--- Cederbaum

Journal 5 – Polite Condolences

ecederbaum — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 03:09:22 +0000

Eve Cederbaum
Journal 6
The phone rings and rings and rings in the middle of the night. It keeps ringing after the machine picks up. Finally you answer it—groggy, irritated, and befuddled. It’s the call we all dread and yet know will come more than once in our lives …
“Grammy passed away Anne, your mother left for the red eye to Florida half an hour ago. Anne?”
“I heard you dad” I say. As I slide out of bed pillows and stuffed bears fall onto the floor. My hand jerks backwards before I make it two steps though, and when I turn around I see a line of black going from my hand to the nightstand. My phone was attached to the charger. I pull the plug out of the phone and through the cord in the general direction of the table. “Is mom ok?” I ask. I know it’s a stupid question but I guess it’s the one you suppose to. Obviously mom’s not ok, her mother has just passed, but I don’t know what else to say. Instead I just ask another question; “should I call mom or my aunts or Jamie?”
“Mom’s phone is probably off right now honey,” dad says, “and your aunts are busy driving down. As to Jamie, mom thought it would be better to wait to tell your sister until after her swim meet tomorrow morning. There’s nothing she could do right now anyway. Mom and her sisters just need some time to grieve privately.”
Every time dad says something I nod in agreement, and as he talks I pace in circles across the hardwood floor, its cold surface making me walk on the sides of my feet so that as little of me is touching it as possible. As I turn into another circle I shift my weight onto my toes and see how far I can go before I get tired.
“Anne, are you still there?” dad asks.
“Sorry dad, I was nodding” I say. “Is there anything I can do then? Do you want me to come home?”
“Hon,” dad says, “I think the best thing for you to do is stay where you are. There’s no reason to leave school in the middle of the week. Just call mom in a couple of hours and come home this weekend, ok?”
“Ok” I reply. “I love you. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Love you sweetie” he says, and we hang up.
Walking back to the bed I bend down and put the pillows and stuffed animals back on the bed. I reach for the charger (it had fallen between the bed and the nightstand) and plug my phone back in. I stand up and put my phone down next to my English Literature textbook. I slide back into bed but the sheets are still warm but I can’t get comfortable. I still haven’t slept by the time I call mom in the morning. She hasn’t either.

Midnight Memories

ecederbaum — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 04:00:22 +0000

1. A woman sits on the floor of her flat, surrounded by dusty unopened, moving cartons packed seventeen months ago. Moonbeams, the only light, spill in the window.
Minutes go by. The boxes still look brand new, aside from the dust that is, and as she stares at them she thinks back to when she last touched them. The other boxes had been emptied immediately-the ones filled with clothes, books, music and cookware-because they were the things she needed. These were the things she wanted, the things she didn’t have room to unpack but didn’t have the heart to throw or give away either.
Guilt crept up the back of her neck like a spider. Was leaving these boxes in the cupboard any better than throwing them in the trash? If she didn’t need the space for all of his things she wouldn’t even be looking at these old boxes. They were strings, chains, tying her to her old life, her childhood, and she didn’t like thinking about them. She didn’t want to look through them but she need the space, so bending down she takes them one by one into the kitchen and delicately places them on the counter by the window.
She considers turning on the lights but she doesn’t want to wake him. She isn’t sure she’s ready to look through her past, but she definitely isn’t ready for him to go back with her. Sighing, she opens the lid to the first box, and moving out of the way of the moonlight she recognizes the Beanie Babies her mother collected with her when she was in middle school and the teddy bears and plush rabbits her father would give her every Christmas. Smiling she picks up Chilly the polar bear and thinks back to the countless hours she spent with him having wild adventures and harrowing escapes and hatching daring plots. For a while her mom had tried to get her into Barbie dolls but she had always found them boring.
Compared to her plush stuffed animals the dolls were stiff and characterless, the plastic to cold and hard to be endearing and the outfits to ridiculous. Eventually her mom gave up and gave all the Barbie Dolls to her nieces, along with all the princess outfits and make up kits that lay abandoned in the basement of their house.
Shaking her head the woman pulls herself out of her memories. She no longer lives in that house. The things on the floor in the basement now don’t belong to her, or her parents or her brother. They belong to another family. Some other family. Were they treating the house well? Did they love it like she does? She bets that they don’t. To them it’s probably just a place. Looking around she realizes that the kitchen she is in now, the apartment she is renting, is also just a place. It’s the fourth place she’s lived in since she left home actually, and she still feels restless here. Putting the lid back on the box she takes it and the others back to the cupboard. They are more important than this space. Closing the door she decides to tell her boyfriend he’ll just have to find room somewhere else, and heads of to join him in bed, content to leave her boxes for some other night.

Eve Cederbaum

Musings on Quilts, Classes and Quotes

ecederbaum — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 03:53:28 +0000

Regard the art on the cover of this book. Relax, take in the colors and the composition. Then freewrite a page of anything it suggests to you, reminds you of, or makes you feel. You don’t need to make sense or sentences, nor stick to the subject. Just let it flow. (Warm-up, Burroway 1)

All of the geometric shapes, and most especially the squares, remind me of my grandmother’s quilts. My grandmother has been making quilts since long before I have been born. I’m pretty sure she has made one for all of her kids and most of her grandchildren. Anyway, that’s what it reminded me of right after the obvious nature and agricultural imagery that popped into my head; wheat fields, hay, grass ect. ect. The pale pink color doesn’t really fit in with either of those things though, unless it’s a flower (either in nature or on one of my grandmothers quilts).

When I was in high school I had to take an art class, which was one of the most terrifying experiences I had ever had in a classroom — mostly because I didn’t think I had any artistic talent and partly because there were no points for a good try – and the picture on the cover reminded me of something we had to do in that class. One of our projects was to take a picture, either one we found in a magazine or online or shot ourselves, trace it onto another piece of paper, trace that onto watercolor paper and then recreate the original picture in mosaic form. I did a picture of a bird (I know I should be more specific but I can’t remember for the life of me what kind it was) on a branch with pink flowers and green vegetation all around. The pale pastel pink on the cover reminds me of the pink of the flower petals. That project was so cool. Another thing that was cool was how our teacher let us listen to our iPods while we painted, which made the time spent on those uncomfortable three legged stools bearable.

Maybe it’s all the colors or the blocks and lines and dotes and variation, but if I stare at the image to long it makes me feel claustrophobic and headachy. I wish that everything had more room to breathe. The x’s look like they are trying to expand, to force the rectangles, their jailers, to give them more space, to let them be free to grow until they cross the whole front cover, flow onto the back and then into the margins of the pages themselves. My only salvation is in the top bit of the picture, a tiny section that consist of about eight lines, all vaguely straight and parallel, and blessedly simple. They remind me of paintings by Mark Rothko, though I feel strongly that if I knew more about abstract expressionism I would find what I just uttered to be a completely idiotic idea. Mostly they remind me of him because last year my Art History 114 and 115 teacher told my class about how Rothko was one of his favorite painters because when he went to a museum and sat in front of one of the paintings and let it flow over it would make him cry. For some reason I find myself continually gravitating towards that top bit of the cover, and it reminds me of my teacher talking about Rothko.

Thinking about places in my mind reminds me of this fantastic Harry Potter quote, where Dumbledore says to Harry “”of course it’s happening inside your head Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real” which is one of the truest things I have ever read, and since I can’t top it, I think I’ll end here.

Eve Cederbaum

Choice Poem

ecederbaum — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 02:08:05 +0000

Henna

Stain floods the valleys of her palm
before being overtaken by thick red paste.

Leaning in, I smell the eucalyptus oil
I had massaged into her hand at the beginning.

Steady hands. Q-tips lie in a line
off to the side, just in case.

Moving up the base of her forefinger
I add more, tiny leaves and petals that end

inside the whorl of her fingerprint,
marking her.

Hours later the paste has dried,
its liquids absorbed into her skin.

Over the next few days the color darkens,
and the lotus design contrasts against her paleness.

When I see her next it is from a distance,
but close enough to watch as she traces the design

with her other hand absentmindedly,
etching the pattern into her memory.

Eve Cederbaum

Brunch at Home

ecederbaum — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 18:40:38 +0000

Brunch at Home

The ceiling paint smelled of
burnt bacon and blue cheese.
Mushrooms danced in a hiss-
ing pan. Caught in the breeze

smells mingled, the air vent
unable to stop them.
The oven timer rang
just as I threw cut stems

from fresh lilies away.
Flowers now in a vase,
I grabbed the frittata
and haphazardly placed

it next to my glass trays.
Spooning fruit into bowls
all that’s left is the fish,
a nice fillet of sole.

Eve Cederbaum

Washington’s First Inaugural Address

ecederbaum — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:59:48 +0000

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

Among the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with
greater anxieties than my toothaches.

My greatest battle was neither at Cambridge nor at Brandywine Creek,
nor is it over.
All these long years, since the tender age of twenty two
I have been plagued by all manner of illnesses.

From measles to dysentery,
malaria to the flu,
nothing can compare to the hell
of a toothache.

I ask you, what have I done to deserve this?
Every morning I open my toilet bag,
I take out my silver toothbrush,
my tongue scraper and silver tooth powder case.

I have tried solutions of balsam and myrrh,
powders of pumice, borax, burnt bread and tobacco,
mouthwash made of salt, wine and vinegar,
and yet still my gums and molars torture me!

Now I have just the one tooth left.
You’d think my salvation was near,
that after this last canine was removed
I would be able to live out the rest of my life
and presidency, pain free.
Pain free and talking,
with the best dentistry has to offer; a denture!

These damnable dentures will be the death of me!
Awkwardly they lay tight against my gums
digging and jabbing, pinching and stabbing
with every chuckle or comment,
I resist the urge to rip them out of my mouth
and throw them into the Potomac river!

Forgive me ladies and gentlefolk,
I digress.
Truly, my greatest anxieties come not from the
slight pain I feel, but rather
the notification that was transmitted by your order,
and received on the 14th day of the present month.

Eve Cederbaum

Motorcycle

ecederbaum — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:06:46 +0000

Motorcycle

The brass bell hangs
camouflaged, metal on metal.
As he turns on the two low wattage bulbs overhead
the chrome takes on a look of glazed luster,
the light dripping down from one cylinder to the next
until it disappears beneath the undercarriage.
There the bell rests, dormant.

Eagerly the side stand retracts,
the bike tilting upwards as the man throws one leg
over its body, grounding himself with his other.

Sound echoes through the maze of piping
as the bell awakens, its chimes like sanctus bells
chasing evil away, calling the faithful to prayer.

Riding is this man’s prayer, his release.
If the bike is his temple the bell is his protector.
The scripture of the rider is simple:
give a guardian bell to a rider you know, and love,
and it will keep them safe.

The man puts on his lime green earplugs,
distancing himself from the noise.
Not the noise of his bell, but another,
his gift of protection, tinkling somewhere far away.
Given, but perhaps no longer deserved.

Venomous insults, sudden rage,
magazines thrown across the room;
his body tenses reflexively.
Putting on his helmet the man turns
on the engine, encasing the garage
in a cacophonous cloud of wheezing
and grumbling.

The motorcycle surges out the garage,
and turning onto the street the sweet
melody of a bell sings out, all but imperceptible.

Eve Cederbaum