Look How Fall Does this to Me

I took a Greyhound home last weekend. This is more or less my experience, written backwards, jumbled in with some nonsensical philosophy.

Taking a bus home to Akron, Friday. My brother was picking me up at 3. He brought his kitten--Indiana Jones the Cat, or the Whiz, or Olivia, because like my niece, she runs around nonstop and never eats. He only locks his car doors when their cat is in the car, because he's afraid someone will steal her, she's so friendly and cute. And I didn't believe him, that he was bringing baby kitty, but there they were, in his beat up Honda, brand new shiny black when he was 16. Now the license plate is crooked, bent up like a fan, there's more dent than bumper, and two busted off rear view mirrors. What a driver. What a brother. I love him to death.

And on this bus ride home, I hoped against hope that he would show up. He's good at forgetting, against his own best intentions. He's the best brother in the world. Nothing better to do on a Friday but go meet his girlfriend at her work for lunch, and come pick up his baby sister at the Greyhound station. He takes me back to his house for a while, to drop Indiana Jones the Cat off. He shows me their stash, offers me some Reese's Cups of Lisa's. Lisa and I are the same person--both on the fast track to salmonella. He shows me the lake his house overlooks. He went and laid on it the night before, Eternal Sunshine style, and Lisa thought he had died. Just him, his lighter, and some alcohol to blow through the flame to make the night light up. Look at this, Kate. He does it in his house, and then checks the wall closest to wear he blew the flame to make sure it wasn't singed. We called him Sparky when he was young. Caught everything on fire and tried to hide the evidence before my mom came home.

I don't like Chipotle that much. He loves it. I think that's why he decided to go to Kent--just for the Chipotle. He warned me, there are a lot of hipsters around here, Kate. A LOT. They all wear sweaters and tight pants and Weezer glasses and have semi-long messed up hair and walk around smoking and talking about Wilco. Aric, did you just describe yourself? No. Like these people are extreme--they keep sleeping bags in the back of their cars and do nothing but smoke weed. Really good weed. They're hippies. Aric, there's a sleeping bag back here. Okay okay, you're right, but at least I don't wear girl pants yet.

Chipotle. Chicken burrito. Grossest thing ever. I take two bites every time. Two good bites, but just bites. I'd rather spend $20 on something else. So I offer to pay. No no, I'll pay. Eh, it's just dad's money, let me pay.You were nice enough to come get me and you're wasting gas driving me home. So I hand him a wad of cash. He orders one of everything on the menu, it seems. All 6'3", 160 lanky pounds of him. We sit down. Three girls glare at me as we walk to our table. B*****s, b*****s, chubies, if you're using T9 while texting. I wish I could tell them he was my brother. Maybe then they'd be nice to me. Did the hyenas leave yet, my brother asks. His back is to them. Nope, still here. They hate me for being here with you. He talks about how he wishes the cat could be with us. She would sit right here and wouldn't bother anyone...she's so cute. I spill my food all onto my lap. I mention that this is the most awkward first date ever. He laughs. We are dating. We're in love. Maybe then people would stop teasing us about it, if we just keep saying that. Creepy.

On the bus, The Hulk was playing on the little TV above me. I watched the Amish man sitting diagonal from me take it all in. What he must think, I can only imagine. I'm not even sure what I think about that movie. We pulled off an exit to pick him up, because buggies can't travel on freeways. He got on, and walked to the seat behind me. He asked, "Anybody sittin' heah?" Nothing back. Or maybe my hearing is getting worse and worse and I'm slowly losing it. Then he walks to the seat in front of me, and the girl moves her book bag so he can sit down. As he steps past me, I swear the woman across the isle says to me, "Snob," with such certainty. Was the Amish man talking to me? Did I unknowingly ignore him? I'm good at that. I get approached a lot. I have a friendly face. I have an American lit book on my lap. I look very Amish friendly. And then I snub him. Or did I? Perhaps the woman next to me was calling the man behind me a snob, for not moving over. What do I care? I care a lot. I feel horrible. I feel horrible that I might have turned someone down without my knowledge--which is a first. My brother said that the Amish man was so used to being backwards in society, he probably has a complex about approaching people from the front, therefore he probably did approach me from behind, and meanwhile I continued to stare out the bus window. But what do I care? I'll never see him again. I'm tearing myself apart over it.

