True Detective: Unity in Opposites

I had heard many people speak of the greatness of True Detective before I ever got around to watching the show. In fact, Matthew McConnaughey as a main actor was a real turn off to me. Despite his beautifully quaffed blonde hair, chiseled jaw, rippling pectorals, and bursting biceps that I would love to lick and wrap my hands around (Whoa, that fantasy just got way too real.), I am not a big fan of McConnaughey’s acting. Fool’s Gold? Failure to Launch? How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days? No thank you. For all I cared of Matthew McConnaughey’s acting, I would have preferred to see six hours of his naked bongo playing interspersed with clips of pelvic gyrations from Magic Mike over any combination of his other movies. Of course, that was all before Dallas Buyers Club. If you have read movie reviews, watched the Oscars, talked to people, or simply been alive in the past few months, you are well aware that this movie was phenomenal and that McConaughey made the performance of his career as Ronald Woodruff. (The review in the New Yorker is my favorite of those I have read. Check it out here. You need a subscription to read the full text.) So, when a career-affirming performance by McConaughey paired with my undying love for Woody Harrelson (How can you not love Kingpin?), I decided to give True Detective a fair shot.

            From the moment the first episode begins, you know this is a show that is going to make you think. The cinematography is beautiful. It pulls you in with a juxtaposition of beauty and emptiness; pastoral landscapes meet seemingly abandoned ghost towns; My Antonia meets Walking Dead. This juxtaposition becomes a theme for the show that is explored within each of the main characters and externally through their interactions as character opposites.

            At first it is easy to look at Rust (McConaughey) and Marty (Harrelson), as cliché buddy cop stereotypes, the brain (McConaughey) and the brawn (Harrelson). In many ways, they are that, but they aren’t just that. This show dives much more deeply into what it is to be a man, that there are never just brains or brawn, that every man just wants to be loved, and that every man is afraid of something that he can’t admit to. But we aren’t quite introduced to these deep, character-driven struggles in the first episode. A lot of time is spent explaining the character dichotomy that the rest of the show fleshes out quite well through actions and dialogue.

Rust is confident of mind, an intellectual, but he is intellectual almost to the point of insanity. First appearing to be a man of few words, Rust’s lengthy end-of-the-world, glass is half empty speeches quickly pull us to the side of Marty, who, we are well aware, wants to punch Rust in the face if he doesn’t shut up. While he doesn’t do that, Marty does tell Rust to shut up, that the car is quiet time from now on, and, if you are anything like me as a viewer, you are saying “yes” and pulling in a fist to yourself in victory as he does this. But, we all get over Rust’s textbook Philosophy 101, and see something deep down in Rust that we love. If nothing else, Rust knows who he is, and he isn’t afraid to be that person. He wouldn’t punch somebody in the face without a good reason.

Marty appears, at least initially, as a more simple character. He is confident of body. He is explosive. Harrelson’s crazy blue eyes and boxy face paired with his ornery smile are the perfect embodiment of a man with anger that lurks just beneath his seemingly perfect surface. He looks like a boxer. He doesn’t hold back and then make dramatic speeches; he just says what he means and does what he wants. Of course, this type of character is more loveable initially because we have nothing to fear, we know what we’re getting, but there is something burning inside of Marty. From the outside, he has it all – a beautiful wife, loving daughters, and respect at his job – but inside, he is a bit of a lost soul. Unlike Rust, he doesn’t know exactly who he is or what he wants. (Maybe this is because the option of family was taken from Rust by tragedy. Marty actually has options but seems to be making the wrong decisions.) Marty claims to want a family, but his adulterous actions prove otherwise. The opposing traits of the two main characters are played with throughout the show in a manner that makes both of the characters lovable through vulnerability and fears, and hateable through thick layers of ego and stubbornness.

