ve forgotten it all, and find myself anxious without my family.
picking blackberries
fingers and lips stained blue
scent of sweetfern
It takes three days for the rhythm of this place to relax into a beat with my heart. Poppies bow their fuzzy, sleepy heads, a peony releases its sweetness into dusk. The donkey is the rude uncle of the pasture – he honks and heehaws toward all the magnificent horses as they graze. His ears are as soft and as big as slippers. I imagine slipping my feet into them, as if into two jewel cases, thanks to Neruda. Fences turn fields of clipped grass and turned dirt into geometry problems.
horse grinds down grass
strong jaw and grey muzzle
nuzzles the world’s body
At a small crossroads store where men stop for coffee, Sanka, and the news, a giant wheel of cheese sits on the counter. Every day the wheel shrinks a little as slices of its cheddarness bid farewell on rafts of sandwiches. Homemade sticky buns and Lepp cookies wait for a sweet tooth. I resist. I remember the comfort of our town’s little store, the aisles of dusty cans, the butcher’s bloody apron, racks of candybars, conversations and local gossip.
Flavors of comfort –
potato, yam, and coffee,
stories of hometown.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
J'aime la nature
I watch morning television and I fear the world I love. I imagine the people I pass on the sidewalk with subheadings under their faces – “Ex-wife of Suspect,” “Sister of Shooting Victim” or “Father of Missing Child.” The television blinks missives and stories simultaneously, one under another; a compost heap of stupidity and numbness. Its commercials try to sell us supplements, super-juices, sugar-packed cereals, face lifts, ideal green energy, politicians, mops that fit into the tightest of corners, orgasmic chocolates, hair products to smooth us into who we ought to look like. Breakfast news entertains us. Musical families compete with each other and news anchors surprise “drowsy” families at their doors to announce they are the chosen ones. The dire economy is addressed with the re-introduction of depression-era recipes, women are encouraged to dress like Michelle Obama and feed their children what the First Family eats. Everything is derivative.
A few mornings ago the top news story was “Death Comes to Reality TV.” Nothing is real until we see it on television. Even death. I have to hand it to death, because it doesn’t care about television at all. It does its job unsanctioned, unbidden, and often is horribly creative.
Last night I watched a movie called “Bande å Part” or “Band of Outsiders” by Jean-Luc Godard. There is a scene where one of the main characters, a young woman named Odile, is being questioned by her aunt. The aunt lists all of the conventional things a young girl might like, and Odile rejects them all. “I detest that,” she repeats. Then she leans against the wall and says, “J’aime la nature.”
Me too, Odile. I love the parts of the world that are not broadcast; the crocus that grows out of a crack in the sidewalk, the kid who rides his unicycle across the bridge every morning to get to school.
A few mornings ago the top news story was “Death Comes to Reality TV.” Nothing is real until we see it on television. Even death. I have to hand it to death, because it doesn’t care about television at all. It does its job unsanctioned, unbidden, and often is horribly creative.
Last night I watched a movie called “Bande å Part” or “Band of Outsiders” by Jean-Luc Godard. There is a scene where one of the main characters, a young woman named Odile, is being questioned by her aunt. The aunt lists all of the conventional things a young girl might like, and Odile rejects them all. “I detest that,” she repeats. Then she leans against the wall and says, “J’aime la nature.”
Me too, Odile. I love the parts of the world that are not broadcast; the crocus that grows out of a crack in the sidewalk, the kid who rides his unicycle across the bridge every morning to get to school.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Some Rules for Living/A Credo for March 2009
This is a follow-up to a post I made awhile ago about writing credos. Here's a list of rules for myself. These are subject to change by the second. Maybe you have a few rules for yourself? Beliefs? It's a good idea to write them down occassionally - touch base with yourself, who you are, and see how you've changed over the years.
Some Rules for Living/A Credo for March 2009
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
~ E.E. Cummings
If you feel compelled to hug someone, do it
and put your whole self into that hug.
If you feel like punching someone, think about it.
Chances are, you won’t want to later. Maybe.
The same is true for shopping impulses –
do you really need that 24 pack of ShamWOWs?
Think, then think some more.
Turn off your television, your computer,
throw the phone in the hamper under
the stinky towels and think.
Allow your thoughts to drift into daydreams.
Write down what you dream.
When you see someone enjoy creating art,
or reading, cooking, throwing a ball –
encourage them.
Do not abuse squirrels, children, the elderly,
geese at the park (even though they will chase you).
Wear clothes you feel comfortable in –
they are your socially acceptable skin.
If they aren’t stylish by today’s standards,
good.
Forgive yourself. You’ll do better next time.
Weave cloth, make paper, assemble a book,
milk a cow, help build a house –
at least once in your lifetime.
If crossword puzzles give you headaches,
stop doing them.
Make eye contact when someone
is speaking to you.
Don’t fake listening.
It will come back to haunt you.
It’s ok if you want to try to glue
ice together – just don’t count on it
making a good house.
Count your money. Keep what you need
to pay your bills and eat, then give
the rest away.
Get dirt under your fingernails.
Witness a birth.
Do something that scares you.
Lay out on the lawn in the summer at night
with a friend and look at the stars.
