stories

There's a game I play on summery Saturdays, called "breakfast." It's where I race early to the farmer's markets, pick up the ingredients for the morning meal, then cook, consume and clean everything up by 10. It's a challenge because most of the markets don't open until 8:30, so the only way it really works is if I forsake my beloved BIG farmers' markets for the little neighborhood enclave, closer to home.

"It's like my body tells the history of me," she explained, "Of me and my family, who we are and what we do. My whole life is on my skin." I took in the tattoos cascading across her arms, thinking that if it took this much of her to chronicle her first 30 years or so, she didn't plan to live very long. But those tattoos were beautiful, and intriguing.

Woke in the wee hours Monday night to thunder rumbles and flashes of day-bright light. PDX weathermen had predicted fair weather, so naturally glassland was having one of its rare thunderstorms. I snuggled down into the covers and purred, listening to rain drumming on the skylight. No way was I sleeping through this, so I after awhile I pulled out Izzy the 'Pad and started figuring out how to respond to some rather odd emails. Finally decided the best way was to simply put them in a post. The first three are pretty direct (I'm paraphrasing only slightly, mostly to avoid embarrassing anyone):

Strange days indeed. I'm driving home on a warmish 4th of July night, heading down the hill on I5 from Vancouver. The highway's like rush hour with everyone going home from celebrations, and headlights and taillights fight it out with hundreds of rocketbursts in every direction. And through it all a slivermoon* rises like scorched gold, far too big to be true.

I never asked her name, and after I'd talked with her awhile I didn't really want to know it. In my mind she'd become Mary, and finding out that her name was really Beth or Linda or Agatha would have just screwed things up. "That's a lovely coat," I'd said admiringly, as we both waited for coffee, "Do you mind if I take your picture?" The farmers marketfolk swirled around us, doing their best to look glassland-wierd. A half-shaved girl in a clown costume gallumped past, and three girls in crayon-colored Hello Kitty! slickers danced around us in the rain, singing about bicycles.

“I hate southerners,” the man said over a mouthful of soup, “I’m a northerner, and we take baths. Southerners are always dirty. They stink.” I froze; the whole unbathed southerner thing was news to me. Might be especially surprising to my North Carolinian mother, who never saw a thing she wouldn’t clean. Twice. He sat at the next table over, [...]