\”blog\” ryhmes with \”bog\”…

            One of the passages from Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger that caught my attention was the paragraph in which Holden describes waiting for Stradlater to come back from his date with Jane. He states that it is hard for him to remember what he was doing when he heard his roommate’s footsteps coming down the hall. He then describes the way in which he reacts to anxiety, saying, “When I really worry about something, I don’t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don’t go. I’m too worried to go. I don’t want to interrupt my worrying to go” (40). This indicates that when Holden is anxious, he can’t do anything other than worry.             This passage is interests me because I also know how I react to stress quite well. Holden and I have both similarities and differences in the way that we worry.              I also find it difficult to remember exactly where I am when I think about something that worries me. My brain simply takes in too much information about my surroundings to store, and I block it all out. However, unlike Holden, I have to do something about my anxiety. I usually try to re-direct my thoughts or work on the homework or problem that makes me anxious, while Holden lets his anxiety take over. When Holden’s emotions are in control of him, he tends to act on the spur of the moment, not thinking things through. An example of this is Holden’s starting the fight with Stradlater. Another such example is his breaking the windows in the garage the night his brother died.      

Half a Hershey’s bar lying on the table

in the middle of many skeins of thread,

their individual strands crisscrossing,

forming a multi-colored spider’s web.

Next to the friendship bracelet taped to the plastic table-top, nibbled

between sips of sweet soda.

Craft-time at camp.  

Coffee-table M&M’s

taken by the handful from the small glass bowl.

My teeth struggle to find purchase on them,

and crack their colored shells,

letting the warm taste wash over my tongue.  

Swirls of smooth ice-cream,

the gigantic cone

licked, smeared all over my five-year-old face.

Amazing I was allowed to eat this.

Sitting on a bench in the sun,

green park stretching all around me,

the gentle drip of sticky chocolate

staining my small hands.  

Chips of brown gold

picked over peanuts and raisins,

turning soft in my warm hands.

They still taste nutty when I pop them in my mouth,

wipe my hands on dirty jeans,

continue up the rocky trail.

I’m almost at the top.    

Chocolate-coated almonds, bittersweet.

I suck off the chocolate,

bite into the nut

while waiting on the terra-cotta tiled floor,

listening to the grown-up’s conversation.  

Gourmet chocolates,

full of fancy flavors and fillings

taken from a waiter in a black and-white-suit,

a towel on one arm, silver platter in one hand.

Those are not for me.  

Chocolate doesn’t taste so sweet

while worrying over smeared lipstick,

and trying to walk between tables.

When wearing mascara, eyeliner,

diamond necklaces,

teetering high-heels,

and a too-tight dress.

When sitting upright at the table,

daintily eating with knife and fork

carefully choosing

each word of polite conversation.    

Even with the fillings, I’d choose the re-solidified bar in my pocket.

          One inch heels, the straps made of blue plastic, the sole made of cork; a flower woven from beige wooden beads on each. Bought at DSW for 20 dollars in ten minuets. I stand in them.

        The six of us wobble, walking two and fro in high-heels like the adults we are about to become.

            When the service starts, we sit down in a row and one by one, the heels come off. We stay still with an effort, four or five at a time, listening to the others speak of peace. I twist my hands in my lap, wipe the sweat from my palms, read and re-read my small blue cue card. Then it’s my turn.

         Rachael and I slip our shoes back on to stand up and walk to read the children’s story. They come from the nursery, small, shy, quietly unsure of us.  We sit down before them, turn on the microphone, open our books.  I take a deep breath.

          As I speak, a small blonde girl stage-whispers a greeting to her friend, waving. I smile, thinking of another, much older pair of friends, a pair now sitting before the congregation that used to call one by the other’s name.

          Concentrating on my part, I am surprised when small warm fingers brush my cold toes. I concentrate on feeling them, not daring to move. They don’t linger, but I sense the flower twisting on my foot. I glance up out of the corner of my eye. A patch of bright blonde is not too far away, and under it must be the childish assumption that I don’t know what she’s doing.

         We stand up, finished. The children get up too, talking freely now, seeking their friends, anticipating their classes for the week. We sit on the pew, and once again our high-heels come off. I smile at the flower on my right shoe; its beaded petals are bent into various angles.          

         The next time I stand an inch taller than usual, it is to walk down the red carpet, out of the sanctuary with the feel of small warm fingers still lingering on my cold toes.

          I learned to knit on a hot summer day in my elementary school, empty for vacation. My first needles were a bright metallic blue, joined at the ends by a stiff plastic wire. My teacher was the principal’s assistant; a brown Pilipino woman, middle aged, each strand of her hair dyed a different shade of gray by time.

          We sat on the blue metal tables, hot in the midday sun. I let a drop of water fall from my finger and watched it shrink into gas. My teacher, known to me as Carolina, wound the pink wool through my fingers, showing me how to start. I sat quietly through the lesson, enjoying the smooth feel of metal moving under my hands, listening to my mom chat with her. My pink scarf with French tassels to be grew and grew—sideways.

         Several years later, that wide scarf sits at the foot of my bed as a blanket. Many more scarves, hats, blankets, and mittens take up a box in my closet, the remainder of which is devoted to yarn. Seventeen pairs of smooth bamboo needles reside in a cloth case on our coffee table. The eighteenth pair I own is still joined to a scarf, the red and black pattern of the yarn clashing with the needles’ metallic blue.      