Write letter of praise and complaint
when they are due.
Attend the funeral.
Don’t cheat when you’re playing a game.
You will lose and you will win
and you should have fun with both.
Take walks in February
just to smell the ground thaw.
Do the laundry and don’t whine about it.
If you’re going to go to the trouble
to bake a birthday cake for someone
you love, make it from scratch.
Pay attention to the way
professionals do things –
a locksmith replacing a lock
is just as much a virtuoso
as an opera singer.
Talk to the cab driver.
Consider your own mortality,
but don’t dwell on it.
You have a talent
and a responsibility to find it.
Share your ideas!
They are not doing the world any good locked up
for safekeeping in the attic of your ego.
Travel to a place where you don’t understand the language
so you can remember what learning a language is like.
Don’t wear sandals or high heels on a hike.
Share the flowers from your garden
with your neighbors.
Sometimes it's hard to love your neighbor
especially when they are peeking into
your bedroom window. See Rule #2.
Do not develop strange, sentimental
attachments to things like cacti.
Get up early and write.
Not all of your ideas are original –
you have to learn from others first.
Kids say better what adults
struggle over.
It is possible to have too many
rules for yourself.
It is impossible to have too many chocolate chips.
- Jennifer Hill
Some Rules for Living/A Credo for March 2009
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
~ E.E. Cummings
If you feel compelled to hug someone, do it
and put your whole self into that hug.
If you feel like punching someone, think about it.
Chances are, you won’t want to later. Maybe.
The same is true for shopping impulses –
do you really need that 24 pack of ShamWOWs?
Think, then think some more.
Turn off your television, your computer,
throw the phone in the hamper under
the stinky towels and think.
Allow your thoughts to drift into daydreams.
Write down what you dream.
When you see someone enjoy creating art,
or reading, cooking, throwing a ball –
encourage them.
Do not abuse squirrels, children, the elderly,
geese at the park (even though they will chase you).
Wear clothes you feel comfortable in –
they are your socially acceptable skin.
If they aren’t stylish by today’s standards,
good.
Forgive yourself. You’ll do better next time.
Weave cloth, make paper, assemble a book,
milk a cow, help build a house –
at least once in your lifetime.
If crossword puzzles give you headaches,
stop doing them.
Make eye contact when someone
is speaking to you.
Don’t fake listening.
It will come back to haunt you.
It’s ok if you want to try to glue
ice together – just don’t count on it
making a good house.
Count your money. Keep what you need
to pay your bills and eat, then give
the rest away.
Get dirt under your fingernails.
Witness a birth.
Do something that scares you.
Lay out on the lawn in the summer at night
with a friend and look at the stars.
Write letter of praise and complaint
when they are due.
Attend the funeral.
Don’t cheat when you’re playing a game.
You will lose and you will win
and you should have fun with both.
Take walks in February
just to smell the ground thaw.
Do the laundry and don’t whine about it.
If you’re going to go to the trouble
to bake a birthday cake for someone
you love, make it from scratch.
Pay attention to the way
professionals do things –
a locksmith replacing a lock
is just as much a virtuoso
as an opera singer.
Talk to the cab driver.
Consider your own mortality,
but don’t dwell on it.
You have a talent
and a responsibility to find it.
Share your ideas!
They are not doing the world any good locked up
for safekeeping in the attic of your ego.
Travel to a place where you don’t understand the language
so you can remember what learning a language is like.
Don’t wear sandals or high heels on a hike.
Share the flowers from your garden
with your neighbors.
Sometimes it's hard to love your neighbor
especially when they are peeking into
your bedroom window. See Rule #2.
Do not develop strange, sentimental
attachments to things like cacti.
Get up early and write.
Not all of your ideas are original –
you have to learn from others first.
Kids say better what adults
struggle over.
It is possible to have too many
rules for yourself.
It is impossible to have too many chocolate chips.
- Jennifer Hill
Friday, March 06, 2009
At the Cafe
I ticky ticky type away during a break from teaching. Someone asks if I am working on homework. "No, I'm working on a book," I say.
I am reluctant to call it a novel. It scares me too much. Like I might jinx it.
I am reluctant to call it a novel. It scares me too much. Like I might jinx it.
She Saw Your Poems on the Internet
Yesterday, a winsome eighth grader breezed up to me after class and held out a sheet I had given her earlier with one of my poems on it. "Can you autograph this please? For my sister?" I was stunned, to say the least. "She says she knows you." I asked her name, and her age. Maybe I had her as a student somewhere. I didn't recognize her name, but I meet a lot of kids. "She said she saw some of your poems on the internet. She's always looking for poems."
I signed the poem, and wondered what poems of mine she's read - worried over it actually. I'm not exactly Shel Silverstein. Maybe she's mistaken me for someone else, or, maybe she just really wants the autograph of a poet. Either way, it makes me feel good about the future knowing there's a ten year old out there reading poems that are not assigned to her in school.
I signed the poem, and wondered what poems of mine she's read - worried over it actually. I'm not exactly Shel Silverstein. Maybe she's mistaken me for someone else, or, maybe she just really wants the autograph of a poet. Either way, it makes me feel good about the future knowing there's a ten year old out there reading poems that are not assigned to her in school.
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