When I was watching the first episode, all I could think about was ego, specifically male ego, as in, this show had way too much of it. Early on, the female characters are a bit of a wash – stereotypes of wives, mothers, and whores. Marty has no respect for his wife, and she doesn’t stand up to him when he acts like a generally shitty and neglectful human being. Early on, the only female character that gets a say and gets to stick it to Marty’s ego is the woman in charge of the Bunny Ranch in the second episode. She sees the insecurity that lurks beneath his brawny façade. Marty threatens to shut her down because she has an underage girl working there, but the woman in charge calls his bullshit: “You don’t like it because it means you don’t control it like you thought you did.” This is so true, and Marty proves it true by handing the girl money and telling her to do something else. He wants to take control from the Bunny Ranch manager and give it to himself, but no one wants to give the young girl control of herself. It becomes that societal cycle of abuse, where young women are abused by men and older women. The older women, once finally in a position to make a change for the younger women, for their collective gender, have been so bogged down by the abuse from men that they see it as a right of passage for the young women to be victims of it too. This is why so many feminist groups advocate for the idea that there must be male feminists in order for any real change to occur. And, Rust, in a way, seems to take on this role, but only after having made huge mistakes of machismo emotion burying in his past. When Marty and Rust are back in the car after leaving the Bunny Ranch, Rust says, “What is that? A down payment?” He sees right through Marty’s attempt to portray himself as the hero, the family man with a picture perfect life.

So, as is often the case with characters that seem, at first, to be stereotypes, Marty and Rust both require some time for the audience to warm up to them. We can’t decide if they are both deeply troubled or deeply enlightened. Maybe, in truth, they are each a mix of both. The relationship the two characters build with one another is what helps the audience to fall in love with both of them as they fall in a complicated friendship with one another.

The first episode uses a framing setup to flashback to the situation that is the true meat of the story. Marty and Rust are being interviewed, separately, about the Dora Lang case, and, as they speak in these interviews, it provides the perfect narrative break to go back in time to how Marty and Rust began their partnership with the Dora Lang case. We sense there is a tension, a complication, during these interviews. Both Marty and Rust seem overly nonchalant, so nonchalant, in fact, that they seem to be hiding something. As Marty leans back in his chair making one liners and Rust demands a 6-pack of Schlitz to continue the interview, the audience is made to realize that the questions Marty and Rust are being asked are not really about the Dora Lang case at all. They are about Rust, who, seems to be teetering on the edge of philosophical enlightenment and psychological breakdown (or maybe he just wants to appear that way).

The use of framing and flashback allows us to look at the characters now and then, how they have grown and changed as individuals and as partners. This provides a fascinating opportunity for exploring characters internally without the use of first person perspective. We also get to see beyond the characters’ current attitudes and static personality traits; we get to learn their individual narratives, their personal struggles, and their endearing strengths. Most importantly, in the first episode, we learn how Marty and Rust first became partnered together. As Marty puts it, “You can’t pick your parents, and you can’t pick your partners.” As the show develops, we get to see how their relationship develops, and we slowly fall in love with both of them, like our hot new best friends. Personally, by the third episode, I was hooked, and I just wanted to give Marty and Rust a hug and tell them that everything was going to be alright, but, if I did that, and they were completely stable, they probably wouldn’t get the job done, and we really wouldn’t have a show at all. The thing that turned me off to the show, the flat female characters, is reconciled by the end. This isn’t a show about a women. It is a show that explores male obsessions and male companionship in all of its complicated glory.

Marty and Rust will never write long letters of gratitude to one another like Emily Dickinson wrote to her dear friends who read her poetry. They will never like each others’ statuses and post words of encouragement on each other’s Facebook walls. But, we know that their bond is unshakeable, that they respect one another in that quiet, unspoken way. Marty respects Rust’s intelligence, his dedication to the job. We know this from the first scene when Rust sees through the Dora Lang case and makes detailed sketches in his notebook. Rust is less transparent, of course. He has a bit of a chip on his shoulder, but Marty offers him something very important – stability. Marty knows how to work the system. He knows how to create the appearance needed to keep something going in a public system, such as police work. He holds Rust up while Rust thinks, ponders, and does all of the leg work. And, eventually, as the season progresses, they teach each other a thing or two about how to be in the world. They end up as one another’s only companions. There is no better moment than when Marty wheels Rust out of the hospital in a wheelchair. They are looking at the stars. Rust recounts, openly, about nearing death, about feeling what it would have been like to die and be with his daughter in a warm, light, and glowing place. It is clear he wants nothing more than to be there, but he can’t. He is pulled back to earth where the Dora Lang case is the only thing on his mind, and Marty is the only thing saving him from being completely alone. Similarly, as the two tragically sit alone eating TV dinners, we learn just how important their friendship truly is. They are connected in their loneliness, in their inability to let love in, in their inability to appreciate what they have, what they could have had. The show is a perfect mélange of light and dark, of love and hate, of beauty and ugliness; an exploration of opposites and how they must and do co-exist in this world both with harmony and with strife.