When we first left Columbus, we were running parallel with a train. Or the train was running parallel to us. Or the girl on the elliptical next to me is speeding up. Or I'm just slowing down. Or we're subconsciously speeding up and slowing down together. Except, when I look at the train, it looks like it's carrying trees. Nothing but hundreds and hundreds of trees, barren from the Ohio cold. I can't see the bottoms of them, because there is a fence between the highway and the train, but I imagine they have big burlap sacks on the bottom of them, covering the roots. I wonder where they're going. Some sort of big Columbus project. A new park. An old park that needs more trees. Maybe even a new house with absolutely nothing real about it, from the blueprints all the way down to the drywall, to those fake imported trees. I stare at them for a long time, watching the big fluffy clouds above them. And then I get dizzy, and fall back. The clouds above the trees aren't moving. The trees aren't moving. Is the bus even moving? But then I realize--it's just an ordinary train. It's just empty, or carrying coal, or something, whatever they use trains for these days. No trees. The trees are stationary, behind the train. But maybe in some parallel universe, on some parallel elliptical at the gym, they're being taken back to the city, to make it more of a home to me.

At the Greyhound station, I get in line. It's not really a line. The one and only worker there is rearranging the line directors. I don't know what the proper name is for them. They're posts, with rope coming out of them. So I'm not sure where "Line Forms Here" goes, or where I go,or where my 50lb. bag full of dirty laundry is supposed to go. My mom is so good to me. She washed and folded it all. I keep rewearing everything I wore last week, just to smell home again, just to smell my mom, just to smell the weird Italian food her boyfriend cooks for us, which is by no means my favorite smell, or even a good one, but I imagine I'm back there, in that house that wasn't really a home until this Christmas break.

The man finally finishes setting up the line directors. I'll take you right over here. I step up to the counter. Akron? Gate 6, he tells me. I've gotten somewhat familiar with this whole Greyhound ordeal, from the last time I was stranded in Cleveland for much longer than I'd like to be anywhere. I knew it was best to wait in line by the gate, in case there weren't enough seats on the bus and you had to wait for another. Do you happen to know if there are any other buses leaving from that gate before mine? He pauses. Why, yes, there is one leaving for AAAH-thens, o-HI-o. He looks me directly in the eyes. Why did he have to say that? Why did he have to enunciate it like that? How in the hell do things work out like that? He is God. God is in everything. God is in everyone. God could be the homeless person walking down the street you deny help. A song one of my mom's old soup kitchen volunteers wrote comes to mind--Feed my sheep. Give the man your leather jacket to keep him out of the cold.

I wonder what God was trying to tell me. This was the weekend he had wanted me to go to Athens. I had never considered it, but the idea that the bus was coming made it seem like something that in theory could have happened. It couldn't have happened. I wouldn't have let it. I'm smarter than that. Call me cruel, but I'm not. I'm one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. But unlike the majority of the world, I don't flatter myself with false notions. I don't particularly like entertaining thoughts of getting used, of settling, of being unhappy on a regular basis, of visiting someone's college campus who, as far as I was concerned, was out of my life and had been from the time I had to find someone new to kiss on New Year's. Long before that, too, if I let myself admit it.

So there they were. The two paths I could have taken. And I feel like I over think what God wants, what he tells me. I couldn't understand it. Are you happy where you are now? Yes. Then that's the answer. What an interesting way to look at things. Thank you, Jesus.

My friend Mike offered to walk me to the Greyhound station that day. He offers to do everything. He offered to make me Grilled Cheese tonight. He offered to go with me and my roommate to look at apartments. He offered to talk to me about why I was so depressed. He would offer his hand in marriage, I'm pretty sure, or at least offer to take my pants off. I won't go for that. I don't want to lead him on. I never take him up on his offers. I let him cook me spaghetti once, and that was the last time I'll let that happen. Some people are too much with you. I can't take that for very long. I like being alone. I love being surrounded with my best friends and my family. I rarely tire of that. But normal people, yeah, they come and go, walk in and out of my life, and I generally like to hang onto that cycle.

The day of my French final last quarter, my roommate asked me to drive her to the airport. She was going back home to Texas. Remember, the Alamo? So I woke up early, took her to the airport. I had never been there before. I haven't driven very much in Columbus. Just a handful of times before I was actually coming to school here. I got lost, off on the wrong exit. Well not lost. You can't really be lost when you know where you want to go. I got turned around, back on track, took forever to find a parking spot, and ran back to my dorm to get ready. I almost missed my final. She remembered. Hey, let me drive you to the Greyhound station. It's no problem; I have to go out anyway. So I had a reason to get Mike back out of my life. A nice letdown. A nice it's -30 degrees outside with the wind-chill, and I think we'd both agree that a car ride downtown would be nicer than an hour walk.

I had decided to go home that weekend for two reasons. It was Martin Luther King day on Monday, so we didn't have classes. That would give me an extra day at home, or at least an extra night. I wanted to see my family so bad. I wanted to see my friends so bad. I had wasted a couple of days with some jerk over break, who would just as soon s**t his pants and call the cops over one of his snowballing lies as tell me he loved me. I saved his a*s. I'm a good person. I still feel good about the whole situation. I still feel good that I'm not him. I still feel glad that I wasn't going to gate 6 for a different reason that day. I had to make up for lost time. I had to see the people who mattered in my life. The people who would save my a*s in return, although rarely have to because I tend to be level-headed and don't drink myself into oblivion.

