OCD, The Dude, and Me
Page 8
*CLASS ASSIGNMENT* 3/7
Journal #3 of the England Trip
(Covering day 5 of the trip. I have a lot to say to Ms. Harrison. A.)
Danielle Levine
English 12
Ms. Harrison
Period 4
Today began with a visit to Westminster Abbey, which is a place I just love. It’s beautiful. Famous writers are buried there, and I love to stand in the writers’ corner and soak in the intelligence buried there. You can feel it.
You know what? I can’t focus on writing about the Abbey and the other stuff we did today, because, well, I just have to get something off my chest. I want to tell you the truth about something embarrassing that I did. You are my teacher, and I think you are a pretty smart lady about facts and stuff and also about feelings. So I am going to risk being honest here and just hope it falls on the compassionate ears I think you have.
I know I fell behind when we visited Big Ben and, because I didn’t stay with the group, I wasn’t with everyone when you did a head count on Downing Street. I know you were mad, and you had a right to be. Your job on this trip is hard and we shouldn’t make it harder. I just want to tell you why I fell behind. You can still be mad, but maybe you’ll understand a little.
By the time we got to Big Ben after taking the boat ride on the Thames, seeing the Crown Jewels, and watching the boys do handstands on the Tower Bridge, the sun was starting to set. It was very beautiful to me. The sky was gray, but streaks of orange offset it and I just kept staring, and I got lost in that staring instead of listening to the tour guide. When my eyes came back to earth, they fell on a young couple standing in front of the clock. Maybe you saw them. He was wearing tight black jeans with a sweatshirt, his hood down to reveal thick black hair to his shoulders. A chain dangled over his jeans pocket and his shoelaces were untied. He was cute, Ms. Harrison, he really was. His cuteness wasn’t all about his looks, either. It was very much about what he was doing and the way he was doing it, standing next to Big Ben.
He was with his girlfriend (well, I guessed she was his girlfriend), and he was kissing the life out of her. (I really hope it is okay that I am writing this to you. I really want to.) He was giving her one of those kisses that you see in movies or read about in books, where I pretty much think the whole rest of the world disappeared for him, even the majesty of that big clock behind him. And, see, that was part of what really mesmerized me. He was having a timeless moment under the biggest symbol of time on the planet. (As an English teacher, I am sure you already thought of that irony as you read this before I even mentioned it, but still I wanted to tell you that I got it.)
His girlfriend looked just like Juno, except she wasn’t pregnant. Well, truthfully, I couldn’t really know that. Maybe she was and that’s why they were kissing the way I saw. I am sure making a baby together can inspire that kind of kissing. But she wasn’t visibly pregnant is what I’m saying. She was just really, really cute and smart looking with short dark hair and tiny thighs like Juno, like a British Juno because she was pretty pale, and I really have no idea about her teeth.
Anyway, like I said before, her boyfriend was kissing the life out of her, or the soul out of her, something was being kissed out of her. I saw her rise up on her toes from the power of his kiss. She was so moved by this kiss that she just dropped her bag to the ground, probably not caring if someone walked off with all her possessions because someone was loving her so passionately in that moment that all her things meant nothing.
Ms. Harrison, I am sure a scene like this is familiar to you. I am sure someone has kissed you like that. Maybe not under Big Ben, but maybe the Empire State Building or something (LOL). The point is, no one has ever kissed me like that and watching those two, I thought about how it is truly possible that no one ever will. Please, please, please just let me write this to you without you giving my words to Marv or my mom. Please. I don’t think this is psychotic. I think it is truly just honest and that is not pathological.
So I stared at them and I watched this boy ravenously kiss this girl. It was incredible. Like he was malnourished and eating from a delicious buffet that was about to pack up for the night. And he needed to get as much as he could before it was taken away. And she . . . well, you know that line from Hamlet’s first soliloquy about the way Gertrude loved Hamlet’s father: “Why, she would hang on him, as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on.” It was just like that. They were both increasingly hungry for the buffet that was each other. (I won’t extend this metaphor anymore. I think you get my point.) But it just stunned me, stunned me and made me lose the moment we were in as a class. I didn’t see or feel you all move and get on the bus. I just didn’t know you did that.
I am sorry I got left behind, and I am sorry I caused a hassle for you when you counted everyone and I wasn’t there. I just wanted you to know that I was lost from the group because, well, I am truly lost from the group. I am sorry, Ms. Harrison.
Teacher comments: It’s okay, Danielle. We’ve all moved on from that moment. You can forgive yourself.
POSTCARD #1 to Mom and Dad
Dear Mom and Dad,
Everything is fine. England is as lovely as it always is. Thanks for sending me on the trip.
Love you,
Danielle
POSTCARD #3 to Aunt Joyce
Dear Aunt Joyce,
I know you will probably get this postcard after I get home, but I am sending it because I want to remember to ask you if you’ve ever been kissed really passionately in a place that was the perfect background for such a momentous event and what that was like. To the mail people who may be reading this postcard: you are perverts who shouldn’t be spending work hours reading other people’s mail.
