Observations
As most of my students know, I think observations documented on a daily basis are an important part of the job. It helps us to move through the world as writers, wakes us up to the things going on around us, keeps our creative selves thinking and working. These are a few of my daily recorded observations from the last few months:
Today my eyes welled up while watching a chihuahua run through an agility course with the theme song from Rocky playing.
Chen, one of the Yale grad students, asked, “How do you teach people how to write?”
The restaurant, Heirloom, gives away packets of seeds. Lisa took some but I didn’t.
Chapel Street had a green line painted down the middle for St. Patrick’s Day.
Everyone came back to the waiting room with a giant plastic shield taped over one eye, like fight club for old people.
The nurse who walked out the patients after their surgery, delivering them to whoever was there to drive them home, made the same joke every time the patient was a woman and the driver was a man. “She can’t do anything in the house now so it all falls on you.” It was depressing, like she was trying to beg a day off for a mule. I was happy she didn’t say this to me as she handed my mother over.
Lying in bed, writing notes for Peter’s piece, enveloped in a cloud of dread, I hear someone walk by my house outside, full on wailing. By the time I sit up and look out the window, I can’t see anybody. Did I just imagine it?
When I went to court last week for unpaid child support, as I was walking back to the parking garage, some guy on a bench yelled, “Have a great day, Superstar!” And it has stayed with me.
“It’s amazing to be outside right now,” Atlas said, walking through the parking lot to our car. There was a warm light rain, the sky gray and moody.
I couldn’t remember the name of the grocery store I’d shopped at that morning and it scared me. It’s Ferraro’s. I thought it started with an Sh for some reason. I kept wanting to say Shapiro’s even though that’s not Italian.
I drew a hideous, exaggerated MAGA face for my drawing today. It’s so ugly sitting next to a drawing of Lena Dunham but that seems appropriate.
Atlas makes me try Foxon Park cream soda. “It tastes like a marshmallow, doesn’t it?”
Parking the car, I picture Dr. Eng walking across the lot to the Aldi, buying a sandwich for lunch.
In the car, driving to the clinic, I hear an old song on the radio and instantly remember Linda Ronstadt singing her own version of it, on a record my mother had when I was about six. “And I ain’t saying you ain’t pretty…”
I watch Dr. Eng slip on his gloves, thin, stretched purple, like a second skin, like a blister casing.
Thank you for reading.
This was very helpful. I think I've been looking for lightning bolts, things that happened to me, like counting steps.
Every day, I observe. From this afternoon, at the shelter, for my journal series:
One man picked through a few lunches I set on the counter by some water. He was looking for one with Doritos. Instead he found Fritos, Fritos, and more Fritos. Just take a bag, dog! Antwan said after a moment. Gotta lotta guys hungry here!
And from my way home: On my way home I passed one of the last men I signed in. He rolled himself in his wheelchair in the street instead of on the sidewalk. He wore the kind of fingerless cycling gloves I used to wear.