Evenings are about waiting until the light has been swallowed up, so I can slide the curtains over their scrappy wooden rods from right to left, making sure no fabric gets caught on the little splintery pieces of wood. It’s laughable, because the curtains themselves are relatively transparent, but there is something about the ritual of pushing them from right to left that welcomes in the evening. Once they are sufficiently closed, I dance around the kitchen while taking little breaks to snack on something I chopped and piled on the wooden cutting board, every other turn dipping them into something spicy.
Evenings are about trying to find the perfect arrangement of lamps and overhead lights to fit the darkening. They are about talking around the kitchen table until we can’t see each other, and then shocking our eyes with the bright bulbs. We are interrupted with some squinting, but once we adjust, we start noticing different things about each others faces, and I fixate on the the stain on the kitchen table. Light becomes so concentrated.
Evenings in Michigan were about huge beers on the train tracks and eating fried pickles. They were about rehearsing lines from Oleanna in the bathroom mirror, and getting so deeply into her character that I freaked myself out. They were about discovering intricate recipes and deciding to figure them out in the evening, and then cooking deep into the night, instead of going to the 24 hour gym we belonged to. They were about summery back porch conversations, looking out over the tomato plants, discussing potential past lives, and the radicals we wanted to become.
Evenings have been about loud honks in the driveway, which meant there was a green Ford Taurus station wagon full of groceries bags for me to help unload. I had to unload them as quickly as possible, so my mom wouldn't complain that she was the only one in the house who ever did anything to help out.
Evenings are about smelling things more acutely: The cast iron is full of sauteed onions, garlic, and vinegar. The compost is ripe. The closet in the mudroom is moldy. There is BBQ 'd something happening in the next apartment. My perfume is too strong.
Evenings are about watching the long black tails of rats wind their way around the succulents and then seeing their little pink ears pop up by the pink flowers. I watch the trees shaking off the damp breeze and bounce back with relief and a specific kind of stillness.
Evenings are about waiting for the sound of the adolescent raccoons to creep and chirp and snarl their way onto the roof that butts up against our house. The raccoons that Old Man George said used to come out in the evenings when he lived here, but he knew them only as ghosts.
Evenings are about welcoming my husband home after a night of work, by hugging him as soon as he puts down his produce filled backpack. His breathing is labored and his skin is humid from that last stretch of his uphill bike ride. His heart beats out of his chest and into my chest. I press closely, so I can hear it thunder. I feel more awake and ready for the night, which is now ours.
Evenings have been about walking around the city taking pictures, and watching people flood into bars, yoga classes, and psychics. They are about remembering how many choices are built into our daily lives, and how sometimes my choices feed into me taking pictures alone in the evening.
Evenings are about recapitulation and writing the top 10 moments of my day, and if it seems the day was hard to distill or stretch into top 10 moments, the evening is about figuring out how the next day can be more memorable, more pointedly unique than the last.
<3!
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