Lumiere
08-15-2010, 12:11 AM
Some people are like oatmeal;
though the memory of them is not especially flavorful, it stays, with no other objective than to wait . . . . for the right word, object, shade of color, shape, or air to throw you back a few years; and when you are thrown back into the expansive museum of your own history, a portrait stirs and steps out of its frame; a hand closes around your wrist - a face you forgot you knew.
I was at the beach, walking on the great rock-surfaces that jut into the water. A small boy who had been kicking the ocean spun round suddenly and called inshore "Irina! Kepla!"
I kept those sounds without knowing why, and repeated them here and there, while in the bath or while making toast.
Two weeks later, I woke up one morning and . . . Irina! A face I forgot I knew.
We were on a team together - volleyball - in the 8th grade, weren't we? You were something, weren't you: lousy at volleyball, but not in the typical knock-kneed way; you were formed like an ancient olympian and broad-backed-strong; and busty next to the rest of us who had only recently come to outweigh the family dog.
Your pride stepped ahead of you and made you seem, by turns, silly or inspired.
Silly: absolutely swaggering like the world's fastest man before a race; stepping long; docking your shoulders up and down; arms arced a little away from your body; close-fingered in your hands for us to see how fine and formidable they were. (You knew your fine points well; you were delighted with your hefty chin; I with your soggy eyes.)
What title were you defending at 14?
You wanted to charm the universe to yourself but were comically unsuccessful apart from me. (And in me you never became aware of your success.)
I think you'd've done better as a god or a queen, accepting fruit offerings and praise naturally, un-stifled as a babe at the breast. You would've been impersonal but kind to your subjects, too prideful to be unjust.
Irina of marble eyes, granite cheekbones. Goodly fearsome and not to be touched.
As it was, you grew warm in a mortal womb and bore the common load: lack of money, lack of a self-destined future, tiny moutains of struggle, fleeting control. We all knew the degree of your peasantry by the $7 psuedo-sneakers you wore and wore and wore.
But ever the granite pride.
Your moments of triumph or devastation were private, like everyone else's;
they should've been grossly public: impassioned balcony-spectacles for your subjectry. Sensing this, you gave us small performances from an imagined balcony:
looking with chilled hawk eyes at your opponents over the net; winding up for the serve; letting a great groan - nearly a suppressed roar - kick out of you as you hit the ball; and when the serve failed - not falling short, but pelting erratically to one side or the other - clenching your hands, eyes, forehead, calves; swearing in your nose; agonizing yourself.
But, oh! The seas crashed applause when, once in a while, you struck true; then your sense of victory was so intense you became almost angry with it; then you were up on your balcony, grinning and flexing your jaw to the amorous bawls of the trumpets and your subjects!
You were not invited, Irina, to the end of the year slumber-party, which was when I first noticed (while not really watching a movie) that I wanted you around with your silly passions too high, too low, and altogether too epically scaled for 8th grade volleyball.
After five years, I've recalled you from the dormancy ward of my memory, or maybe you've recalled yourself.
I would like to know where you are, what triumphs and devastations you're in the thick of, and how they look from inside you. Do you have a sweetheart, and are you joining the Air Force, and have you cut your black nest of hair, and what is your day-job, and do you smoke cigarettes, - (you would put on such a suave show of smoking, which would come out both silly and inspired) - and is your voice the same highlow-husk, and
are you bitter about not having a balcony?
Unfortunately, all I ever collected from you was your first name and some oatmeal, Irina.
though the memory of them is not especially flavorful, it stays, with no other objective than to wait . . . . for the right word, object, shade of color, shape, or air to throw you back a few years; and when you are thrown back into the expansive museum of your own history, a portrait stirs and steps out of its frame; a hand closes around your wrist - a face you forgot you knew.
I was at the beach, walking on the great rock-surfaces that jut into the water. A small boy who had been kicking the ocean spun round suddenly and called inshore "Irina! Kepla!"
I kept those sounds without knowing why, and repeated them here and there, while in the bath or while making toast.
Two weeks later, I woke up one morning and . . . Irina! A face I forgot I knew.
We were on a team together - volleyball - in the 8th grade, weren't we? You were something, weren't you: lousy at volleyball, but not in the typical knock-kneed way; you were formed like an ancient olympian and broad-backed-strong; and busty next to the rest of us who had only recently come to outweigh the family dog.
Your pride stepped ahead of you and made you seem, by turns, silly or inspired.
Silly: absolutely swaggering like the world's fastest man before a race; stepping long; docking your shoulders up and down; arms arced a little away from your body; close-fingered in your hands for us to see how fine and formidable they were. (You knew your fine points well; you were delighted with your hefty chin; I with your soggy eyes.)
What title were you defending at 14?
You wanted to charm the universe to yourself but were comically unsuccessful apart from me. (And in me you never became aware of your success.)
I think you'd've done better as a god or a queen, accepting fruit offerings and praise naturally, un-stifled as a babe at the breast. You would've been impersonal but kind to your subjects, too prideful to be unjust.
Irina of marble eyes, granite cheekbones. Goodly fearsome and not to be touched.
As it was, you grew warm in a mortal womb and bore the common load: lack of money, lack of a self-destined future, tiny moutains of struggle, fleeting control. We all knew the degree of your peasantry by the $7 psuedo-sneakers you wore and wore and wore.
But ever the granite pride.
Your moments of triumph or devastation were private, like everyone else's;
they should've been grossly public: impassioned balcony-spectacles for your subjectry. Sensing this, you gave us small performances from an imagined balcony:
looking with chilled hawk eyes at your opponents over the net; winding up for the serve; letting a great groan - nearly a suppressed roar - kick out of you as you hit the ball; and when the serve failed - not falling short, but pelting erratically to one side or the other - clenching your hands, eyes, forehead, calves; swearing in your nose; agonizing yourself.
But, oh! The seas crashed applause when, once in a while, you struck true; then your sense of victory was so intense you became almost angry with it; then you were up on your balcony, grinning and flexing your jaw to the amorous bawls of the trumpets and your subjects!
You were not invited, Irina, to the end of the year slumber-party, which was when I first noticed (while not really watching a movie) that I wanted you around with your silly passions too high, too low, and altogether too epically scaled for 8th grade volleyball.
After five years, I've recalled you from the dormancy ward of my memory, or maybe you've recalled yourself.
I would like to know where you are, what triumphs and devastations you're in the thick of, and how they look from inside you. Do you have a sweetheart, and are you joining the Air Force, and have you cut your black nest of hair, and what is your day-job, and do you smoke cigarettes, - (you would put on such a suave show of smoking, which would come out both silly and inspired) - and is your voice the same highlow-husk, and
are you bitter about not having a balcony?
Unfortunately, all I ever collected from you was your first name and some oatmeal, Irina.