Beating the Blog Block

I have been fervently writing blog posts.  Posts about love, and broken hearts, and strangers I’ve seen, and streets that I suspect are inter-dimensional tunnels.  Some have accompanying photos, some have sketches, all have insight and emotion.  But, not a one of them has seen the finish line, or the light of day.  I keep finding the fury of my typing stalled as I stare into space, not for lack of what to say, but for having too many things to say and not enough focus to choose.  Unfortunately that seems to be a common theme in many aspects of my life.  So…. beat the blog block, change my life.

To kick off the new free flow of ideas, creativity, and energy I’m posting something that I actually wrote several years ago.  At the ripe age of 24 my best gal pal, Krista, and I went to Europe to experience the world and to get a step closer to the women we are meant to be someday.  The trip, in its entirety, was life changing.  The following is just one experience we had on the flight to France.  I hope you laugh at me.  I am.

Parle Vous Français?

Mar 22, 2007

…Sitting directly behind us was an older couple that I predict were from Europe.  I want to believe that they were from France because then I can just clump them together, with the rest of the people on that particular plane, and say that French people in general are rude.  The reason behind my prediction of their nationality, aside from their behavior, was mostly due to their appearance.  Brace yourselves for some good old-fashioned spot judgements.  The man was tall and thin and what hair he had left was completely white.  He wore thick framed glasses with half rims, a button down woven with blue and red pinstripes, and a navy blazer…which he didn’t remove during the seven hour flight.  I neglected to notice what his trousers looked like, but his woven was buttoned to his throat.  Overall, he actually had a very dignified aire about him, which only added to his seeming arrogance and my ignorant assumptions about Europeans.

The woman he was with, whom I am assuming was his wife, was someone I had visually made acquaintances with long before we ever boarded our airbus.  She had a very unique and distinctive style which teetered dangerously close to the line between bold and ridiculous.  She too wore glasses, but her thick frames were a shade of purple and were bespotted with rhinestone (it’s entirely possible that I imagined the rhinestones).  As stunning as her eyewear surely was, it was doomed to live in the shadow of her hair.

It was cut short in the back and on the sides, which were dyed an auburn/brown color.  She had allowed the front to grow long and had styled it in some hybrid between a rock star swirl and a backwoods country “claw”.  As if that wasn’t enough to express her desire to “stick it to the man”(or whomever the French stick it too), she had to take it even further to really give her grandchildren a reason to beg her not to pick them up from school.  So, in spite of the advice that she surely must have received from close friends and family, she decided to dash for that threshold that has been the downfall of so many of our teenage brethren.

While I can’t be sure of what was occurring inside of her head, I can speculate.  I imagine that she envisioned some sort of blonde swatch sprouting from her forehead like a flaxen spray of field grass.  Perhaps she explained her vision to her stylist, who shrugged his shoulders and shirked his duty as an artist, human being, and most likely as a homosexual (it’s hard to be sure in Europe) to try to change her mind, and went ahead and applied the color.  Perhaps she did it herself…over the bidet? Either way, she must have pushed through the attempts from others to stop her.  Maybe it was a memory of those attempts that caused her to balk, halfway through the germination phase, and decide that she just couldn’t go through with it.

She must have stormed to the sink, or squawked at her poor stylist to rinse her immediately!  Obedient to a fault, he quickly did as he was bade, and our poor friend was left with a rock star claw a color combination of newly washed bricks, autumn leaves, and cat urine.  Can you imagine the horror?  In what must have been an attempt to cover up the travesty and distract attention, while still maintaining her Rock Grandma edge, she added some pink to the fray…and…volia!  What a woman?  To add insult to injury she wore a frumpy seeming, green, pullover and knee-high, black, boots.  The boots were canvas and laced up her leg to end at her knee, where she had strategically tucked in her jeans. This was the woman sitting behind dear Krista.

My first experience with this woman was actually while I was waiting outside of the restrooms in the Atlanta airport.  I’m not entirely sure why, but I find that when I am in public, people tend to stare at me.  I’m sure that there are a combination of reasons behind the stares, ranging from my clothes, to my hair, to my effeminate demeanor, to my vocal volume, to any number of facial blemishes.  While any or all of these factors may or may not be cause, I choose to believe that people stare at me because I’m incredibly attractive, incredibly well dressed, and incredibly charismatic…on a good day.  On a bad day, I truly believe that I more closely resemble a cross between, Golem, the Blob, and that annoying subway guy.  The difference between a good day and a bad day is vast, and one can become the other in a flash.  This particular day, was a good day.

