Animal v. 21st Century American Woman
Some springtime malaise, musings, and vignettes
It’s springtime once more. I wish spring foretold rain in southeastern Arizona, but it’s arguably the driest season. My humidifier, placed directly next to my bed, strains to break 32% humidity and I wake up feeling as though my skin has puckered in on itself like a dried sponge. My towel after a shower is dry within minutes. The inch of coffee I left in a cup two days ago is a dry lake bed now.
There’s a soft edge to dryness—all the colors of everything are muted by it. Around me, dust is a thin sheet tucking every object into place. I swat at a fly with my W-2, which has been sitting on my dining room table for weeks. Dust spills off the paper into the air—weightless, like the fly. Dryness has a different type of gravity than a humid atmosphere. I’m ungrounded, but tethered; a sensation of floating in place more than floating away.
I’ve been working myself hard in a number of personal and professional realms lately. I’ve sowed seeds for a brighter future, let’s say, but now that I’ve done most of the groundwork, I feel listless. l keep looking for it all to start sprouting—my financial goals, my career plans—it’s springtime after all!
Impatience frustrates me into short bursts of action: I set up a direct deposit from my paycheck to my savings account, I switch out my LinkedIn profile picture and then switch it back, I make a vet appointment for Merlin. Then I lay back on the couch, floating a millimeter above the cushion on my sheet of dust.
I want to be more animal. And I also want to be prepared for my ongoing life as a 21st Century American Woman™. These are hard to hold in tandem. Being an American Woman™ has become a weighty focus in the past seven or so years. Paying my bills, investing, buying a house, being “successful”, telling people they need to improve their performance, pinning closed the space between buttons on my shirt so my tits don’t pop out when I’m describing a Wardley Map to a room of stakeholders… the list goes on.
To help me touch my animal self I’ve been observing stuff today. Not even nature necessarily, but just the stuff of the world. Here are some things that my animal self (or at least the longing for her) has observed:
Laptop
When I place my laptop on my thighs it leaves a heat rash that looks like the loopy pattern that the sun makes through pool water.
Birds
They’re back. It sounds so much more tropical than it feels. I wonder how many of the birds understand each other’s messages. Can a house finch understand a cactus wren’s call or vice versa?
Escape Paths
Nonna has been digging her way out of the yard recently. In spite of my best efforts at covering all the potential exits, this morning, once again, she is missing. The hole is deep, but at this time of year digging down 12 inches gets you no closer to moist earth. The rocks I placed in the hole last time have been strewn about. Nonna is a meticulous escape artist. I open the back gate and yell for her down the alley twice. She trots around the corner from the main drag, brown with dirt. As she gets to the gate, she shakes and the dirt rises off her like smoke. (I will be buying cinder blocks as the next level of security this weekend.)
More birds
Two doves in the pine tree at the southwest corner of my yard are having bird-sex. The sound of their wings is loud as they move from branch to electrical line. It doesn’t look sexy at all.
Shadows
The leaf shadows of the olive tree on the front patio bricks have a shimmer that reminds me of the crescent shaped shadows thrown by a partial eclipse. Which reminds me of the way sun looks through water, which reminds me of heat rash, which reminds me that I have my laptop on my thighs again.
Paper Angels
The breeze is catching several layers of posters partially torn off a telephone pole. The symmetry to the tears resemble wings about to take off.
The process of observing feels good. Important. It certainly doesn’t turn me into a full animal, nor even half-animal, but it puts me in touch. Like now I can be dusty for a while, too, not just float atop it.
With love always,
Kara 🩷