Reading: Blind Assassin

Moving: wandering

Watching: animules

Learning: Rhinoceroses paint

24 September 2000: Jessie

I had blueberries (and you know how much she loves blueberries). I had bacon (because that's the real treat). I had buttermilk pancake batter (made the night before, 'cause it's better after it sits) with lumps in it. I had ingredients, if not a meal; a house, if not furniture; and I was ready to meet Jessie.

In May, Beth and Jeremy and Jenn and Kevin and RDC and I could sit outside, and we did, on milk crates and folding chairs and I forgot that I could have brought camping chairs from the apartment. We did not yet have patio furniture. Now we had patio furniture but also snow.

It was the snow that made Jessie and T. later than we all expected, but that was a good thing. I had never cooked bacon before and had no idea how long it would take. One pound took 45 minutes, a few slices at a time that would fit into the frying pan, sizzling at a prudent heat. I started at 9:15 and I finished just as they arrived at 10. Yes, I was bored of cooking by then. Jessie's arrival put a quick stop to the boredom and also to the cooking, since she took over the pancakes. Or I foisted the spatula on her. Whatever.

We have this weird doorbell arrangement. Its ringer is a remote handheld device like a garage door opener, sounds about as loud as a mouse squeaking, and you're supposed to bring the ringer with you from room to room. I can't even remember to bring the cordless phone with me from room to room. So it was a good thing the morning was so still, because the slam of a car door was my cue. That's the first foreshadowing.

I knew I was going to like Jessie, and I did. She is enthusiastic and full of joie de vivre and books and silliness. I figured if Jessie like T., I'd like him too, and I did. This was all going swimmingly, and Jessie had even taken over cooking the pancakes. Then Blake, who had been good, started screaming for no apparent reason until RDC realized there was someone at the door to whom Blake was trying to alert us. A guard cockatiel: what every household needs, especially when the house in question has a quiet doorbell that is broken anyway, especially when the house is full of me talking and no longer still. (End first foreshadowing.) The Interrupting Cow arrived. Jessie had said, "Would it be all right if our friend from Boulder joined us? Feel free to say yes." So I did. And I was glad to see that she wrote that she, not I, told the IC about Blueberry Hill. I wouldn't put it past me.

We ate pancakes and bacon and orange juice. We talked. T. and the Interrupting Cow and RDC generally talked amongst themselves, which was good because it left me Jessie all to myself. We were right in front of the S bookcase, Dora, so I threw Holes at her. Since she's moving to Boston, she wasn't sure if I were lending it to her. Also she wondered because she herself doesn't lend books much. This further proved her to be a woman after my own heart, because you can borrow a book from me when you pry it out of my bloodless claws.

(Okay, I've been lending Harry Potter. But I know where Haitch lives. And CoolBoss is just super responsible. She's had each one back in under a week, though I expect Goblet of Fire will take her a little longer. And Harry isn't Holes.)

As we rounded ourselves up to go, T. asked whose car we should take. Ahahaha, car. Funny! We walked. Until I moved here to the land of nonnative trees and pleasantly early snowfall, I had never in my life seen snow on leafed trees. So as we walked, I took a picture of that. Somehow Jessie and I talked about bras or breasts--the men were otherwise occupied--and when I asked something about size, instead of telling me a cup size she flashed me, there on the street. I did not get a picture of that.

The zoo! Yea, the zoo. I hadn't been for two years, I think. RDC and I'll go again on Christmas, but it won't be as fun without Jessie.

While looking at the otters, I remembered that she has actually been to where The Grey King happens. Remembering, I didn't do anything silly like wait for a pause in the conversation. Oh no. I'm the one who should be called the Interrupting Cow. She did not meet a silver-eyed boy or a white dog, though, nor King Arthur.

While looking at fishes, she realized that here is a trove of new aliases for people. Earlier, when she mentioned "Paramecium Woman," the IC knew just who she meant. Here, we saw Clown Loaches. I took pictures of signs because we didn't have a pen and RDC hadn't brought his Palm Pilot (having left it behind for fear of ridicule). (Because when I brought him to the emergency room, I had my backpack with just the basics--journal, DayRunner, three books to read--and he had his fannypack: cell phone, Palm Pilot, glasses case, wallet. The Palm Pilot had that day's New York Times in it, so it's not as if he had nothing to read. But still.)

