the magic 8 ball and other things

Not to be ultra-depressing or anything, but my last post made me think of these two "essays" i wrote about the effects of my Zadie's death on my life when i was 7...

The Magic 8 Ball

On November 25, 1989 I turned seven. The number one gift on my wanted list was a Magic Eight Ball—an oversized fortune telling plastic replica of the game-ending piece to a round of billiards. This is what I naively let rule my first grade life. Of course I received this prized possession upon the termination of my sixth year because my life could not go on without it.
Three days after my birthday I brought the ball to school with me. Since I was several months older than a lot of the kids in my class, and my birthday was exactly one month before Christmas, my classmates eagerly crowded me during indoor recess to see the new toy. “Alyse, tell me my fortune!” squealed the admirers. “First of all,” I started matter-of-factly, “I don’t tell the fortunes, the ball does. And secondly, you have to ask a yesirno question for it to work.” Wen-dy, one of the smartest girls in our class asked if she was going to win the next game of Around the World. “Shake it!” she yelled. “You don’t shake it,” I said and gently demonstrated how to turn the ball around in my tiny hands three times and then hold the viewfinder side upwards till the answer floated to the top and revealed itself among the blue iridescent liquid. A devious smile spread across my face and I looked my component in the eye and said, “My sources say no.” “What do you mean—your ‘sources’??” Wen-dy exclaimed. “Not my sources. Look!” I turned the viewfinder towards her and showed her the magic answer. “Maybe I’ll win this time,” I told her..
When the novelty of the fortune-telling ball wore down I finally began asking my own questions. On the bus ride home I sat by myself and whispered my uncertainty so close to the rounded plastic that my lips just barely graced its smoothness. I watched Dave, the wimpy blonde boy, a few rows ahead of me sticking his feet in the aisle, telling a stupid joke to Jon sitting across from him at a window seat. "Do you think Dave likes me?” I asked the black orb. “Reply hazy, try again.” I wasn’t exactly sure what “hazy” meant so I asked again and turned it three times and waited as my triangular future floated through the blue stuff. “Don’t count on it.” Why not? I thought. That’s not fair. The ball simultaneously fell out of my hands and rolled on the grimy bus floor towards the front. I got on my hands and knees just in time to see two little hands grab at my future rolling away. I couldn’t tell if they were boy or girl hands, but as soon as I climbed back up on the bumpy seat and peered around the one in front of me, I got my answer. “Whadowe got here, Jon? Looks like someone’s Magic Eight Ball.” They both turned around to see me watching them wide-eyed. Mr. Know It All decided he had to play with it before giving it back to me. In an outside voice he asked, “Is Alyse a gigantic, ugly dork?” I sunk into my seat and watched the different colors of smashed gum on the vibrating floor. Then he announced, “Yes—definitely!!” Giggles invaded the bus and I wanted to cry.
At my bus stop I grabbed the toy out of Dave’s hands and stuck my tongue out at him for added discomfort. “See!” Dave shrieked. “Your face is all messed up!” I dropped the ball in the street on the outskirts of my cul-de-sac when I jumped off the stairs. I almost didn’t turn around to pick it up. I wished the bus would just run the thing over. But I pivoted, rescued the toy and examined it. The seam along the middle circumference of the sphere had come a little loose on one side. What was really inside there? I wondered. I want to meet the force behind these messages. I looked up at the sky. When I got home I ran up the fourteen stairs to my room and placed the Eight Ball on a shelf in my closet.
