The fact that often when I’m doing something difficult, or something unpleasant, say for example: walking the quarter mile from class to my car in the frigidity of another Everything Is Frozen Spokane January, I find myself counting. Counting anything. I count the number of trees in my direct vicinity on the way to the car. I count the number of footprints that aren’t mine in my direct path. I count the amount of physical steps it takes me to walk from the English building to my car. And today when I reached my car after one hundred and ten steps I thought: how strange that I, Ms. Kerri, I Pride Myself In Being Quite Literary, should find such comfort in counting, and in the mere presence of patterns and numbers. And I don’t just count when I’m walking in the cold either. I do it when I’m running, and when I’m swimming, too. I would make myself stop, but it really is a primarily unconscious behavior. And besides, I’m banking on my newfound affinity for counting to somehow help exponentially increase the score I am going to receive on the Math portion of my up and coming GRE’s.
How someone can have such a seemingly awful morning so as to warrant the strange and anger-laden behavior of tailgating a blue Chrysler on the freeway for two miles, and then tailgating the same blue Chrysler even after I slowed and let you in in front of me, (so as to ensure you didn’t miss the quite abrupt appearance of the Cheney/EWU exit), placing your front license plate just as close as vehicularly possible to the butt end of said blue Chrysler, and then proceeding to weave in and out of your lane, in a vain attempt to pass the blue Chrysler on the exit ramp, finally rolling down your window and inviting the 22 degree, biting cold wind into your car, just so you can throw your left arm and left middle finger up and out of your window in the obvious direction of the blue Chrysler in front of you, before you proceed to dart into the turn lane, and finally pass your early morning object of wrath, the blue Chrysler, in one of the most humorous displays of angry, impatient driving I’ve ever seen. Please note: I am in no way here attempting to imply that I myself never suffer from occasional bouts of frustration when driving within the confines of Washington State. But I definitely am honest when I say I have never flown the bird in response to any poorly executed driving maneuver made by fellow road warriors, nor have I even used my horn. I always want to use my horn, but dang it! I usually forget, until long after the moment to utilize the horn has sufficiently passed.
The way my keys so willingly and skillfully disappear in the mornings when I am needing them to warm up my ice covered car. Actually, come to think of it, they remain quite adept at hiding for various increments of time throughout the day, often when I am most desiring their presence in the palm of my hand. And as the keys aren’t merely inanimate objects, but rather a thinking, feeling entity–a thinking feeling entity which seemingly delights in consistently driving me crazy–it must be the keys, and not my lack of consistency in placing them somewhere memorable and practical in the interim between their use, who are to blame in this situation.
I posted a picture of him for a silly Instagram-related game and found him waiting for me in my dreams, something which occurs so rarely it still explodes solidly-constructed dams inside me each time I see his face, mustached and smiling at mine just the way he always did, just the way I always remember him. As usual he didn’t say much, not anything I could hear or remember, but he was there and I knew it, and when I → Read more...
I have words washed out to sea. Words ushered quietly from my lips to my fingertips, waiting patiently for the right tide, for the moon to bring my stories alive.
I have words being reviewed, words accepted and words rejected, and I’m clinging to my favorite lines, fighting for them, and it feels strange and new and exhilaratingly infuriating, this tug-of-war of wills and how the slightest bit of caving can make me feel like I’m flirting with abandoning the sanctity → Read more...
[Alternately titled: Story, The Second: The Girl Who Moved To Washington State]
It began simply. A direct message on Twitter first, followed by texts; those texts, in turn, begat plans. With those plans came anxiety and apprehension – I didn’t know you, not your face or your voice or anything else, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to – but also something exciting, a strange and unexpected hope hovering quietly on the horizon. And then we met, conversed and laughed → Read more...
Stories I said I had. Tangential stories and life-changing ones.
Until today I haven’t known where, exactly, to begin. And so quiet this space has mostly been because some beginnings are tricky. Sometimes it’s quite impossible to denote where something ended and something else entirely began.
I’m not going to be able to tell you everything, but then the best stories never really do, do they?
(That’s not a trick question. I promise they don’t.)
(Unless the story was penned by Henry James, in → Read more...