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12 June 2006
Neither Silvia nor I were concentrating on our work. I, with my notebooks, pens, and Post-its scattered across the small round table at the northwest corner of the room, thumbed blindly through manuscripts, making arbitrary notes every few minutes on a pad of lined paper. She sat at the long desk running along the west wall, listening to old lecture tapes through a set of headphones and tapping at her keyboard from time to time. Each of us was feigning diligence for the sake of the other.Silvia took off her headphones and rotated her chair in my direction. As she began rolling a cigarette, and without looking up, she asked with characteristic European apathy, “How are you doing over there? Finding what you’re looking for?”
Careful to maintain the appearance of intense concentration, I muttered an affirmation, glancing up only long enough for her to catch a glimpse of the distant, detached gaze that I imagined would give me the look of a true genius. Returning to my notebook, I circled an attractive word and crossed out an ugly one.
Silvia licked the edge of the cigarette paper and sealed it off, pinching one end with two fingers. She lit the other end and took the first drag slowly, blowing the smoke in the direction of the open window overlooking the courtyard.
[ posted by Matthew Chrislip at 22:48 : 0 comments :
]
{ Retrospect : 21 August 2004 }
In the middle of a sluggish Saturday afternoon, I found Grandma leaning over the back of the living room couch, staring out the window. I joined her, and for a long time neither of us spoke. I wondered what was going through her mind as she stared ahead. I wondered where her eyes paused, what they passed over. I tried to imagine how her ninety-one-year-old perspective differed from mine, which was at this point only twenty-two years in the making. I imagined that her billions of thoughts, memories, and experiences cluttered her tired mind, keeping her up at night and clouding her vision from the reality that now surrounded her. I wondered if confusion compounds with each successive day.Finally, she spoke. “I feel like I’m living in a place that I’m not used to.”
[ posted by Matthew Chrislip at 22:45 : 0 comments :
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