Because of my high self-esteem, I suppose I was being more liberal, and therefore more harsh in my judgements of others in passing.  As you’ve been playing witness too, I was having a field day with this poor woman’s appearance.  I was lost in thought as she approached me, and for a brief moment we made eye contact.  Possibly because I was staring at her.  For a fraction of a second, my breath caught in my neck, and I rapidly slipped in and out of a good day.  As my gaze met this woman’s, she looked at me with such total disdain, and I was caught off guard.  It was as if she was offended by my uni-lingual, American presence, and she wanted me to know it.  Maybe she had some sort of crazy voodoo, to accompany the rest of her persona, and she could read my thoughts?  Maybe my internal dialogue was clearly written in my expression?  Perhaps, more likely, she was just as taken aback by her own appearance as I was and it caused a reaction, within her, of bitterness towards others and general insecurity?  Whatever the reasons, it was clear to me that this woman was not the foreign pen pal that I had been hoping for.

Krista and I boarded the plane and found our seats without consequence, or help, from the snooty French flight attendants.  We were making ourselves comfortable and chatting idly when the attack came.  Suddenly an arm sprouted from the back of Krista’s seat and begin tapping her on the head.  After the initial shock wore off, we realized that the mysterious arm belonged to the older man who was accompanying our excentric new friend, the Rock Claw Woman.  He told, not asked, Krista to put her seat up and withdrew his arm back into the dark recesses of the row behind us.  Of course we obliged and apologized, and resolved to stare at one another in confusion.  These folks didn’t play games.  We would have to be more careful in our future encounters.

Later, hours later, we had been dozing and watching films, and we turned in our seats to face one another and enjoy a little stretch while looking for a vacant restroom.  Krista’s eyes had turned yellow from her need for the facilities, and as my focus drifted from her toward the back of the plane, I again made eye contact with Frenchie McCrazyhair.  She was still offering me the same disgusted expression without showing any sign of retracting it.  As I studied the facial narration of her disgust, I noticed that it now carried an additional flavor of haughtiness, signified by the edge of a curled nose.  I met her eye and offered her the customary pinched smile of acknowledgment, expecting that we would both quickly look away and continue with our travels.  Apparently it was too little too late, because she did not return the smile, nor did she look away.  So I did what any logical person would do, I dropped my smile and returned her disgusted stare.  Two can play at this game my dear!  Once I had forged through the awkward beginning stages, I begin to realize that I was indeed engaged in a game; a game I was surely familiar with.

This woman of unknown decent had challenged me, and I had accepted it full in the face.  I found comfort within the knowledge that some things people just understood.  Even across oceans, around languages, and through “interesting” venues of expression, everyone understood a staring contest.  I was prepared for a dual to the death.  It was going to be grueling and exhausting, but I am young and edgy, and I was up for it.  I could only imagine the steel of her wit after surviving an entire vacation with that concoction on top of her head.  This would be one for the record books.  It was an opportunity for me to stand up for my country and prove once and for all that though we have our shortcomings, America is still the leader on this tiny planet.  Not only would it be a triumph over France, but over all of Europe!  And you know what? Canada too!  Why not?  They speak French there.  My victory would ring out across the nations.  Ring it would have too, for I could sense that her defenses were weakening.  I had her by the throat, and I was going in for the kill…until the flight attendant grabbed my shoulder, breaking my concentration, and asked me to turn around in my seat.  CURSES!  FOILED!  I begrudgingly slumped back into my chair, but not before attempting eye contact one last time. I wanted to convey that though I may have been beaten, I was not broken.  There would be a day for a rematch, and next time she wouldn’t have French countrymen (flight attendant or otherwise) around to aid her.  It was imperative that I deliver one last look to convey my outrage at my defeat and my reassurance that it was a one time thing.  But my efforts were only met with sideways glances and covered whispers.

She was for sure French.