Growing Things and Other Stories, page 21
KB
Pee: ✓ Poop: ✓ ✓ ✓
—10/26
12:46 to 1:06
Today there was an old woman at the pond feeding the ducks and swans. All of them. In the world. She dumped enough bread to feed a small nation of waterfowl. I’m serious. It was like she was landscaping with bread instead of spreading mulch. I rightly worried she was overfeeding them and their little stomachs would fill with bread and explode out between their beaks. I grant you that might be extreme (and gruesome, sorry), but I remember reading somewhere that processed white bread isn’t the best food for ducks or birds, which shouldn’t be a surprise, as it isn’t the best food for us either. It was a challenge to stop Holly from eating bread and keeping her from barking and charging at the ducks. Her stiff-legged hops of aggression are cute and sad at the same time. Luckily those huge swans were elsewhere. They’re as tall as I am when they stretch their necks up. Without even saying hello to me the old woman started talking in medias res, telling me about how all the baby swans, born in the spring, have died. Jeez, I’m doing fine, how are you, right? I know this sounds ageist, but the old woman was more than kind of creepy. I swear it was not because she was old and gray, and hunched, a bit shaky, but it was because of how she looked at me. Her stare wasn’t quite vacant, but it was not all there either. She was looking beyond me, to the horrible future we’re all doomed to suffer. Her voice was echoey, like a chair creaking in an empty house. And seriously, the sheer volume of torn-up bread on the ground made everything feel off, feel wrong. We tried to move quickly past the scene without getting drawn into a long conversation I did not want to get into. I smiled and nodded and I told the woman that it was too bad about the baby swans. She said the snapping turtles got most of the babies (and that made Holly and me afraid of being dragged underwater and into the dark mud all over again), but last night she heard a coyote howling across the pond and she was sure it got the last swan baby. I told her that it was terrible, it was all terrible and horrible, and it was, but I didn’t want to deal with it today, not with the chill in the air and weakening sunlight, and as I walked away she yelled to me that I had to keep a close eye on the dog and not let her get too far away from me. We normally walk past the pond and then curl back to your house, but today we cut the walk short. All I could think about were hungry coyotes as big as cars and they howled and they had bloodied and torn Hollys in their mouths. Holly and I came home, but neither of us was into the belly rubs. We sat together and I let Holly have a good cry instead.
Elisa
Pee: ✓ Poop:
—10/31
12:23 to 12:46
I loved Holly’s referee (sorry: rufferee) costume. The black and white stripes are befitting, and she strutted around the neighborhood showing them off. Holly didn’t have a care in a world while I wrestled with whether or not to tell you that I took a piece of candy from your jack-o’-lantern candy bucket. My mom has one just like it, but yours has a cooler, more jagged smile and looks more like a real pumpkin. Obviously I decided to confess to you that I took a peanut butter cup. There was no ill intent and I did it without even thinking. That is not to say I am not constantly aware of treating your place and belongings with professional care and respect. It was this weird natural reaction: I opened your front door and bam, there was all that candy in its shiny packaging practically spilling out of the bucket hanging there on the stairway’s front post. I’m not saying it’s your fault, and I don’t even blame Holly, but it’s hard walking into your house sometimes because Holly still barks and skitters away from me and cowers in her little dog bed like I’m the scariest guy ever. That’s not my fault, but it doesn’t feel good. It’s not anyone’s fault. It is what it is. I woke up in a great mood today, too, I mean, it being Halloween and everything, but on this day of all days it was a bit much to get barked at again when all I did was open the door with my biggest, goofiest smile, and she wouldn’t stop barking. Our song didn’t work today. I felt ridiculous having a little dog dressed up in a football referee costume barking her furry face off at me, and, well, I don’t like being made to feel ridiculous, and like anyone else, I wanted to feel good, feel better about who I am and what I was doing with my day and yet-to-be-determined direction of my life, so yeah, I took a piece of candy to get the chocolate endorphins kick. And you know what? Unwrapping the peanut butter cup helped Holly too. No, I didn’t give her any, but she stopped barking when she smelled the chocolate. Anyway, I feel bad about taking it even though you clearly had enough there to spare and you probably wouldn’t have known one piece was gone. I wasn’t going to say anything and I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal to you at all, but then I didn’t know how many pieces you gave to trick-or-treaters. One? Two? A handful? While Holly and I were walking around I couldn’t stop imagining you guys running out of candy right when some poor little kid dressed up in a homemade mummy costume rang your bell. That’s the costume I wore once because Mom told me I was too tall for a store-bought costume. She was lying to me, and it wasn’t because we couldn’t afford to buy one. She simply didn’t want to go with me to the store. That was it. She couldn’t be bothered—one of her favorite phrases. I could tell by the slumped shoulders and sigh in her voice when I asked her, and there was no way Dad could be bothered to take me to Party City, so I wrapped myself up in roll after roll of toilet paper, which pissed my parents off more because I used almost every roll we had. The worst part was that my costume was lame. The TP didn’t look like ancient, dusty wrappings. I looked like I was wrapped up in toilet paper. Way too white, soft, and cushy. The stuff didn’t stay on my body very well either. I wrapped my head last and Scotch-taped the ends to my face and because I wanted it to look real I made sure my mouth wasn’t showing and same with my eyes, and I couldn’t breathe or see very well and when I finally went outside I fell a couple times. So because of all that I worried your neighborhood mummy kid wouldn’t get your last piece of candy because I took it and I worried that kid would feel worse than he already felt because of me. And I’d hate myself if the kid then did something bad to your house in retaliation. Trick or treat, right? I am sorry, and I’ll buy a candy bag and fill up your bowl the next time I come over.
