She’s kind of like a ninja?? (Image: “Animal locomotion,” Plate 156. Eadweard Muybridge, 1887. Courtesy Wikipedia.)
It’s been hard the past few days to touch base because I can’t tell you where I am!
It’s true: I’ve been in [REDACTED] for the past couple few days because I’m on assignment for this magazine and I can’t let the cat out of the bag about which state Quiltfolk’s Issue 05 will spotlight. Not me, Satie! No way, Monet!
And while it’s fun to be a lil’ ninja and fly under the radar, it’s also the pits: I can’t write to you about all the things and I can’t even do any Instagram stuff! Believe me, I’m in a very cool place with crazy-good photo opportunities. The Instagram stuff can wait, but it’s torture to not write up what I’ve seen and the things I’ve experienced since getting here yesterday morning. I just need you to help me download things, you know? Downloads of the mental variety. This is something you help me with.
Agh! Okay, one thing:
It’s been so horribly hot in Chicago; we broke records all week last week with temperatures in the low- to mid-90s. I hate a summer that stretches into October, and of course it’s all just very anxiety-provoking and confusing and frightening, all this extreme weather.
Anyway, I experienced a fall moment today and it took my breath away, honestly. There was a quicksilver chill in the air and when it whistled through me, my entire life-in-autumn flashed before my eyes. Autumns of my childhood (the sharpened pencils, the trick-o-treats); the autumns of my young adulthood (the cigarettes outside the bars, the late-night rehearsals); the autumns more recent (the leaves downtown, the frost on the windows of the cabs in the morning.) But in that moment when you first feel the fall air, all the autumns blend together and it’s just your life, in technicolor, in a sweater.
Really, the perfect picture for Mark’s post is this image of homemade buttermilk ice cream with espresso-chocolate chip cookies. Image: Wikipedia.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but things have been intense around here lately. Grad school is hard. If I stop for a half-an-hour, I’m behind. I love all of it, but I’m ridin’ the struggle bus. And whattaya know, but last night I woke myself up whimpering (!) because the scratchy throat I felt in the newspaper office yesterday had become agonizing. Even though it was barely 4 a.m., my body ached so bad and my sneezes were so hilariously powerful, I was not gonna fall back asleep. So I got up.
And in my email box, there was this wonderful, incredible piece of writing from one of my very first (and personal favorite) PaperGirl readers, Mark H. (You may remember Mark and Netta from my trip to Florida! And I’m sure I’ve mentioned how they send me fudge and pecans at Christmastime, swoon.) Mark had sent me an email a few days ago, his email subject line the same as it’s been for years: “Note from Mark.” He was checking in on me, you see: Mark’s been reading the ol’ PG long enough to be able to read between the lines and suspected I was kind of freaking out with all my activities and schoolwork. He had an idea for me, because Mark likes to help people.
“Maybe you could have your readers write a post or two,” Mark said, “about why they read your blog and why they keep coming back. I bet they’d like to do it and it would take something off your plate.”
What a friend, right? And the idea sounded neat, except 1) it would necessitate a bit of planning and organization on my part and I can hardly find time to floss; and 2) I was a little worried that if I asked people why they read or love this blog, it might be a little self-congratulatory or hoo-hoo-look-a-me. I told Mark he was amazing and kind, as usual, and that I’d keep thinking about a way to do it and indeed, I did think about it.
But before I had a solution, however — and suffering from my cold enough to really need a break — Mark wrote back and said, essentially: “Well, tough, kiddo. I’ve decided I might as well just give this a shot. You can post it if you want, but you certainly don’t have to. It was fun to write!”
Mark, you’re a true-blue friend. You made me cry with this. I appreciate you so much. Thanks, buddy. I’m so glad you’re here. Don’t leave. I won’t if you won’t, okay? And this is the first-ever guest post on PaperGirl. How cool is that?? 😀
* * *
“It was actually an errant internet search that brought me to this blog many years ago. My wife and I had to work in different parts of the country, and I was searching for love poems to tell her how much I missed her. When I entered the words “love poems” in the search box I accidentally searched the “video” tab, not the “all” tab. Mary’s video of her famous poem was near the top. So I clicked it. I didn’t know what slam poetry was, but I liked what she was doing. There was a little icon at the bottom that linked to her blog, so I clicked that one too. I wanted to know more about a person who could write poems like this.
The blog gave me great insight into the life of this stranger. I read along for a few months, never commenting, but decided to send a few encouraging words to her one night because she was particularly despondent about losing her hair. I don’t know if she knew how sick she was back then, but my medical background told me that she was in serious trouble. I don’t know if she knew this, or was just downplaying the situation, but I wasn’t sure if she would survive it. I wanted her to know how much I enjoyed her blog, so I sent her a short note about what it meant to me. I didn’t really expect her to reply, but she did. This began a years-long friendship between us, even though we have very little in common.