Love you,
Danielle
*PRIVATE TRIP INFO* 3/7
Journal #3: The real story
Heather called me a bitch to my face because room check was earlier tonight because I held up the bus. I literally tried biting the inside of my cheek like girls do in television movies in order not to cry. It didn’t work. It just gave me another reason to want to cry.
I stayed in the room and pretended I was invisible.
I know this wish to be invisible is ironic since I am twenty pounds overweight. I mean, if I were truly committed to this invisibility thing I should have developed anorexia, but I am not that lucky.
People may not see me or they may ignore me as I desire them to, but the force of life does not ignore me. It just keeps acting upon me in the most impersonal way like gravity. There is something profound, I’m sure, to be learned from this, but I can’t possibly find my way to that right now. What I am going to find my way to is the phone so I can order room service.
*CLASS ASSIGNMENT* 3/8
Journal #4 of the England Trip
(Covering day 6 of the trip. A.)
Danielle Levine
English 12
Ms. Harrison
Period 4
Today we went on a walking tour of Canterbury, an incredible city. Is it a city? Or a village? Or maybe it’s a hamlet? Anyway, whatever Canterbury is, I like it. Our tour guide was an old woman who told us she was born in Canterbury and had lived there her whole life and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. In fact, she said she plans to haunt the place after she dies (LOL).
She was married once, she said, in another lifetime when she was very young, but her husband died when he fell off a scaffolding as he was refurbishing one of the churches in their neighborhood. If anyone gets to go to heaven, she said, it must be her husband, Bubbles, (that’s so cute) because he died in the service of the Lord even though he spent his weekends at the pub. Some things you do make the Lord turn a blind eye to some other things, she told us. She’s a relativist, she said, and while I am still trying to figure out exactly what that means, I know I want to be a relativist, too.
Ms. Harrison, I am going to write about the stuff we saw in Canterbury, but I have to write about this woman
first because she is what I will most remember about my visit to Canterbury and probably what I will most remember about my whole trip to England, along with some other small details that I won’t write about here.
Justine (that was our guide’s name in case you don’t remember) started out our walking tour by giving each of us a piece of candy because she said young people can pay attention better if they have something to do with their mouths other than talk. Also, a little something sweet never hurt anybody. Her mother named her Justine eighty years ago on the day she was born, and she liked the name just fine until she read Frankenstein and that was the name of the innocent young girl who was falsely accused and hanged for killing the young Frankenstein boy. It took her some time to come to terms with her name after that, but she came to realize there was a lot about life that you just had to come to terms with, and she hoped we would learn that lesson sooner rather than later.
Which brought us to the entrance of the Canterbury Cathedral and Justine’s lecture about how, whether we liked it or not, we had to come to terms with the Starbucks that was situated right at the entrance. Christianity was established in Canterbury in the year six hundred she said, and Starbucks was established in two thousand, and those were just two facts we would have to come to terms with. The Cathedral and the Coffeehouse (she said both should be capitalized) were places of worship to two similar and yet different gods. She didn’t elaborate and I will have to think about that more, but I am sure she is right.
Justine is the most wrinkled woman I have ever seen. And I have to tell you this, Ms. Harrison: I really thought she was beautiful. I can’t believe I thought that, but I did. Usually, when I think of old people I get kind of sad. I think how awful it must be to be so old. But I had a real epiphany as I listened to and watched Justine. Sometimes it is awful to be young, so where was I getting the idea that it was so much worse to be old?
After the tour of the Cathedral, you gave us free time for lunch. Everyone paired off and went their separate ways, and I was left standing at the front of the Cathedral thinking it was fine, that I would have lunch by myself in this beautiful place. But then, Justine asked if I wanted to have lunch with her. I did. I said yes. I was both surprised and happy with myself for that decision.
Instead of going to a restaurant, Justine took me back to her flat (that’s what she called her little apartment), and she served us authentic shepherd’s pie she had made herself. I really liked it because it tasted so good and was served in these small antique-looking ceramic pie pans. I had never eaten anything so cute!
Her home, which was on the second floor above a repair shop, looked just like something out of a storybook: everything was old and creaky and a little dusty. There was not one thing (not even a fork or knife) that looked like it came from Ikea or Target or Restoration Hardware. She didn’t really have a color scheme or design of any kind; it was very eclectic. She had old books stacked on every shelf and piled in every corner. Pieces of yellowed paper with wise quotes hung on her refrigerator by magnets. Pictures and paintings in old frames covered all her walls. I could have spent weeks there asking her about all the pictures and the quotes, but if I had done that I really would have missed the bus again! I just asked her about one picture. It hung to the left of the window that looked out onto the street and right above her dining table, which seated two. It was an old black-and-white photo of a man in a suit and tie with perfectly trimmed hair. He had very kind eyes. “Is that your husband?” I asked.
“It was.”
And then she told me all about Bubbles. About how he wouldn’t serve in the army even though I guess he was supposed to. How he said he would only put on a uniform that made him truly be of service to humanity, which is why he worked in restoration. Justine said she was so proud of what Bubbles did for a living. He spent a lot of time restoring the tile work in the old buildings in Canterbury. It was very tedious, specific work meant only for artists who had a sense of history and who cared about future generations in a very real sense. “Little things, little things, are much more important than big things. Big things hit you in the face with their bigness and obscure the little, more important things that really define a life and provide it with delicacy.” I’ve quoted her here because I remember, verbatim what she said because it sounded so real and so true. I wished I understood it the same way her face showed that she did.
