She thought about this for a while, this annoying and insulting little problem that kept growing like a worsening twitch in the eye. Oh she had the eye all right. She saw all, and was sick of what she saw. She was sick of Robert, and all the other Roberts who’ve disgraced the world and those living in it. Or not living, in it.
Her alarm clock was set precisely at 4:30am: Cynthia liked to catch the black sky before it turned different hues of the morning pink, because it felt the equivalent of catching criminals before they could disguise themselves into something nice or at least commonplace – the everyday morning pedestrian, marathon runner in-training even, what have you – and run away. She was nit-picky too, in a world-reflecting sense. She liked her coffee black as a vacuous eye – no sugar for her, or God forbid, splenda – because she thought all of humanity had too much sweetness in it that it was lying to itself; if there is any bitterness in the world, it should not be denied but confronted, head-on. She liked her house as a cold as a meat locker – it’s a cold, cruel and unfair world out there, she would always mutter to herself, especially whenever she worked with Robert, whom she loathed with the deepest distaste.
Did Robert know all this about his secretary, Cynthia? Robert, the richest, most influential businessman, who sat with his nose in the air, on the 30th floor of the Manifest Towers? He knew her hands were always cold, and so was her body, her torso, her legs. But, nope. He was as blind as a bat to all this. His blindness will come back to bite him.
And by God, it will bite him hard.
This is what Cynthia did on a daily basis: after getting up, beating dawn in the face with a curled lip as always, she made her way to the bathroom and took a quick cold shower, making sure she scrubbed clean every part of her body. Every inch, every single inch. Next, she brushed her teeth with the latest recommended toothbrush by dentists nationwide. After flossing that is; she must not forget about flossing. When it came time to do her make-up, she suppressed vomit building up inside. Cynthia hated make-up, but was forced to wear it. It was part of the ‘dress code’ at her work. Perhaps part of the ‘dress code’ of society, even. And high-heels, how she abhorred those agonizing devices made to make her feet look ‘pretty.’ Yes, with her toes sticking out through the far end, like how a mischievous kid sticks out his tongue. Yes, with the blood seeping out through the scratched skin at the back of her ankles, red staining the inside of that end of the shoe, creating a dull burgundy fade after a few days.
And yet Cynthia wore these for months upon months upon months to work . . . with Robert.
Ugh. Her face cringed each morning before the waft of his cologne hit her face.
“Good morning, Cynthia,” said Robert, age 31, five feet, eleven inches, dark brown, almost black hair in the mold of Clark Kent’s hair. But Robert was no superman. Sure he had abs of steel and a book of charming pick-up lines up his sleeves, but he was no super hero. He was as vain and arrogant as a superman look-alike could get. His middle name was “Baby, baby, be with me and you won’t regret.” Or was that one of his pick-up lines? Perhaps his middle name was this: “Sexy, but Ignorant.” Yes, that must have been it, if you believe middle names to be descriptive lines about a person – down to the essentials. Like the way of the Native Americans, because their epithets are native to them. Robert couldn’t help being, “sexy, but ignorant.” That characterization was indigenous to him, born and living in every one of his genes and emanating out of his body through his body language. His despicable actions . . . with women.
Ugh.
“Cynthia, could you go get me a coffee?” That wasn’t a question. “You know how I like it.” Yes, Cynthia did in fact know how he liked his coffee, unfortunately. And that was expected, after working for him for almost ten years now.
“Do I now?”
“I sure hope so.”
“You sure hope so.”
“Cynthia?”
“Yes Robert?”
“The coffee, now?”
“Yes, Robert.”
Her smile, which had been one hundred percent artificial throughout her brusque conversation with Robert, continued to stay a smile, but one that was sarcastic in color as she left his office to head to the break room.
Moments later Cynthia entered Robert’s office with an espresso and a mint for Robert often liked to have something minty after his morning coffee. As Cynthia placed the cup next to the telephone, a memory jolted her spine, making the espresso spill a little, over the cup and onto the small saucer underneath it. The memory was one she had been trying to repress for several months now. It was one she was ashamed of and hated as much as she hated Robert.