I got high off of being at home. Spending the night in my own bed(s). Spending the night on the couch because my sheets needed changed. Also because the Christmas tree was still up, sans ornaments but it's the lights that make it pretty anyway. It's your eyes that make you sparkle so much, that make my face light up when I see you. It was just what I needed. Back with my best friends, drinking too much coffee, taking obnoxious pictures. Going to Wal-Mart to get snacks in the snow and listening to Hot 101. The Yoshi pout every time I lost playing Wii. Having a PJ day at my mom's with my sister and niece and grandparents. Going shopping with my sister and her mother-in-law, the queen shopaholics. Turning me into one, except I don't have money like they do. I'm broke. I'm in college. My wallet got stolen on the last date I was on. Another sign I need to take it easy.

I'm back in my dorm now. My head is clear. My hair is cold and wet. My eyes are fresh and blue. My pajama pants smell like home. I am happy. I am in love in some way or another--with life, with my friends here, with my loved ones back home, with my future, with my hot English teacher who looks like Matt Dallas, with my bio lab partner, with walking outside in the cold with my furry boots on, with turning people down because I can, with not feeling obligated, with making Valentine's cards (or planning on it), with getting a letter in the mail from my sister everyday (Did you go off to war or something? says my brother),with late night phone calls, with skipping class because I stayed up all night, with daydreaming about Friday night and the weekend after my birthday, and next summer before ugly fall comes and this whole process of winter starts all over again.

I wrote a poem a month ago. No thought went into it. Just my feelings.

Look how fall does this to me
Look how full of it you can be
Look how lovely we might seem
If you would let me in

Look how Christmas comes and goes
Standing underneath the mistletoe
On my very tippy-toes
Just to kiss your silly nose

Look how much I hate your guts
Making me paranoid so I fuss
You couldn't really care any less
Would you call me after New Year's?

What good is it now, that I can't really remember what it was that I was feeling at the time, though? I was caught up. I got caught up and like every winter, I get depressed and look for someone to save me. Forcing myself to like somebody I didn't like, thinking if I wasn't alone it wouldn't be so bad. I was more alone than ever. I am most alone when I'm not myself. I think I'm myself now. Or somebody different, that's more like myself than how I was before. Somebody that I like much better, somebody called mature, somebody called crazy, somebody called brilliant, somebody called loveable, somebody called sweet, somebody's shining star who I have yet to find.

Nothing much makes sense, and it's wonderful. Chasing dreams while other people are trying to chase some sort of reality just wasn't working out for me. I'm not sure if that's ever going to change. But from now on, my reality is no longer a train with trees behind it. That's yours. In my heart I still believe that train is taking those trees away. It's taking me away. My brother burned this CD for me. I thought you'd like it. It's called Beachwood Sparks. I'm not sure if the band is Beachwood and the CD is Sparks, or if that's the band's full name. God is in everything. "The most awkward first date in the world," you said. That's hilarious.You're my favorite person, Kate; don't ever change.

Author's Note

I don't expect anyone to understand what's going on, as much as I'd like them too. I wrote this for myself. But if you get something out of it, I couldn't ask for more.

Reviews

[Here's What I Say]

Well, first thing's first; it was a little difficult to follow because it's not a story with a plot like I usually expect, although you made it perfectly clear in the beginning that this wasn't meant to be fiction but your own personal reflection. This is much more like a conscious stream of thought; one thought leads to another, whether or not it's a logical flow.

There is so much substance in this piece, even if it's hard to follow at times. There is so much poetry in your thoughts, even if they don't all rhyme. It's a sample plate of experiences: being at a terminal, going on a "date" with your brother (this once my brother and sister were mistaken as a couple, and when I had a boyfriend in high school, the new girl thought we were siblings), remembering the joys of being home and being in love with life--which is a concept I came to accept as truth a few years ago when as a child, I thought the notion was ridiculous (but I think I was in love with life then too). Life rolled up into one piece.

[Ourebro.]

Nice.

[Pax Analog]

Good slice o' life immersion.

Summons up any number of colorful Greyhound sidebars, especially those middle-of-the-night stops at McDonalds in the middle of nowhere.

You have an easy way of "hangin' out" in prose, making your experience and ruminations as natural as sharing it all with a friend.

Using title from poem inside the prose is cool too. I like the recurrent tweak of trees traveling image too, like a lyric refrain.

Soundly engaging writing; good work.