What I Like
I bought these sweet potato chips from Whole Foods (only made with potatoes, peanut oil, and salt) and they are so good-thin and melty, begging me with their orange crunchy ridges for lips to keep eating them, keep eating. I rubberbanded them and corralled them to their proper spot, out of my sight. I am still thinking about them, and about how greasy my fingertips are on the keys. I can still see the blue foil batting its lashes at me from behind the computer. No, I will not eat anymore. I will go down the street and take a look at this neighborhood that I like. The Highlands is where I work and it is a nice neighborhood in North Denver that has a little oldness, a little newness, some quirkiness, some Europeanness, and a nice little coffee shop in an old house with a lady who did not cut up my credit card when someone found it on the street and brought it inside to her. See? Humans are good people.
I have so much to do, all I can focus on is the things that I don't need to get done. Across the street, three men are paining puffy yellow clouds onto a pink brick background, and another man gets out of his car and impressively carries a four-foot aquarium sideways through a door that looks too narrow for just a man, not to mention a cage. Cages are weird. No, maybe it's the people who put them in their houses that are weird. I had a cage in my room for a while, and I always felt odd about it. Tap-tap-tap I tried to get my iguana's attention, but I always felt he was thinking, you put me in this cage, don't you tap at me. I named him Nemo. David kept saying, “That thing's a bad omen,” which I never got until like this year. Get it?
I have no idea what these buildings I pass every day have inside them or what they will become. I am wondering why anyone would paint clouds on the outside of a house when this guy who lives above the office where I work walks by without his dog, Boo boo, who sometimes runs underneath my feet when I'm doing work and scares the living daylights out of my legs. Boo boo eats things off the carpet like sweet potato chip remnants. He's one of those small dogs who should be called something different than normal-sized dogs. Two people on the corner touch like they are in love, and a woman with an enormous necklace made of black plastic hoops swings herself, her jewelry, her chunky blonde highlights, and her odd assembly of style across the street.
Another couple walks to the middle of the street, they hug, and then their hands cling over the yellow line in that awkward third date linger: kiss? no kiss? They decided not to kiss. Bummer. I like to see people liking each other. (In a non-pervy way).
A car drives by with my brother's friend, who is a funny dancer, in the passenger seat. This is the same coffee shop where I ran into my friend Ann from grade school and her mother a month ago, which was all the more coincidental because it was the first day I had ever come here and she was only in town for a few days. She looked more beautiful than I had expected she would, although she was always pretty. I like when things that are beautiful stay beautiful. I wanted to tap her on the back and say, “You've really been taking care of yourself,” but then she might think I had expected her to look worse. What if we all expected that everything gets better with time? What if we made our own clocks so we liked time better? My dad made most of the clocks in our house, and he usually seems pretty at ease with things.
Sometimes, I write to keep track; sometimes I am writing to lose track. Today, the lady here who makes my chai does not recognize that I am the credit card girl. Last time, she said, “Megan?” when she looked at my credit card, and I said, “Yes?” and she pulled my lost one out from a hiding spot and said, “I knew it was you!” We were both beaming. But today there's just the curt “hi” which makes me a little sad, because every one wants to hear their name. Maybe I am writing to recognize things. What if instead of everyone saying hi, everyone said, what's your name?