Last Sunday I experienced a door-to-door experience which can only be deemed truly disturbing. Actually, I think it was Saturday. Yes, thinking back on it, the day definitely was a Saturday, but I guess my point is, that opening the door only to be greeted by two Jehovah’s Witnesses was ever as disconcerting on this Saturday as it would have been had it occurred on a Sunday, or any other day for that matter. And not because the doorbell rang and made me jump and spill the water I was pouring into my glass onto the counter, and not because opening the door I saw two strangers smiling at me with strange vacant expressions on their faces, and not even because the two strangers smiling with strange vacant expressions on their faces turned out to be two Jehovah’s Witnesses who wanted to discuss the possibilities of accumulating “eternal knowledge” on this earth and to point me in their direction, or rather, the right direction .
I didn’t take offense at them interrupting my water consumption and my visit with my grandmother, and I didn’t take offense at their apparent lack of interest regarding my own pre-established religious background and spiritual tendencies. What did bother me, and left me reeling and a bit frightened, and having to check to make sure my mouth wasn’t noticeably agape, was that one of Jehovah’s two witnesses standing in front of me was a little boy, a little boy no older than seven.
A little boy in an adorable and yet obviously uncomfortable grey tweed suit who proceeded to look at me with his innocent wee face and like a little trained monkey regurgitate a speech that he could not have written because it sounded as if an adult over the age of thirty had written it, and wouldn’t you know, an adult over the age of thirty was standing just paces behind the little witness, beaming proudly and patting his back and encouraging him to keep going when he looked longingly at her at various points during his “speech” after he stumbled over words no seven-year-old should be forced to pronounce. After he choked on phrasing too complicated and contrived for a little boy who should be outside in the Saturday afternoon sunshine in shorts and a t-shirt, playing in the dirt and picking his nose, and not peddling something he can’t possibly even understand at the ripe old age of SEVEN just so no one will want to slam the door on the the tract-toting behind of the woman beaming eerily in the background.
Because how can you tell a seven-year-old that you aren’t interested? How can you slam the door in a seven-year-old’s face when he keeps pushing for you to take documents on becoming a Jehovah’s Witness that you do not want, but thank you anyway? The answer: you can’t. It’s like frowning when the little boy in a scout’s uniform and the little campfire girl with pigtails in her hair bound to your door excitedly, and then proceeding to tell them that you aren’t going to buy a box of their cookies, thereby leaving them feeling dejected and wondering why you hate them and why you hate cookies. And besides, it was certainly not this little boy’s fault that he was dressed in an uncomfortable tweed suit and had memorized his mother’s spoonfed lines and was nervous and scared and SEVEN.
And even more than I wanted to grab the little boy and steal him away from the Dark Side and transport him safely and unscarred back to the playground where he belongs, or at least back to books about bugs and planes and cars and ponies and even Barbies if he wants, even more than that, I found myself wanting to punch the beaming adult behind him in the ovaries, right in the baby-makers, and tell her that manipulating children is best done in private and could she please leave me out of it.
And after punching her in the ovaries I would most surely think it appropriate to yell something like “Can I get a WITness?!” so that she would know that while I may not be inherently righteous, at least I am clever.
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...
This week I’ve been finding pieces of writing long lost and forgotten. Unearthing words belonging to me, and words penned by some of my favorite of all literary voices, collected and saved and scrawled excitedly on pages littered with foggy memories of past lives, obscured now in light of all that was and is and is to come.
Of the words not belonging to me, Lucille Clifton’s were the ones I found most often, recounted in notebook after notebook, or inked → Read more...
They say water changes stone, carving it over time to angles and dimensions in harmony with water’s need to reach the sea; but sometimes, stones change the watercourse instead.
-The lovely and eclectic Shari
I’m collecting my favorite corners, like the one with the stunning oak tree on display for an entire neighborhood to see, its limbs shading a bustling crosswalk shooting confidence into pedestrians like electric currents of white light, fresh graffiti on a nearby curb: an infinity symbol, black and simple.
I’m collecting stories about the apartment window filled with small elephant figurines along one of my favorite walking routes. So many trunks standing side-by-side and none of them alive.
I’m collecting the surprisingly → Read more...