I didn’t touch it again for over a month. January 7, 1990 my Zadie turned 66. Three days later he died from an aortic aneurysm. I got the chicken pox the day after that. So did my younger sister, Sheri. We did not go to the funeral for this reason. When I returned to class I found out the scar marks (which still sometimes itched) didn’t help my “gigantic, ugly dork” status with the boys. But I did get invited to Christine’s sleepover birthday party. I had heard about these parties and I was ready to move onto these “big girl” games. I was seven after all, older than Christine or any of the other girls going that weekend.
Before going home that day I went to my best friend, Shelley’s, house two doors down from mine. I sat on her bed, one bendable little leg atop the other. Full of excitement I told Shelley about Christine’s party. Sleepovers were old news for her as she was nine months older than me, therefore a whole grade ahead. She did share in my enthusiasm, though, and wondered how I was going to ask my mom. I hadn’t thought about this beforehand, and there was no way I could let her say no. I took the Eight Ball out of my backpack. I had recently decided to give its powers a second chance. “Will my mom let me go to Christine’s sleepover party?” “Concentrate and ask again.” Why did this dumb thing always second-guess my questions? “Will my mom let me go to Christine’s sleepover party?” My voice gained a little anxiety the second time. I watched the blue water shift and my answer stared up at me. “Yes.” I jumped off her bed, yelled “Bye!” and ran home as fast as I could. Due to recently losing her father my mom was in no mood to argue with me when I told her about the sleepover party. I kissed the Magic Eight Ball and hid it for safe-keeping.
That Saturday my mom dropped me off at Christine’s house. I had already changed into my pajamas and had my new My Little Pony sleeping bag and pillow in tow. We sang “Happy Birthday” to Christine and ate some cake and ice cream. Then Christine’s mom went upstairs and we all decided to play games. I said to the ten little girls that I didn’t want to play. Instead, I grabbed my Eight Ball out of my pillowcase and silently asked it if I would ever see my Zadie again. I wanted him to hold me and tell me I was special. Wanted him to kiss my forehead and whisper in my ear that he loved me and would always be there. I looked down at the ball. “My reply is no.” I felt sick. I stumbled out of the family room full of little, innocent girls surrounding the Girl Talk game and sat on the kitchen floor at the base of the sliding door to the backyard. Pushed apart the vertical blinds. Tears streamed down my face and through their distortion I stared at the sky.
Before this party I did not realize that the Eight Ball was one year my senior and was older and wiser. Before this party I did not comprehend death. I missed my Zadie. Despite not seeing him laid to rest, I finally understood that I would never see my his kind eyes again or touch his familiar face the way I used to when I sat on his lap. The sky at night wasn’t black anymore like I used to color it. I understood the Midnight Blue crayon now. And I understood longing for something so much it takes away a little girl’s immortality. I miss you Zadie! I repeated like a broken record in what I thought was inside my head. “What’s a Zadie? Why are you crying?” Christine asked. She had heard me in the other room. I didn’t even turn around to look at her. I could not tear my eyes away from the brightest star in the sky. Made myself believe that was him. The world grew, with its size, more confusing.
In the morning Christine called my mom to come get me earlier than the rest of the party-goers who were still fast asleep. “She kept crying by the window and wouldn’t stop saying something about a zadie,” she told my mom. That was the last time I ever touched the Magic Eight Ball.

