Stay of Execution

First Lines I Like

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest. 

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice -- not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

What I Am Thinking About These Days

I have been thinking a lot about class, and aspiration, and belonging, and social climbing, and comfort zones.

I have been thinking about how to write about them.  And I feel blocked, in a couple of ways.  One way is that I'm not sure it's safe to write about class or social climbing, even though I think it's one of the most interesting things that I see around me.  And two, I'm not sure I'm skilled or nuanced enough to describe what I've been seeing.

I've been seeing this all my life.  I guess I'm tuned into it because of my own uneasy relationship to class.  Maybe that's what makes it all feel unsafe.

I am thinking, mostly, about the yacht club, where I get to watch a million tiny personal dramas playing out.  The yacht club, where I go generally to sail, is a place where a lot of people go to prove (to themselves? to other people? to me? I've seen all of them) that they have attained a particular class status.  I watch people who are keeping score, who are studying the social nuances and the friendship patterns and who talks to whom as though it were a middle school dance.  There is a studied ease and a natural ease.  I am not sure how to describe the difference, or how I could convey in writing which is which. 

I've been on both sides, myself.  Maybe that's why I'm so sensitive to it.  And why it feels so dangerous. 

I've been noticing the people who make me feel relaxed and the people who make me feel on guard.  I get tired, somehow, talking to people who I sense have a finely-honed eye for evaluating class, even when I don't feel it trained on me.  I am grandfathered in at this yacht club, literally and figuratively, and although once upon my middle school days I felt anxious and outside the cool kids' circle, over the years it has become a true home, my safest place.  But there are people who I sense are scanning the place for indicators of how the insiders dress, and talk, and what they drink and laugh about.  I can feel myself being scanned for clues, and that's really strange. 

I'm uncomfortable with these people because what they want most desperately is acceptance.  Sometimes I can give that, but the truth is that they'll never relax if they imagine that acceptance and belonging is for someone else to give and to take away.  This is beginning to sound treacly and vague, which is why I don't know how to write about it.  Still, it's on my mind.  I'm seeing it everywhere.  Where does self-acceptance come from?  And how does class fit into it? 

Question for People With Teeth

Have all dentists stopped giving out free toothbrushes with cleanings?  Is it petty of me to feel disappointed and irritated about this? 

Woof

I was rushing from my previous appointment, but I got to the waterfront in time to coach the Special Olympics athletes.  I've had to miss the first two sessions this year, although I think last week they were rained out.  I sat at the picnic table and watched people milling around.  I talked to an athlete named John who I didn't recognize.  "I've never been sailing," he told me.  "I'm new."  Another athlete came over and sat with us.  He asked me if I would sail with him, I think after sizing me up a bit.  I felt pleased, like I'd been picked on the playground. 

As it turned out, he was very capable.  He steered the boat, and trimmed the mainsail.  I took the main from time to time, but he was pretty good with it and liked to have it in his hand to ease the sail out in the puffs.  He was nervous at first in the waves and the slightly bursty breeze, but pretty soon relaxed.  "I know a lot about sailing, you know," he told me.  "I know everything there is."  He liked to talk trash to the other sailboats, "I'm going to get you!" he'd yell.  He also liked to tug on my ponytail and call me a "goober."  And he thought it was pretty funny to "rrrrff, rrrff," like a dog, or sometimes sing a song, if things got too quiet on the boat.  I shrugged and barked back. 

He was an accomplished skipper, with a pretty natural feel and a lot of experience.  I made the goal for the evening to get him to tack from a close-hauled course to a close-hauled course, rather than from reach to reach, or even slightly off the wind.  He was capable of it, with coaching and reminding, and by the end of the night it looked like he was starting to pay attention to the telltales and not just his destination, or the nearby boats.  I taught him a trick for popping an inverted batten on the mainsail to the other side, and he was very impressed. 

We won both races, handily, which I enjoyed all the more because we beat a boat that was being steered by one of the other coaches, a very accomplished sailor.  (I think it was partly because he was sailing in strong adverse tide, and we headed for a part of the course where we were fighting less tide.)  He had the new athlete in his boat, who smiled delightedly and hollered at us.  "Hey, yellow bird!" he called to my skipper, who was wearing a bright yellow lifejacket.  My guy came back with a dismissive laugh.  "We're going to beat you!"  The new guy just waved, and grinned at us. 

Choosing

Yesterday afternoon I stood in front of a small-town ice cream stand, near a dusty dirt road, trying to decide what flavor to get.  My companion got two scoops -- one, red raspberry with chocolate chips, and the other, orange with chocolate chips.  I was tempted by the almond butter crunch and the mint chocolate chip, but chose to get black raspberry with chocolate sprinkles.  That's been what I've been choosing lately. 

