update from sparkleup
This commit is contained in:
Madison Scott-Clary
parent
ace76ae341
commit
7490729fda
|
|
@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
|
|||
<p>I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just always seem to wind up talking with you here, so I was wondering. You don’t seem like one of the salaried employees.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Her smile was wry as she replied, “I’m not, no.”</p>
|
||||
<p>I don’t remember if we talked about anything else that day, and there were not any stand-out conversations over the next however many times I saw her in the office, though we soon started talking every time I came by and the few times I saw her in passing both in the library and on campus. At some point, we simply…became friends. I do not know whether we would have done so without me having acted with the intent to do so. Perhaps we would have. I do not remember thinking about intent-of-friendship much after that first conversation, so perhaps all it took was that opening question.</p>
|
||||
<p>We slid effortlessly into a routine of weekly lunches. I went to a few concerts with her, though she knew far more about the music being played than I and I often felt in over my head as we listened to the instrumentalists and vocalists on stage. I was surprised to find on the first concert that she wore earplugs throughout. I did not find the music to be too loud, some string quartet, perhaps, but she explained to me that it kept her from getting overwhelmed.</p>
|
||||
<p>We slid effortlessly into a routine of sharing lunches several times a week. I went to a few concerts with her, though she knew far more about the music being played than I and I often felt in over my head as we listened to the instrumentalists and vocalists on stage. I was surprised to find on the first concert that she wore earplugs throughout. I did not find the music to be too loud, some string quartet, perhaps, but she explained to me that it kept her from getting overwhelmed.</p>
|
||||
<p>At the end of her time at UI Sawtooth, I had the chance to attend her senior recital, where several other students from the various departments performed a few short compositions of hers. The music was cerebral and, to my ears, dissonant, even dark, but it was as fastidious as her in a way that I cannot explain. I applauded heartily and after the show we hugged and she invited me out to drinks with her family, who all proved quite friendly and much like her. Thinking back, I suspect that must have made quite the sight: four coyotes sitting around a table at a fairly nice restaurant, speaking in essays to expound on whatever thesis has come into their heads.</p>
|
||||
<p>Spending time with other autistic folks was not a strange occurrence to me, as I had known a few in university and had as a matter of course of course met several in my training, but for some reason, that night was the first time I could say that I felt comfortable in that portion of my identity. I felt at home with others, and, strange as it seems to say, rather like a member of their family.</p>
|
||||
<p>My lunch break is nearing its end, out here in the liminal lot, so I should probably hold off from writing any more, but I should note before I do that it <em>is</em> interesting that much of what I describe here in retrospect bespeaks an early attraction that I had not at the time attributed to budding romance or anything so grand. </p>
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -27,17 +27,17 @@
|
|||
<p>She shook her head. We’d had enough conversations by this point that neither of us was really willing to go down the conversational road of discussing religion. I was Catholic, she was not. On that point, we were immiscible, and at the time, I had no problem with it.</p>
|
||||
<p>I don’t know why the memory of this lunch in particular sticks out to me, though. It was just us, there. Two coyotes, sitting in a solarium tucked in against the south wall of the union. Some renovation or another in the past had left the room obscured, and thus often unused and quiet. It became one of our favorite lunch spots.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two coyotes sitting in a glass-walled room, a painfully bright blue sky, a blanket of snow on the grass outside. Warm, but sensing the nose-stinging cold a few inches away through the glass.</p>
|
||||
<p>Why this lunch? Why does this one stick out in my head? We talked about lent restrictions more than once. We’d talked about food more than once. Why does this one stick out in my mind?</p>
|
||||
<p>Why this lunch? Why does this one stick out in my head? We talked about lent more than once. We’d talked about food more than once. Why does this one stick out in my mind?</p>
|
||||
<p>I remember that the conversation stalled after that, at least for a little bit, and we ate in silence. Kay had brought with her a sandwich larger than my own, plus some little single-serving packet of hummus and some carrots — I remember taking one of those and a swipe of hummus when offered — a packet of chips, and a drink.</p>
|
||||
<p>I finished before she did. I think that’s why I remember it. She finished her sandwich and then scooted her carrots and chips and hummus to the edge of the table, twisted sideways in her chair, and put her paws up on the low rim of the wall where glass met concrete, squinting out into the brightness of the afternoon.</p>
|
||||
<p>I finished before she did and I pulled out some notes to rifle through, but gave up after a few pages, instead just enjoying the sun with a friend. Sitting nearby, listening to her crunching on chips, watching the way her ears would flinch back with each sharp snap of the carrot between her teeth.</p>
|
||||
<p>I pulled out some notes to rifle through, but gave up after a few pages, instead just enjoying the sun with a friend. Sitting nearby, listening to her crunching on chips, watching the way her ears would flinch back with each sharp snap of the carrot between her teeth.</p>