Behind Open Doors

People grow up faster in cars. Between transporting Cheerios and Midol from store to home you are confined to a small space that you cannot safely leave until you arrive at one destination or another. In exchange for food and drugs we learn to relate to other human beings. The following took place in a local Jewel-Osco parking lot in Palatine, Illinois when I was seven years old and my younger sister, Sheri, was four.
“All I have to do is run in and cash a check,” my mom told us. “Do you want to come with me or do you want to wait in the car?”
I told my mom that we’d wait there. I was trying to be brave. My Zadie had died just a few months prior and I was constantly afraid of temporary relationships. That you could have such a powerful love bouncing back and forth with someone and then have him ripped away and lowered into the ground overwhelmed me, and I thought that if I lost track of my parents the same thing would happen to them. It was the reason I slept with my door open, the hall light on, clutching a stuffed animal dog and worrying that when I woke up I might be alone. My mom knew I couldn’t stand not knowing where she was, but I was attempting the impossible: letting her leave us in the car for five minutes while I watched from the tinted window as the mechanical door of the grocery store ate her in one piece.
A look of shock flashed across her face and she said, “If I leave you in here, you have to stay in here. I’m locking the doors, and I don’t want you—for any reason—to open them, especially if someone you don’t know knocks and says it’s ok for you to unlock them—even if it is someone you do know. Only I am allowed to open the door.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah mom, I’m not stupid.”
“Ok, I’ll be right back,” she said.
The sound of the power locks echoed inside me as I watched her slide the side door shut. Things inside the Chrysler caravan remained at a standstill for a few minutes. Nothing happened. I watched people honk at each other over the first parking space in the row. Kids using the backs of shopping carts as overgrown skateboards. I began getting antsy when I saw a mom holding her daughter’s hand looking both ways before they crossed over to the parking lot. I couldn’t watch the other people anymore. I wanted my mom to return. Maybe she decided to refill my Penicillin bottle. She better at least bring us back donuts to eat on the way home. I asked out loud why she wasn’t back yet. Sheri didn’t have the answer. She just shook her rattling Lolly doll. These three minutes were eating me and my patience alive. I stuck a few fingers in the built-in cup holder. Something sticky at the bottom. That’s it, I thought, I’m going in there.
I thumbed the lock up on the sliding door and pushed it open, smearing fingerprints across the window, jumped from the ledge onto the cracked asphalt and turned to face Sheri.
“You stay here,” I instructed her trying to sound motherly, knowing she couldn’t get out of the car seat alone, “I’m gonna go find mommy.”
She just stared back at me, a blank look in those big green eyes. My shoelace came untied as I headed for the entrance, but I did not stop to fix it for fear of either getting hit by a car or wasting more time in the pursuit of locating my mom. Look both ways before you cross the street. At least I obeyed one rule. She’ll be so happy to see me, to know someone’s worrying about her, I thought. The door magically opened for me. It was amazing that despite my small size the door still knew I was there. The moment I walked through the entrance a familiar face came walking through the exit.
“Where were you??” I cried, although relieved to see she was still alive.
Only a metal handrail separated us.
“I told you I had to cash the check,” my mom answered, exasperated.
“I know, but you took a long time!”
It had been four minutes since she left us.
Suddenly, her facial expression morphed from annoyance to panic, as she realized she was arguing with only one daughter.
“Where is Sheri?” she demanded.
“In the van. I told her to stay there, don’t worry.” I was not worried and this worried her as much as the fact that her youngest was alone in a car seat.
“Come here now!”
I ducked under the bar and followed her quick strides out the automated door and into the parking lot. She was making me nervous, almost more than when I was anxiously awaiting her return, safe inside the locked van. When the van was in sight and it was apparent that not only did I leave my sister in there, I had been careless enough to leave the door wide open, my mom looked like she was going to pass out. It hadn’t even crossed my mind whether I had or hadn’t closed the door at the time of my departure, being that watching my sister was not my top priority. But I realized then that I had made a huge mistake.
My mom ran to the open van, I’m sure at least half-expecting to see an empty car seat and the Lolly doll that she would look at every morning thereafter and cry whenever she heard a similar rattle. I didn’t run after her. I approached slowly, cautiously, terrified that I really would end up alone because there was no way my parents would keep me after pleading guilty for the disappearance of their baby.
She reached the open door. I stopped moving altogether and held my breath. She wasn’t crying. Her mouth was moving. A silhouette shifted through the back window. One pigtail. Two. She must have been asking Sheri if she was ok, apologizing for leaving her alone, for my irresponsibility, knowing she should have trusted her instinct about me—that three minutes apart surpassed my comfort level—that she should have just made us come in with her. My feet remained planted, this time hoping a car would hit me. My mom didn’t have to tell me what could have happened. I watched Unsolved Mysteries without blinking on Wednesday nights while she was at work. I knew what easy targets temporarily abandoned little girls made.
But she did tell me.
Turning so that she could see both of us, she screamed, “Alyse! Do you know what could have happened just in those few minutes you left Sheri alone in here?”
“Yes I do know what could have happened!” I shouted back. “And I hate myself! I really do. I wish I could just die. I wish I was dead! You wish that too, don’t you?”
I stunned her.
“Well don’t you??” I screeched.
She locked the door of Sheri’s haven, slammed it shut, and marched over to me, seemingly scared to get too close, afraid that not only had her baby almost been stolen but that her first-born was threatening her own elimination.
“Don’t you EVER say that again!” Her voice cracked. “I NEVER want to hear anything like that come out of your mouth again, you hear me?? You don’t want to be dead and don’t you ever wish that upon yourself!”
We both attempted to hide tears, both upset for same and different reasons. She walked to the driver’s door and I pulled the locked handle of the sliding door on the passenger’s side, waiting to hear the familiar unlocking. I climbed in and found my designated seat in the back row next to the left-side window. Buckled my seat belt. My sister remained in her car seat, still in the middle row. The three of us rode home in silence, Sheri never understanding what happened, yet somehow able to escape from the car seat on her own for the first time when we arrived back in our garage fifteen minutes later.

