Memoirs 3 and 4
I only have pictures of the cat while he is cleaning himself, because that�s when he�s too self involved to notice the fascinating mass of lenses and mirrors that breaths short and quick while it circles him. He looks up for a moment, focuses his daft, green eyes on the lens, and returns to his left flank, which is covered in dust and ticks. The shutter snaps, and catches his full attention. By then, though, I�m off.
I am on the prowl. Tipping open the cover to the gas grill, sneaking up on windows, crawling up to flowers on my stomach. When I thought the cat wasn�t watching me, I hunched on my stomach and started to focus on him. I had him perfectly � caught pouncing on a hornet � when the sharp image I had through the mirror and the lens became a rush of blur.
I flopped on my back, and balanced the camera on my stomach before I faced the onslaught of teeth, sticky saliva, and thumping hindquarters. The cat attached himself to my forearm, and gurgled and spit, snarled and attacked � never as hard as he was capable � and chewed on my fingers.
This is a daily ritual. Every day, I stare up at the patterned leaves of the yellow wood, and every day the cat burbles away with pleasure as he chews on my hand. I let out a shriek somewhere between glee and pain, then a whoop of laughter, and I pulled my hand away, teasing and tempting the cat. Happy scars puffed up on my hands. I laughed and wrestled and fought back and stared at the yellow wood leaves.
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"By the time you're twenty five," the rock and roll on the stereo tells me, "You'll want ("you'll want you'll want you'll want" chime the back up girls) to get out of this repetitious life." I inhale deeply, the cotton of my clothes are so worn that I forget that they're cotton and not skin. I stretch on my stomach, watch the wall, watch the book in front of me, and watch the lyrics played in my head. "Another job, another baby," the song tells me.
"I am speechless at the life you chose for me,� says one of the breathy voices, and I�m suddenly anxious.
The wall is plaster, and it's irregular and quirky. By five thirty-eight, the sunlight is spare, just glances off the wall. The walls are white, but now seem dingy and gray in the afternoon light. "By the time you're twenty five," and the two guitars are arrhythmic, slippery, and hard to hang onto. The book isn't interesting me anymore. The song makes me sad, sadder than any song about star crossed lovers ever did, sadder than any slow song. Sad in the way I get when I watch my smart cousins working as waitresses instead of going to graduate school. Sad like when I sat in my therapist�s waiting room, reading Ms., and listened to Gloria Steinem console older feminists, saying that younger girls just haven't faced the real injustices in their teens. "Just wait till they get a job," I think she said. "Then they'll get angry." By the time I�m twenty five, I don�t want to have to get angry.
I want I want I want to get out.
I stare at the wall some more. A huge expanse of lumpy gray, broken up only by empty picture hooks and holes where thumb tacks were, and eventually I notice the picture of Montana hanging over the lamp. It's from an old National Geographic, and it's beginning to fade, but I leave it there when I take down everything else. The picture is in layers; layers of brush and weeds, layers of curved mountains, layers of thick thunderclouds. The horizon is so dark that it looks navy blue, burnt and bruised.
+======+
I ripped off a sleater kinney song and used it in an english assignment! I am so low, shameless, dirty, and downright evil. But I'm also the queen of content, you hear? My mother needs the computer. Thank you jacqui and equin0x for feeding me back.
2000-06-09, Memoirs 3 and 4
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