Probably because that memory involved Robert.
The memory took place about nine years after she was employed at Manifest Towers – just recently. Originally, she applied for Robert’s position. Back then, Robert was almost forced to relinquish his job for a more minor one. But no, no, no, that wouldn’t look good for Robert now will it – a man who had good relations with the female secretaries of other businessmen, the higher ups, and therefore had good connections with other companies? But when the head of his company saw that the person replacing him was Cynthia, a powerful woman with much more credentials, qualifications, and honest confidence, they were quick to let him keep his position.
Cynthia, instead, was given the position of his secretary. That’s when her loathing intensified. Her loathing for how the world worked.
However, the memory took place nine years after her employment commenced. It was during a cold, winter night when a horny Robert occupied his office. Everyone else had left work to go home. It was already ten o’clock in the evening, oh but of course. He found himself unable to get any work done. No worries, he thought. I’ll let Cynthia do the leg work, or better yet, give me a reason for distraction.
Cynthia had entered his office with the recovered files he had asked for when he showed signs of friskiness. Unfortunately for Cynthia, that night was one in which she was vulnerable. Having been alone for the past nine years, she was throbbing to the touch of Robert. She was split in half that night in Robert’s office: one side of her was the regular Cynthia, with her guard of a wall standing erect, casting a proud shadow from Robert’s desk lamp; and the other side, a much softer side, was in need of attention and intimacy, no matter how forced it was.
On the desk. The papers falling off, coating the floor with white, like the snow outside, covering the ground. Much to busy in gratification to answer the ringing telephone. It rang and rang and rang, until his wife left a message, saying she missed him and could not wait until he got home to be with her.
For it was, indeed, ten o’clock at night.
Later on in Cynthia’s apartment, Cynthia, alone, crawled herself into a ball under the sheets and cried herself to sleep. Her alarm clock, set at 4:30am still, watched her, pitilessly. That was the only time she cried in her entire life, save for the time someone told her she sounded like a man when she was fourteen years old.
Tense words lashed out under their breaths the next day at work.
“That will never happen again, Robert. I’m warning you.”
“Oh, but why? You had fun didn’t you?” He began to caress her elbow.
She tugged away from him. “You have a wife; I can blackmail you.”
“But why would you do that? You would get hell from her. Plus, you would lose your job, now wouldn’t you?” His hand began to reach for her elbow once more.
And again, she tugged away.
Open jobs were sparse at the time, and she knew she had to keep her job to pay her rent, her bills, everything. It’s a cold, cruel and unfair world out there, she muttered to herself, leaving his office to get his morning espresso.
But on this morning, after that jolt of a memory finished sparking the inside folds of her brain, Cynthia promised herself that she would get justice. It was going to be a late night, just like that wintery night in the memory. But things would run differently.
His office door was often kept closed. As Cynthia was carrying important folders for him to look over, she walked down the hall, her eyes steadily set on the light underneath his door. Already from seven in the evening to eleven, she had done numerous tedious jobs for him, getting him important documents, looking up information from various sources, making important phone calls. Robert, she could tell, only pretended to do work. Whenever she took a quick, furtive glance over to him, she saw his eyes diverted to the mirror on his desk. He loved looking at himself, admiring his own hair, his face and how it seemed to complement his neck and chest. Occasional chest hair popping out for sex appeal. And white, straight teeth too. His insensitive eyes, good for glossing but not for caring.
And when he called for something, he was annoying as ever. He yelled out demandingly, “Cynthia, oh Cynthia! Cynthia, did you make copies of the reports you made yet? I need them now!” Through his closed door, his voice traversed the hallway, uselessly.
For Cynthia did not respond to him this time.
“Cynthia! I need those damn reports! Come here, lady! I’m not playing games, sweet thing!”
No response.
His desk lamp flickered, then turned off. Alone in the dark, Robert used the light from his phone to substitute a flashlight. Even so, this dim light could only light up a limited space. He made his way to the door, bumping his knee on one of his chairs, causing him to curse in the name of Cynthia. Once he opened the door, a stuffy blackness descended.
