Writing

On Hearing Cicadas in the Hail

We’re having another winter storm in Seattle. All day, I’ve watched the wind manhandle the trees in my neighborhood. Our power has flickered repeatedly, as if it’s flirting with the notion of going out entirely. Now hail is clinking (make that clanking, since the hail is getting larger) against our home’s gutters and windows. I just moved my car to the bottom of our hill, which means I should at least have a shot at making it to the GRE testing center tomorrow morning, when the weather is supposed to be even worse than it is now.

When I got out of my car after safely nestling it on a side street at the foot of the hill, I noticed a familiar sound. At first, I thought it was cicadas, but there aren’t any cicadas here. Even if there were, they wouldn’t be out this time of year. Still, the momentary misimpression of hearing them stirred something in me—a longing for the Midwest, for late-night walks down quaint, flat streets, the bark of the oaks and elms and maples and magnolias covered with them. The surround-sound of them above us, beside us, near and far. Every morning, the rattling was gone. Then at dusk, they’d start up with their modulated drone, vibrating their tymbals and turning their bodies into diminutive chambers of sound.

But I digress. The sound, as I was saying, wasn’t cicadas. It was the hail. I’m not sure how hail created that kind of din, but it did. While I walked back up the hill to my house, shielded from the hail by my umbrella, I felt happy as I thought about the joy of plucking abandoned cicada exoskeletons from branches and tree trunks, something I relished as a child in Oklahoma and as an adult in Kansas City. (Aaah, the wonder of their split-open backs, banded abdomens and finely haired bodies. Their alien eyes. Their hunched posture. Their clawed and crooked front arms. And oooh, how lithe they must be to crawl out of such a thin casing without destroying it. And wow, the thought of them rising up out of themselves—soft-bodied with pale-gold wings and red eyes and black bands on top of their heads—and wafting on the breeze like miniature German flags.)

But I also felt sad about moving so far away from them, both in terms of distance and, increasingly, time. As more time passes, I will forget about cicadas (and all the other details of my old Midwestern life), recalling them less often and with less specificity than I do now. One day, I will hear hail that sounds just like those ugly little racket-makers, and I won’t even make the connection.

But that’s what we do, right? Move forward. It’s the only choice we have.

So, with every step I took toward what is now my home, I exhaled. The tiny droplets of water and ice I breathed out into the cold night hung under the arc of my umbrella until I stepped forward, leaving even my last breath behind.

Not Now, I’m Sleeping

I wake up with my head smashed face-down on a pillow the consistency of a marshmallow. When Lora used to get hungry in her sleep, she’d wake up chewing on her pillow, I think. Was it the consistency of a marshmallow? But the more important question is how did I get here? I am barely awake, so it’s hard to put meaningful thoughts together. In this state, factoids about friends I had two decades ago come to me readily, but I am unable to piece together the events that led me here, to this bed. With my mind still stuck like a turntable needle in a scratched record on the image of Lora noshing on her pillow, I try to fish from short-term memory more pertinent information, like what day it is.

With one eyeball-goop-caked eye, the one not pressed smack-dab in the soft body of the warm pillow, I try to focus on what’s around me. I am in the guest bedroom. The LCD display on the radio alarm-clock reads 2:15 p.m. I vaguely remember having had big plans today. I was going to clean the house and groom my toenails. Did I do that stuff?

My brain, about half awake now, gives me the answers I’ve been searching for. It is Sunday. No, I did not clip my nails. The house is in the same filthy state it’s been in for weeks. Instead I ended up doing what I always do on Sundays: I took a nap. That explains why I am in bed. Having determined that I am not in danger of missing work and that I really didn’t have anything cool planned after all, my wildly relaxed body pairs up with the half of my brain that is still slumbering. They determine that I am going back to sleep. I take a deep breath and settle into the mattress. It’s gonna be a long nap.

Then something terrible happens. Just as I am about to be taken again by Sleep—my sweet afternoon lover who can please me for hours on end—the awake part of my brain reveals it has a different agenda. It wants to get up and write. In an attempt to draw me out from under the covers, that spry part of my mind starts documenting the moment. It writes the first phrase, I wake up with my head smashed face-down on a pillow … . Before I know it, it has completed the first sentence and is on to the second. And the third. In seconds, it has the whole first paragraph completed. Then, in a startling and rare display of mental agility, it leap-frogs to the end and ties everything up with a surprise ending.*

This is what I get for reading Gabriel García Márquez before taking a nap.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying what the loquacious portion of my brain is stringing together is any good. I am drawing no comparison between the quality of my own writing and that of Márquez. I am just saying that reading tends to stir up words, and once excited, those words want to be expressed. I tell myself I can continue sleeping. I will remember these words later, I half-whisper, half-snore to myself. But I know that’s not the case. There’s no way I can remember the whole first paragraph as well as the surprise ending.* As I lie in bed, I know I have a choice to make: Continue to sleep in my extraordinarily coooooomfy guest bed or get up and make my way to the computer. Guess which option I chose.

I’ve tried to put some measures in place so I can capture ideas without having to immediately flesh them out. I have a DAT voice recorder I carry in my purse. That works OK when I have an idea in the car or some other private place. But I am loathe to use it in public, where I might draw attention making verbal notes like, “nude, towel, gay porn, heat” or “80, new tits, dead.” So I also keep pen and paper handy when I want to be discreet. But even these methods don’t ensure I will successfully capture ideas for later development.

Take the following notes I’ve left for myself in the past week alone. They make absolutely no sense to me now, and I have no idea what to do with them:

1.
toilet
rat
fear

I wrote that one in the middle of the night. I think I’d just gone to the bathroom. Clearly, it means I am afraid of a vicious rat lurking in the toilet that will jump up and bite my pretty ass when I sit down to pee, but the bigger story I had in mind is lost on me now.

Then there’s this one, which I came across yesterday and have no recollection of even having written:

2.
cut thing
dick thing

It’s in my handwriting, so I know I wrote it. But what does it mean? What riddles do these words hold that I no longer have the power to decipher? Is this about sex? Am I the cut thing and LoveShack is the dick thing? Or is it something else entirely? I’m afraid I will never know.

Then there’s this note:

3.
fat
albert

No clue what that one’s all about. I even watched all four episodes of “House of Cosbys” today to jog my memory, but no such luck.

Well, I am glad I got that out. Now I am off to cut my toenails. I might even polish them, too.

—*

* I had to scrap the surprise ending my brain came up with. It was over the top and my budget didn’t allow for the special effects that would have been required.