sea salt

J.J. was a skinny kid who moved to our neighborhood when I was in middle school. He was my age, but a lot shorter than me (most of the boys were). More importantly, he played basketball in his driveway. For a few glorious summers, there were enough kids in my neighborhood to have big games of basketball, dodge ball, and hide-and-seek. So one afternoon I took my basketball over to J.J.'s house and rang the doorbell. "A bunch of us are playing basketball at the end of the street. Wanna play?" After that he became a regular in our pick-up games, which we played most nights in the summer and every weekend. We didn't know each other very well, as we went to different schools, but my parents liked his parents, he was nice, and really good at basketball. Perfect qualities for a neighborhood kid. And because he was so much shorter than me, I never had a crush on him. When we reached high school, J.J. moved back to Milwaukee to live with his biological father, and I di...

(published in MARY: A Journal of New Writing, Spring 2012) "Do we just go in?" Kevin asked. "I think so?" I said, unsure, as we slowly walked up the brick steps. The front door was open behind a glass storm door, and we looked in. A woman standing in the kitchen looked up at me, and I smiled and awkwardly gestured to the door. "Come on in!" she shouted, and when we walked in we saw two women sitting on a couch, another sitting at a table behind a cash box, and stuff everywhere. "Everything's for sale, upstairs, downstairs, and basement. Let us know if you have any questions," the one behind the cash box told us. Kevin and I looked at each other, trying to act like this all felt completely normal and not weird at all, to be walking through a [presumably deceased] person's house, looking at price tags. We were really only there to see if we could find an old chair to add to our mismatched dining set, completely furnished wit...

Those readers who know me in person know that I am, well, loud. My voice is loud, my laugh is loud, my gait is loud (it's inevitable when you walk as fast as a person who has lived in Boston). I like loud music, loud conversation, and loud white noise (which we use at night to hide the silence and its variety of soft, creepy noises). I know someone who finally got hearing aids after years of nodding along, asking people to repeat themselves, and not going to the movies because it was too hard to distinguish the voices. The doctor's tests revealed that he had 50% loss in both ears - he was only hearing half the world around him. With hearing aids, he was shocked to discover the sounds of things he had previously assumed to be silent. The ding of his car's turn signal. The click of his fingers on a keyboard. The wind. Most of these sounds are annoyances I've always tried to mask: the car radio covers the sound of the blinker, headphones at work make my keyboard sil...

I spoke with a woman who wants my help as she begins writing short stories. "I've never written a story before, never in my life!  I'm a songwriter, but I've never written anything else before." "Look," I said, "in order for anyone to do anything, you have to have never done it before." She didn't respond, so I took a different approach.  "Before you wrote your first song, you'd never written a song before, right?  At one time, Johnny Cash had never written a song before, and then he became Johnny Cash." "Yes, that makes sense..."  My limited knowledge of the language of music helped us get one step closer together.  I speak writing and she speaks music, but somehow we had to communicate if we were going to successfully work together to create something new.  I asked her what she had written so far. "I have the idea for the beginning and the end, but nothing in between.  I don't know what ya...

A few weeks ago on the train, I tried not to read over the shoulder of the young woman next to me.  I couldn't help it, though - she was reading the glossary of her book, and I had to know the words she was trying to learn. I saw one word and stopped reading.  I stopped because after one word I knew she was reading a book about music, and I stopped because the definition was so arresting I spent the rest of the train ride thinking about it: Monophony: a musical style employing a single melodic line without accompaniment. A single melodic line.  Without accompaniment.  Single.  Accompany.  Melody.  This concept was beautiful to me, as it defines both a musical style and a style of life.  Can one person - one single melodic line - create a melody?  Is it always necessary to be accompanied to give life to musical notes, bars, rests, and melodies?  Can a single melodic line resonate as powerfully as harmony?  As melodic li...

I hate talk radio.  Maybe it's because I spend so much of my day talking, or because I love music so much, or because my sisters and I listened to sports talk radio every morning with our father on the way to school - no matter the reason, when I turn on the radio, I want someone to sing to me. This morning on my way to school, I was listening to 91.9 WUMB, Boston's all folk radio station.  I love this station for the folk music, but in the morning I especially appreciate Dave Palmater's non-yelling, non-advertising, non-pop-music voice.  The tone and volume and cadence of his voice are less DJ, more grandfather in a rocking chair on a porch talking about Woody Guthrie.  It was this voice that lured me in and kept me tuned in long after a song had ended.  "It was on this date in 1964 that the governor of Illinois declared the Kingsmen's recording of  'Louie Louie' pornographic, and asked all local radio stations to stop playing it." Real...

At the Lily Pad in Cambridge last Saturday, I was confronted with the power of music.  Three groups played; all three featured the deep, haunting voice of the cello.  I arrived at the show in good spirits - I hadn't been to the venue since it re-opened (Boston-based readers may remember the Zeitgeist, which previously occupied the space), my boyfriend was playing for the first time with a new band, and it had reached fifty degrees that day.  All was well in my world. And then the first cello played.  The cellist played with her eyes closed, moved by every note; I was on the verge of tears.  My heart tensed up, taut as the strings on the cello as the bow was pulled across.  I felt my body relax when the bow was lifted; the cellist closed her eyes again and I could barely breathe.  What was happening?  I kept reminding myself, Nothing is wrong!  You have no reason to cry!   And I believed it, and I kept my...

I've had a song in my head all day - actually, one line of a song: "Ooooooh, I keep crawling back to you..." This is the chorus of "Crawling Back to You" by Tom Petty (Wildflowers album).* He repeats this line twice between the verses of the song, and it's enough. The line is simple, the music is subdued, and the message is clear: I'm coming back. The idea of crawling back to someone is desperate, ashamed, and exhausted. We say it with embarassment - "I went crawling back to my old boss," or with satisfaction, "He came crawling back to me," or with anger, "Don't come crawling back here when you need something!” The action of crawling in adult relationships carries such tension, such weight, so much shame that we forget it's the only way to learn how to walk. We see it as regression, a place of weakness, humility, and powerlessness. A place so low we can only look up, but somehow seem able to move forward - beca...

For the second time in my city life, I am living in a third floor apartment.  For the first time, however, I live above an accordion player.  She is friendly, helpful, and currently practicing her scales while I write.  Also, she sings Italian ballads while she plays. Many people might be turned off by the idea of living above the owner of Gondola di Venezia ( http://www.bostongondolas.com/ ), but I was thrilled to move in.  She plays, she sings, she stores gondolas in the basement of the house, and she has a parakeet so vocal that I first mistook it for ten parakeets.  But hearing her play the accordion makes me turn off my music, stop what I'm doing, and remain as still as possible so I don't miss a note. I love Italy.  I spent five months studying abroad in Florence in 2004 ("Firenze" to the Italian speaker), and every day I wish I were still there.  The smallest reminder takes me back: a piece of dried fruit, the smell ...