Not as much accomplished today as I hoped; I didn’t get to the library or the Strand for a book on Victorian clothes and the history of women’s footwear. I’ll head there tomorrow.
Tonight, I think I’ll attempt to clean my bathroom. I should be sketching for another project. And doing research for another.
Yay; it’s Saturday night in New York.
Date: April 13, 2013
Crane: 55
Days Spent on Project: 55
Location: Apartment, Washington Heights, NYC
Person I would have sent it to: Kim W., from elementary school.
If you’ve picked up from these entries that I was not in the popular crowd in school (any of them), you’d have made an astute observation. However, I wasn’t at the bottom of the social chain.
Whereas I was relegated down the food chain for being weird (I had more girl friends than guys. I didn’t like sports, but art. I did well in school. My mother was a teacher.), Kim was sent there for being shy and, possibly and even sadly, “poorer” than most of the other kids. In a rural/suburban community in Indiana, that *that* could be a qualifier of your status seems bizarre, you know.
But, lest you think that we socially awkward kids in Indiana stuck together, I’ll unfortunately prove you wrong.
In fifth grade, I have a distinct and clear memory of sitting at my desk, feet away from Kim, and making a comment that stopped her cold and caused the class to erupt in laughter. The comment was about her appearance. I know she didn’t respond. I still remember how she looked at me when I said what I said.
Even though the comment was made as a joke, and the sting behind it was probably more in HOW I said it than what I said, it was too far. I made the comment believing I was in some way socially superior to you. I commented about her appearance as a joke.
I knew as soon as I said it that I crossed a line, one which was unnecessary to step over. It was wrong.
But it got laughs from the class.
Mocking someone who was just as socially awkward as you in order to get some fleeting nod of social acceptance from your classroom peers is just wrong.
I was a little $hit that day. I never apologized, which made me even more of a $hit.
Music I listened to while sewing: Air!
Or rather, the band Air. Did you know they did an album of music that was composed for the silent film “A Trip to the Moon” by Georges Melies from 1902? Just discovered that, and I think it’s strangely awesome.
Thoughts/Feelings behind the block: As I’ve dedicated these Cranes to people (in some cases to people I haven’t thought about in 20-some years), I’ve realized how people can become larger than life markers in our lives.
As I’ve thought back to elementary school, certain episodes come popping out of the past quite distinctly. Some people and events, I’m finding, can replay themselves in my mind as if I’ve stumbled across a digital archive of my life all those years ago.
Events and people seem like they’ve become larger than life the more they’ve descended into the past. Was my insulting joke to Kim really that big of a deal? Was it a turning point in my life (Don’t make fun of other people!)? Was it a life lesson? Did it really play out like that? Or is my hindsight not 20/20, but clouded?
And (and!), who’s to say someone else doesn’t remember those events completely differently?
Who’s to say that the people involved even remember them at all? Who’s to say these people- Micah, Casey, Danielle, Katie, Jeremy, Mike, Kim- even remember that *I* was a part of their lives?
Who’s to say I was even in the socially miscast, outcast group? Did someone, perhaps, think I was popular?
These recollections of mine are truths only because I believe what I see in my head is what actually happened. But… I have no real proof.
Memory is such a twisted thing, isn’t it.
Just know that I’m writing what I believe to be true. It isn’t gospel, by any means.
Yikes.
Cheers and more to come, folks.
A Thousand Quilted Cranes 