A new piece I'm working on called, "Home"

I had this dream of building a home. Of making something beautiful and peaceful where we could live with love and harmony. I started in our small duplex. The finish on the floor was peeling away; I suppose the landlords didn’t want to spend the extra money on a higher quality brand. That, or the wheeling around on the office chair and the sliding around of furniture for a year began to wreak its havoc.

When the weather was warm, the bathroom ceiling would start to rot. Little tiny black bumps would pimple out of the ceiling. “Black mold?” we joked. A swift wipe down with bleach and water and the pimples would disappear. I knew they would come back, but, for the time, I was doing all that I could. I was keeping the surface clean, but a damp heaviness still lingered in the room. The claw foot tub wasn’t the glamorous antique I had hoped it would be. Cat hair and dust clung where the feet met the legs, like a ring of gray paint. I got down on my knees and wiped it away with the bleach and water towel.

When I was down there, I inspected the floor. A black, gummy substance was growing out of the cracks. I scrubbed the floor; the gummy substance stuck to the towel like it would the pigtails of the odd girl on the playground, stringy and sticky, holding pieces of hair together at odd angles. I felt this lump in my stomach, this lump that wanted to come up, and was coming up, like a tiny ball lodged in the back of my throat. I leaned over to the toilet, lifted the seat, and the ball spewed out, split into a yellow liquid. I looked away, holding my head from the dizziness of something coming out the wrong way, and pulled the “wrong way” handle to the right to flush. After the water surged out and back in, the toilet kept on with this monotonous trickle of water flowing in or out, I couldn’t tell. I looked in the toilet bowl; the black pimples were creeping in there too, down from the edges hidden from the naked eye. I reached for the toilet bowl cleaner and sprayed with haste. I grabbed for the brush and fought to remove the black pimples leading from, what I saw now, was a giant brown ring. I scrubbed while large flecks of brown and black jumped into the still running toilet.

After about two minutes, I stopped and looked down at my work. The pimples were gone, at least. The brown ring had been penetrated, but like everything else brown and black in that bathroom, I knew it would come back. I could never get ahead of it. I knew it was always just there, just below the surface, threatening any potential for sustained happiness. I got up off my knees and jiggled the handle of the toilet. It stopped running. I grabbed the bottle of bleach water and the muddied, nearly disintegrating washcloth. I ventured down the stairs, the blue carpeted stairs, like a cheap doctor’s office waiting room threw out the edges and our landlords glued them to the stairs. I couldn’t help but wonder what was underneath that carpet that had been so hastily and steadfastly glued down. My feet left the last step, the last of the rough edges irritating the silken bottoms of my feet, and I entered the kitchen. The towel had no other place to go than the trash. It needed to be destroyed, any ounce of the darkness that could be removed or destroyed felt like an accomplishment, but maybe I was just chipping away at an ever-growing monster. The real problem was hanging back; retreating from my desire to clean it, make it right. I returned the bleach water to its home under the sink. Just then, I heard the door open, in the crunching way it always did, the crunching of everything peeling away and rubbing together with any sort of movement or change, of everything being a little too small to fit properly in its place, like everything was expanding, dying to burst free. My body tensed at the sound, but I reminded myself of the darkness baring down. “Go to the door with a smiling face,” I told myself. It was my tiny fight against what was eating us.

