Right?
I'm so fancy.
Today kicked my ass, but was also kind of awesome. I'll tell you about it since that is presumably why you're here. That and your insomnia.
I had big plans to leave work early to go to a lecture at the Florence Griswold Museum. I was dressed completely inappropriately.
I wore a very cute, very old, Gap skirt. It's whisper thin and so pretty with blue swirly things on a chartreuse ground. But I rarely wear it. I pack it away every fall and take it out in the spring thinking it will have changed. Only it never does. It's got this weird static cling issue. I don't know. Can't shake it. By the end of the day it's down right pornographic. And please don't tell me about static guard and dryer sheets because I can't douse myself with chemicals. Oh, and I still don't have a spring coat dressy enough for work so I wore my black trench with this filmy skirt, bare leg, and strappy shoe. Classy.
Since I was going in early, I was driving with all of the regular commuters who I assumed were a relatively jaded bunch. So I was surprised when they all slammed on their brakes to look at an eighteen wheeler that had been carrying fish before it overturned earlier in the morning and was now being removed from the side of the highway. You can't do that to me with the brakes at 7 o'clock in the morning. The truck driver had fallen asleep. He's fine, FYI. It wasn't really that interesting. But my life flashed before my eyes (for the first, but not last, time today) when everyone started slamming on their brakes and I had to do some quick maneuvering to keep from getting into an accident of my own.
Dear Connecticut Emergency People,
Please think about getting a big portable screen to keep people from stopping to look at accidents.
Sincerely,
A girl who hates adrenalin.
Okay, so then park my car, walk to my building through icy, hurricane-force winds and work work work at my new terrible desk.
Leave early (hooray!) walk through icy, hurricane-force winds to my car. Begin my trip to Old Lyme while thirsty and starving.
Because I had eaten my peanut butter and jelly sandwich at my new terrible desk, leaving only the orange for my car. You can see the flaw in that plan. But I thought for sure I'd run into a Starbucks on the way to the museum for an Earl Gray Tea Latte to restore and invigorate me. I count on my beverages to do serious heavy lifting.
Unfortunately, I had some trouble in Middletown. I always have trouble in Middletown. I can't drive straight through without getting all confused and second guessing myself and getting off the highway. Then I end up downtown trying to get back on the highway and it's always a whole big thing. That's what I was doing when my life flashed before my eyes for the second time today.
Some nutty lady popped out in front of me from a row of cars parallel parked along the side of the road. Just popped out to cross the street without looking. I slammed on my brakes to avoid hitting her. She jumped back and mouthed something to me like I sincerely apologize. Which I appreciated, by the way. But then instead of getting out of the way, she decided to walk up my window to have a chat. What? We were in the middle of the road. This chick obviously didn't grasp the concept of traffic. So odd. If only I was thinking more clearly I would have use the opportunity to ask her where to get a latte.
Back on the highway, I took my usual exit off I-95 to the museum, but got all turned around because I was coming from the south instead of the north and ended up taking a tour of Old Lyme. This is very unlike me as I have an exquisite sense of direction. It's just the kind of day it was. And I never did get a drink.
I did manage to make it to the lecture on time. In an interesting twist, there were two other people there who were less than eighty. Very unusual. I can't tell you much about the boy, but the girl had amazing highlights. Amaaaazing.
It's usually just me and the AARP set at these things. Bunches of old people together are always interesting. For example, the room was set up with eight rows of chairs, eight chairs long. No center aisle. The chairs stretched all the way to the wall. Only one way in and out of each row. But the old people don't scootch all the way in toward the very pretty and not at all oppressive wall. No way. They sit wherever the hell they want. Because they're old and they don't give a fuck. Then a cell phone starts ringing at forget it. They get all huffy and turn aroundy. But there's no one to blame. It's one of them. Fantastic.