I use Mary’s blog as part of my unwinding process at night. It’s hard for me to shut off my mind at the end of my stressful days, so I follow an odd mix of bloggers to help me escape the mental replays of my day. When I started following her blog, she wasn’t a quilter. She was a freelance writer and performer. She wrote about her life and her thoughts, and it was fascinating to me. The blog took me to Michigan Avenue, or a cold slab in a hospital, or New York, or Washington, or Winterset, Iowa, or the Arizona desert, or on an early morning run along Lake Michigan.
While the blog is not meant to be educational, I’ve learned a great deal from it. I’ve been introduced to George Orwell’s six rules of writing (which I now use frequently), haiku poetry, various recipes, international philosophy, decorating tips on a budget, and even silly poems about fruit, which I’ve come to adore.
By far the most endearing quality of this blog comes from Mary’s vulnerability. Mary shares some deeply personal thoughts about her life, that some of my best friends would never share with me about their own. In some ways, I feel that I shouldn’t know this much about a stranger, but her easy writing style always draws me in. I’ve discovered that she’s actually an introvert, but that she does not shy away from relationships. In fact, I’d say she delights in them. Her ability to write about her emotions is at once humanly familiar and heart-wrenching, and for me, it’s the most authentic part of her site.
I’m curious what other readers draw from PaperGirl. No doubt, many of you are quilters, but I am not. (I might have sewn a button back on my lab coat a few years ago, but that’s it.) I’ve slept under a quilt most of my adult life. When my girls went away college, it was a quilt that went on their dorm room beds. When Hurricane Irma roared through my state last week, I hunkered down under my grandmother’s quilt. I’ve used quilts most of my life, but really just see them as heavy blankets. Some make their way to museums, but for me, the beauty and fascination of themisin the backstory of those who make them. Mary’s blog is just that for me. How ’bout you? What brings you here?
That picture of a teddy bear has nothing to do with this post. It’s just that there’s pretty much one decent picture of a condominium on Wikipedia and I used it the other day, so why not go with an affable-looking stuffed bear, instead? That’s what I said.
On Thursday, they shut off the water in my building from floors 9 through 21, starting at 9:00 in the morning and going till 5:00 or so. This wasn’t arbitrary. It’s not like the management got pushed too far and said, “We’ve had it! No water today!” or anything like that. No, it was just that maintenance needed to be done on the pipes or something and that’s how it goes in a mid-rise condo building.
I took a shower real fast (it was 8:44 a.m. when I remembered this was happening) and filled up two bowls of water so that I’d have it if I needed it later, which I absolutely did because I ate chips and had chippy stuff on my fingers. When I rinsed my hands in the sink with my water reserves I felt very Boxcar Children and congratulated myself for probably being the kind of person who could survive against all odds.
The whole temporary-water-shut-off thing got me thinking about how some people who live in a house or in a smaller apartment building might not know what it’s like to live in a condo building like mine, smack dab in a big city. After all, I don’t know what it’s like to own a whole house in the country. I have questions about that, like, “What’s it like to have a basement?” and “How often do you need a new roof?” and “Is it illegal to not cut the grass if you just don’t feel like it for 20 years?”
Therefore, just in case you’ve always wanted to know, here’s a list that maybe gives you some idea of what it’s like to live in a mid-rise condo building (mine = 20 floors) in downtown Chicago. This is not a complete list and I’m going off my own experience in this building, of course.*
1. You have to wait for the elevators, sometimes.
2. There’s a rooftop patio or deck, usually, and you can go up there and hang out and look at the sky and the city.
3. If you have doormen, they are your friends, hopefully. (I have doormen and they are my friends and their names are Stanley, JC, Roosevelt, William, and Victor.)
4. There’s a receiving room. And a smaller room with all the mailboxes. If you’re really, really lucky, there’s a mail chute.
5. It’s really stinky in the alley behind the building where all the dumpsters are from your building, the ones next to your building, and the pizza place and the 7-Eleven.
6. You have a programmed fob on your keychain that opens a series of security doors. The fob looks like a disk and it makes the locks go from red to green when you wave it over the thingy and then you can open the door.
7. Sometimes the water gets shut off for maintenance. (See above.)
8. There is a maintenance staff and they are usually men but not always. (All the maintenance staff here are men and they are all my friends, too, just like my doormen, and their names are Leo, Miguel, John, Richard, and one guy whose name I can never, ever remember, ever.)
9. There’s a garbage chute on every floor. Honest, I still get a thrill when I take out the garbage because I get to use the garbage chute. It’s magic.
10. I pay an “assessment”, which is on top of a mortgage. An assessment is a fee that covers the doormen, the maintenance guys, the on-site management stuff, the whirlpool cleaning, the elevators, etc., etc. The assessment in my building is really high. I can’t talk about it.
