Fresh Air

Every morning I’m greeted with a fresh vase of flowers on my desk from my boss's garden. Today’s holds one bright orange flower - he loves me, he loves me not petals surrounding a fuzzy red center. The smaller petals in the middle are deep orange, the larger petals beneath are more faded, as if the color forfeits its intensity as it spreads. Purple flowers that remind me of caterpillars are arranged behind it. There are also three large leaves forming the bottom layer of the arrangement. Pale yellowish olive green, with translucent lines like on the palms of my hands.

I have this strange urge to take a deep breath every time I see a beautiful flower. When I walk through the community garden near my apartment, I’m afraid I’ll one day hyperventilate. But I think I’m just trying to breathe in the fresh and innocent beauty (those tea bags for the dark bags under my eyes are not working their magic anymore). The tall sunflowers in the garden have been especially enchanting lately. Isn’t there just something about sunshine and flowers and a warm breeze that makes you want life to stand still?

Laundromat Language

I feel like a fairly observant person, but if you ask me to explain or describe to you what I’m seeing, hearing, smelling, etc., I’m at a loss for words. This is a bad thing for an aspiring writer to admit, I suppose. Earlier today, I was in the wonderful land of the Laundromat. So I started thinking, How would I describe this place? I could tell you about the cold, hard seat that was hurting my bony butt. It was in a row of other colorful seats (blue, yellow, orange) to disguise the dread of having to use a Laundromat. Look, while you’re here you get to sit in these rainbow chairs! Or I could describe the whir of the washing machines, a row of different cycles and stages and this one is permanent press and this one is gentle. I wish they were louder. I want the rushing and spinning to cover the sound of the Channel 7 Local News coming from the TVs on all four walls. I’m not in the mood to hear about the little girl who was saved from the creek—her rescuer first thinking she was a dog. Or about the Florida residents in an uproar because peacocks are destroying their cars.

photo source

Or maybe I’ll tell you about the man across the room. He’s standing in front of the big Eco-Friendly Dryer, staring at the spinning dark colors. He’s tired. How do I know this? He’s somewhat slumped over, with his right arm resting across his stomach and his left arm squeezed by his side. His left hand is supporting his chin, with his neck stretched out, as if to peer into the dryer even deeper. He hasn’t shaved today. He’s wearing white painter’s pants and an off-white t-shirt with sponsors on the back, like the ones they give out at festivals or minor-league baseball games. But I’m still missing something. I don’t know how to go into more detail on how the man’s body language tells me he’s tired. Instead I can only imagine what has exhausted him in the first place. Or why his stomach sticks out over his pants like it does. I could go into a story on how he works eleven hour days and when he gets home he just wants to sit on his couch, because although his painting job is not exactly exercise it is still physically tiring. And his wife doesn’t have the energy to join a gym, so how can she tell him he needs to lose a couple pounds. She may be a nag, but she is not a hypocrite.

Well, anyway. That will be my Last. Laundromat. Visit. EVER. My new apartment will have a washer and dryer unit all to itself. No more hauling suitcases down the street or having to watch the Maury Show. No more accidentally flinging underwear on the dirty floor three washers down or watching clothes catch on fire in the heavy-duty dryer and then turn to black char. Just six days ‘til the big move!

"I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don't have any clean laundry. Because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of your life?"  —from a fifteen-year-old contestant in a newspaper challenge to imitate Jack Handy's Intimate Thoughts

On Honesty

Honesty should be black and white, right? You're either honest, or you're not. It's a virtue, a quality, a characteristic, a myth... The truth is that honesty is swirls of gray.

Honesty is like a pane of glass, or a window. It lets you see through to the other side, to the reality and truth. But sometimes it’s distorted or smudged or cracked. What then? You can still see through to the general outline, get an idea of the full picture, but you can’t make out the crisp details or the complete story.

But what’s more important anyway: the nitty, gritty cold facts, or the way you feel about them? When recalling memory, should we be honest to the events or to our emotions? And what is more honest anyway? What is more real? Our reality is made up of our experiences—our understanding of how things were, are, will be. Honesty is personal to each of us, and we therefore all have our own versions of the honest truth. So how, then, can there be any universal truth? Ah, but truth and honesty are two different things, aren’t they.

Maybe honesty is what comes from us naturally, unavoidably. How can we live a dishonest life? Our very being is the honesty of our self. Every breath begins honestly. But we twist things to please ourselves, and in the process turn them into lies. Honesty is easy, even if blurry at times. But through the blur, honesty should be ever present. 

This was an exercise for my Nonfiction Workshop on Memoir: Simply write "On" at the top of your paper, then add an abstract noun. As I've worked on exercises throughout the semester, it was nice to remember that the word essay (as in a personal essay) comes from the French verb essayer, which means "to try."