I must have looked a little confused so she said politicians and movie stars and bank accounts were big things that got in the way of living. And when I said to her that, well, you need a bank account to survive, she said I was dead wrong. She said it just like that—dead wrong. Then she pulled out a glass milk bottle that had lots of cash shoved in it. “This is my bank account and it works just fine, thank you very much.” I wanted to ask her a million questions about how she lived like that and didn’t she feel like she was missing out or wasn’t she worried someone would break in and steal her money. She didn’t get to travel or buy new things, but I kind of knew the answer she would have given. Her small life made her happy. Her special life was all she needed.
Ms. Harrison, Justine never had one bit of plastic surgery her whole life. I didn’t ask her that, but I just know it’s true. I mean, if you’re a woman who keeps all your money in a glass milk bottle, then you don’t have the resources or the inclination for plastic surgery. She was eighty years old with so many wrinkles, even on places that I didn’t know you could get wrinkles, like on her forearms. Each one fascinated me. She reminded me so much of the lead actress in Harold and Maude. Have you seen that movie? If you haven’t you really should. You’d like it. Anyway, Justine had that same spirit of acceptance, that same adorableness that Ruth Gordon possessed. We are wrong if we think old people are freaky and pathetic. Well, I guess some of them can be. Just like some young people can be freaky and pathetic.
At the end of lunch, before we walked back to meet the group, Justine wrote down her address and said we could be pen pals. She said she had been wanting to write letters to someone in another country and thought I would do just fine, thank you very much.
After my lunch with Justine, we saw the Christopher Marlowe theatre, and we learned about how Canterbury got a new archbishop in 2003. When I read the Canterbury Tales again at some point in my life, I will have a whole new set of pictures in my head about the setting of those stories.
For my room at home, I was able to find a snow globe featuring the Canterbury Cathedral and some postcards of cobblestone alleys. When I look at them in the future, they’ll remind me of Justine.
I guess for you, the most dramatic part of the day was when James came back from lunch with a giant tattoo of the British flag on his left pectoral. Well, maybe even more dramatic was when we got back to the hotel, and it was clear from his fever that the tattoo was infected. Looked like maybe you had a fever, too, because you were boiling mad. LOL. Hope it’s not too soon to joke about this.
Teacher comments: What a rich experience with history and humanity you had. Thanks for sharing!
*PRIVATE TRIP INFO* 3/8
Journal #4: The real story
I am happy to report that tonight I don’t really need a private journal because my day was so wonderful, and I already wrote all the details to Ms. Harrison. I had nothing to hide. Awesome.
*CLASS ASSIGNMENT* 3/9
Journal #5 of the England Trip
(Covering the last day of the trip. Another A. I am on a roll.)
Danielle Levine
English 12
Ms. Harrison
Period 4
Well, this was our last day in England. We started with a visit to the Tate Modern Museum. I am so happy you included that museum on our tour, Ms. Harrison. Thank you. I lost myself in the photography exhibit section, unbelievably, but Keira personally invited me to check it out with her, and I did. I saw how some photographs make a positive statement.
My favorite piece was pictures of a woman who chronicled her journey of losing ten pounds. She took
a picture of herself naked every day from her starting point of 140 pounds to her ending point of 130 pounds. If you looked at each picture in succession you didn’t notice much change. But if you stepped back and looked at the first picture and then the last, you could see how different she looked.
Our lives are like that. We all probably change a little every day and we don’t really notice the changes. But if we look at ourselves today and think back to a year ago, we might be surprised by what we find. It’s hard to bring change into our lives, I think, and so that’s why it doesn’t really happen radically most of the time. Although, wait, sometimes things do change radically without our choice. I guess what I am talking about is conscious change. That kind of change I think takes time like the diet woman showed through her photographs.
Anyway, that’s just one example of what is so cool about the Tate. Also, that exhibit made me want to go on a diet (but not photograph myself along the way. LOL).
After the Tate, we did the Southwark Riverside Walk, and I got to have a good conversation with a classmate. (You’re probably surprised, but it’s true and maybe now I won’t have to see Marv anymore because I am learning to socialize.)
Then we got a tour of the Globe Theatre before we all rode the London Eye and got a spectacular view of the city where I took a moment to realize how small we really are in the scheme of things. And that reminded me of what Justine had said about the beauty of small things, that it’s just fine that we have small lives; those are probably better.
Teacher comments: Nice summation of a beautiful trip.
*PRIVATE TRIP INFO* 3/9
Journal #5: The real story
(A very satisfying journal to write.)
I am still just amazed any time something good happens to me. But today was one of those days, and I will just admit that as I sit here and type this journal, I am still amazed. When we did the Southwark Riverside Walk I was walking at a slower pace than everyone else because I was soaking in every image I could before we left. I really do love London. Someday, perhaps, I can live there.