Relics
My first senior year of college was a memorable first senior year, and my favorite of my “four years in only five” undergraduate university experience. My roommate, a close friend since our freshwoman days when we bonded over cigarettes and romantic naivety, had recently experienced heartbreak when her nearly three-year relationship came to an adulterous end. To commemorate what had been or, more accurately, what remained, she created a body outline, in masking tape, on our 5 x 8 area rug. The rug was classic dorm flooring décor with its rough texture and open invitation, by way of its dark burgundy color, for mixed drink spills. There were many an Apple Pie Shot (half apple juice, half vodka, topped with whip cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon; shoot, swish, swallow) poured both inside and outside the lines of my friend’s rug body outline. There were also many cigarette ashes layered in among its course weave. And inside the outline of Lisa en mask there was a relic, a broken heart.
It was hers to remember.
By October of 2001, the body outline was under the watch of an oversized, plastic, Halloween bat that hung above our television until the end of the academic year and Lisa’s graduation. I did not want to come back to my second senior year without her. She was the first one to tell me that a plane had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. She was the one who had introduced me to a man I would marry, and later divorce. She was the one who joined me on Superbowl Sunday for a TLC special about same-sex weddings and the one who had first shown me The Crow, Brandon Lee version/the only one that matters. She was the one who would army crawl across her own body outline to look for signs of feet outside the door when we were trying to hide from everyone. She was the one to welcome me back from night class to a solo New Year’s Eve celebration, complete with Kenny G’s “Auld Lang Syne” and cheap wine, both on repeat. It was not December 31st, but she needed the year to be over.
For a night, it was.
Rituals, even the last-minute, mellow saxophone type, are cathartic. Honoring a life, grieving a love, or bidding farewell to a possibility asks much of our hearts. Tears and words and music and gatherings give us a means of lightening the load, if only for a little while.
Then there’s fire. Continue reading “#60: Blue Circuit”
Kitty Eveling 