In Case You Want To Know

Moving

In a college speech class, I once had to give an extemporaneous three minute talk on the topic of moving. I was called to the front of the class, and the professor, sitting in the back of the room, merely said, “Your topic is Moving.”

I spent my first thirty seconds or so just looking out at my classmates feeling my face redden. I was trying to think of anything to say. Finally, I spoke about moving along through college and how difficult it was and some of the courses I had taken.

It was quite a substandard speech.

At the end, I had to stand there while the teacher gave some feedback, he called it, to improve for the next time. He read from the notes he had been taking as I had spoken. “Too many pauses. You have to watch the pauses. Try to plan out what you will say as you go along, and don’t be intimidated when you are talking. You also need to chose something from the beginning and go with it. You wasted too much time. Anyway, you’ll get four more chances this semester, and as I have said, I drop the lowest grade. See me after class and I will tell you your grade.”

It was many years after college that I thought back to that speech and realized I had never moved when I had given that talk. But now I could have given a much better speech.

Now I would have faced the class and I would have said—

My furniture was once put in storage. My favorite was the chair.

I once had two apartments. One for if it did work out. One for if it didn’t.

I once saw my parents go.

I’ve been to twenty-three funerals. I once saw a casket opened. Gray. Ash. White satin.

I once had blood taken from my arm.

Boxes of books are the heaviest.

My sister’s table was from Jamaica.

She died of leukemia. Leukemia eats the blood. And makes you rest.

I’ve often wondered how far and how long.

I once got three estimates.

And almost bought a house.

And moved to the city instead.

I cleared out the closet.

Brushed the floor.

Cleaned hair from the sink.

Scrubbed the tiles.

Turned off the water one more time.

Took one last look.

And left.

All The Floating Strings

“Do you know the difference between toothpicks and spider webs?” It was one of those questions that Coe always asked when there was too much silence.

Coe and Larry were sitting on the front steps of the house on a muggy summer evening watching Jamie play on the lawn.

“What, Coe?” Larry asked.

“That’s the thing. There is no difference because everything is connected. Bread and birds and stars and strollers and pain and heat. And that’s the trouble. Because nothing gets differentiated. And it’s all a mass of confusion.”

Larry stood up and walked to the bottom of the steps, and standing on the edge of the lawn, turned around and faced Coe. “That’s what’s wrong with us sometimes, Coe. The way we see things. I think nothing is connected. I think we try, but nothing comes close to anything else. We’re all like strings. Kind of floating in a wind. Maybe we touch for a second. And then some breeze makes us flow another way.”

“I want to go back inside,” Coe said turning away. “It’s getting too hot, and Jamie’s going to get bitten up.”

She got up and looked at the spider web by the light near the mailbox. “Look at the spider,” she said. “It’s still in the middle of the web just waiting. Don’t you see that, Larry? Don’t you see it hiding like we are? Doesn’t that make us all tied together? Aren’t we connected like that? Can’t you see that, too?”