Busted

Gentle readers, I have not the gift of gab.  Only when I'm very comfortable with someone--a true friend (or--strange fact--a class full of students after the first few weeks)--can I rattle on comfortably.  And when someone I admire is in the vicinity, I get so tongue-tied that I might as well be a twelve-year-old kid with a bad crush. 

So tonight, after readings by Prairie Schooner Book Prize winners Kara Candito (Taste of Cherry--which Tracy K. Smith calls "poised and raw, hard-knuckled and siren-sweet") and Anne Finger (Call Me Ahab--PW:  "brisk, inventive, and intelligent"), I was walking with a good friend toward the parking lot, and we were joined by . . .

an icon.  Seriously:  a poet and editor I've admired since I was a callow grad student.  (If I included her name, you would say, "Oh, her," in a tone of warm, hushed admiration.)  So naturally, my brain stopped making words, and I walked in silence like a dullard, until this iconic poet and editor, who also happens to be a gracious and kindly person, asked how my new place is.  Can't think.  Can't think.  No words coming.  How does she know I have a new place?  Don't ask.  Act casual.  Still no words . . .

In desperation, readers, I pulled a Mr. Collins*:  my brain, grasping for something to say, pulled a phrase right off this blog and re-used it.  (Because sitting here alone, imagining the friendly faces of those of you I know, I'm completely comfortable, so sentences just tumble out easily, as if we're having an intimate chat.  --And if they don't, I can log out.)

"Oh," I said lightly, giving the phrase as unstudied an air as possible, "it has all the ambience of a parking garage," as if such phrases sprouted effortlessly on my lips all the time.  Readers, I quoted myself.

Not that big a deal, you say?  We all recycle verbal formulations?  If we didn't employ useful favorites and well-worn catchphrases to help us get through the day, we'd all fall down exhausted by the sheer effort of experiencing things freshly and phrasing them in original ways?

Yes.  Quite right you are, and practical, too.  And very grown-up about things.  Generally, I agree.  I try to tamp down that part of myself that always feels queasy repeating used things as though they're fresh.  One performs.  One must.  It goes with the territory.

But this warm and lovely writer and editor, whom I've admired for, lo, these 20 years now, says (in the friendliest of ways), "Yes, I read that on your blog."

Busted. 

Readers, talk about mixed emotions.  Talk about feeling 1) shocked, 2) wildly flattered, and 3) like a perfect idiot, in precisely equal proportions. 

Sigh.  Am I actually becoming more hilarious as I get older, or am I just learning to laugh at myself more?  (At least my clothes stayed on.)

In other news, the husband is currently in New Orleans, supposedly checking on his elderly parents (during Mardi Gras--terribly coincidental, I know) but also gambling with the longevity of our marriage by texting me such tidbits as, "64 degrees here.  Love you," and, "Eating oyster po-boy in the Quarter.  xoxo."  I'm saving them as evidence.  They may be grounds.

While he's gone, I thought I'd hang curtains (in said apartment with said ambience), just as a practical matter.  It's one thing to wander around, visible to all of downtown, when there's a brawny fellow walking around with you, but as soon as his plane left earth, I suddenly thought of every creepy stalker film I've ever seen, and felt very, very backlit.

So there I was, duct-taping our old Indiana curtains up this past weekend.  (Our other apartment had blinds.)  I also painted some of the sad cabinetry in the kitchen--you know, the kitchen where the 70s went to die?  I'm painting the cabinets "Dragonfly," which is a sort of dirty turquoise, bit by bit, late at night.  Our above-and-beyond realtor gave us a gift card to Home Depot when we sealed the deal, so we bought a bunch of those little sample bottles of paint colors.  I'm using those paints and a 50-cent sponge brush. 

Between the fresh coats of dirty turquoise and the duct-taped curtains, the apartment was looking downright homey.

Alas, when I got home this evening from my excitingly overanalyzed interchange, the cat had single-pawedly managed to pull down all the curtains.  He lay there rolling guiltlessly on the rug while I re-duct-taped them back up in the dark (so that no stalkers could see me duct-taping and thus intuit that I was alone--you see the extent of things).

So I'm 42, and I'm duct-taping curtains and painting my crappy cabinetry with paint samples.  Just typing that sentence makes me laugh out loud here.   Is it any wonder I don't feel like I've arrived? 

The cement floor under my feet has duct tape marking off where my office will be.  Someday.  Someday.

Oh, readers, a wild patience has taken me this far.  And a sense of humor that's apparently getting jollier by the day. 

Happy post-Valentine's Day.  Love the ones you're with--and love them hard.  It goes by so fucking fast.

*[Mr. Collins, at dinner with the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice:]
     ". . . Her ladyship seemed pleased with the idea, and you may imagine that I am happy on every occasion to offer those little delicate compliments which are always acceptable to ladies. I have more than once observed to Lady Catherine that her charming daughter seemed born to be a duchess, and that the most elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by her. -- These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay.''

     "You judge very properly,'' said Mr. Bennet, "and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?''
     "They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.''
     Mr. Bennet's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and, except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure.