reputation

i think mine just took a turn for the worse.

i was sitting alone in the bathroom, with nothing much to occupy the mind, and operating on a rather severe sleep shortage. i think someone in the office complained about the lack of paper toilet seat covers in the bathroom, because some have appeared, but since there aren’t any dispensers yet they’re just sitting on the purse shelves. they’re stapled to a little cardboard instruction sheet written in three languages.

recently i’ve been having more interactions in french so i began to read the french instructions aloud. dramatically, à la scarlett o’hara.

really, it’s serious sleep deficit.

finishing up my reading i heard the outer of the two doors leading to the bathroom, so i fell silent. the woman who came in after me and i came out of our stalls simultaneously, and washed our hands after a brief exchange of smiles in the mirror. and then, as i was glancing away from her, i saw them.

in the farthest stall.

two motionless and silent strappy gold sandals. attached to the feet of some horrified office member, trying to remain still enough that i would just go away without noticing her.

it was that kind of silence, a girl can tell.

thank god i have another pair of shoes under my desk, i’m just hoping that changing them immediately will prevent my identification.

web

i am practicing gratitude recently, like a mantra, like a meditation. this is something my muslim friends have taught me. crossing the street on a hot day the breeze comes down the canyon of skyscraper walls and lifts the hair from my sweaty neck; thank you. an old friend sends an email full of love and the weight of shared experience; al hamdullilah. through the flutter and hiss of an internet phone line a new friendship forms, crystalline, like the delicate multicolored towers that slowly expanded to fill an old fishbowl when i mixed the packets from my childhood chemistry set. thank you, thank you.

sometimes it is harder. i try to see the goodness in the pain in my arms that never seems to go away anymore, to be filled with joy all the time. my concentration slips a lot. i curse things that should be blessings. but the constant pressure to say my thanks out loud feels less like a constriction and more like support.

i long to be bound up in filaments of gratitude, strong and flexible, allowing pain to flow out like water through a sieve, holding happiness in.

re-cast

i had this egyptian boyfriend, and for a long time he made me very unhappy. since we broke up i hadn’t talked to him in a million years, by which i mean six months, which is perhaps why he stopped making me sad. but recently i saw him and everything was sort of ok in an uncomfortable, where is this going kind of way, and so the other day i was thinking of going to see him. i stood outside the entrance to the subway where i used to call him after work when we were dating, when he wouldn’t answer even though we had planned to talk until i called him ten times, and then when he answered he’d yell at me and then hang up on me so we wouldn’t end up talking anyway, and i’d cry and cry and not care who was looking. and then i’d call him back in the vain hope that this time it would be possible to talk, and this time he’d answer the first time, but he would still yell at me and i’d yell at him and then i’d take my distraught self down the steps and into the subway, where people would studiously avoid looking at me.

so, i was trying to call him. and he didn’t answer, but i knew he wasn’t mad at me, so i hung up and called back in case he didn’t hear the phone the first time. when the voice mail picked up the second time i knew it was because he couldn’t answer the phone, but that even if it was because he wouldn’t answer the phone that i didn’t care. it struck me as so amazing that the location and the players could be the same, but the emotion so different.

and then this girl came walking past me, yelling in what i think was korean into her phone, then collapsed against the wall at exactly the place where i used to repetitively smack my hand when i was talking to the egyptian. her face was covered with tears. as i was leaving a message for my ex, i saw her take the phone away from her ear, look at it in disbelief, close it, and wait a few seconds before she dialed it again. whoever it was answered and she began yelling and crying again.

so clearly it was the same play – i just had a slightly modified part this time. as i watched this scene unfold something just barely heavy enough to notice landed on my foot and stuck there in a way that caught my attention. sitting on my toes was an incredibly furry caterpillar, yellowish, with a shiny red ant-head and four longer red fur tufts at each end of its plump body. it looked up without seeing me so i picked it up and set it on some plants at the base of one of those trees in a box. it climbed as high as it could go and then cast its body upward as if dissatisfied. so i picked it up again, set it on the tree trunk, and watched as it inched unerringly up through the branches; its whole existence focused on going up.

when i turned around, my successor as crying girlfriend had disappeared. i was sad… i wanted to tell her that her next part may be stranger and more hopeful: that in the next scene her role may only be to watch something, miraculous and determined, heading for the light.