The Crow

August 9, 2012 By in Petulance 45 Comments

I am sitting at my window with a lap full of pages. Outside, a crow lands on the street lamp, surveys the neighborhood with a regal black brow. My coffee’s gone cold and my son is talking to himself upstairs; when I checked on him earlier he had a stick in hand and was muttering threats to an imaginary opponent: Back off, just back OFF. Two books are beside me: Heart Sick and The Kingdom of Childhood, and on top of them a plate with two pieces of peach and a blackberry slick with agave, the last bites of breakfast left to eat. The light is soft today and gray, the kind of light that comes from everywhere and nowhere at once, weak smudgy light that leaves the eye sockets in pools of shadow. It’s too dim to read. My index cards are crooked. My hair is wet and my feet are bare–one warm, tucked under my thigh, the other chilling on the footrest. I switch them and put on my glasses. Two men are playing tennis across the street, and one of them drops his racket. Around the corner, I hear a basketball, thunk thunk thunk on the pavement. I need to buy copy paper, a gallon of milk, thumbtacks for the (crooked) index cards. I hope my husband gets that job he’s up for, I hope he lets me get on top. I hope I will be pretty again someday, but the 8-ball says outlook not so good and the crow has flown away.

What are you thinking?

45 Responses

  3. I’m sitting under a fan. Is it the heat or the fan that stirs my thoughts and makes me dizzy?
    I’m naked under a thin cotton robe, feeling sweaty, but I’m drinking hot tea anyway because I have to and the sweat isn’t so bad.
    I’m pretending to be alone here with my laptop, but both girls are within reach. They hunker down on the sofa beside me, reading a comic book, bickering softly. My back is turned to the large window that looks out onto a slow green river, a beach crammed full of umbrellas, and a serrated ridge line of redwood trees that rises and falls behind it all. The fan hums, ice clunks in the ice maker, and cicadas call from a distance. Everything’s buzzing and humming in the heat.
    I love that yours begins and ends with a crow.

  4. It was cold here this morning. Ahhhhh…. woke up and needed a sweatshirt.

    I’ve opened a chapter my my WIP — Chapter 13, which as I write that suddenly sounds unlucky. I’m astounded at how many commas I’ve used. I should sell them on eBay, would make enough dough to pay for our next vacation, that’s how many. I checked on the essays I’ve submitted into the lit journal world and see that 2 are “in progress,” so they’ve at least been opened if not yet read.

    The noise here today is deafening — tree trimmers have joined the bangbangbangbang of the house being built across the street. Plus it’s garbage day. Plus there’s a gardener across the way blowing debris off the street. Trying to remember the last time I felt pretty.

    • I use a lot of commas too, and put them in the wrong place, or omit them where they’d have done me some good. Commas are tricky little bastards. I have also become addicted to colons and semicolons, which seem to me unappreciated in favor of the ubiquitous period.

  7. I’m thinking that the weekend can’t get here soon enough – Thursdays are the worst day of the week!

    And I’m thinking about how evocative that passage is above. Wish I could write like that!

    • You think? I like Thursdays, but Wednesdays are another story. Betwixt and between, blah blah blah. Nothing good ever happens on a Wednesday.

  8. I’m thinking you deserve every bit of success you get. Holy fuck, you can write.

    Apologies to greener. I don’t like to swear in front of my friends’ mothers.

  11. I’m thinking I don’t have to work tomorrow, so I can write until midnight tonight and nap tomorrow afternoon, or go to bed early tonight and write tomorrow afternoon, because I want to see Jeremy Renner tomorrow and the first showing of Bourne Whatever is 9:30 tomorrow morning.

    And that the last person to make a pass at me was both drunk on a professional level and strongly shower-free fragrant. It was a surprisingly polite pass and part of me was actually flattered.

  12. How lovely and alive your writng is, that’s what I’m thinking. Amidst loud thank yous to the luck gods. My best friend’s brain surgery yesterday revealed a blood clot, not revenging cancer. I read the text from her husband this morning and screamed with relief and joy.

    • Oh dear lord, what a horrible scare. You must have been freaking out. Thank god she’s okay, CJ, and best wishes for her speedy recovery.

  13. I’m thinking… I wish my thinking could be slowed down enough, ADHD, of how it felt when my Grandmother died, unicorns, tears, men murdered by guns while standing on one leg with spears, I’m thinking I don’t want to know, I need to survive.
    All the little ones matter as much as the big ones, these teeming lousy thoughts best thrown in the air, and folded and flayed into shape, and stuck to paper somewhere.
    If we were built with an on-off switch with easier access, we’d all have been gone a thousand times, and every one of those times we’d have made a mistake.
    Life is precious, and so are all of your thoughts Averil. Enjoy them. They keep you pretty, in the way that matters more.

    • Ah, Mr iPants. “If we were built with an on-off switch with easier access, we’d all have been gone a thousand times, and every one of those times we’d have made a mistake.” Very true, and don’t you forget it.

      • Don’t worry, I remember it plenty enough. It’s the quiet one in the shadows we have to look out for. And give him a beautiful pen, and a rough wad of paper, and tell him he’s a writer, and just hope he believes it. And with luck and time he’ll save himself, like us, and maybe somebody else.

  14. I’m thinking I’m about to start working on my new creative nonfiction piece, but because it’s about something that happened years ago and scared me, and because I’m alone for the time being and it’s dark, I’m worried I’ll freak myself out. I’m worried I won’t finish it in time to submit to my writing group for a critique, and I’m also worried that I will finish in time and my writing friends will look at me funny after reading it. I’m worried it exposes too much that I’ve lost that little part of me that knew to avoid shame, to hold back just enough. And I worry that after all this worrying it’s not even interesting enough to warrant people thinking I’m crazy. Which is not what I want, not really, but crazy is at least better than boring.

    • This sounds like the inside of my head. Worry, worry. When I’m alone in the dark, I have to go from closet to under the bed to garage, etc. and make sure I’m REALLY alone and the boogie man isn’t waiting behind the door with an upraised knife . . .

      Sorry. Not helpful.

  15. I am thinking that Italians talk way too much. I am in a camping ground in Corsica. I am thinking that there can’t be sharks in Corsica, the way I swim out so far. I am also thinking of the order of the stories in my collection, and if I can balance the rosé (to dull all the talking/cooking/eating) and the espresso afterwards so’s I won’t fall asleep. I am thinking of one word-sexy man and I shouldn’t.

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