(the photo is of me at the zoo, probably trying to talk to the bear....taken by my dad around the time when both of these stories occured.)

ode to ancestry

In lieu of last night's entry re: poetry, I figured I'd post one of the few poems I've ever written that has stood the test of time and I don't look back on as crap. I wrote it in late October, 2002 after going on a mini adventure through the streets of New York to find the apartment building that my maternal great-grandfather lived in.

109 Ludlow Street

Every time I ask about my great-grandfather
relatives deny knowing anything--
Except that his name was Michael
and he died from a heart attack
when my Bubby was sixteen.

What I know of him
are six stolen photographs
creased and slightly blurry.
He looks like Hitler, I told my mom.
Don’t say that! She scolded.

Rumors circulated that he came from somewhere in South America.
On my Bubby’s death bed I asked her if the rumors of her dad rang true.
I think she slightly shook her head, but I wouldn’t swear to it.
Maybe someone made it up to explain why she was named Juanita

Then a paper surfaced:
Naturalization Certificate #1423062
Immigrated from Russia through Ellis Island
On May 5, 1920
Including a New York City address

Down East Broadway, down Pike, down Canal
Turning left on Ludlow
Just past Delancey
Before Katz’s Deli on the corner of Houston

Eighty-two years later
The air is still bitter
I am not wearing a jacket
The sky is white
There is more graffiti than people
I find the apartment building
Rising six stories above a tailor shop

Cross the street to stand closer to these bricks
Step in front of an oncoming car and jump back
Look at its license plate—my initials.
Coincidence constantly mocks me.

I am in the same doorway
On the same steps
My face pushed up against
The same dirty glass window

A pigeon lands at my feet
and cocks its head at the fire escape ladders
The same way I do

I tell it I love its wings
I confess to the bird
What’s hidden behind walls
And dragged behind boats

The city’s at a standstill.
Michael found Anne.
She is my namesake.
I’m gonna keep walking
And whispering to birds
Someday I will be an ancestor.


A few weeks ago I read the following quote on one of my best friend's facebook profile: "Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is an illusion." After reading it, I left her a note saying that I wasn't trying to stir controversy but that I don't see the way I define myself as an illusion just because I don't really identify with God. I couldn't put my thoughts into more words than that at the time, but I started to think about it more later. If I say I don't identify with "God" or "God's love" or whatever, then what or who can I say I do identify with? I mean, to me, that question has an infinite number of answers. But I've known since age 11 that my best friends and I don't quite see eye to eye when it comes to this religious stuff, and that we bring sometimes polar opposite opinions/beliefs to the table. The conclusion I came to is that I identify myself with my ancestors...or at least I strive to find an identity link within our diminishing family tree.

