On Sunday night I took my place as an imaginary audience member in someone else's life. Beth lives in and curates the museum which houses her dead mother's artwork. She idolizes two people, her mother and Houdini. She's given up following in her mother's footsteps, so she tries to be like Houdini. "Ladies and Gentlemen," she begins boldly and she tries to perform a card trick. She's not very good unfortunately and we discover that she has a penchant for talking to herself, for leaving the front door open and, sadly, for hitting herself. She managed once, she tells us, to pull one magic trick off though, "...the greatest trick ever performed in this house, the very day I died." Her story begins one day, three days before her mother's museum is to open, when a stranger walks through the open front door. Her name is Emmy and her car has broken down. She's come in because she wants to use the phone. And so begins a tangled yarn full of fondly wished digressions, versed and reversed deceptions, and more than a few heart wrenching revelations.
It becomes quickly apparent to us that Beth has taken a liking to Emmy, but before anything can really happen, Dan the Mechanic shows up and just as quickly as she arrived, Emmy is gone. Then Beth is left, as she was before, in a museum of a house with the wax statue of her mother ... whom Beth talks to ... and imagines talks back to her. Her mother, we learn, was a famous artist, who trotted the globe with the likes of Andy Warhol, leaving Beth behind, and gives us this Bartlett worthy quote, "Beauty is a red house in a world of brown...." The comparison is obvious, her mother is the red house and Beth is part of the world of brown. Beth then wonders with the question, "why didn't you take me with you?" why she can't help but be brown, but her mother can't answer that for her. And then Beth is left again, alone.
"Ladies and gentlemen..." Beth begins again. This time she brings out a pair of handcuffs, but before she has time to try the trick, Emmy returns, again, through the open front door. It's more certain this time that Emmy is as interested in Beth as Beth is in her and the two go out on a date. And while the two are away from the house Dan breaks in to steal a few of her mother's paintings. Beth quickly becomes distraught, perhaps because she's never been away from the museum/house, which she has bound herself too, and abruptly drags Emmy back to the house, but everything seems to be in order. Emmy still wants to dance so Beth puts on some music and begins a odd, strangely-childlike dance which captivates Emmy. Emmy says, "You're beautiful." Astonished Beth, replies, "I didn't ask you to say that." Then asks, "Why do you think, I'm beautiful?" Emmy replies with Beth's mother's quote, "...beauty is the house that dares to be red." They nearly kiss then, but Beth has one more confession, "I hit myself sometimes ... Sometimes I feel empty inside, so I hit my head as hard as I can with my fist and then I start to feel dizzy, and then the feeling is gone." Troubled, Beth walks off and leaving Emmy alone. Then Emmy picks up the phone and calls Dan. She's part of the con.
While Emmy is back at the garage expressing her doubts to Dan, Beth has another visit from her mother and they begin to argue. Beth tells her mother that she's going to leave. Her mother dares her to leave. And then pleads for her to leave. Beth replies, "Don't you understand? I'm the only thing keeping your memory alive." Her mother insists. But Beth stays put. "Fine," her mother resigns, "at least close the door." "No." "Why can't you do this little thing?" "I just can't." "Why do you always leave the front door open? Why can't you just close it?" Beth cries, "I leave it open for you!" "I'm dead, little dove, I'm never going to walk through that door again." And then she is gone and Beth is left there, empty. She tries to leave, but she can't. She gets ready to hit herself when Emmy rushes through the front door and kisses her. Night falls and in the morning Beth find Emmy in the main room pointing a gun at Dan.
And then we see the truth of it. Beth is tied and bound to this house, much like Houdini was chained and shackled. And like Houdini she's been dumped in to a sea of troubles. But unlike her previous failed tricks, she manages to get the magic in this one right.
"Brown" was written by Richard's co-worker Aaron Loeb.
For two nights my body racked with constant fits of coughing; and two days in a row I stumbled into work like a NyQuil dosed zombie. I'm not certain that I've slept at all for the last 48 hours, but somewhat steady hands tell me that I've stolen a few precious moments even as my lungs fought to keep me awake. And they have ample reason to punish me, for getting sick twice in a month's time and for not immediately scheduling a doctor's appointment and the first signs of second revolt. But my throat, my poor throat, which has been whipped raw, to the point cowering silence, twice in a single moon, has suffered the most. At one or two in the morning last night, in a state of incoherence -- wedded to my bed because, though it could not appease my ragged respiration, drugs still held dominion over my limbs -- I thought that there was something that I needed desperately do. Expunge this vile disease? Alas no, but not for lack of trying? Sleep perchance? Again no, even as deeply I wanted to. I thought then of the tacit promise I made to my mother, to stay well and if not to see a physician, otherwise what good is health insurance? Oh how I had failed on all three accounts. Morning came thankfully and I worked my way through half a work day before making an appointment for this afternoon. The diagnosis was expected, bronchitis. The remedy also familiar, azithromycin. As was the salve, greatly desired, codeine.
J. moved the first car load yesterday and lo and behold this morning I find an e-mail from Rich introducing me to a new potential housemate. I'm a little skeptical that anyone will be as good as J. but times change and so do we.
I found this update to last week's story about the stolen Mustang. I don't know whether to feel sorry for the guy or to laugh out loud. (For the record, I didn't feel sorry and I laughed out loud.)