When we didn't look at giraffes, who were all inside because it was a little chilly out, I reconnoitered in their stable and came out saying "There are tall spotty things in there that stink. We can give those a miss." So I hope no one had a heart set on seeing them.

The pachyderms, which stank probably more than giraffes, we did not miss.

I love tapirs, because I remember them somehow from elementary school (where none probably ever visited, but I read about them). Despite my liking particularly the tapirs that are black and white like saddle shoes, I was ignorant about their origins. I thought every species was South American. Nope. The saddle shoe ones are Malaysian and all the other ones are South American, and they have remained noticeably the same critter despite continental drift's having separated them eons ago. As a genus, they're that old. That was neat. I failed to get a picture of it.

All the pachyderms were neat. All the hippopotami were dozing in the water. The baby hippo is much bigger now. The baby hippo rested its chin on its mama's back, and the papa snuggled in there somewhere. We did not have a baby rhinoceros to show Jessie, and the grown-up one showed us its tail end only. Also its paintings. Jessie liked Dancing Woman and I liked Self-Portrait (because of the name--how did the human know what the rhino was trying to paint?) and the one that the IC liked, Jessie, was called Untitled. And elephants! This zoo has only Indian elephants, and I suppose it's unkind of me to find them inferior, but I do. It's not that they're smaller than African elephants that I hold against them--remember that I crave a cocker spaniel-sized one. Having only one finger on their trunks is certainly inadequate, but what makes them look like yesterday's bagels to me is their skimpy little ears. I like big elephant ears.

Stupider animals in zoos don't bother me too much. The Denver Zoo does a lot of breeding with other zoos to preserve as much genetic diversity among captive species that are (nearly) extinct in the wild. But elephants are not stupid, and they wanted to go outside. The largest stood by the huge door and nosed the latch. And it's not as if their exercise yard (I use the prison term advisedly) is so vast anyway, but it's bigger than their inside space and they wanted out.

So did the gorillas. The male, who is beginning to go silver around his tush, sat immovably by the door. The gorillas' outside space is much funner (I was going to say "cooler" but everything was equally slushy and chilly) than the elephants'. It has trees and ropes and things to climb on, as has the orangutans'. I suppose elephants don't do as much to amuse humans as other primates do and therefore don't get as much fun stuff to divert us with. Here is where Jessie sang me the marmoset song. I have to get her to record it for me.

Now I'm going through my pictures and remembering that Jessie cannot readily distinguish between* emus and ostriches, even when the emus stroll through the same enclosure as other even more obviously Australian beasts like kangaroos. Except that their being with their compatriots would not readily have clued her in to their being emus anyway, she said. Please do not ask me to distinguish between wallabies and kangaroos, myself. I missed the best picture of the kangaroos boxing, but I did get an emu sitting on the backs of its ankles. It's a strange continent.

The emu is reclining on either its elongated heels or the backs of its calves, depending on whether those 90 degree joints are ankles or knees.

I know this is impossible to see but there's a binder clip at the bottom of the stalactite holding the quarters of melons for the bats. There are no bats in this picture. RDC's standard question when presented with a cave: "Are those seraphim or cherubim?"

Later, we passed through the bird exhibits. One jungly room was eerily silent. Choice of adjective=second foreshadowing: RDC suggested this was maybe the DDT exhibit.

Jessie said the bear was napping and maybe he was the first time through but the second time (after the retrieval of the bag) we saw him, he was after the Virginia creeper or whatever this was trailing over the cliff of his enclosure. Yes, that is a he; standing, he's about 9 feet tall. Maybe 10. Don't fuck with him. We watched the bear stand wobblily and snatch at the ivy and then figure out that he could prop himself up much more steadily with his front paws against the wall, even if it meant he couldn't be as tall. I don't know if that was the first time he'd reached the ivy, if he'd watched it grow all summer (what else has he got to do?) until it drooped just far enough.

I do hope the zoo vets have ascertained that whatever that is isn't poisonous to polar bears.

Also I wish the bears didn't have to swim in chlorinated water. That's what makes them yellow instead of white.

