Currying

Apparently I’ve become much more laid back than I used to be, or at least less concerned about minor accidents.

This morning I filled my car with sound of The Zombies. Filled me with such morning-sun bliss I didn’t notice the slow traffic or that I had to park a country away from where I work and walk. I decided, as I shut my car door, that I was going to begin the day differently. I would bypass coffee at the hospital café on the way in, and instead begin with a smaller, albeit much less tasty, cup from the break room. Simply to stir the order of things. (If I’d thought ahead I’d have stopped mid-bliss at a place that serves good coffee before I got to work, but it was the shutting of the door that incited the skew in the first place.)

Pulled a paper cup off the pile, pressed the red button, dumped in some sugar, some milk (no half & half in the fridge, which frankly is necessary in this shitty break room perc), stirred. And as I took my first step out of the break room the brown sloshed up and out of the cup, down my pink skirt. Down my long pink skirt, splotches all the way down. There was a time when such an event would have made for me a dark neurotic day in a dark neurotic park.

The progression: I was nine years old. My mom and dad (whom, as he had not yet adopted me, I still called by his first name) had gotten serious and decided to buy a house together in a new neighborhood just outside of town. The new neighborhood was made of mud. I walked across the street into the virgin grassless yard, and my new white sandals sank into the ripe shit-hued mud. I threw back my head and screamed. My sandals were ruined. Or so I thought. My poor new dad, joining forces with two femmes lunatiques. I also played in the dirt back then, scaled dirt hills, dug my fingers into the damp grass-poked dark soil. I guess I was very particular about mud.

Skipping forth in the timeline, while in college I ate some acid with my then-boyfriend and met up with a friend. We walked to New Kahala, where I almost always ordered crispy tofu in spicy sesame sauce. This time I ordered curry chicken. My friend’s religion professor was there. I’d heard this guy was an august mix of intelligent and cool, and I’d wanted to meet him. All I could do all wide-eyed and scoping inward, though, was smile and blush.

When our food was ready we took it to the Springer house, where several of our friends lived, as well as a multitude of musical instruments and brain candies. I guess I was really enjoying my curry chicken, as I had poked the fork right through the styrofoam without realizing it, and for some indefinite time, curry had been soaking into my favorite jeans. After which my jeans were colored Elton John-style (as in the video for "I’m Still Standing" which I fantasized about participating in when I was a little girl). I spent a few minutes freaking out until I decided there was nothing to be done. I had been curried.

The rest of the night had us filming our naked Japanese friend in a cowboy hat and angel wings, in frame with one of the other (as in other than me and another) "quiet ones" in our loopy circus, wearing a monk’s robe. There was also the scribbling of the colors and patterns in our brains onto slides for later use in a light show, and a girl who got her bare boobs painted. It was the only weeknight I gave acid to my brain while school was in session.

All of this was required of sorting purpose in the world: Jeans and sandals are insignificant. Colors stay.

There is another mess and recovery which will make this post much too fat, in which case it will be tomorrow’s party.