Sleeping Around

Inspired by the writings of my wicked smart funny friends Jesse Seret (Perfect Calm), Trish Deitch (Distant Dock), Jessica Schickel (Chagrin and Bear It), Jen Sincero (Hey Little Bad Ass), and Janine Schulz (Oiling of a Rusty Mind), and encouraged by people I’ve met here and there, I will now commence the blog. Maybe just about beds. Maybe about other things too. But the beds are a constant. I’ve been keeping record of every mattress, hammock, waterbed, and couch I’ve spent the night on for some time, as many of you know.

Not every bed makes it into the bed collection. Sometimes I forget to take a picture. Once my computer was stolen on a night train in deepest India and I lost an important year of photos. Sometimes the beds in which I’ve slept would cause too much of a stir if made public, so. But there are lots beds in the bed collection. And stories behind each one.

If beds bore you then there is still some hope for us having a blogger/reader relationship. Let’s see how it goes. I’m only about 80% comfortable with this set up and welcome your input.

Love and kusheln from my red velvet bed in Berlin,

Noa
June, 2010
~ Thursday, August 18 ~
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I spent a few days with mom at her new house in Woodstock. After two years of searching for the perfect home, she finally found it. It’s right in town yet feels as rural as our house in Bearsville. Her yard is an expanse of greenery waiting for a vegetable farm. It leads to the Tannery Brook which feeds into the Millstream. We walked three blocks to the village green and had noodles at the new noodle shop. She can walk to the library, her favorite place. We didn’t make any big plans. She planted some bamboo. I worked on a newsletter. She walked the dog. I taught her how to make my new favorite dish and how to use stickies on her mac. She gave me a kimono and a teapot.

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One afternoon I drove down to Kingston to visit my high school friend Alex and her babies, four in all, born 16 years apart. She teaches history and social studies which is an accomplishment because we were both such delinquents at Boulder High, barely graduating. I lived alone back then, in an apartment near the diagonal, and Alex’s mom tried to keep an eye out for me. She once sneaked into my place and filled the kitchen with things to eat. It was like a scene out of The Little Princess (see the scene at 1:15:30) when I walked in the door. But Alex and I were neither supervised nor guided through the brambles. We were tended to like the stray cat you leave a bowl out for on the porch when he chooses to come by. So when we sat on the floor of her kids’ playroom, surrounded by the good life she has created for herself and her family, we reminisced only as much as we could endure. Our friendship doesn’t depend on the old days. Though we were best friends, we were cruel then, and there was only a sinew connecting us through that terrible no good time. A shining thread in a heap of horribleness. Now all the rest of it has dropped away and we still have this thing, the thing that makes us laugh ourselves stupid, a quick recognition of what the other means. She’s been my friend now for 28 years. And she’s a good mom.

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I slept in my mom’s room, she took the air mattress. She spent hours online trying to find the perfect percale sheets. “They don’t make sheets like they used to,” she lamented. “It takes time,” I kept saying. “The laundry softens them.”

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We both read our books late into the night and woke up late in the morning. It was all very peaceful and when she dropped me off at the Trailways I felt stronger than I have in weeks. And I felt that lump in my throat that I’ve had when we say goodbye.

Tags: beds