As I stood eating my cone, with the chocolate sprinkles falling off the cone and landing on the top of my sandals, I noticed all the other things I could have gotten.  When I go out for ice cream that always happens: I spend my time in the line preoccupied with which flavor of ice cream I want, and then when I'm licking my cone I realize that it didn't occur to me to get a shake or a flurry or a parfait or an ice cream sandwich.  Mostly it's milkshakes that I wish occurred to me.  I never remember there is such a thing as a shake until I've already ordered an ice cream cone. 

Ugliest Dog Ever

This here is the ugliest dog I've ever seen.  Be warned that it's really, scarily ugly.  And Google doesn't know about it yet, but that appears to be about to change.

Letters I'll Never Send: Purple Loosestrife

                                                              August 3, 2001

Dear People of Canada,

    On behalf of the United States, I would like to apologize to you for the infestation of purple loosestrife that threatens your country's beautiful yet vulnerable ecology.  It will be a shame to see the Atlantic provinces covered in this invasive wetland killer.  Although we are not directly responsible for introducing this exotic plant, the New England states have been guilty of sloppy ecological stewardship and a lackadaisical approach to spread prevention.  For this, I sincerely apologize to my neighbors to the north.

    Yours,

    Scheherazade Fowler

Last Night

Last night I went to a benefit party for Rippleffect, an Outward Bound-like experiential education nonprofit.  The party was on Cow Island, an island with WWII ramparts and forts, as well as lots of overgrown raspberries and poison ivy.  They've done lots of work to the island, making the ramparts into kayak and gear storage, an infirmary, a kitchen.  They've got a composting toilet and a big garden and trails, a zipline and a dock and a big tent platform.  There's a goat on the island munching away at the poison ivy.  Before last night, I hadn't been on the island since I was 14.  An overnight field trip there with the sailing team was the first time I'd ever gotten tipsy.  At moments last night, looking at the sky or reaching out into the prickers to pluck a ripe raspberry, I wasn't sure if I was 14 again or 32.   

After dinner I walked up on the ramparts, looking out at the ocean.  I picked my way along, among the fireflies, over the uneven concrete, and down to a rocky beach.  I scanned the horizon and counted five buoys flashing green, and two flashing red.  I knew where the lighthouses were, but my view of them was blocked by Cliff and Great Diamond Islands.  I saw a long slow shooting star over Long Island, the silverwhite trail lasting so long in the corner of my eye that it seemed to be waiting for me to turn my head, and only when I was looking square at it did it fade away.  I made a wish, and lay down on a warm rock to look at the stars.  I saw a small yellow sattelite moving in its determined orbit across the sky, and as it tracked along I remembered the Billy Bragg song:

I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them
But they were only satellites
Is it wrong to wish on space up there?
I wish, I wish I wish you'd cared....

When I proceeded back down to the party area I came from out of the darkness and stood between two groups of familiar faces.  I stood in between and eavesdropped, trying to decide which conversation to join.  Everyone had had a lot of wine by now.  On one side, a woman was saying, "Well, I gave him an ultimatum, but now I am not sure if he does propose whether it will be because he really wants it or because of the ultimatum," and the three or four listeners were chiming in with advice.  I turned to listen to the other conversation: "so he sounds pretty good, right?  Well, the other hedge fund is run by this manager who has a whole different philosophy...."  To our left, a dozen people were dancing to a nine-piece salsa band.  I wandered back into the darkness, looking for a bottle of water.  The water was all gone, so I poured myself more wine instead.

Stay of Execution Book Report: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Meh.

This was a quick read, a page turner and a fun book.  It gave the present a sort of sci-fi feel.  He makes some interesting points about trust, and connection.  None of the characters struck me as particularly real, though.  Or maybe they were real but just a little bit too hip, and too cool and starkly well-accessorized.  My favorite bits were the term "Lombard" as a descriptor of a certain kind of man ('lots of money but a real dickhead') and the theory of a sort of soul jetlag: the soul can't travel as fast as the body, and so it trails behind when you fly to a new place, and you have to wait for it to reel itself in to feel like yourself again.

The book is a pretty good example of using email interspersed with the text to drive the story.  You don't see email communications used very well in novels, generally.  Well, not sure I can say that; I don't read nearly enough.  But I've seen it badly done.  This book did it well.

Letters I'll Never Send: An Ancient Grudge

I am starting a new category for letters I've written or imagined writing but wouldn't ever send. 

In a 2001 journal, I found this letter.  I was on a post bar-exam roadtrip with my dear friend, who has since become my Housemate, and we were talking about people we hold unreasonable grudges against, or still feel guilty about mistreating.  We offered to take dictation for one another and while driving we drafted some letters, that are funny and somehow serious at the same time.  This one is to a girl who was mean to me in 4th or 5th grade: