0 0 4B The Statemnt / Wednesday, March 10, 2010 Wednesday, February 10, 2010 // The Statement m {i sit before mr.e.e.cummings} i sit before mr.e.e.cummings as one sits before any a who-artist: naked nervous(ly smiling.) "paint me," i say, "paint me a poem on your white canvas waiting in your click- clack typewriter, waiting as i for your thud- thump heart." he tries a line(tickitytacktackclick) heaves a sigh: "can't be done! it must be mud- luscious Spring!Time is jumping forward too fast!too old! my heart does not thud- thump unless there is Rain." rising with a shaking head he leaves me (my performance concluded), with my chilled pale being. i think an artist can never love, never see colors in real time: never look past their eden-greens staying-golds sinless-whites to see things in the now (they say life is so chilled, pale, because it too is a mortal being). They've been sitting back there for years, Clear glass containers filled with brine. not (Make new friends but keep the old, they said, . Fu ncerais a gre iAn ppropriate And who am I if not one to comply with aphorisms?) .Pla ces to Im agine Priests in I drive slowly and steadily, and am so Careful not to turn right on red or Accidentally speed through intersections or Change lanes without signaling. I stop for school buses. I brake for animals. I'm a model citizen. Really, I'm just terrified that the jars will tip over, crack, spill, and stain. And paranoid that I'll be pulled over. Worried that while I fidget in the front seat, nibble nervously on my nails, watch the reflections of flashing lights in my rearview and side mirrors Mr. Officer will run my license for outstanding warrants, Bunny costumes, ana utner Reflections By aby ar ten nsteadoffeelingexcited whenev- er anyone announced that he or she had adopted a new puppy or other infant pet, Ruby immedi- ately felt a pang of sympathy, for her first thought was never of the happy life that the owner would share with the animal, but rather that the puppy or kitten or domesticated rodent would die one day. She thought of how sad the owner would be if his puppy were to be run over by a plump middle- aged woman on a rainy day driving home in a car with failing windshield wipers, or how devastating if, when the owner goes to the vet for an annual checkup, hefinds out that in its old age, the pet has jaw cancer or is blind in one eye. Likewise, whenever a new romantic relationship began, she allowed herself only a fleeting moment of happiness before accepting with grim stoicism that the relationship would inevitably fail. In turn, she stopped beginning, and, for that matter, ending, relation- ships altogether, and found comfort in meaningless nights with men whose last names she never knew. For such nights freed her from the pesky bur- den of having to care about something that would eventually become a man- gled, distorted, disappointing version of itself. Her acute awareness of tem- porality pressed on her, and resulted in unbound cynicism and a paralyzed gaze that constantly focused on end- ings. That day, seated in the second row at her grandmother's funeral, sur- rounded by relatives who were more like strangers, she listened to sadness and mucus rhythmically bursting out of the noses of those present, and much to her surprise, discov- ered a piece of dried oatmeal on her scarf. She reviewed her most recent clothing choices. It was early November, which meant she had not worn the scarf since approximately late February of that year. The scarf had hung neglected in the back of her closet during the spring and summer, and the oatmeal had clung to it for those months. She admired its loyalty, and realized she had never stuck with any- thing that long. She wondered if the scarf had felt the oatmeal's presence, like an itch, and if the oatmeal had felt lonely and confused as to how it had ended up in a place so very different from its intended location of Ruby's digestive tract. She picked at the oat- meal, and after a bit of difficulty - the result of a lifetime of incessant nail bit- ing - scraped the crusty remnant off the fabric and absentmindedly brushed. it to the floor. She was certain that when she had poured that unremark- able flake of oatmeal, one of hundreds of flakes in a blueberry flavored packet that came in a Quaker's Instant Oat- meal Variety Box, into a microwave- safe bowl with three-quarters of a cup of milk seven months ago, the piece of oatmeal in question never would have imagined it would one day end up on a funeral home's carpet amid salty tears and the mysterious white dust that bil- lows off of Kleenexes. Ruby thought of all the places she had ended up without intention, and realized she had more in common with the piece of old oatmeal than she felt comfortable admitting. She refocused her attention on the frail minister who was delivering a vague sermon about pain and loss, and to pass the time, she imagined him dressed in a bunny costume, then won- dered if that was disrespectful. This was the third funeral she had attended since her own birth, and at each, she became progressively more troubled by how little emotion she allowed her- self to feel. While her younger sister lost close to six ounces of tears that day alone, Ruby's eyes stayed obnox- iously dry, even