Between the Lines

What's not said. A litany of things. I'm a middle child, for instance, and I don't know how that affects me. I assume some things, that I might not be as secure as either a first or last child. I probably over-think any given thing. It's certainly true that I dwell in the moment. I fully believe people should be taught how to laugh, as there are few things worse than working with someone who has a high-pitched and cackling laugh. And they should be taught to walk. Dancers walk well. When I see someone walking nicely I usually ask them if they danced in college, they often look at me strangely, how did I know, and I tell them they walk like a dancer. I've only been wrong once or twice in the past decade. There's an Asian woman, Thai I think, that has a massage therapy storefront a few doors down from the museum; quite beautiful, tall and reed-thin, lovely ankles, and she walks like an angel. These are things that can be changed. I got into theater in the first place because I had a horrid southern accent (there are lovely southern accents too) and Speech class was also Drama class, the last two years of high school, an elective. I left there sounding vaguely mid-western; the southern returns, when I visit someone in the south, but otherwise I sound like I was raised in Des Moines. I spent the night in Des Moines, one time, we all sounded alike and I could understand every word. There's something for that, simply being understood. Regionalism comes into play, colloquialisms more than diction: what you call cornbread and what it's cooked in. I spend an hour reading the several pages of entry about 'corn' in the Dictionary Of Americanisms, a two volume set Howard sent me when the Bowling Green library was weeding the stacks. Why they weeded this out escapes me completely, I never fail to spend an hour looking up even the simplest word. Ronnie gave me some extra tomatoes at the farmer's market this morning, told me to eat them first, and they were luscious. I poached an egg, to go on top of the second one, with some shavings of ptarmigan cheese. It was one of the best things I've ever eaten.