jolie laide

jolie laide

I started this when I lived in Brooklyn and struggled for grace in a city that grants moments of beauty and ugliness breathtakingly close to one another. Now I live in a place where things are a different kind of ugly and the beauty is pedestrian. I struggle with that.

9.02.2008

There is a jam up at the off ramp and when I finally creep up past the blockage, it is two people pushing a car. The car is shiny new, too new to be broken down. The people are very young, young enough to play chicken with a gas gauge on the highway.

At the book store I am a training opportunity. It's the first back-to-school day in September, and three new empty-nesters stand behind the counter in their twin sets. This is clearly their first user experience with a cash register and as they bend their blondedness to the task, I'll bet none of them last past the shock of their first paycheck.

Another on-ramp and I am looking at a Montana license plate. Don't think I've ever seen one before. I would imagine that's because there are just not a lot of them, and this one is making up for it, jammed with images of mountains, the state bird, state flower, a tree. It's stuck to the bumper of a rusting honest pick up truck, and the way it hiccups up the grade I can tell it's a manual transmission.

The man at the loading bay at the Goodwill knows me now enough ask me why I am giving away such good stuff. I laugh and tell him that's what happens when you get married at 40--you have three of everything. It's the easiest way I can describe it, as I am not married. I'm not 40, either.

6 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

I'd guess you're closer to being married than you are to being 40. Least I hope you'd prefer that to the other way around.

1:55 PM  
Blogger ttractor said...

Until then I think I'll start calling you my animal familiar, just to be irritatingly impressionistic about it. And yah, what? The idea of a 45-year-old blushing bride is so mortifying.

2:45 PM  
Blogger slickaphonic said...

just leave the blush at home and beam. Beaming at 45 is just fine.

10:49 AM  
Blogger ttractor said...

We had better ought to be aiming for 43. But trying to figure out this wedding thing is like two slinkys doing the lindy hop.

11:15 AM  
Blogger slickaphonic said...

i will always vote elope. then party afterward for friends who want to come. simple, cost-effective, relatively stress-free.

and dude, no bridesmaid dresses.

7:38 PM  
Blogger ttractor said...

That guy up there holding the camera says I'm not allowed to get away with that this time. I am being obligated to stand and profess, even if it's to a small audience--more like family and friends dinner party, one on each coast, says he.

9:28 PM  

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