I ran to the door, smile on my face and open arms, ready to give you a hug, to not let the weight of this place and the world out there swallow you. I could swallow you instead, at least, for a moment. But I saw you were wearing that clay mask that made your face heavy. It was hanging down. I couldn’t see your eyes, but I knew, if I looked at them, they would just be these glowing, rounded surfaces, convex shapes that you had clearly already retreated from. Were you standing in there, just to the side, but still out of reach? I could see you back in there, over to the side giggling, a child playing hide and seek. I tried to pull you out. I put my hand on your shoulder, “What’s wrong?” You pushed me away and walked through to the kitchen. I guess I should have yelled, “Olly Olly Oxen Free!” Maybe that child would have come out, playfully wearing the mask, making fun of the monster in the closet.

“Nothing,” you said, still not looking at me. You walked right through the kitchen and out the back door. I just stood there for a moment, taking it all in as I heard you scramble in that back room where we stored our bikes and a mélange of overflowing belongings. I heard you yell, “Fuck” and “Shit” and “God damn it!” Tears started to roll down my face, but then I heard you open the back door again. “I’m going for a bike ride,” you shouted.

“Okay,” I said, swallowing the tears trembling in my throat. “Be careful.” The back door slammed. I walked into the living room and melted into the couch. The cushions were hanging off at an angle, but I was too exhausted to fix them. I lied down and stared up at the ceiling as my left arm disappeared into the crevice created between the pushed out cushions and the slippery leather back of the couch. I thought about how the Velcro I had applied to the back of the cushions never helped. I thought about how nothing I did here ever helped. I told myself that I wasn’t doing enough.

I leaned my head to the right and stared at that picture of us that was next to the TV. I looked happy, maybe a little chubby, like I had been eating my feelings and trying to jog them off but my emotional calories outweighed my exercise pay off. At least my smile was genuine in your embrace. You had your arm around me, but your body was pulling away, like there was something you couldn’t quite let me touch. I figured if I kept smiling, one day you would let me touch it. One day that glowing light in your eyes would be more than reflection; it would come from within, and we would be happy. I sat up with that thought, hoping that you would find something warm and real to bring back to us on your bike ride. I decided to go for a walk.

Novel Excerpt

There she was, Amy Gerstein, over by the pool, kissing my father. She must have just climbed out of the pool in that tiny white string bikini because her Groucho Marx eyebrows were dripping water like two caterpillars stuck clinging to a leaf during a rainstorm. All I kept thinking was that either the carpet didn’t match the drapes, or there was no carpet. The white bottom was truly white, not a shadow of pubic hair in sight.

            Grooming aside, Amy Gerstein presented a problem as a 20-year-old kissing my nearly 57-year-old father. The problem was whether or not I should tell mom about Amy. For all I knew, this had happened before with Dad. For all I knew, it was a part of their marriage agreement, a little underage action on the side: Eyebrows mandatory, pubic hair optional. My parents were both attractive and fit 50-somethings. Who was I to tell them how to make a relationship work for the long haul? But, there was still another problem, I didn’t want to see my father kissing Amy Gerstein.

            In a public place, I felt comfortable that the kissing would stabilize as such. I toyed with the idea of making my presence known to them. How would my father react if his eldest daughter suddenly appeared at her father’s side while he was ignobly making out with a girl ten years his daughter’s junior? I couldn’t even begin to imagine. All I could see in the movie theatre inside my head was the girl’s caterpillar brows jumping to the middle of her forehead. I saw it zoomed in and played on repeat like a clip of an eyeball from Luis Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou.

            So, I hovered behind the white-painted wooden pool house, so old now that the paint was beginning to chip away. I looked across the sparkling, chlorine-scented blue pool to the shiny new gray and white laminate building. At least no one was getting splinters, but the building was sterile, like a place kids would go to get a vaccine rather than their place for kicking splashes across the baby pool and challenging each other to breath holding contests in the deep end. Sterile, like the white coat draped over Amy Gerstein’s bikini, the white coat that said, “Dr. Georges,” so clearly on the right breast pocket.

