Saturday, March 14, 2009

Bookmarks

I liked a girl who used all sorts of things as bookmarks.

She rode my bus, and it started on a snowy early-dismissal Tuesday when I saw her reading in the mirror above the driver's head – her dark brown hair (almost black) pulled back into a bun, her knees pushed up against the seat in front of her, and her book – Brideshead Revisited – marked with an empty restaurant match booklet. A few days later she was reading Thirteen Reasons Why and keeping her page with a faded fisheye photograph of a farm; after that it was The Hotel New Hampshire and a plastic spoon.

I wrote her a love note – a long one on graph paper with little charts in the corner (fig. 3: "how happy I am vs. how close I am to you") – and gave it to her one day when we were sitting together on the way home. She read it and then looked out the window. I didn't push the matter further.

Right before her stop she reached into her bag, took out The Poetry of Oscar Wilde, and removed her bookmark, which was, in this case, a receipt for a vegetarian burrito from Chipotle. She slipped my note in its place and then kissed my cheek as she stood up to get off the bus.

Sometimes I see people with bookmarks for bookmarks and I laugh.

****

This is, by the way, my 500th post. Also thanks to Meredith for being such a great hand model.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was the graph a cardioid? Also congrats on 500. This blog has been up forever...

Carissa said...

That was cute.. i liked it =]
...i remember when this first started... Esteban is right, it has been forever! congrats!

Anonymous said...

hey look, your profile picture is different now...I wonder when it was changed xD

Anonymous said...

hey buddy onward and upward