I began this journal two years ago, and except for the last two months, I've updated with unexpected regularity. Now, with my muse a continent away and my house as desolate as ever, I think I will have to look ever deeper into myself to find something to share. I suppose that's the real journey. Let's begin.
Much like C. did in July and my Christmas tree did last week, my housemate for the last year and change is leaving me this weekend. If being a homeowner has its benefits, it also has its drawbacks. People come and go, yet here I remain. Nearly two years ago I purchased my house and before half a year had passed I received an instant message from Rich asking if I was looking for a roommate. After J. and I traded a few messages, mostly to make sure there were no balloons in the house, she moved in. Over the next sixteen months we talked infrequently, her orbit in opposition to mine. And yet, when those rare alignments came it seemed inevitable that I would be going to work tired the next day. But priorities change, and this was merely an acceleration of an end. She will doubtless move on to better things and I will most like be here for many years yet. But those are stories yet to be told, for now I can only say that I've been lucky to have a great housemate and perhaps she will say that once she lived in a room from which she could have fed her pet giraffe, if only she had had one.
I ran across this article last week. It reminded me of the reason I shouldn't surf the net at work, which is that it would be really bad if my co-workers found me on the floor laughing. My favorite part was this, "Everything started early Thursday when Young awoke at a home near Lewis Street and realized a woman there had stolen the keys to his Mustang." Journalism doesn't get much better than that. Seriously though, that guy was lucky that he didn't earn a spot on the Darwin Awards.
Yesterday we celebrated my niece's first birthday. A fact that reminded me that Clementine's first birthday has just past also. I owe her a bath. Technically she was "born" much more than a year ago, I just "adopted" her. Whatever. I got to thinking, as I was pursuing the aisle at Toys 'R Us that it'd be nice if I could keep her in good working condition that I should give her to Amelia on the occasion of her sixteenth birthday. I've always had a fondness for things that were born or made roughly around the same time I was, and perhaps she will too. I don't remember my first birthday and she'll probably be the same. First birthdays are really for the family and not for the child, a fact that irked me when I was much younger. Now, though, I realize what a boon children are. Surely one of the best gifts that they give us is an excuse to make the time to get together.
On the topic of family. My mom came up to my house today to help me with my garden. I don't mind being out in the garden and pulling on weeds for a few hours or pruning trees and shrubs. And as busy as I'd like to believe that I am, I really do have the time to do the regular maintenance that would keep my front and back yards looking presentable. Why then don't I? In all honestly, I'm scared of killing everything. My mom kept telling me, don't worry, the plants will survive. Following her lead I proceed to rip apart various plants in my garden. I'll tell you this much, with a name like Peter Pan, you'd think that it'd be easy to remove, but really, that's a hardy son-of-a-bitch. In any case, the hours of toil were well worth it. Thanks mom!
How one year ended and another began.
The Christmas tree that sits in my living room is beginning to brown. I checked it for the first time in over a week and I suddenly wished that it would stay green a little longer. This is often the case. She arrived the Wednesday before Christmas and it seemed like we had scarcely enough time to get all the things that need to get done during the holidays. We managed to make it through past the 25th without disaster, though we were very close when C. pointed, with a frustrated pout, at her very sad looking potatoes au gratin and ordered me to fix it. Christmas Day was full of firsts. This is the first year in memory that I've had a real Christmas tree, and the first that I've had Christmas decorations of any kind in my house. It's also the first time that my whole family was over at my house.
It started to rain heavily Monday night, which was a bad omen for our three day snowboarding trip. We started up late Tuesday morning and arrived in Reno seven hours later. I started coming down with a cold that evening, but luckily it wasn't anything severe enough to keep me off the slopes on Wednesday. It was gorgeous up there. Snow fell constantly, heavier at times, but nothing bad enough to cut our day short. Powder covered all of the runs and several of ones at the top were so lightly trafficked that there was fresh powder everywhere we fell. At the end of the day we were exhausted and looking up I saw there was blue sky beyond the break in the clouds, the calm before the storm.
Fortunately for me, Rich drove this trip. The previous day's exertion had done nothing for my cold and perhaps exacerbated my sore throat and I would have been miserable driving down Thursday, that's when the blizzard hit. My sickness made me sleepy and somewhere after our nearly two hour delay in Truckee I fell into a deep slumber. Then there were just fragments of consciousness. It was dark and the window wipers scraped the just frozen ice off then windshield with an eerie rhythm. The headlights formed a diffuse cloud of light in front of us. I slept again. Soon after, the snow turned to a rain and we past 30 mph for the first time in eight hours. We sped down the foothills and down I-80 in a heavy rain.
Friday marked the end of the year as it often marks the end of the week. I had not yet recovered from my cold and my voice sounded rougher than a cat’s tongue. Still, there were parties to go to and it would have been a tragedy to let 2004 pass into history quietly. We spent the first half of the evening down in Palo Alto with her friends and second half with mine in Richmond. I received my final and perhaps most thoughtful gift of the year just minutes before midnight: Homemade chicken soup. Thanks Ji!
The first few days of the year have been relatively quiet. She’s leaving on a jet plane tomorrow and though it’s been more than two weeks since she arrive I sudden wish that the memories could stay green a little while longer.