|
||||
<p>A separate memory, a memory within a memory: thinking of my advisor from Saint John’s. His fur, when we shook hands, was so much softer, so much more pleasant to touch than my own.</p>
|
||||
<p>That Kay and I were both coyotes didn’t seem to matter, her fur still looked as thought it would feel softer than my own.</p>
|
||||
<p>I don’t know if I’m remembering this correctly right now. I don’t remember if the Dee that was sitting in the sun was thinking about whether or not Kay’s fur was soft, or if that’s just the Dee right now, sitting here and writing about that moment. It’s such a nothing memory of a lunch that I can’t disentangle the reality from the moods I’ve been wilting under of late.</p>
|
||||
<p>I just remember that I gave up on the notes and we both sat there, even after she finished, saying nothing, soaking in the warmth.</p>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
<footer>
|
||||
<p>Page generated on 2021-07-16</p>
|
||||
<p>Page generated on 2021-07-31</p>
|
||||
</footer>
|
||||
</main>
|
||||
<script type="text/javascript">
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -12,8 +12,8 @@
|
|||
<h1>Zk | 72</h1>
|
||||
</header>
|
||||
<article class="content">
|
||||
<p>Our last lunch together — at least the last of the regular schedule of such — took place the week after Kay’s senior recital, and after we greeted each other, we spoke little, as though all the clamorous notes and weighty silences from her performance still hung beneath us. We ordered our food separately and it wasn’t until partway through the meal that we realized we had ordered the same thing, which drew a laugh from both of us before we focused back out on the lawn behind the student center.</p>
|
||||
<p>And then, with all the suddenness of applause after a performance, our conversation, our words were ungated and we began to talk.</p>
|
||||
<p>Our last lunch together took place the week after Kay’s senior recital, and after we greeted each other, we spoke little, as though all the clamorous notes and weighty silences from her performance still hung beneath us. We ordered our food separately and it wasn’t until partway through the meal that we realized we had ordered the same thing, which drew a laugh from both of us before we focused back out on the lawn behind the student center.</p>
|
||||
<p>And then, with all the suddenness of applause after a performance, our conversation, our words were ungated and we were free to speak.</p>
|
||||
<p>“How do you feel about your performance?”</p>
|
||||
<p>She eyed me slyly, as she always did whenever I used ‘feel’ language. “Are you asking as a friend, or are you asking as a therapist?”</p>
|
||||
<p>I shrugged. “I’m not your therapist, Kay, but if you want to talk about your deepest feelings, you are perfectly welcome to.”</p>
|
||||
|
|
@ -22,7 +22,7 @@
|
|||
<p>Finally, I asked, “Do you feel your emotions didn’t come through in the music?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I don’t know, did they?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Deflection. I rolled with it.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I feel like a lot of the emotions we don’t have words for we wind up putting into art, don’t you? The Sistine Chapel is a work of art that expresses ideas and feelings that don’t come across well in language.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I feel like a lot of the emotions we don’t have words for we wind up putting into art, don’t you? Great painters all make works of art that expresses ideas and feelings that don’t come across well in language.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You really are in a therapist mood.” She threw a piece of lettuce at me. I set it on the corner of her tray.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You’ve been quiet,” I hedged. “It seemed like there was a lot going on, is all.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yeah.” She picked at the piece of returned lettuce, tearing it carefully into shreds and eating them absentmindedly, one by one. “I guess I’m trying to decide if I wrote the pieces out of some academic need or whether I actually put emotion into them. I can’t tell because I couldn’t read the response from the audience. The applause was always so…I don’t know. It was hesitant, like people were trying to figure out whether or not the piece was actually done, but man, when you hear that from the point of view of the stage or as the artist, it’s hard not to read that as though they didn’t like it.”</p>
|
||||
|
|
@ -67,7 +67,7 @@
|
|||
<p>I am unsure of myself, as always. Dewí Kimana, perpetually hedging his bets, perpetually worrying that he’s going to put his foot in it after decades of perpetually putting his foot in it. I will keep remembering things, of course. It’s comforting to think back on pleasant times with pleasant coyotes. But I am not sure if will keep up this exercise any longer. Maybe I’ll save those memories for stupid dreams, and should any leave me reeling the next day, perhaps I’ll share those, instead. After all, Kay left her own signal path, from those lunches through the formation of memories, and then years of being tossed and turned, digested and reformed into feelings that lay close enough to the surface that the signal can once again leave my paw and spill out onto the page, and all I can hope is that, as Kay put it, I’m left with a picture of the thoughts and feelings that I might have had at the time.</p>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
<footer>
|
||||
<p>Page generated on 2021-07-13</p>
|
||||
<p>Page generated on 2021-07-31</p>
|
||||
</footer>
|
||||
</main>
|
||||
<script type="text/javascript">
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue