The Tara-ist

Good words my student learned today:

Cacophonous

Chicanery

Blandishment, which was described as flattery, cajolery, or “apple-polishing.”

One Day as a Tutor

Me and a child in a room, talking about possessive pronouns.  “Look at their chairs!” Me and a child in a room, talking about solar flares. Each star has its own magnetic fields, that tangle and knot; new stars spin quickly, dangerously, poisoning the life around them. Middle-aged suns spread warm light to planets within reach. Old stars die, presumably: Metaphor is tempting. Me and a child in a room, talking about the Inca, who constructed temples without mortar from interlocking stone.  They built an empire by extracting work from their subjects, in small doses.  “Like the Israeli Army,” my student offers.  Me and a child in a room talking about motion.  Distance, I tell her, is how far you travel.  Displacement is how far you are from the measuring place.  Acceleration and velocity are unseen; we gauge them by watching things go.

Happy Mother’s Day

Today was Mother’s Day and my mother and I crawled our way in traffic moving in opposite directions, and converged onto a windy, overcast beach.  We wrapped our bare legs in towels and sat in chairs facing the ocean, shivering.  Around us, other people had pitched umbrellas and bundled themselves up in spare clothing from their cars.  The sun broke through when we got corn dogs and sandwiches and candy bars and sat on the grass and the dandelion weeds and talked. 

My mom and I took a walk down the beach, towards the country club where people sat on plastic pool chairs planted on less crowded sand.  It’s a comfort that the rich can’t improve much upon the beach. 

She talked to me about growing up in Playa Del Rey.  She told me about how she used to climb onto her nightstand and use it to hop out her window.  How she ran away when she was 13 and hitchhiked with friends up the coast to San Francisco.  They took speed and found themselves in a park at night, and she remembers being cold and hungry, and hearing dogs howling in the distance.  The police arrested them, and her father flew up to pick her up.  The entire return trip, all she talked about was wanting a dirt bike, because all of her friends had dirt bikes. 

My mom, by some grace of God, survived her own life.  And I, in a near equal miracle, actually listened this time when she told me about it.  While I settled down into the warming sand, my mother walked onto a tiny peninsula of cement that extended out into the ocean.  A seagull, perched on gate wire that surrounded the peninsula, alighted in the sky just above her head. 

I tried to memorize my mother standing there, a bird hovering over head, and the ocean all around.

From Laughter in the Dark, by Vladimir Nabokov

The street had not changed.  There was the baker’s at the corner, and there was the butcher’s with the gilt ox-head on the signboard, and outside the shop a bulldog was tied up - it belonged to the major’s widow from No. 15.  But the stationary shop had turned into a hairdresser’s.  There was the same old newspaper woman at her stand.  There was the beer-house which Otto used to patronize; and over there was the house in which she had been born: it was undergoing repairs, judging by the scaffolding.  She did not care to go any nearer.

As she was walking back, a familiar voice called to her.

It was Kaspar, her brother’s companion.  He was pushing a bicycle with a violet frame and a basket in front of the handlebar.

“Hullo, Margot,” he said, smiling a little shyly, and he walked along the pavement by her side.

The last time she had seen him he had been very surly; but that had been a group, an organization, almost a gang.  Now that he was alone, he was simply an old friend.

“Well, how are you getting on, Margot?”

“Splendidly,” she laughed.  “And what about you?”

“Oh, just rubbing along.  Did you know that your people have moved?  They’re living in North Berlin now.  You should pay them a visit one day, Margot.  Your father won’t hold out much longer.”

“And where’s my dear brother?” she asked.

“Oh, he’s gone away.  I fancy he’s working at Bielefeld.”

“You know yourself how much they loved me at home,” she said, frowning at her feet, as she walked on the very edge of the curb. “And did they bother about me afterward?  Did they care what became of me?”

Kaspar coughed and said:

“All the same, they’re your people, Margot. Your mother got the sack here and she doesn’t like the new place.”

“And what do people say about me here?” she asked, looking up at him.

“Oh, a lot of rubbish.  Back-biting.  The usual thing.  I’ve always said that a girl has the right to do as she likes with her own life.  And are you getting on well with your friend?”

“Oh, yes, more or less.  He’s going to marry me soon.”

“Fine,” said Kaspar.  “I’m very glad for your sake.  Only it’s a pity that it’s impossible to have any fun with you, like in the old days.  A great pity.”

“Haven’t you got a sweetheart?” she asked, smiling.

“No, not at the moment.  Life’s very hard sometimes, Margot.  I’m working in a confectioner’s.  I should like to have a confectioner’s shop of my own some day.”

“Yes, life can be hard,” said Margot pensively, and after a little pause she called a taxi.

“Perhaps one day we might-” Kaspar began; but no- they would never again bathe in that lake.

“She’s going to the dogs,” he thought as he watched her seat herself in the cab.  “Ought to marry some good, simple man. I wouldn’t take her, though.  A fellow would never know where he was …”

He swung himself onto the bicycle and rode rapidly after the taxi to the next street corner.  Margot waved to him as he swerved gracefully onto a side street.