writings by me...
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************SUEDE************** The fascination started between geometry and English. Lanky and shaggy blonde, he stalked past me in the courtyard, seemingly unaware in his careless stride of the plebeian sharing his air. I watched him as he walked, awkward and grand in his German army jacket and large hands. My interest piqued through the rainy winter, not a crush, but pure fascination; I had never seen or met anyone like him before in my suburban New England town. As the early spring breeze, he traversed transient and cool to the tennis courts where I had gym, handed me a flat, square box, and disappeared as mysteriously as he came. The box contained a few pictures of the band Suede, a handwritten note and an audiotape. This was the beginning of our short-lived but intensely profound relationship. Justin Stander was the son of an affluent doctor in Guilford, who, as a present, bought him a small sports car. His driving the car was as awkward as his seven-foot frame and broad shoulders inside it, yet he seemed comfortable as if sleeping, one beautiful hand loosely clinging to wheel. He talked and chained smoked, pulling on Benson-Hedges 100’s from a burgundy pack with long fingers while I listened and studied him. His Adam's apple and gentle shoulders swayed as he talked. His face was pleasantly asymmetrical, the awkward features as deliciously mysterious and cool as his actions. His nose was slightly crooked and his meadow- green eyes placed beautifully as if by God itself. Pouty lips taunted as he spoke, a neat five-o-clock shadow contrasting the tawny pink. The Smiths, Iggy Pop, Suede and Excasty were the soundtrack to our drives around Guilford. I loved the freedom of riding around aimlessly and transient over marsh bridges and through echoing stone tunnels, around Branford forests and beside coastal roads. He brought me to what he called "the historic Guilford green" where he taught me how to use a professional camera. He snapped black and whites of me 'hanging out', stating this kind of photography was very 'Smiths-like". Justin was an artist-photographer- writer. He didn't talk much, but the conversations we had seemed very profound for my developing fourteen -year-old mind; jumbled phrases and metaphors were his specialty. I asked him many questions, for I truly believed him to hold all the answers. Once I asked him what he thought of me. I wanted to be part of his critique of the world. "Chicken and rice." "Huh?" "You're like chicken and rice. It is the only thing I eat, metaphorically speaking. Like chicken is always there. And rice goes well with it. You're a vegetarian, right? Yeah, ha. "
..**..**..**..**..**..**.. be a part of my universe... music is more than mathematical jumble and logarithms- its breath and life. each sound wave is a chest sinking and expanding until it dies into infinity, where it truly lives. each day my body sets on the rising sun and i am silent... **** Mess stuff up--!! things aren't right and its time for a change!! all the things we hold dear in this country are materializations of exploitation. our mother earth is a steaming pile of poop on a cold winter universe morning ~ we reek
ah.. to be a child again... ******************************* Situated on a run down section of Boston Post Road, across the street from Strawberry Farms, is a faded blue apartment building where I spent most of my elementary school years. Upon closer inspection, I notice the cracks in the driveway I meticulously averted each morning on the way to the bus stop to avoid ‘breaking my mother’s back’. The faded navy exterior and paint chips unceremoniously falling off the weather beaten walls greet me as I open the door to the stairs I traversed a thousand times before. The trip is a short one, not long enough to prepare me for the long journey back in time. I take a deep breath and sigh as I open the heavy wooden door to the musty second story apartment. The door, stained with age and splintered by the careless feet of playing children, opens to the kitchen and dining area. Directly across is another door that opens to the backyard, whose hurricane-bent trees created an Indiana Jones- style adventure land. The worn and dirty carpet crunched underfoot as I turned left into the kitchen. I ran a trembling finger over the ugly brown counters and the cabinets my brother and I used to climb to get to the goodies hidden above the refrigerator. These are the same counters that every year around Christmas became the mecca of baking activity as my brother, mom and I rolled and baked hundreds of cookies for the local soup kitchen. Against the wall is a seventies-style Formica table where each Saturday morning my family and I would watch cartoons and eat poppy rolls freshly baked at The Corner Store. Above the table hastily taped to the wall is a myriad of portraits, paintings and paper-bag Santas. I smile as I remember the rainy afternoons in Mrs. M’s first grade class spent pasting cotton balls to red and white paper bags. Around the corner in the living room rest the old, half- upholstered chairs whose sagging seats I would ungracefully sink into while watching cartoons. Friday nights and holidays were spent in this room with the whole family lying together watching T.G.I.F., Ten Commandments or Christmas claymation cartoons, depending on the time of year. Immediate family and friends filled the large room with presents and love each December 23rd as we had our traditional Italian Christmas get-together, complete with Bakala Soup and Italian pastry cookies from Ferrara’s. The record player in the corner adjacent to the jungle print couch accompanied my brother and me on rainy days, when we put on Peter, Paul and Mary’s Puff The Magic Dragon or Mickey’s Jazzercise album and bounced around the living room. These memories followed me as I walked down the hall to the room my brother and I shared. Upon entering, I first notice the bed Ryan slept in, perpetually unmade and containing some sort of incriminating item between the mattresses. At the foot of his bed is the tipped dresser sans the drawers we used to hold the cornucopia of plastic soldiers, barnyard animals, trucks, dolls and other miscellaneous toys we collected at flea markets and birthdays. Across the room, parallel to Ryan’s, is the bed I slept in for four years. The headboard is made of shelves I used to hold my Magic Math Machine, books, bunny sculpture from Sri Lanka, and other various trinkets from around the world. The closet I always hid in during indoor hide and seek and the ancient sky blue record player rest across the room under the hammock that embraces my colorful stuffed companions. I walk out of the room and take a left to my Aunt Maureen’s room. Her room isn’t very heavily furnished, just a bed on the floor and a nightstand. The most interesting things in her room are the boxes full of miscellaneous historical memorabilia and screenprinted mirrors. I spent many afternoons searching through her things, often stopping to look at yellowed newspapers headlined with the death of men I never knew even lived. I pick up a Smurf mirror, check my hair, and bolt out the door of my aunt’s room, still feeling the fear of being caught in there without permission. My parent’s room, a few steps across the hall, is the saddest room in the house. Even the windows seemed to weep in their panes. Here, on the queen size bed across from the large ancient dresser that took up most of the room, is where my parents had the arguments that terminated their marriage. I would sit in front of the cramped closet, eating the guilt candy my father would bring me home, and soundlessly watch them exchange vitriolic remarks and punches. I leave and turn right back down the hallway towards the door outside, stopping to peer into the bathroom where I would sit on the sink and kiss the mirror, pretending it was one of the New Kids On The Block, or Steve Lavazza. I walk back through the living room, where I would watch MTV when my parents weren’t around, and try to hold my breath through all the commercials. Back through the kitchen where I lost one of my first teeth in a chocolate cupcake, and Ryan and I would mooch the dessert of my aunt’s Meals on Wheels lunch. I walk out the door to the stairs I traversed a thousand one times before. As I close the rotting front door for the last time, the fading exterior doesn’t seem as comforting anymore.
thanks for reading... <3