The other night I spent a few hours at the Borders in Hyde Park flipping through travel magazines. Doing that is bittersweet. It excites me to see pictures and think about all the places I still can look forward to discovering, yet it kind of bums me out because I don't really know when the next time is that I'll get to do major traveling again. But anyway, I was looking at Condé Nast something or other, and the main story in there was all about Bucharest and how Romania will be joining the European Union. This reignited my intense interest in planning a "return to my roots" jaunt around Eastern Europe...specifically Romania, Hungary and Poland. Romania is the one country that I know the exact town that my family came from: Panciu (pronounced: Pon-chu....as my grandpa and dad would respond: "i'm gonna pon-chu!") Finding out that this country is going to join the E.U. made me want to quit my job and go over there right now. I want to see this country before it homogenizes; I want to see this country as it was when my ancestors called it "home" (or whatever "home" is in Yiddish).

I think it is really important to know where you come from, to know that you are here because your parents had you, your grandparents had them, your great-grandparents had them, and so on and so on. I didn't realize how important this ancestral knowledge was to me until March 19, 2000, the day my Bubby ("grandmother" in Yiddish) died. As I referenced in the poem, I didn't ask soon enough about why the heck she was named Juanita or anything about our shared ancestors. Later that same year my uncle died in October and my Grandma died in December. My Zadie ("grandfather" in Yiddish) had already passed away when I was 7. So I never got to ask him about his experiences as a Marine in WWII, witnessing the flag being raised at Iwo Jima...or how he fell in love with my Bubby...or tell him that I followed in his photographic footsteps.

Losing all these people made me reevaluate a lot of things. I felt secure in who I was, and yet I was clueless to my past. Who were these people that preceded me and how did I end up where I am today? I became obsessed with documenting my last remaining grandparent, Grandpa Joe (my dad's dad). Every time we'd drive out to Rockford I'd bring along an available notebook and frantically write down everything he said. Sometimes I even brought my video camera and recorded our visits. I mean most of it was silly stuff--he convinced himself he was blind for the last few years of his life, so a lot of what I wrote down was in reference to the hilarity that ensued from that. But, I did get some valid information as well, such as the Panciu clue. Obviously that's just one piece of the identity puzzle, from one grandparent out of the millions of things I could have asked the rest of them before their time was up...but it's a puzzle piece that I treasure.
Grandpa Joe died February 11, 2005 (2/11...adding to the worst days in my life almost always falling on an 11th) and was buried on Valentine's Day (thus continuing my string of awful Valentines Days)

I want to see the world. I dream of going on African safaris and taking my sister to Iceland. But the number one trip I want to take is this leap back in time to these mysterious, ancestral lands. Now I just need to find the funds, and once that's covered I am determined to set aside the time....

(the photo doesn't necessarily directly relate to this posting, but the pictures i took when i found 109 Ludlow are at my parent's house...for some reason this photo seemed the most appropriate out of anything i have on my computer here...i took it of my dad almost a year ago when we went to Aruba over New Years. the last morning we were there he and i and my sister got up before the sun and took our rented Jeep on one last off-roading adventure into the uninhabited areas of the island. i took this picture while standing in the entrance of a cave. 1/6/06)

revival of the writers week junkie

In April, 1998 my freshman year at Fremd High School was coming to a close. My Spanish teacher, Ms. Mungai, took our class to the auditorium for an event called Writers Week. I sat in the last row of the center section with two of my friends, Chris and Julie, lowly, unassuming freshmen, as 80-year-old Gwendolyn Brooks shared her words from the podium on stage. Those 50 minutes literally changed my life. At the end of her reading a teacher announced that Ms. Brooks would be available in the faculty study the following period(s) to sign books. Somehow the line to meet her kept shifting so that I kept ending up dead last. This caused me to miss two or three classes, but in my eyes it was totally worth it. I told her a friend of mine wanted her address, so she wrote it in the back of the book. I don't have many regrets in life, but one of them is never using the address to write her a letter. It's one of those things that was always on my "I'll get to it someday" list. I should have known better, even at the young age of 15, that people don't stay around forever. She died on December 3, 2000.