            I realized I was conflating memories. Amy was not wearing my father’s doctor’s coat by the pool that afternoon, but I knew that she had worn my father’s coat. I knew that was where this whole thing had gotten started.  

Race to the Top?

            When I was in high school, just a decade ago, standardized testing was not a part of our lives. They were just beginning to field test some of the HSA’s, but none of these tests counted against students or schools. I recall being selected to take the biology test, and, knowing that the test held no weight on me or my school, I did very little preparation for the test. Regardless, I wasn’t one of those students who could ever just turn in a test where I bubbled all C’s, so I did my best. The test was surprisingly easy. But, I only had to take one of those tests. Every single person I graduated high school with said thank God we graduated when we did and didn’t have to take all those standardized tests. We were in some of the last good years where our teachers still had the control in their classrooms to lead us on a journey. We were part of the last good years where teachers weren’t forced to teach to a test. We were focused on tests that meant something, on AP classes that were rigorous and challenging (and didn’t ever use those buzzwords as descriptors, they just were). We had some of the most amazing teachers, who were amazing because of the freedom they had to teach about what was meaningful and important, rather than what would be on a test that was shipped in a box like an Amazon package.

            My most meaningful classes in high school were AP European History and AP Composition. AP European History was one of the few challenging classes I ever took (We were also, unfortunately, already a part of the age where students were beginning to complain about too much work, and at a school where students were expected to get all A’s and B’s because of course everyone’s little Sally Joe did all of the assignments and I have no idea why she is failing!). First of all, the teacher of this class was one of the best I have ever had to this day. Everybody loved him. He was anecdotal, honest, and hilarious, and he knew the subjects he taught inside and out. To pass his class, you had to read the textbook. You had to create a timeline of European History in your head (and probably on paper first, too), and he helped every single one of us do that by providing us with some of the most fascinating stories of European History. And, of course, any one who knows a thing or two about European History, or even just knows of Henry VIII and his six wives, will tell you that the content provides a wealth of anecdotal stories fascinating to any age group, but especially to the budding and, at times, volatile romantic minds of teenagers.

            To be a good teacher, you have to be a storyteller. I think this goes back to our history, to the oral traditions of Homer and other stories and legends that were not only forms of entertainment, but beautifully disguised lessons as well. As a teacher in a time where standardized testing has led to standardized curriculum, I see the rules are changing. I see the reins of every classroom being handed to someone sitting in an office at the Board of Education who has quite possibly never set foot in a classroom, let alone taught in one. The oral traditions, the opportunities for storytelling are disappearing, but when I find time for those moments amidst the overflowing curriculum, I remember why I got into this job in the first place. Teaching is a beautiful profession. When you are passionate about what you are teaching, when you tell a story, when you can help students to connect and associate what they are reading with something relevant to their everyday lives (Disney/Pixar movies, Instagram, texts), the reason for learning becomes clear to everyone in the room, and students become engaged. It is those moments of magic that I live for. The quiet in the room as all the students look up front and open up a lively conversation about how the neighbors in Rod Serling’s “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” are falsely accusing one another with a mob mentality that frighteningly resembles McCarthy era America as well as Gaston’s jealous incitement of a mob to “kill the beast” in Beauty and the Beast - those connections and associations have always been what excites me about learning. I become so excited when I speak about these associations with my students. They engage with my excitement and with the connection. Our neurons are firing in the ways they should be! Students’ brains are engaged and they aren’t making off task associations. We are keeping it all relevant and interesting at the same time, which can be so very difficult to do with twelve and thirteen year olds who are constantly bombarded by fights with their best friends or bullying or crushes. And, the truth is, even those stories, have a connection to what is being read or learned in the classroom. The stampede of students running to watch a fight in the hallway certainly follows the idea of mob mentality, which leads to a teachable moment about peer pressure and overcoming the changes in your brain that occur when you become part of a mob. Why is it difficult to be Steve and easy to be Don? Why didn’t people call out McCarthy for falsely accusing people of being communists? Why didn’t anyone tell a teacher that there was going to be a fight?