Geoff
Pee: ✓ Poop:
—11/1
1:13 to 1:33
So after I tried on all your clothes and had a fashion show for Holly (kidding!), she took me on a tour of the office/writing room today. I love the red walls, framed (but not hung) horror movie posters (the Nosferatu canvas replica is my favorite) perched atop the back of that small sofa, and the wooden desk overflowing with notes and knickknacks. Enjoyable, understated, and functional décor. That said, I don’t get how you’ve organized the books within the office bookshelves. Aside from one shelf that’s all graphic novels, the “brag” shelf of your publications, and on top of the case, above the brag shelf, the crooked stacks of foreign editions, there’s no discernible order or reason to how the books are shelved. Not alphabetical by title or author, not by genre, not by copyright date. I can’t imagine it would be by purchase date. Not by cover or spine color, which I’m glad you haven’t done, as that’s annoying. Books aren’t bits of mosaics. A book is the mosaic. Although, that’s not entirely accurate, as individual stories are pieces to a larger whole of our collective culture. A discussion to revisit at a later date, perhaps. I’m saying the cover art/color in and of itself is not best employed for the purpose of office decoration. How do you find a book that’s been shelved if there is no order, no system? Do you stand in front of the bookcases with arms folded across your chest and scan the spines like a bored god? Are you ever paralyzed with the inability to choose and you then stare for hours? Have you ever walked away, overwhelmed by the weight of choice? Do you go to the shelf not looking for a particular book and then simply choose one at random? Do you carefully run a finger along each spine, briefly refamiliarizing yourself with each book and its position within the shelves until you happen upon the one you want? I like the idea of your bookshelf inefficiency, as it forces you to spend quality time with the bookshelves every time you retrieve a book. Is it possible you have the improbable map of books safely contained within your head, and this map only makes sense to you, is only readable to you, and it is organic, rearranging itself into the new daily patterns, growing like a creeping fungus? Color me intrigued!
It was cold outside today, and Holly walked with a slight limp, as though her little tendons and bones foretold the long, hard winter to come.
KB
Pee: ✓ Poop:
—11/2
1:04 to 1:24
Obviously, phrenology is utter quackery (at best) and was monstrous in practice. Palmistry is for suckers and so too are tarot and aura readings, and tasseography is no less a sham but harmless and I rather like my cup of tea in the afternoon. If only there was a term for determining the character of a person or persons via their bookshelves; piecing together an inner life or mind from the titles and types of books and how they are arranged and cataloged. If there is a term for bookshelf-dowsing or bibliodivination, I am unfamiliar with it. Of the two options, I think bookshelf-dowsing is the lesser descriptor of my talent, as it implies searching the shelves for only one book in particular and not discerning the very nature of the home library curator. Although, ultimately, when any of us looks at a bookshelf, we’re always looking for one book; the one to read or the one with which to make a sweeping judgment. Sometimes we search for the lack of a certain book, or the lack of any books at all. I will admit to class privilege at work here, and I assure you, upon finding a home devoid of books I do not presume the inhabitants have the disposable income for a library and choose instead to spend the money on lesser entertainments and effluvium, nor do I assume the inhabitants of a bookless domicile aren’t readers and devotees of their local library. I am most careful in my bibliodivinating. With all that in mind, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace wasn’t the first book I noticed in your shelves and it wasn’t the first I flipped through; however, it was the book for which I was looking without knowing I was looking for it. This book is the cipher to your bookshelf encryption. This begins with my finding Infinite Jest. In case you aren’t aware (I believe you are deeply aware), the book rests in your left bookcase number two, third shelf, flush against the case’s frame on the right, the book merely and meekly peeking around the corner of the black wood. Such a position could mean you are trying to hide the book, like one tries to hide shame. It is not proudly displayed in the middle of the shelf with its thick spine legible from any distance or vantage within your office. (And not for nothing, your positioning of the four tall black shelves—and I can’t resist making a filmic reference, here, to the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey—against the walls opposite your desk and laptop docking station doesn’t go unnoticed.) I don’t think you are purposefully hiding IJ. Its modest position relative to the rest of the books represents a touch of your practicality showing through. The novel simply fits best there with the wood to slide up against while stolidly serving as a quasi-bookend; the book is big and strong enough to hold up the others, the sentinel of the shelf. It doesn’t get in the way of the other books and doesn’t selfishly prevent the eye from wandering along the other spines. Its place within the wider galaxy of your shelves is interesting, of course, but not as interesting, or telling, as what I found inside the book. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what I found. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could tell me the pages where the bookmark is located. The first meaning of the bookmark (a repurposed torn-off square of an advertisement for a local donation [clothes, shoes, books] outfit, printed on green card stock) is obvious: you made it only to pages 126–127 of the book and then you gave up. “Gave up” is a little strong and ascribes motive I have yet to fully determine; however, you get the point. Initially, you were excited, as we all are when we start a new book. You knew what you were in for and had committed to the idea of donating months of your reading time to this famous and famously long, sprawling novel. Things were going well early on, but you lost steam; perhaps it was too difficult to read at night before bed, if you are that kind of reader; it is not the kind of book one can read twenty or twenty-five minutes at a time. Or perhaps you lost the thread (which is one of my favorite polite ways of saying you were no longer interested in the story, the characters, the theme, the style, the book), or perhaps your to-be-read pile (which, as an aside, I assume is the impressive pile of books stacked on the floor next to your bookcases; no place for them in the shelves, as they have not yet been read, yes?) began calling to you to indulge in the greedy little thrill of starting another new book and/or you couldn’t abide the thought of that to-be-read pile growing larger or being ignored for the duration of what would be a long, long read. Whatever the reason(s), you put IJ back on the shelf (having purposefully chosen its current spot) and you promised yourself you’d get back to it when you had more time. Of course, if you’d truly fallen under the book’s spell you would’ve carved out the time. Now even more time has passed and if you were to pick up that novel again you’d have to start over because there’s no way you remember enough of those first one-hundred-twenty-plus pages to be able to pick up the thread(s) (perhaps you remember something about an academic setting and tennis and footnotes, but that’s likely it). The bookmark is your confession, and a noble one, I might add. When you are asked if you’ve read IJ, you do not pretend that you have read it in its entirety and I believe you do answer the question honestly no matter who is in the room, or at the party, or attending the conference. You tell the truth because you have to, you are forced to; the bookmark is there and it doesn’t lie. A person who would pretend to have read IJ (and there are plenty who do) would’ve left the book in a place of prominence, a look-at-what-I-read spot, surrounded by books with thin, unreadable spines, withering in the shadow of the great and terrible book. That is not what you did. I also found Wallace’s The Pale King, trade paperback, on the shelf below. It doesn’t quite sit in the middle of the shelf but neither is it hiding in a corner. There is no bookmark cleaving its pages. One might assume you haven’t read it because you didn’t finish IJ, but I looked closer and there are clear signs of the book having been read, including three highlighted passages, the last coming on page 423. The question remains: did you connect with the more “accessible” but unfinished TPK and its Kafkaesque bureaucracy meets twenty-first-century neurosis or did you read it all the way through as a form of penance for quitting on IJ? You’ve lived your whole life in New England and I wouldn’t be surprised to find puritanical shame and guilt playing an oversized role in your decision processes. After the TPK discovery I focused on cataloging the non-genre or mainstream literary books you haven’t finished reading as they are similarly bookmarked. I was pleased to find more unfinished works of note, and I wonder if their bookmarks are akin to a reading virus, infecting and proliferating. Further, I am fascinated by some of your author bookmarked/not bookmarked pairings: you read Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and The Little Friend, but The Goldfinch on pages 188–189 has a card stock bookmark adorned with pictures of your daughter posed with a soccer ball (TG sits next to Christopher Hitchens’s The Portable Atheist, no bookmark, though I am not confident it has been read completely based on the intact paperback spine); Mark Danielewski’s Only Revolutions is bookmarked (and not with the spine ribbons but a bookmark from an indie bookstore in Cambridge) on page 92–93, whereas House of Leaves is so well read and worn the cracked spine is falling apart and pages are loose; you made it to pages 244–245 in Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives (pages marked with a folded paycheck stub), but you read 2666 (many marked passages throughout) to completion. Other notables within the bookmarked/abandoned category include Bless Me, Ultima, Geek Love, Anton Chekhov: Collected Stories, and Pussy, King of the Pirates, while other large and/or challenging works like Mrs. Dalloway, 1Q84, Beloved, and Jane Eyre have clearly been read. Though I would allow Jane Eyre might not have been read by P___ as it appears to be an older college text, one in which, judging by the handwriting, L___ wrote notes within the margins. However, a bibliodivinator must operate under the assumption (particularly given the length of your relationship/partnership) of what’s yours is hers and what’s hers is yours unless contradictory information surfaces at a later date. Call me a romantic, but I would argue that even if you, P___, haven’t read Jane Eyre, you’ve still been informed by L___’s read of the novel. Ah, the magic of the printed word. Note I focused solely on the non-genre (or non-horror, at the very least) books for now. Clearly the majority of the books in the writing office would be categorized as, if not horror, then dark fiction, as one might expect given the nature/concerns of your own published work. I want to familiarize myself with such before making any further comment.