I forget this beast's name. An impossibly cute cross between a raccoon and a koala, it seemed: look at the fur. It probably wasn't diurnal and was trying to get some sleep, or maybe it was a teenage whatever-it-was and was crying. Look at that. Have you ever seen anything that cute? "Including Blake?" asked Jessie, mischeviously. Its butt is on the stem of the Y; its left foot grasps one prong of the Y and its right an offshoot. Its arms are within the protective circle of head and legs. The tail comes around the right side of its body and wraps all the way around the head, and look how the light glows through that right ear.

Peafowl roam the zoo grounds freely. Jessie liked them because not many animals have different names for the males and females; usually it's just general animal and oh yeah the female. Dog and bitch. Fox and vixen. Lion and lioness, tiger and tigress. I pointed out the opposite, just 'cause I'm contrary like that: goose and gander. Chickens are hens and roosters. Horses are mares and stallions. But there aren't many. The one animal I can't figure out is cattle. My point: there's no singular neuter noun. Except steer, but the term for a neutered male not what I mean. A cow, a heifer, a calf, a bull, some cattle or kine: one bovine critter of indeterminate sex and name. IC suggested "a beef," like the yearling beef whose hide Father intended for shoes in Farmer Boy. (N.B., that's my literary reference, not IC's.) But I mean meat on the hoof, not on the plate. Anyone?

Now that previous paragraph was a tangent and one of the rare instances in which I remembered I was first talking about peafowl. Now I'm going to go on about peafowl, but tangents are important to keep in mind.

Jessie picked up a peacock tail feather with one eye in it. She was possibly debating whether to keep it--it's a zoo, not a park, so it should have been okay--and I suggested she send it to Kymm and explained to the nonjournaling members of our entourage. I misquoted though. I said that not to have peacock feathers on stage was just common sense. Kymm herself said it was just being sensible. At any rate everyone laughed, but the fate of the feather I don't remember.

The topic of peacock feathers is now closed. I announce my return to the somewhat meta topic of tangents.

Jessie was talking a mile a minute about any variety of things, but sensically, unlike I do. (Isn't "common-sensiscally" an adverbial phrase? Can I just say "sensically"? Well, anyway I just did.) (And is "unlike I do" wrong, since "like I do" would be wrong and "as I do" correct if I did? If not, why not? Discuss.) The IC told her he admired the way she could pop her stack. This is a programming metaphor that zipped over my head like so many geese (here, "like" is correct). ("Geese" came to mind because after talking about names for male and female animals we talked about group words, like pride and herd and flock and murder and parliament and gaggle, and I contributed that while a gaggle of geese on the ground is a gaggle, if they take to the sky they are a skein.) "Popping your stack" is something about the ordering of commands, and how you have to undo the commands in the same order you made them, which is tryingly linear but sensible. However many conversation leaps Jessie takes mid-thought, she can always go back and finish them, presumably in order. Hence stack. So anyway (back to the point of this paragraph's first sentence), I said, "I can't do that. I'm more like the kid in the Shel Silverstein poem--" and Jessie finished, "I'll take the one in the middle." And I seized her around the middle and squeezed. She understands! I sighed, with the rightness of it. (Which is a line from Look through my Window: at the end of Emily's reading of Impunity Jane, Jean and ???Mary??? sigh, at the rightness of it.)

Then I had to explain it to RDC and maybe the others, who despite their many other sterling qualities have not read (or memorized) Where the Sidewalk Ends and The Light in the Attic.

I like Jessie a lot. (And T. and IC and even RDC, but they didn't get my Shel Silverstein reference.)

Later, after monstrous burritos from Chipotle (where we heard a strange remake of "I Will Survive" by a band that the IC said was named Cake of which I, in my limitless hipness, had never heard), and M&Ms in white and three shades of blue (from the wedding), Jessie uploaded her entries (and I insisted on being credited). I decided not to try to shove another parenthetical remark in that last sentence (aren't you proud, OMFB?): when she said that the M&Ms favors were in the colors of the wedding, I said, "Like in 'Diner,'" but I think I was either unheard or unheeded, which was probably for the best.

Then they left. There's always Boston in December, though, yippeeee!

* So I'm (still) listening to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It's okay, particularly today when the bus home was so crowded I had to stand and couldn't've read anyway, except today, today (2 October, yes I'm slow), the author writes that he overheard a conversation between a man and two women.