            But as educators, and certainly at the county level, we don’t talk about real life associations or even associations among texts that are relevant to students. We talk about “driving connections among various texts.” That sounds terrible. And, what makes it even worse, we are told what texts to drive the connections among. So, where is the creativity? We are not teaching children to take pride in their associations. We are not forging new connections in their brains. We are spoon-feeding them connections that have already been made by someone else’s brain. We are teaching them to see what some person at the county or state or even federal level saw. What good does that do anyone?

            When I was in college, I took a class in which we watched The Lion King. Yes, I went to a "little Ivy" school in Boston and one of my course's texts was The Lion King. Why? Some of you may have already guessed the connection to a college-level English literature course: Hamlet. Seeing the connection between a Disney movie I had watched and cried over again and again, and a Shakespeare play that I could never really fully engage with emotionally, made me realize what Shakespeare was all about, what literature is all about really. It is about sharing the human experience. These stories repeat themselves in many ways. Themes recur and teach us lessons time and time again. And, just as learning the definition of a word one time doesn’t quite send the point home, learning a lesson or a message once, doesn’t quite get the knowledge hammered in either. We know how our brains work. We know about connecting new knowledge to prior knowledge. We know that we remember things better when they are tied to something meaningful or emotional in some way.

            So, am I purporting that we need to find a Disney movie to connect to every piece of literature? Well, not exactly, but I am suggesting that we need to make learning more relevant. The things we teach in school often exist to our students as information or texts that stand alone in a textbook, textbooks that stay in their desks and seem to have no relevance to the outside world. What is the greatest way to help a student to remember something? To help them to connect it to something that is already meaningful to them. For most people, some of our deepest connections are tied to emotions forged in childhood. For me, and probably many twenty somethings, we connect to Full House, Disney movies, Pogs, Nickelodeon, Tamagotchis, Lisa Frank-the seemingly trivial things that were always there as we learned about the world. When I meet an old friend we can connect over old stories from high school or legendary teachers. The truth is that we remember stories better than we remember anything else. We can learn this from great Roman orators, or even more recent speech makers who tell a story and bring a call to action or a lesson through their narrative. You have to make what you are saying relevant to your audience. Stale curriculum and standardized (yep, this word alone says it all) tests are relevant to no one, except for those waiting for the data to pour out the other side. That is why they are stale and standardized. They have one purpose: data.

            But the data-driven world is on a sour path, if they think they can close the achievement gap by making things look better on paper, on a chart or a graph. We can make our academic graph look better, but there will still be kids stampeding down the hallways because they never learned about mob mentality and how to resist it. What truly makes a difference is connecting through our human experiences. Is that hard to do with adolescents? You better believe it. Is it impossible? Of course not! We are here to teach, to learn, to go through a journey. We are not here to Race to the Top and make sure that No Child is Left Behind. This thing we are doing -learning, teaching, education- it is a journey, not a race. There will be no child left behind because every child will be a part of this journey that will continue for the rest of their lives. There is no top. We are moving across a timeline, not up a mountain. As Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces has taught us, as Star Wars has taught us following that example, there is something that brings all humans together, something that is universal. It goes back to great myths, to all of our literature. It is the universal experience of being human, what we so concisely label as “theme” in our secondary language arts classes. Teaching through narrative will close the achievement gap because this is truly the universal language. The experience of what it is to be human, in any space or time, this is what will bring us all together. This is where our educational reforms need to start.

Coffeehouse Confessional (work in progress...)