The day after I skipped a bunch of classes to meet her, I was summoned to my administrator's office. Busted. To be honest, I was quite terrified, as I had never really done anything before to warrant being sent to anyone of high authority. I was practically shaking as I faced my administrator, Dr. Scott (now the current principal of Fremd), and the truth came spilling out...as it usually does whenever I open my mouth. I'm not a very good liar. I told her that yes I skipped class but that I felt as though I learned more by getting the chance to meet Gwendolyn than I would have if I had gone to class and that the experience changed my life and it's ok if I'm in trouble I'm ready to accept my punishment. I sat wide-eyed, barely breathing, and handed over the book, Selected Poems, and said, "This is the only proof I have. I didn't just cut class to cut class. I did it for this." Dr. Scott looked at the autographed page and smiled, clearly sensing how nervous I was. She decided not to give me a detention. In fact, if I remember correctly, I think she even congratulated me on getting the signature.

From that point on I became a self-proclaimed Writers Week junkie, and for the remaining three years of high school I camped out in the auditorium during that week. Literally. I'm not joking. Senior year I don't think I attended a single class all week. As long as there were writers reading, I was there listening. It was like an addiction. I'd get my fix, maybe even overdose on words and language and watching writers share their work. The inspiration and motivation to write would last for just about a year, and just when I'd start to lose it, it'd be time for Writers Week again. Starting sophomore year I passionately involved myself in all aspects of the event. From setting up fundraisers at Barnes&Noble, to reading my own work as a featured student writer, to giving the introduction to some of the real writers (such as Jane Hamilton) before they took the stage.

Another poet, Marc Smith, stood out freshman year because he was loud and he walked up the auditorium banisters while shouting words, including the banned word: Fuck, which got an obvious rise out of both the bemused student body and the paranoid faculty. What stood out more than his use of "profanity" was the fact that he invented the poetry slam. It's funny now looking back on that day because I had no idea what a poetry slam even was until Marc Smith arrived on stage. After that year I made sure I participated in every poetry slam held at school, during and after. Don't get me wrong, it's not like they happened all the time, but enough so that I found it strange when talking to people who didn't go to Fremd and they'd have no idea what I was talking about. So anyway, Marc invented the slam. That's huge. And not only did he invent it, he invented it in our home city of Chicago at a place called The Green Mill. Julie and I vowed that as soon as we turned 21 (as her birthday is 3 weeks before mine, both in November) the first thing we'd do as of-age patrons would be to go to this famed jazz club.

Tonight Julie and I reconnected after not seeing each other since high school graduation over five years ago. We finally set a date and finally went to this otherwise mythical venue. We parked several blocks away and walked in the Chicago cold to the flashing lights at the corner of Lawrence and Broadway. "Here we go..." one of us said as we made our way inside. "I can't believe we're finally here." We wandered closer to the stage area, and Julie pointed out Marc Smith standing a few feet away. He then saw us and said, "Go sit at that table up in front! Then I can look at your pretty faces the whole time!"

Honestly, I'm not even a huge fan of the slam. Partly because I think a lot of times poets are judged on how they deliver their words (the more hand gestures or thrashing body movements or say-ing w-ord-ssss brok-en up soun-ding, the higher the score?) as opposed to what they're actually saying. And partly because judging poetry makes me uncomfortable. I mean I'll be the first to admit that I don't like something, but I will be the last to hold up a number between minus infinity and 10 to tell you that.

But even though "slamming" is not my thing, the fact that I was once again surrounded by people who love sharing words made my stomach churn. There's something to be said about the feeling you get when you feel overwhelmed by excited sparks and flying objects colliding somewhere inside you. Borderline nausea maybe? Because you know this is what you've been missing in your life, what you've been depriving yourself of because you're "too busy" or "too tired" (in this case, to write).

Although my concentrations in college were both photography and writing, I definitely veered more towards photography--at least from a professional/career standpoint--in the later years. I feel like I exhausted anything I had to say after September 11. It was like nothing needed to be written anymore because what else could I possibly say after writing pages upon pages about witnessing the worst attack on U.S. soil? What could I possibly write that hasn't been written, or say that hasn't been said?