though she had many more memories of her grandmother to cry over. She attributed this to the fact that she had known this day would come since she became aware of human mortality at a very early age. For as long as she could remember, when she found herself in big crowds she wondered who would die first out of everyone present. It wasn't a dark or dangerous curiosity, but a matter- of-fact acknowledgement that life is temporary. Ruby lapsed into phases of appre- ciation for obscure animals, notable historical figures and celebrities or academic subjects, and she obtained the Funeral Plans notebook during her Pug Phase when she was ten. She adored pugs, and three weeks into her obsession, had made five visits to the pet store to gaze at them, though she never held or touched them out of an unspoken fear that they would uncontrollably urinate on her cloth- ing. She had drawn several pictures of them on pages secretly stolen from her brother's sketchbook, and choosing to ignore her father's fur allergy, wrote an official petition for the adoption of one into the family. She had asked each of her fourth-grade classmates to sign the petition, though only three actu- ally did, and along with a scribble in red crayon that indicated her three- year-old sister's commitment to the Pug Campaign, the meager five sig- natures she presented did nothing to cure allergies or convince her mother to replace her father with the pug. It was then she documented her funeral plans in the notebook, where they remained long after the Pug Phase had morphed into the Gnome Phase, which became the Regis Phil- bin Phase. She tweaked the plans periodically. For several years she had wanted her funeral service and burial to be televised, with coverage by at least three localnews stations. She had wanted her funeral to be a raving party after sitting through her great-grand- father's painfully boring service, and at one point had willed her entire life savings to PBS. Only one aspect of her original plan remained, and that was for her cremated ashes to be placed in an hourglass. The intended recipi- ent of the hour glass had changed over the years - in fourth grade, it was to be inherited by her best friend Katie but after Katie had lost Ruby's favorite pen, the one that didn't write very well but had other redeeming qualities like feathers attached to the end, later that year, she furiously crossed her name out and replaced it with a question mark to indicate her future firstborn offspring. No matter upon whose man- tel the hourglass containing her ashes would one day sit, the most important thing to her was that even after she had left the earth, she would still be able to remind the living that their time was running out. In the stuffy, crowded room that contained a body that had been living only days ago, Ruby was reminded yet again of how quickly things change, as she often was in elementary school when she spent hours laying on the trampoline in her backyard, watching the clouds and the trees transform. Convinced she would one day be an Olympic gymnast, she would jump and flip tirelessly on the magic elastic blacktop until her muscles were on the verge of collapse. When she could barely breathe, she lay on her back and focused on the tree branches above her head, the ones she could never touch no matter how high she jumped. She noticed that everything in nature was constantly redistributed in a care- ful balance. In her earliest years, she thought that leaves had a monoga- mous relationship with trees. She imagined that they would fall off for a while to explore - to see the world their rooted home didn't allow them to experience - then return to their des- ignated branch, refreshed and green. The hours spent staring at the shifting world convinced her at an early age that time was not linear. She believed instead that life is one giant moment that perpetually rearranged itself. She thought of the hours she spentat her grandmother's home during child- hood. Her grandmother picked her and her brother Ollie up from school every day, and Ruby liked the routine of such afternoons. She would scramble into the back seat of the beige Taurus that always smelled like combinations of soil, fresh green beans, newspapers, mold and old people, and her grand- mother would roll the window down and ask if there was "too much air." Ruby hated the open window, and the air that rushed in loudly and tousled her hair and stung her eyes, but never once did she complain. When they arrived to her grandmother's home, Ruby ate a snack - always Club crack- ers with cheese and a very ambiguous "orange drink" - then she and Ollie sat at the kitchen table and wrote stories and drew pictures until it grew dark outside and their grandmother would wander in and express her deepest concern that they would ruin their eyes from straining to see the paper and colors before them. The lighting of the room never troubled them. One thing that did concern them, though, was that their grandmother See FUNERALS, Page 6B changed names, changed stories, changed lives, or maybe he'll search my trunk and discover my dirty little secret. I had nowhere else to hide the bodies. Ruby ... realized she had more in common with the piece of old oatmeal than she felt comfortable admitting."