The Furious Spinner

Stumble backward into the day, dizzy from dreams and not enough sleep. Gray white day at first, the clouds like the caul over a newborn's face, foretelling great things to come.

The Winds lift the veil on the sunny day. I hurry to the library where I will spend the day working with Mario. I used to work in a library five days a week. I was good at my job. The subversive librarian. All good librarians are subversive by Nature. We are always on the hunt for the grail: information for everyone, no matter what their station in life. Is this what you were looking for? Information presented like a gift, a remedy, tonic, healing. Is this what you need?

Today I step back into the role of branch librarian easily, with Mario by my side, or me by his. So many days I feel like Donna Q, tilting at windmills. This is concrete what I do at the library—it is certain. I either find what the patron needs or I don't. No ambiguity. No one standing between me and the goal. Peace and tolerance reigns in my domain.

In fact, many minutes pass on this Saturday when everyone is quiet and still, and we all breathe together: the young man reading a graphic novel and smiling shyly when he glances my way; a teenage girl bent over at the internet station alongside a stranger in town who checks his email on another terminal; two girls sitting on the floor in the children's section deciding which horse books to get; a woman reading the paper; a man looking for books on Thomas Edison.

Why is it whenever I hear about Edison I think of him and Tesla arguing over who had the better method to execute someone by electrocution? AC or DC.

I want to take a different current. I do my job. I find comfort in competence, an aspect of myself I used to take for granted. The Earth always feels unsteady once our bodies and minds fail us. Constant tiny earthquakes. You've just got to grab a board and ride it out.

Mario and I don't touch while we're working. It's strange to be this close and not touch. People come in who don't know us. I wonder if they can guess we are lovers, mates, friends? He is so easy to work with. Why aren't they all in love with him?

I talk with the patrons as I help them. I know many of them, and we have quiet conversations about the Patriot Act, Intellectual Freedom, privacy, fire season, the weather, Ireland, the upcoming fair. Outside the trees rock in the wind, their leaves flashing green and gold, green and gold, as they move rapidly from shade to sun and back again. This would be a perfect day to have a windmill. To be a windmill. Think of the electricity it/I could generate!

We close the library together and go home. Mario makes rice, vegetables, and salmon. I go outside and water my postage stamp-sized garden. I crouch amongst the marjoram and lettuce. The wind presses the tall arugula plants up against me; their yellow and white flowers tickle my cheek. They are shade for my second and third plantings of lettuce. I gently harvest the lettuce and other greens. The tiny red lettuce leaves are getting eaten by some kind of insect. I've never had bugs in my lettuce before. I take the bounty of greens into Mario. He washes them carefully. After dinner, we realize we forgot to put the lettuce on our plates.

The wind makes the day seem slightly unreal. Or something. I read more of Mario's book he recently finished. I fall into his sweet quirky world of Terrastina and Mazolli and their twin girls. They live in a small town like ours and they seem like us, if we had had children, if I had never been ill...if, if, if... It's a lovely place, and I don't like to leave it.

Mario and I walk around town before dark. We say hello to an acquaintance as we start down the hill. The man remarks that the Fourth of July was relatively quiet this year. I see Mario flinch as he remembers the bombs bursting in air. No Tomfest this year, I say. We nod, relieved that we will not be subjected to five nights of Christian heavy metal again. "It would be nice if the Irish festival comes again, though," he says. "Yes, that was fun," I say. And we part company.

Down Russell Street toward the post office. The sun has set, tumbling behind the hills like a giant drunk spilling chianti-colored light over the forested slopes. A lone man goes into the post office. We follow him.

"Hiding from the grandchildren, eh?" I say. He and his wife have two girl grandchildren for the summer. (Remember the ice storm that happened while Mario and I were in Arizona? His wife slipped and broke her hip during the clean up. They walk around town as much as Mario and I do.)

He makes a noise and shakes his head.

"They've got a lot of energy, don't they," I say.

"It's a different life style than we're accustomed to," he says, "but that's all right." He waves as he leaves. Mario checks our box and finds a check from Honda. He complained about our Honda needing the same repair over and over, and they actually sent us a few hundred dollars as compensation for one of the repairs.

"It took so long I was starting to believe they were shining me on," Mario said.

Never hurts to ask. Never hurts to swing at those windmills. Okay, it might hurt, but what the hell.

Keep walking. Pass by the brew pub.

"Do you ever stop and think that there's a whole segment of society in this town we don't know," I say as we walk by the house with the barking dog but the dog doesn't come out and we keep going by the ambulance, toward the Sage House.

"Because we don't drink?" Mario says.

"Yes. But it's not a religion. We don't care if they drink. Alcohol just makes me sick."

Mario shakes his head. "But they think it’s religion or something. People who drink aren't comfortable being around people who don't."

I try to remember when I drank if I cared. I was young. I only cared if I was getting a buzz. I was the center of the universe.

"It's just kind of strange," I say. He was right. Most of the people we knew who drank shunned us. Very odd. I wanted to shout, "I'm not Carrie Nation! Donna Q, maybe, but that's a different affliction."

We go to Main Street and look for a video. Nothing. Up to A&J's for bananas. No brown bananas to freeze as "ice cream." I look at the headlines in the Oregonian while Mario buys green bananas. The U.S. Court of Appeals says Bush can resume detainee tribunals. I breathe deeply. How can we stop this insanity? What can we do?

We take the long way home, holding hands and talking about writing. We start up the hill. Mario points out a brilliant blue feather on the ground. Just then, we notice one of the trees that was downed in the ice storm. It's still alive. I'm not sure what kind it is—it has deep dark black-purple leaves. We stare at the sight of this huge prone tree, still growing from the hillside, still beautiful despite her misfortune. Then we continue our walk.

We stop to gaze at a neighbor's patch of black-eyed Susans. They are preternaturally orange in the sweet light of dusk. I reach out and stroke her rosemary bush; she gave me a branch of it several years ago. I stuck it in the ground near my rosemary bush, until I could transplant it. It grew roots and sprang up tall very quickly, before I had a chance to do anything. I tried to transplant it several times, but it appears they no longer wish to be separated.

At home again, the wind dies. Night fills the day. Later I slip outside and look up at the moon, then down at the Queen Anne's lace that reaches up to me, even though I'm on the porch. I’ve never seen such tall beautiful wild carrot before. I breathe deeply. "Thank you for this day," I whisper, stretching my arms out wide. Just then, I hear cheers coming up the hill from the fair ground. I smile. I guess they’re having a good day, too. 0 comments

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All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.