I picked a spot and sat down next to me in forty years. The fella giving the lecture sat on the other side of me while he waited to be introduced. So great. I love smart people so much that I even get a charge out of sitting quietly next to them. Like it's going to rub off or something. He was a very tall, attractive, retired professor from the same fine institution that has rejected me repeatedly. Which, of course, made me love him more.
The lecture was called "A New Knowledge of Reality." It was about Wallace Stevens, but it used a Childe Hassam painting as the jumping off point. It pretty much went like this..
First we looked at Childe Hassam's "Connecticut Ledges." Not a slide. The actual painting-- hanging right there in front of us.(SOP for affluent white people in Connecticut) Then the retired professor did something very interesting. He said that, although there's no proof Wallace Stevens was aware of Childe Hassam, given Stevens's interest in art and impressionistic-like painting, he probably knew his work.
Okaaaay. I believe that's just the sort of disregard for actual fact-y evidence that resulted in me being labeled scholarly light-weight, unsuited for the rigors of academia, but whatever.
So we looked at the painting then he shared an awesome anecdote about Wallace Stevens's daughter. First, he used words to describe her like "wildcat" and "loose cannon." Then he went on to suggest that her involvement in the presentation, at the professor's university, of an annual prize named for her father was the direct result of her having an affair with some graduate student. Like she just showed up once a year to hook up with this kid. Isn't that the best thing you ever heard? I was all over that, man. Awesome.
I drive Mr. Blyleaf crazy when I say dumb things like that, by the way. But I love people who do their own thing, non-conformist types who are directed by what fulfills them rather than by how people around them think they should behave. And just because the guy used the word "affair" doesn't mean either of them were married, either.
When he talked about her, I just got this picture in my head of an older woman with long, silvery hair wearing handcrafted jewelry and a colorful scarf, breezing into boring Storrs and taking up with some beautiful young (but over 21) genius boy in faded jeans and Birkenstocks who always needs a haircut, but is too busy with his reading to bother. So great.
I was there on the coast, in a pretty museum, watching the retired professor holding a real water glass, while he talked about the history of landscape painting in the United States, why poets and painters concern themselves with landscapes (to portray "beauty", establish hegemony over nature, inspire terror and fear as an emotional antidote to 18thC rationalism, and a fourth reason that I missed but had something to do with sublimity), and Wallace Stevens's idea of "Supreme Fiction". I listened to him read the poems. And it was just.. I don't know.
Isn't that what I should be doing? Shouldn't I be regularly surrounded by poetry and painting, being pushed by people who are smarter than me to expand my vision and gain a different understanding of myself in the world? I mean, isn't that the thing? You know. When you feel so excited by a new idea that you think your head is going to explode and stars will pour out and you'll be totally in sync with the universe?
Maybe I should stop with the LSD.
Kidding.
It's just hard because I work in an office tower now and only read poetry recreationally. I mean, technically, I'm an actual, professional writer. And I'm lucky. I know it.
Some people work their whole lives in factories. Or at least they used to before the domestic manufacturing industry collapsed. Now they're unemployed. But you know what I mean.
I did have one jarring moment when the retired professor, talking about the significance of place, mentioned the connection he feels to Hawaii. Suddenly he was in front of me with his pale tummy protruding over the waistband of bright red swim trunks. And here's the thing, you don't want to think of those brilliant professor types in anything other than their jackets and ties. You really don't. You don't.
Hey, would you like to know how I know the old people weren't actual Wallace Stevens fans? This is a some difficult poetry, right? But these people would, after every poem, sort of sigh knowingly. A big collective Ummmmm. And I thought holy cow, these people sure are smart. But then they all sighed after
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
Which would have been fine except that was the middle of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". The rest was on the back of the page.
So awesome.
And the lady next to me couldn't stop talking. It was a small room. Everyone could hear her. But she didn't care.
The Emperor of what? Ice cream? Ice cream?
Yes, lady, ice cream.
I don't know what to tell you, ma'am. It's not my poem.
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