Monday, July 4, 2005

Dispatches from Camilleland


the california station, originally uploaded by camille94019.

Independence Day, Flip Flop, AP.

Over her desultory morning repast of previously frozen French greenbeens and poorman's grilled cheese sandwich, Camille contemplated her life and the the life of her current literary fixation, Dorothy Sayers. Braless, and wearing yesterday's boxers, she picked at the soggy beans-- her fork scraping the cast iron cooking surface of the skillet. The neighborhood mocking bird trilled the car alarm song, as is his wont, but other than that, only her equally desultory thoughts clouded the aural landscape of her mind.

"Why am I thinking of myself in the third person?" she asked herself. An embarrassed silence ensued. She looked over at the useless sink. At least it didn't smell so bad from where she sat, alone, at the table. A car drove by, but didn't turn into the driveway.

She chewed the beans carefully, one misbite would send a torrent of oily bean juice over the pages of her book. Sayers is so inspiring. She spent her 20s being poor and working at dead-end teaching gigs. Camille knows all about that.

"I have been in the darkest Camilleland for the last 12 solid hours," she mused out loud, to no one in particular. Self-talk, pacing, and dark thoughts about NY usually commence at hour 4. She thought about the witty things she would say in her blog, but now, as she contemplates the evil text box, they seem to have abandoned her. The bean juice, given the faculty of text, is now writing her entry without her. All drippy, previously frozen, but the acids of her stomach have robbed it of its continental flair.

She is comforted by the fact that Sayers "cried every night for three years" over her loveless fling with a jewish man. And, if that wasn't bad enough, Sayers had a purely physical fling with a "man on a motorcycle." She actually got pregnant by the motorcycle man. Fortunately, the parallel ends there. To Camille's credit, Charley's number has lain, undialed, in the mess of her desk, for over a month.

A Brief word about Dorothy, for those of you who aren't acquainted with her work.

She wrote kick-ass detective novels, was a fiery and passionate christian, and she also didn't do her hair.

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