Night is a loaded gun; both have dangerous potential.

A child is a word jumble, both are only somewhat comprehensible.  

             In the glossy, glass-covered photograph between my hands, two girls stand side by side. They look complete opposites, day and night, standing on a beach as the sun sets. One is tall, the other short. The first is pale, the second bronze.            

           The girl on the left is as tall as the seniors in front of a seventh-grader’s eyes. She wears a black silk dress, strappy heels, and a little make-up. The smile on her face has been plastered on purely for the picture; it is too wide and fixed. Her eyes look vacant, light in color to match the skin framed by smooth brown hair.            

        Her companion shrinks below her. The smile she wears along with a navy-blue sweater and brown skirt is more relaxed. Bright blonde strands escape the pony-tail draped over her shoulder, curving with her face, covering an amber eye. Vivid sunburn has brushed her nose and cheekbones.            

        What the picture doesn’t show is that the two are the same age, both celebrating the start of their thirteenth year of life. One is mature, responsible, and proud to show it off, while the other is much less loud. One is bookish, even though sports are the other girl’s water and air. They both love rock n’ roll, both thinks the other lucky, both are hungry, both creative, and both sugar-high.

      Day and night just happen to be two halves of a whole idiot.    

            It seems just the tiniest bit unbelievable that I didn’t want to go to music camp this year. At the time, I had reason enough; I’d been out of town for a month and, and last year I had been bored out of my brain while at camp. But once I had settled in, auditioned for the orchestra, and memorized a few names, it felt less as though I was going to camp and more like I was coming home.            

             And then, of course time flew. The days I had been planning on counting down were over before I could remember how many were left. One moment I was in the lunch line, the next in rehearsal a few days later, then I was hiking, then at afternoon assembly, and then it was the final day and we were sweeping out the cabin for the last time. A heartbeat later my friends and I were laughing at Jen’s ridiculously high high-heels while waiting to perform during the end-of session concert; and when my heart beat again, I was sawing away at my violin, playing the last note of the last piece at top volume alongside all the other campers and staff. Then I was walking to my case, giving my friends hugs goodbye along the way, and the next thing I knew, my dad was driving us down the freeway.            

           For days I could only think of camp, of how the conductor’s glasses flew off during rehearsal, how excited my councilor had been at the dance, how I’d promised to write a bassoonist as soon as I got home, how much I wanted to re-live it all.

           But the thing I missed the most camp were the people, even the ones I didn’t know. “You are the camp,” we were constantly told by the curator. “Without kind and caring musicians like you, Arrowbear would be nothing.” And so, the hardest part of being camp-sick was knowing that even if I somehow convinced my parents to drive me all the way back up the winding mountain, above the blanket of smog, past Arrowbear lake, and to the uneven roads and scattered buildings of my camp, there would be nothing there to come home to.      

        It’s four in the morning and the only thing running stupidly through my head is that it can’t be four in the morning. That’s way too early to even think about functioning.            

          I’m bouncing along on the back row of a small, white tour bus on a red dirt road through the middle of nowhere,
Northern Territory, Australia. My cousins sit next to me in a daze, not talking, all three of us unable to even yawn, let alone listen to the driver over the intercom. I think he’s talking about weather conditions. He strings the words together through a thick Australian accent, making it impossible to understand him. Not that we’re trying hard.

             Instead, I stare out of the tinted windows at the black night and its stars, so bright they make the ground glow silver. Some of the other passengers try to search for the big dipper. They’re still arguing about its location when the bus rumbles to a stop.            

         We file out dumbly, sheep following their shepherd. Even through two coats, two shirts, two hats, and a scarf, the cold hits me hard, finding every possible path through to my skin. Already my hands are painfully numb. I knew I should have brought gloves.           

           Under careful instruction, we unload the balloon and its basket, complete with fuel supply and attach one to the other. As the balloon expands with hot air, I eye the wicker nervously. Can that oversized picnic lunchbox really hold the weight of sixteen people?            

           All around us, other groups like ours are unloading balloons, running through safety procedures, igniting the fuel, watching the tent-like folds of material inflate. I watch two, four, eight, sixteen people climb into a single basket. A man takes their picture, cuts a rope and they ascend quickly. Too quickly. 

              Then our balloon drags its basket upright and makes it hover a few feet above the ground. We climb in, and it pitches like a dinghy afloat. My cousins giggle. I cling on tightly, half excited in spite of myself. The now dreaded camera man walks to the side of our basket, climbs onto a nearby van. And then, with a “one, two, three, cheese!” our retinas are branded so that we can’t see him cut the rope. We suddenly soar sideways, a gust of wind pushing us west, the red center flying away beneath us, and the sun just pushing a purple tinge into the deep black sky.

            I dashed across the black sand, hot from the summer sun and up the wooden steps, imagining them scorched from my burning feet. Still dripping saltwater, I made my way slowly across the porch and sat on the thick wall separating the house from the ocean. With one leg hugged close and the other dangling down, I scanned the beach, my eyes picking out rare patches of sand from between brightly colored umbrellas, people and the towels that went with them. For endless hours, I stared and stared from the shore, to the swimmers, to the sparkling crests of forming waves, up to the sun and the sky, my ears full of the roaring waves,  breathing in the ocean’s salty breeze, letting the warm sun soak in, wishing that today would repeat forever.