Jamel

Jamel is a small man with rough, brown skin and a charcoaled five o'clock shadow. His long curly hair is dark at the roots, but graduates to a warm yellow at the tips. I'd guess he's in his late forties. I studied abroad in Italy two years ago. I told him once, and we compared the language and culture there to the language and culture of his home, Crete. You are a beautiful woman. He tells me in his thick mediterranean accent. You get it from your beautiful mather. He also cuts and styles my mother's hair once every three months.

I think if I saw Jamel on the street somewhere and he told me I was a beautiful woman, I'd probably walk a little faster and pretend to be on my cell phone with a very important person who could rescue me if needed. But in this setting--the Toni and Guy hair salon setting--Jamel is okay. Just below his white rolled up sleeves are a pair of poised and accurate hands. I watch as he angles his scissors at my hair to sculpt precise layers.

The last time Jamel cut my hair, I was at home for the summer--what is called home for me. Home is a place where the television mumbles in the background of every conversation, where people who once were friends to me are not anymore, where I have three brothers and three sisters-in-law that I see maybe once in those seven weeks out of the entire year, and where I feel as though I have no purpose. To me, this haircut was me making up for those things, taking care of myself.

Jamel sat me down and began to ask me the same questions as always, the answers to which he had been told each visit before since the time I was eighteen. I sold a painting yesterday. I said. Oh, you paint?! I didn't know that. He said. Yes, Jamel, I paint, and I've told you this before. It was okay though. Jamel is okay.

I remember most things Jamel tells me. I remember that Jamel is Greek. I remember that he has had the same exact hair style for the past four years. I remember that he is great friends with Adolf, the colorist, and they go boating on the weekends in the Texas summer heat. I remember that he drinks, he does not have a wife, and does not ever want one. I remember that he owns a house in the Mediterranean.

You know. He said, pausing from straightening some strands to look at me. God loves you. You do the right things, and he will bless you. I never knew Jamel knew God. For a small moment at Toni and Guy, I felt at home.

The New Cafeteria

This place reminds me of the Lakeline Mall food court back home in Texas. High ceilings, a cold metal decor, food trays, and a hum of echoing voices that could probably put me to sleep if I were a child. Strangers stand in line spewing out their rehearsed order to the workers behind the counters--one small turkey sandwich please, extra olives. Eye contact is optional, smiles are trite and often not entirely sincere. This is the new cafeteria.

For me, it's a factory--come in, get your work done, and leave as quickly as possible. I am suffocated by the eyes of a hundred others. She's here every day. They must think. She never eats anything but salads. They tell their friends. She's beautiful but alone. I hope some of the people that I see frequent the cafeteria consider coming over to talk.

Any time I think of hopes like these, I am reminded of the scene in Amelie toward the end when she is in the kitchen making dinner for herself. She imagines the man she loves coming up the stairs to her apartment, opening the door, and brushing his hand through the beads she has dangling from her door frame. In reality, she hears the ticking of the beads, but looks to find it is just her cat gliding by. Moments later, she hears the doorbell, and it is her love.

I am sitting towards the back of the cafeteria where a lesser percentage of the people can watch me stuff my face. I poke at a stubborn piece of lettuce that does not want to fold in half to a size more suitable for my mouth. I hear a group of 20-something-year-old men howl their Chewbaca impressions to see who could be most accurate. I am happy this is the caliber I have to choose from. Man, did you hear that burp. They say. That burger tasted like a cow pie. They must think. That girl's hot and I now will be as obnoxious as possible. They snort out some laughter and pat each other's backs.

I throw away my styrofoam plate at the big rectangle trash can, stack my tray on top with the rest, and exit the least populated route to avoid eye contact and smiles.

I hope. But its always just the cat.

Disconnected

I attend college in a place where there is sometimes no cable, where shops are within walking distance, where I can cool down in the shade, where I learn from conversation and writing, where friends come over unannounced because they want to, where I live with people who must interact. When I come home I am reluctantly plugged into a stale opposite.

The temperature will not drop below 90 in the summer, making long bikerides (they are long because places are stretched so far apart) a last resort. Even in the shade, I am suffocated by hot air and sweat. I am convinced that even a small amount of this tepid heat would leave me dead on some neighborhood sidewalk, so I stay inside.

The house is two-story and air-conditioned. Four out of its six rooms are empty or used for storage. When one of the three people who live here come home from a day of work, the television is flipped on--usually to a news report, a trashy housewives reality show, or a cooking demonstration. After hours of shows, the voices on every channel seem the same. I know our television like I would know a relative--if I really knew one to begin with. Here, it is my stimulation--sad. It's strange how people can physically be brought together by such a device, yet pushed so far apart at the same time. I feel so distant from those around me.

I try to please myself with endless amounts of fresh strawberries, blueberries, nectarines, walnuts, ice cream--things I can't regularly buy on my school budget. I have new clothes and hair. I force myself to workout daily, I paint still lifes, I read books--activities which require only one person. I am alone.

When I am plugged into this life, I yearn for an emotional, intellectual, and spiritual connection somewhere else.

I'm ready to go back to Rexburg.

Finals

I've been sitting in the same spot on the couch for about four and a half hours. At one point, I realized my gut was hanging out, and my ponytail was smooshed to the side of my head. My neck is hot, and my mind can't focus. But I watch the letters appear on my laptop screen as I type and type and type and type.

Victoria is sitting across the living room with her hair pushed into her face "like her eyes are wearing a mustache" (says Brittany), while laughing at me in her Spongebob decrescendo. Periodically, she looks up from her laptop screen to make a funny face at me.

Brittany just left, after about four I-can't-take-this-anymore's, to get a Sno Cone with Mark.

Amy is calm, taking small bites into her little six-inch Subway sandwich. Her long hair is neatly braided, resting around her neck and down the front of her torso. She smiles and hums the songs that Victoria makes up in her insanity. This is because she does not have finals this week.

Victoria rolls from the couch onto the floor singing "pa-pa-pa poker face pa-pa poker face."

We are going insane.

Unorganized, Unprocessed, Unrefined

It's 12:09 a.m., but I have to write because I feel it, and I haven't felt it in a few weeks.

I'm sitting on my bed with a pillow on my lap, my laptop on top of that. It's hot in here. I would sleep with only a top sheet, but here I just have a thick brown comforter. Ironically enough, I'm wearing pants and socks to bed tonight. Yes, pants and socks. Don't ask why.

Here, the silence of my room is almost haunting, mostly because I am left to think to myself and partly because there are four people up here--it should be noisy.

Tonight I went to the gym--which I have been doing quite often lately--with the intention of reading some Ben Johnson poetry while eliptical-ing. I eliptical-ed, but was so distracted from the poetry. I've realized that trying to do something else while reading poetry is actually very counter-productive. There's no way to get a good amount of insight from a poem, when you're busy thinking about other things, like your heart rate and how many calories you've burned so far and what your reps per minute is and oh that guy's kind of cute and oh hey there is Jordan again with his girlfriend and I wonder if someone is using the abductors right now and there's that awkward patron that wants to date me. These thoughts, plus the sporadic reading from On My Small Daughter, plus the new Jason Reeves song I just bought, turned up to the third to last bar on my sound gage, leads to much more confused thinking than should be had at the gym. Isn't exercise supposed clear your mind? But I feel like when I'm at the BYU-I gym, I need to distract myself as much as possible. I need to drown myself in noise and get the heck out as fast as I can, because it's a meat market in there. Right now, I choose to be a vegan, thank you. Needless to say, reading Ben Johnson didn't go over well.

Today Victoria and I drove to the corn fields. They're corn fields, right? We drove for an hour, turned off the car, turned off the music, and I could hear the blood in my ears. (I wonder what silence is like without the blood in my ears--I hope someday I can know that.) It felt good to be in between the green earth and blue sky and nothing else. I am so small and cannot be in control of anything.

My hair is drying. I love taking showers at night.

Getaway

So, I've been doing this new thing--when I'm in a class I despise and I do not want to pay attention--where I write down songs lyrics to a good song I know and randomly mix the words into my own poetry. Here's one of the results from A Clean Getaway, by Maria Taylor:

Of no day, no door, no getaway.
I fear to love a someone met with no name.
I made a home of hung pictures; it looked just like a smile.
Except it wasn't in my own face.
I didn't know.
At the bar they know, tough voice made by my friends--hard.
They were laughing and I? Losing.
I miss every single great heart.

No! Could you just getaway?
I see across it.
And there:
Like the yard, a park, my grass.
Clean. I had made clean.
Finally, I made the place.
Except it felt there were no he.
Had I made just like I met? Waiting for it? No.
It felt like what I was: I
And you?
I just miss.

That's all.