Crickets and Cars and Computer Keys

100th BLOG POST!! YAY! Here is a piece I wrote that pretty much describes me as a thinker and a writer.

 

Writing on a laptop, screen blazing white into the dim living room lit by not one, not two, but three lamps. Legs underneath a faded maroon blanket, warm but not hot. Fingers tapping, scrolling, typing. My brain thinks and tell my hands what to do and they tap the keys that tell the screen what to do. We are one machine, one motion. I think and they write, they write and the computer thinks. I read it, I pause, I look out the window.

The blinds are half drawn and slanted open. The thinning blue sky outlines a large tree, a mere silhouette by this time at 8:31 pm. Cars on the highway roll by, the hum of tires on pavement and the occasional rumble of a motorcycle filling the emptiness in the house. There is the shuffle of book pages as the reader in the red—now faded pink—arm chair finishes a page and then flips it, reading on, not pausing, not thinking, just reading.

Stop. Write. Think. Stop. Read. Look out the window. Write. Stop. Think. It ebbs and flows, a pattern ever shifting. The delicate wings of a cricket floats through the window, blending with the cars on the highway. Buzz, rumble, a heartbeat of quietness. Everything has a pattern, a moment of hesitation. I can feel the rise and fall of the sounds around me as the page flips, the reader reads, the cricket sings, the cars go by. Then a free, soundless, perfect moment of stillness. Then the page flips.

Looking at the screen again, focusing through the glare in my glasses. Fingers are still tapping, mind is still thinking. I am writing but no, I am thinking–and suddenly they become the same, writing and thinking do not differ in anyway except for one is in my mind and the other is on a screen. Is this how thoughts look? Suspended, clinging onto invisible lines on the clean white screen? Are my thoughts scrolling, in Arial font, consistent and stopping, starting, stopping, starting? Or are they lapsing and rolling like the waves of an ocean?

Stop. Look out the window. The sky is darkening rapidly. A song is stuck in my head. I look back at the screen, thoughts and words a jumble on the Google Doc in front of me. The document is still untitled. I’m untitled. This moment is untitled, and will remain so, because there is no name for a brief moment in time while crickets and cars and computer keys work. Unless a slightly over-tired, slightly too philosophical person  comes along and names it. But that’s just what happens on Saturday nights. Writing on a laptop, screen blazing.

 

The Noise

The pause

The stretch

The heavily loaded moments

Between smiles

Between tears

Do you hear that?

I love the noise

When it’s silent.

 

Look Both Ways

Mother always told me to look both ways across the street.

Left, right, then left again. Double check. Triple check.

I listened.

You must be absolutely positive that there are no cars coming, she said.

She said this first when I pleaded to go over to my friend Eliseo’s house in the fourth grade.

Eliseo was Guatemalan, and his parents didn’t speak much English. Mother always worried about me going over to Eliseo’s, said there was too much risk in between the world of languages. And the worst part was that in order to get to his house, I had to cross a busy highway in between our houses.

Mother hated that highway.

She’d curse at the loud motors roaring by, and the honking of horns, the blaring sirens.

She stood from the window, watching as I stood at the base of our driveway, checking the road.

Left, right, then left again.

Double check.

Triple check.

And then I’d cross.

I’d bound across the highway, skipping until I got to Eliseo’s house.

Their house was askew.

There were always children playing in their overgrown garden.

A pink, broken tricycle lay abandoned on their lawn for what seemed decades.

That house was a broken haven at the other side of the monstrous highway.

I liked Eliseo and his five brothers and sisters.

They moved away when I turned eleven.

 

Over the course of my childhood, my mother must’ve told me to ‘look both ways’ a million times. Of course, the manner in which she told this to me varied over the years. The last time she reminded me of this is when I had invited her to come with me on a trip to D.C., and I almost got run over by a Toyota Camry that whipped out of nowhere and nearly sent me careening to hell. In a cleaner version, she’d mostly said “Jesus Christ, you better look before you cross the _______ street or I’ll _______ wring your neck.” She meant it with affection, of course.

 

But somehow these words and memories escape my mind for one moment.

So much can happen in a single moment.

