introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- adventurae 10:53 p.m. - 2002-06-10 "if you have five seconds to spare, then i'll tell you the story of my life."~patty griffin its still making me laugh, even though it probably shouldn't. we'd had a hell of a night of motion, never stopping for long. it was home from work and down to bloomfield and waiting for a bus that didn't seem to want to come until we had decided to drive and the seemingly endless search for a parking garage that still had an empty spot for a car full of twenty somethings to a several block walk to the grassy point of the city for a few indigo girls songs and then hoofin' it back to market square for the best pizza in the city, all covered in mushrooms and onions and a perfect companion to a pint of lager, where we finally sat for a bit and chatted each other up like children around a table at lunchtime. (i crave motion, lately.) but it was hot and it had been a long day that didn't want to seem to stop and eventually, we decided to call it quits and head to our respective beds for the night to curl up alone or next to our lovers, letting the wee hours slip softly into light. we four, having long ago departed company with my sister, then, headed for the bus stop to catch a return trip to bloomfield. the bus came and the crowd waiting pushed with the crankiness of the hour to board and pay their change and take a seat. i sat in the back. toby, back even further. mark, in front and facing forward but next to me. brian, taking a seat next to the woman who had pushed her way to her seat loaded with broken down cardboard boxes and carrying her coinpurse in her mouth. and our brian is the kind type and he loves his bus conversations but maybe he's learned his lesson. "are you moving soon?" he asked, innocently, having noticed her abundance of boxes. we didn't hear the answer first hand but she was strangely animated. we later found out that she had had only a month to move because they were selling her building. the banter continued over the growl of the city bus and the chatter of children up late with summer bedtimes but even over all of the noise, i heard the line. it struck through the world strangely and made everything seem overly white in flourescent light and rolled through my head a few times before i completely comprehended. "do you pick your sores?" do you pick your...do you pick your...do...you...pick...your sores? words, yes, all of them. but strung together in this line, the most grotesque images came and i couldn't force my head to keep still as it flew to look. indeed, she was digging at a scab on her face. digging, literally, her thumb and index finger picking and pushing and pulling until the blood came. and brian replied smoothly, "no. is that a nervous thing?" but she said it wasn't and kept digging and brian turned away and everything was ridiculously silent but for the little kids still laughing over something i wish i'd heard instead. and she kept digging and picking. and her face began to bleed. and i was lost in some hillarious laughter that probably made me out to be more like a bus-crazy than a girl who was sure she didn't hear what she had, indeed, heard. and brian knew. and mark knew. and toby knew, too, when he saw the blood on her thumb. ten stops ran into a million and it was our turn to disembark. and we went into mark's and each had a tall glass of cool, refreshing lemonade and mulled over the situation before parting ways to go make friends with those beds that we'd been longing for all along. people will never cease to amaze me. (thanks for hangin' out, boys.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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