11. There are bike rooms. My bike is down there, safe and sound, and Claus has a bike down there, too, because he moved back to Germany and couldn’t take his bike. Anyone wanna buy Claus’s bike?
12. You don’t meet the vast majority of your neighbors, but if you live in a building long enough, you meet a few of them.
13. There’s a vending machine in the basement!
14. There’s a fitness center down there, too, but it’s scary so I don’t go in.
and
15. It’s wonderful to live in a condo building, if you’re into that sort of thing — and I absolutely am.
**I don’t write about things that don’t interest me, but I’ll admit I was surprised just how fun it was to write this. It was simple. Simple and physical. Perhaps what’s surprising is that no matter how many times I learn and relearn that “simple” and “physical” is the best kind of writing, I have to learn it some more.
My actual planner a few weeks back. And this is just the stuff written down. Image: Me.
Some people ask me, sometimes with a Southern accent but most often not with a Southern accent, “Why, Miss Mary! How ever do you keep up with all the things you have to do?”
And I say: “Pape-cal.”
“Pape-cal” is short for “paper-calendar”; specifically, one that fits inside one’s purse. This item is more commonly referred to as a “planner”. Other people might call it a “day runner” or a “datebook”. I like calling it my pape-cal because it’s funny: pape-cal! And it makes me happy to call my planner my pape-cal because it’s something my sisters and my mom and I came up with.
We each have a pape-cal. My sister Hannah’s pape-cal is actually a large calendar she has on the wall, but it counts. This all comes from my mother, of course; some of my earliest memories in life involve observing my mother pencil in notes, trips, reminders, travel plans, birthdays, etc., in her pape-cal. I’m not sure if she still saves them, but she used to.
[Psst. Mom. Do you still save your pape-cals?]
Now, I do use my Google calendar function on my computer and my phone, but only for backup and a nice, full picture of the month. I tried to lose my pape-cal and just use screens and it was a total disaster. I’m not kidding: I mixed up a day for an important task, I accidentally flaked on a birthday party, and, worst of all, I felt like my I was spinning away from Earth, flung into the atmosphere, unable to get purchase on my life. No, things were no good without pape-cal. No good a’tall.
I remember Claus looking at me as I sobbed about feeling disorganized and spacey, how I felt that my life was falling apart.
“Claus! My life! It’s falling apart!”
“Maybe you should write things down again,” he said. “You used to have a little book, Piggy.”
(He used to call me Piggy.)
“Oh, right,” I sniffed. “That’s true. I used to have my pape-cal.” I brightened. “Yeah! I’ll just get my planner back! Thanks, Bear!”
(I used to call him Bear.)
Anyway, I got a fresh pape-cal and the situation improved considerably.
By the end of every year, my planner is so beat up you just can’t believe it. And boy it’s happening now, as we head into the tenth month of the year. It’s a good thing that the other day, my 2018 book came in the mail. (In case you’re interested, I use the same make and model year after year, the best in the biz: the Leuchtturm 1917 pape-cal. There can be no other. It’s a perfect pape.)
The cover of my 2017 book was a deep rose pink. My 2018 pape-cal is a perfect mouse brown. I have already begun to fill it.
Please tell me not to buy binoculars. Please tell me not to buy binoculars. Please tell me to —
Okay, I won’t. But I really want to. Because a building in my neighborhood was finished a while back and at this very moment, I can look across the way and see the glowing TV screens, the outlines of the furniture, the movements of the inhabitants of the units in that building. I can’t see what’s on the TV; I can’t tell much about the furniture past whether what I’m looking at is a lamp or a couch; I can’t see faces by a longshot. But I can see life happening over there and I know they can see my life, too. Which makes me want to pull the shades down — or not.
This morning, I was up at 5 a.m. sharp so that I could put in a good four hours on the cover story I’m writing for the October issue. Just as I settled with my tea,* I saw the lights go on in the unit over from mine and up a little bit. Two people were crossing back and forth in the room.
I thought to myself, “They’re going jogging.”
Because apparently, when two people are up and moving around before dawn, I automatically assume that they are more responsible and active than I am, that they have things figured out: Namely, that going jogging with your beloved is definitely the best way to start the morning. Within seconds, I pictured the vital, peppy couple getting back home an hour later and laughing over yogurt with blueberries and some sort of herbal tea before heading off to work. At some point in my constructed scenario, they made out, but don’t worry; I didn’t get quite that far. My point is that the silhouette peoples’ lives were somehow…smoother. Less treacherous. Easier, at any rate, than mine feels, sometimes.
In a few moments of looking at the building over there, I made up a whole life for two perfect strangers. That’s weird. It’s as weird as me not-quite-peeping on my not-quite-neighbors, if you ask me. But we’re only human.
But it’s hard to not watch. We’re only human.
*I’m back with the tea in the morning. I just couldn’t do it. The coffee is nice in the afternoon, though!
