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If Language Were Liquid
I stood at the window of the house, which was nestled into a copse of fir trees, admiring the statuesque conifers that framed the bowl of the valley like a spiky matte. Their heads shot skyward like shuttlecocks that had blasted off and were then frozen in motion. I’d seen the valley during the summer when it was covered with wild grasses and flowers. Now, it was a vessel filled with sugary powder. The incredible thing about the composition framed by the picture window was that it couldn’t have been plotted better if a master painter had composed the scene: the trees directed the eye beyond the valley to the massive peaks that towered in the distance. The stubble of trees and fingering slopes filled in the composition when the clouds moved away, leaving behind them a downy comforter of shaved ice.
One evening we didn’t leave the slopes until the sun was sinking low in the sky. The light dallied with the clouds and dappled the mountain in patches of ripe rosiness interspersed with matte-finished smudges of shadow in palest gray. At certain points along the lift-lines, the aspen trees—their gnarled and writhing fingers gathering ice—gave the appearance they were fiddling with Victorian lace. The conifers on the highest slopes seemed to gather powder to their chests, forming great paws that seemed to want to bat the frosty air. I was always happy when storms left their backwash on the slopes so I was teased for being the group’s powder hound. As I swished through the fluffy granules, I felt as though I were shooting through a crystalline forest. It wouldn’t have surprised me if I’d seen Snow White guiding a prancing unicorn along one of the trails, the puffs of air escaping its delicate muzzle forming plumes of steam that drifted above its conical horn.
After several runs in deep powder, I was feeling the strain in my legs and my lungs, which weren’t accustomed to the high altitude, so I took a break from the exertion of skiing, popping Suzanne Vega’s cassette Solitude Standing into my Walkman. As I listened to "In the Eye," an idea for a short story started to form, inspired by her lyrics:
“If you were to kill me now
Right here I would still
Look you in the eye
And I would burn myself
Into your memory
As long as you were still alive
I would not run
I would not turn
I would not hi-i-ide…
I would live inside of you
I’d make you wear me
Like a scar
And I would burn myself
into your memory
And run through everything you are…”
The story had as its protagonist a woman named Karrman, who opened her tale with the declaration, “My mother’s maiden name was Karr and she couldn’t bear to give it up but she wasn’t strong enough to keep it herself. I guess that means I’ll be her identity until I die.”
Her newfound love interest, named Martin, asks, “You mean until she dies?”
“No,” Karrman corrects him; “that kind of brainwashing doesn’t die with her, it can only die with me—that is unless I have kids and then it’s a guaranteed right of succession.”
She let out a brash cackle and he knew then and there that if she laughed that way too many times, he’d have to kill her. She did, of course; it was simply who she was, and he snapped one evening—her crassness sending him over the edge. Lost in a blood-pulsing fog, he bludgeoned Karrman to death as Vega’s “Night Vision” wafted into the room from the speakers flanking the record player in her apartment:
When the darkness takes you
With her hand across your face
Don’t give in too quickly
Find the thing she’s erased…
He taped her legs at the ankles as he salivated over the idea of burying her in a snowy field. He decided he couldn’t let her go without a souvenir so he cut a piece of the tape that he’d plastered over her mouth—a symbolic gesture that he had shut her up for all eternity—and placed the scrap in his pocket. He looked out the window of her apartment toward the high-rise next door, the lights from which were casting strong shadows into the dim interiors. No one was watching so he took his time savoring his deed, turning up the volume as "Solitude Standing" pulsed out into the room, while sipping slowly on the glass of wine Karrman had poured him. He rocked back and forth to Vega’s soulful guitar chords and tentatively beautiful voice:
Solitude stands in the doorway
And I’m struck once again by her black silhouette
By her long cool stare and her silence
I suddenly remember each time we’ve met
And she says “I’ve come to set a twisted thing straight.”
And she says “I’ve come to lighten this dark heart.”
And she takes my wrist; I feel her imprint of fear
And I say, “I’ve never thought of finding you here…”
As the word trailed off, he raised the glass, toasting himself, and unleashed a creepy laugh. THWACK! I was startled from my narrative by the sound of skis meeting the ground as a guy dropped his on the snow next to me and sat down to eat an apple. I hadn’t realized I’d been sitting on the bench long enough that my ski suit had nearly frozen to the slats of the wood bench. I took off a mitten to check my watch and it hit me that Jim was likely having a heart attack; I just hoped he hadn’t already called the ski patrol. What a mess that would be! As I pried myself from the frosty bench and jammed my boots into my skis to head down the mountain, I had a picture of him pacing in front of the dressing rooms down below. I flipped the volume higher on my Walkman and let Vega’s “Language” carry me along the power-laden trails:
If language were liquid
It would be rushing in
Instead here we are
In a silence more eloquent
Than any word could ever be…
I’d like to meet you
In a timeless, placeless place
Somewhere out of context
And beyond all consequences…
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Lost in Translation
Father Calvin took us to the Hong Kong Restaurant. The menu had two sides: one written in a Chinese-y Spanish, the other in a comical version of English. Instead of chicken breast, the restaurant offered chicken bosom, which was served with deep dry noody. I took this odd-sounding side to mean deep fried noodles when I ordered it, and was relieved when this was actually what was served, as I had no idea what a “noody” might be!
I tried not to laugh out of respect for the earnest restaurateur who was extremely excited to have Americans in his restaurant—not an everyday occurrence Calvin explained—but it was too much. I giggled my way through the gastronomic options, trying several times to slip a menu into my purse because my friends would never believe me if I didn’t have proof. The squat Chinese owner, who had the waitresses cutting napkins into four pieces and refolding them into tiny squares, was vigilant, making it a point of stopping at our table every few minutes to ask if we were ready to order, his hand extended to take my menu. We returned to the restaurant many times during our stint in Germania, but I was never able to get a menu out the door.As we walked back to the parish house after dinner, I couldn’t believe the change in the atmosphere of the small town crisscrossed with roads, many of which were dirt and some of them little more than rutted paths. From two-story lean-tos with screen wire for windows, a number of songs from Michael Jackson’s "Thriller" album competed for attention. While “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'” blasted from one disco, “Beat It” throbbed from another. A block away, the rock superstar crooned “Billie Jean” from yet another smoky room.Bare-chested men holding cold cervezas leaned against the facades of restaurants and bars while women in their best dresses sashayed by. One particularly tall woman stood on a well-lit corner where the streetlight leaned at a precarious angle toward the ground. She was mesmerized by a group of children playing nearby. Her revealing dress in a juicy shade of red contrasted her wiry, dark hair that was pulled back to expose the smooth, sepia-toned skin of her face. I thought it odd that a lone shock of white ran along her hairline above her right ear. She didn’t look old enough to have sprouted gray hair, which made me wonder if the swath could be the result of hardship or trauma. Though I saw her for only a few seconds, I was convinced she’d lost a child. Her expression as she watched the children’s antics was part peaceful wonderment and part agonizing longing.It was remarkable how the inky air had turned the town into an antithetical version of its sun-drenched self. The streets had come alive, which made perfect sense because nighttime was the only tolerable time to be outside in August in the tropics. Like those of the discos, the windows on the parish house were unadorned openings cut into the building’s façade, covered over with screen wire. Until the wee hours of the night, the songs chosen by the DJs congealed into a soundtrack for my drama—a protracted tossing and turning on the single cot with its thin mattress. To their credit, Jacko, Springsteen, Madonna and Aretha held their own against a retrospective of the history of Reggae.If you are new to my blog and you'll like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the earliest post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar gives you the very first information. Thanks for stopping in!
