<epleted walking back from Family Fare. Surprising – this is just the type of weather I liked, I had been with friends, there were curled leaves blowing across the pavement. Some teenagers smoked cigarettes outside the Key, which is an intimidating name for any establishment, even one in Northfield. A clump of preteens ran like prairie voles two-by-two.
This feeling happens sometimes. I had sat down in Tandem Bagel earlier. My friend wanted a bagel and I went along though I didn’t want anything.
“What can I get for ya?” the man asked; he looked at us. He had a straight nose; he looked like he had just stepped out of a barn on a prairie. The sun was kissing him straight through his jacket.
“Um…” My friend always has difficulty deciding.
“This is stressing me out,” I said.
I sat down at a circular table and watched the artificial fire behind the glass; the world would never have a place for me. The slow fire seemed to agree. I cried for a while. My friend put her hand on my sweater and I regretted my sweater is made of llama hair and wasn’t soft on her hand. Then I stopped crying, but there wasn’t going to be an end.
Ever since childhood nothing has been quite right, I felt the truth of that in Tandem Bagels and walking back from Used-A-Bit. Ever since my childhood power all dissolved, there has been no surrogate. The impression of the fun of that power has left a constant lacking, sometimes more full than others.
In Clothes Closet, where we went after Used-A-Bit, a mother was shopping with her daughter. Her daughter was in the changing room.
“How’s it going sweetie?”
The girl mumbled something.
“Well, then I’ll go find another size. I wish you had told me earlier that it didn’t fit, sweetie.”
I wish you had told me earlier that it didn’t fit, sweetie. This makes me smile because it’s so true that mothers and people who’ve been broken up with always wish for that.
I looked at the glass breakables and the frames of pansies. There was a large lamp only $6 but I’d have to carry it and the dead feeling was still there. The cloth section was all translated into Spanish; otherwise, everything felt washed over in a single-vision of culture and status. It was awful for me to shop here, I knew this, even when buying things, I knew this. This was quaint for me.
At the cash register, the mother and daughter were paying. We struck up a conversation. Her name was Juliet. We girls should definitely go and visit her and her five children. All home-schooled so we are often home. This one is Elizabeth. I was going to say I had a best friend named Elizabeth whom I haven’t spoken to in years, but I didn’t because that would’ve been depressing. She had an espresso machine and she’d be happy for us to visit them, whenever we were passing by.
“We’d would really love to. I miss homes.”
“That’s what I figured. I’ve invited Carleton students over before, but none have actually come yet.”
“We get busy, you know,” I mumbled. Her disappointment was not immense but it was still surprising we were not the first she invited over. Maybe she wants to socialize her children with respectful, responsible young adults? And my friend and I are not very formidable to approach. We look like children after all and have the same needs.
The jingly door jingled their departure. Imagining drinking coffee in her living room with her home-schooled children draped over the furniture and floor like Dali clocks, I bought some fish earrings among other stuff. We went to Family Fare and I bought a pomegranate. It seemed like a good move. We saw Lena there. She seemed sorry for something and I told her she had nothing to be sorry for.
Then I walked back.
The hat I got at the thrift store seemed more and more ridiculous the closer I got to campus, but I refused to take it off. Removing it would be defeat. Mortify your senses. Regret is important. Regret is growth.
The point of this whole thing is to say that the mood of my day is not just contained in the mood of my day. The point is to be honest about my experience of today. It is October 2 and sometimes life is a perfect pumpkin, but pumpkins can get rolling too quickly, depending on the degree of the slope.
I doubted so much today, my English major, my outfit, my point, the point of this article. There really isn’t a point! Even after trying to find one, I’ve failed!
Maybe the point is the failure to deliver a point to you. Failure, my little friend, a gourd of unclear proportions. The school year is in full swing and we are rolling along down the hill like pumpkins. And while we do that, the best thing we can be is honest. Honest as pumpkin pie because there is no reason to not be—it’ll bite you in the butt later if you don’t try. Besides it’s boring here sometimes. Why not kindle some friendly drama, some intrigue, within yourself? Why not interrogate your own thought? Each emotion can be isolated and discussed or at a minimum felt to its proper extent. Honestly, I have a lot of reasons to be in a good and bad mood right now, but I have one reason to talk about it: to feel it more fully because it’s fricken life. And when we understand the nature of the beast, the beast is less angry for it.