There's a quote from one of my favorite books, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss:

Words often failed me
While others prayed
I only moved my lips

That's how I feel most of the time--tongue-tied. I've always been able to express myself better with written words as opposed to verbally. But even written words were beginning to fail me, so I threw myself full force into photography, and from then till now I've been expressing myself visually. But lately I've been missing the words. My intention was always to do both, to combine the mediums somehow, forming some form of equilibrium.

People who only knew me in high school, only knew my dedication to writing and becoming a writer. When I run into these people now, they always excitedly ask, "So are you still writing?" And I always squirm and sometimes blush because I feel like a failure. I know they expect me to say that I'm mid-novel or writing two poems a day. "Well," I say. "I actually haven't written anything in a long time..." "Oh really? I remember when your 9.11 journals were published in the newspaper..." What do I say to that? Yeah, and that's where I lost it? Instead I just smile politely and say that hopefully some day I'll start up again.

Julie and I approached Marc after the open mic/slam ended, and we told him how we've been talking about coming to the Green Mill for nine years and finally made it. He said he has good memories of Fremd but has since been banned from performing there because parents complained that he used the "f-word." It's nice that suburban parents think they have nothing better to worry about than their teenagers hearing words that they themselves use on a daily basis.... We told him we're planning to be regular Sunday night attendees. Even though we heard no good poetry and our waitress was rude, I now know where I can at least get my fix--because if I'm going to be addicted to something, words might be the healthiest poison.

(both photos are of marc smith and were taken tonight--12/3/06)

dreaming of madrid

Every day I make several round trips down Wabansia Street to avoid the North/Damen/Milwaukee intersection. To do this, though, I have to stop at a stop sign every block for about 8 blocks (although i've never counted...). This stop-and-go can be annoying, and there's always the risk of some idiot, who doesn't think the law applies to them, plowing through without even yielding.
I have a total double standard when it comes to pedestrian crossing. When I'm driving, I urge the pedestrians to hurry across the street, and yet, when I, myself, am a pedestrian, I will not hesitate to glare at a driver who is over-eagerly awaiting me to cross. Today I came to one such stop sign and saw an old lady to my left about to step into the crosswalk. There would have been ample time--even with a complete stop--for me to continue on past the stop sign. But I've always had a soft spot for people over 75, so I waited for her to make it to the other side. When she got about halfway across she turned her face partway towards my car and gave me a little smile with a small wave of her hand. I waved back. And it was at that moment that I noticed an old man with a cane crossing the cross street. I turned to my friend Amy in the passenger seat and let out a squeal. "Do you think they're meeting each other??" And sure enough, the old woman changed directions and took the hypotenuse route to the old man. They exchanged words which I could not hear inside my car. As I drove past I looked back in my rearview mirror, and they were already parting ways. I wondered if maybe it was a chance meeting, even though the sudden path change of the old woman seemed pretty deliberate to just be chance.

The above encounter made me think of this picture that I took while living in Madrid (Spain) almost three years ago. It was mid-March, and I had had a rough day. To make a (somewhat hilarious) story short...I managed to walk forcefully into a glass door upon exiting a restaurant and smashed my nose so hard that I had to go to the hospital and get my face x-rayed/bandaged. Anyway, I finally returned home, and all I wanted to do was relax on our balcony. So I climbed out the window and reveled in the sunshine. It was around 5:00, and the sun shone directly down Calle Eloy Gonzalo, making huge, elongated shadows follow directly behind passersby like silhouetted giants. I climbed back through my window to grab my camera, and that's when I got this shot, looking directly below my building (the top of the photo is actually the side with the street). To this day it remains one of my favorite captured moments, and every time I look at it I long to be back in the Spanish sun perched above the city, watching love shadows wander.

joining the 21st century...one word/photo at a time

I never thought I'd be one to latch onto the blog craze, and yet here I am. It's Saturday night and I'm not doing anything. And since I'm not doing anything, I decided that this would be a good time to suck it up and join the 21st century. Not because I want to disclose all my secrets to faceless perusers but because I've been lacking motivation/an outlet to combine my writing and photography. So I'm going to give this a try....