Friday, February 26, 2010

The Old Woman and the Gym

My journal entry from a few weeks ago went something like this:

Tonight I went with some friends to the Peking Acrobats. Amidst all the amazing (and audience-stress inducing) talent all I could think of was a conversation between myself and the old woman who issues required clothing at the gym. It went something like this:

Me: Can I get a size X swimming suit please?
OW (in thick Russian accent): I don’t think you know what size you are. Do you know what size you are?
Me: Oh. Uh. Yes?
OW: I don’t think you do. Size X is for the little Asian girls. Girls like this (holding up hands about three inches apart). You are like this (hands a bit further apart).
Me: ……
OW: Here is size Y.

It was too big.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Bleh

Our water heater is broken.

So is our heater.

It's hard to recover from a day that starts with a cold shower, an apartment that is 65 degrees, and an outside tempeture of 4.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Dynamic Reading

Robert Duvall as Boo Radley

I remember reading it for the first time while lying on the porch swing. I don't know if the image of light, filtered by the canopy of the swing, on the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird is real or imagined, but I do know that I loved the hours spent reading it. I remember closing the book and just laying there thinking. More importantly I remember I was changed by it. It was one of those changes I didn't know how to talk about. Like the character Jem, I turned inward with my thoughts, knowing I was different, but not knowing how, not knowing what to do with my new knowledge, my new self.


I just finished it for the fourth time. The circumstances around my completion were hardly so picturesque. I was on my bed, my desk was cluttered, a pair of dirty jeans on the floor. But closing the book caused the same reaction. I just laid there thinking, knowing I was once again changed.

I still don't completely know how to talk about how this book moves and changes me each time I read it, I think I will always be like Jem in that way. But it does. I think the thing I gained from it the most this time was the virtue and value of sight.

Monday, February 1, 2010