I did not think when I walked Cedar street that morning, holding a cup of coffee in my bitter fingertips, trying to avoid the ice and snow that still remained on the dirty brick sidewalk.

I did not think when I stopped in front of a street, looking ahead at the building of where I worked.

I did not think when I cursed at my watch.

I did not think when I realized I was late and took one foot off the curb and placed it in the road, without the white bar of a crosswalk, and started to hurriedly cross it with only thoughts of my boss publicly humiliating me and reprimanding me for my tardiness.

I did not even think when I saw the car coming out of the corner of my eye.

It was a blue car.

Probably a Nissan.

And I didn’t even think when the car got closer, too close.

Still, as the other side of the road was so close, and I thought I was there, I did not think when the lights bore down on my eyes and the horn blared into my skull.

And then I stopped thinking altogether.

I should’ve listened.

Driving Home

the soft edges of the night touch the car
dark blue
flickering with street lamps.
rain patters
softly
reassuringly.
the voices
the ones in charge of this vehicle rounding about through the night
murmur.
their noises let the stoplights
the wet streets
the night
hold hands together.
contingency
possibility.
evaporated.
the calmness of the red, yellow, green lights
sits down in the car
it hums
you are safe
you are safe
you are safe
in your car
driving home.
you are safe.

An English Teacher’s First Day on the Job

She smooths the black canvas surface of her laptop case, pausing a moment to take a slow, steady breath of crisp September air before breaking apart the silence with the unzipping of the case. She tugs the zipper open–roughly at the last few centimeters, it always jams–and slips her computer from its case. She places it on top of her desk among the other new items of her desk; a jar of freshly sharpened pencils, a book with a slip of paper marking her place (a proud 256 into her 400 page novel). She straightens the pencils, trying to make them stand upright in their jar, but as soon as her hand releases them they scatter off into different directions. Typical.
She surveys her classroom once more, taking in the sight of the wooden desks connected to navy blue plastic chairs, framed in the early morning sunlight. It looks peaceful, and she cannot help relaxing a bit in the stillness of the room. But her nerves are frayed, and her fingers are clammy. She rubs them on the hem of her skirt, tucking her blouse in for the thirtieth time. She’s been up all night, tossing and turning in her sheets wondering what it would be like to see those children, the ones she’d be stuck with all year–good or bad–come bursting into her classroom. What it would be like to watch their faces, eager for learning, stare up at her with awe. Alright, alright, she was kidding herself. She needs to prepare herself for the worst; just in case her expectations are crushed. That way she’ll be prepared. In that moment, she pictures a bunch of slouching, angry teenagers akin to John Bender. She shivers, hoping that the character is far from reality. How could people bear to defile the calm tranquility of the classroom? She could not envision it; the slandering of school during the act of sunlight streaming onto the large red rug over carpeted floor, embroidered and tasseled to the finest degree.
It makes her nervous again, looking around the room. She checks the plastic clock hanging above a desk to her right, craning her neck to read the digits. Seven minutes until 9 o’clock. Her heart clenches and unclenches, as if something was there in that room and she did not have enough time to run and hold onto it  before it was swept away by something beyond her control. In a way, that was what was happening. Her virginity as an English teacher would soon be gone and replaced with the sort of rough, cold persona that only soldiers bore after a long, hard-fought war. Looking at her reflection in the window across the room, she prepared herself for battle. She would be firm, yet kind. Nurturing, yet aloof. She would leave an impression, not just teach her subject. This is her life, and she will live it.
A few more minutes pass, and she saw the hour hand drawing menacingly closer to 9 o’clock. She gives herself a quick, reassuring nod in the window–pausing to draw a stray hair from her temple—and hurriedly gets up to write in blue Expo marker; her name; Kathryn R. Elliott. Too traditional. She erases her middle initial, hoping to seem more casual. On a whim, she adds a smiley face on the end.

She sits back down, confidently. She is ready. One minute until class. She looks back up at the board, her name cleanly written across its pristine surface. She rises again, this time to hastily erase the smiley face; she doesn’t want to appear cheesy. Or too friendly; perhaps a smiley face was too friendly. She sits back down once more, smoothing her skirt. She sits up, straightbacked, and stares–expectantly, excitedly, anxiously—at the door handle as it slowly begins to open.