I came in on the tale end of the conversation. Grant already had his drink in hand, but he continued to stand to the side and chat up the barista. "Yeah, having kids, that is something I never did. Never had a family." The barista's reply was short but not unfriendly. She was busy making my iced mocha. Grant took the hint and wandered outside to one of the shiny black tables newly minted with no smoking signs (because some people in Washington state were smoking pot outside of the coffeehouses there, Grant later told me).
I always try to steer clear of too many people in my close vicinity when I am writing. I like having people around me, but only at the level of white noise (and I suppose the equivalency of white company, but that sounds a bit racist... I mean feeling the presence of others without actually having to interact with them. The company of others without the sensory overload, like white noise. A presence that is there and comforting but not something you have to attend to). On this particular day, though, I had set out to go to this particular coffeehouse as a new environment to inspire my writing. The inside was too crowded, so I made my way outside and sat at the table next to Grant's. I could have sat looking at him or with my back turned to him. I chose to have my back turned, so I could focus on my writing.
But Grant isn't the type of guy who would let a back turned to him stop a conversation. "You know if you smile, you'll feel better." A smile crept on my face as I sat down and looked up at him in surprise.
"That's true, I suppose. I feel better already."
"That's what I tell my customers. Unfortunately I get a lot of unsavory replies."
"Really?" I asked, half surprised, but really not surprised. I myself was torn between the bitchy and friendly reaction when he said it to me.
"Yeah, the four letter F-word is generally the worst."
"You must have some pretty unhappy customers."
"Seems like a lot of them are," he said. "The little old ladies are the nicest. They really don't care about anything. They're the least judgmental, the least stuck up. Sometimes they even bring me food during my shift at work."
"That's nice," I said as I started to turn away to my notebook to hopefully start my writing. It seemed to work because Grant had already struck up a conversation with a passerby he seemed to know. He invited her to join him, but she had to go in and order her drink first. I'm not sure why, as I usually avoid unnecessary conversation with strangers, but Grant intrigued me. He seemed so carefree in his ability to converse with strangers. Being so the opposite of myself, I was curious to see what more he would share. "Where is there a Food Lion near here?" I asked after observing the logo on his work shirt.
"Where isn't there a Food Lion near here is a better question! Are you new to the area?"
"No...I've lived here my whole life." Grant then proceeded to share a list of nearby Food Lion grocers, closing with the grocer that he called home. "I suppose I never paid muchattention."
"Where do you usually do your grocery shopping?"
"I'm a Co-op fan."
"Oh, the old communist co-op...and I say that in a kind way. I actually send them a lot of customers."

Cold

It is tough to feel anything out here. I thought it would just be a cool, stinging rain, but the water fell in heavy, icy sheets. Barbara taunted me to come inside with the sweet smelling steam of hot cocoa and a red knit blanket big enough for two, but she couldn't move me. I was frozen to the porch, barely feeling my face, fingers, and toes. Ice coated the road in front of me, transforming it into a skating rink for squirrels. But even the squirrels weren't out in this chill. They didn't need to feel coldness to the core; they didn't need to see the world around them change. They curled up and slept through it, just like Barbara.
An icy wind began to blow. Frozen pieces of water flecked my face and stuck to my eyelashes. I tried to dry them, but the fuzz of my mittens kept sticking in the corners of my eyes. I pulled off one of my mittens. The tingling on my fingers turned to a burn as the once enclosed hand was shocked by the land of ice being built around it. I quickly wiped my eye clean and felt a melange of hot and cold sensations before I slipped my hand back into the mitten. My fingertips were still wet, and the tips of my mittens froze almost immediately. I curled my fingers out of the tip and into my palm in protest. The round, frozen tip of the mitten hung limp over my pink knuckles.
I looked out at my car, a crystalline fossil, like a preserved relic for men and women or aliens of the future to find and learn about our mechanical technology. The vehicle looked so useless; it was so useless in this frozen world. I looked at the trees. They stood naked but stoic while ice whipped past them, sticking to some of their branches like a hair or a fungus. They could freeze and refreeze, feel the shattering chill or the burn of the earth, always with repose.

The Rash

The rash pimples up my spine and wraps around my rib cage. Tiny little red, sometimes purplish, bumps itch and sting my side. I scratch at them, and then they start to burn like a fire on my skin flaming my clothes away. I try to tell myself to forget those bumps, but no amount of convincing seems to work. The bumps have created their own neurons of special attention in my brain. With every itch and focus on these bumps, I begin to feel my spotted rib cage protruding, as if it is growing with pride each time I think about it and worry, verging on panic, about the origin of its speckled surface. I imagine these bumps growing on each individual rib bone and jutting outward, an internal disorder not merely classifiable as contact dermatitis.