“Cynthia? Cynthia, enough with these games. Come here right now. If this is about the whole . . . incident . . . you’re not treating it with professionalism. I remind you that I have the power to fire you. I know you don’t want that.”
Silence.
“Cynthia! Cynthia?” His echo rang through the darkness until it was interrupted by a moan. It was to his right. Quickly, he shone his cell phone light in that direction . . . in the direction of the break room.
His heart beat pounded with each step closer to the break room whose door was only slightly open. Making his way in, he shone his light hesitantly looking. Could Cynthia be in there, hurt and therefore moaning? Or could it be something darker?
The moan sounded again, this time louder and deeper in pitch. It was not Cynthia’s voice. Could not have been. It came from behind the garbage can – something or someone was crouching there. Robert began to question if it wasn’t even a human voice, and quickly started stepping backwards toward the door again. Pellets of sweat dripped from his head as fear raised hell inside of him. He got to the door, but someone had locked it. Robert banged on the window, when a hand landed on his shoulder, the moan, this time directly in his ear. He felt saliva and spit on his ear lobes and even on the inside of his ear as the creature moaned at him.
Robert tried to take the creature’s hand off of him, and saw that the hand was half flesh, half bone, all covered in blood. When he saw whom it belonged to, he almost fainted. He came eye to eye to a zombie, whose mouth started aiming toward Robert’s once lustful eyes.
Defensively, Robert’s hand went straight for the zombie’s head, pushing it away from him, his pointer finger accidentally poking the zombie’s eye deeply so that when Robert released his hand, the eye was stuck on his finger, yet still attached to the socket by means of optical tendons. He yelped in a high pitched voice, and took the finger-punctured eye off of his pointer finger and started banging on the window of the break room door.
The glass shattered and Robert leaped through it, landing on something soft but cold.
A zombie. One of many who was trampled over by the multitude of zombies who began picking Robert up, smelling him.
“Ge’ off of me!” How could he escape? There must have been at least eighty of them out in the hall with him. Eighty against one Robert. He would still need to make his way down the stairs or elevator, then out to the parking lot to his car.
Zombies were everywhere as the lights in the hall started flickering on and off. Gray and pale brown bodies with hollow eyes surrounded Robert. They climbed on him, pulling on his clothes, smelling his body, petting his chest hair before licking it with their cold, purple-pink tongues. “Tastes, tastes so good. One lick. One lick more.” Robert was constantly prying zombies off of him with his muscular arms. Sometimes he was too strong for them; instead of pushing the zombies off, he accidentally ripped off their arms, legs, feet and head.
He was able to make it to the elevator, stepping over zombie bodies he had knocked down. The elevator doors opened and a flood of zombies poured out, chanting “Fresh, fresh Robert. Dinner is served. Fresh, fresh Robert. Dinner is served.” They toppled over Robert causing his knee to bend backwards. “Oh Jesus, my knee!” screeched Robert. The zombies giggled.
There was no question about it: Robert would have to crawl out to safety; his broken knee would serve him no good. He reached the stairs surprisingly, and once there, he relied heavily on the railing, zombies chasing after him. He thought he was going to die, the way his heart was racing through the roof of Manifest Towers. With each step down the stairs, his broken let thudded on the step behind him. Thirty flights of stairs was unbelievable, but adrenaline was coursing through his blood – his warm, fresh blood. In no time, he was out in the empty parking lot, save for his car, a white bmw equipped with a sunroof.
When he got in and started the car, he saw zombies making their way toward him, through the rearview mirror. Flooring the car to the front parking lot, Robert was quick to avoid zombies, coming through the bushes that lined the lot. If not, he ran them over with a vengeance. Bump after bump after bump, and Robert was all smiles. Suddenly, the sunroof glass broke and in fell a zombie whose head snapped off after hitting the passenger seat, and rolled onto Robert’s shoulder and down to his crotch area. Robert yelped and took the head, intending to throw it out his window, only to have it bounce back to him because he forgot to open it. He had screamed again when it bounced onto his own head.
Suddenly, there was a large crash from the on top of his car, denting the inside. Leaning toward his window and remembering to open it first this time, Robert looked up and saw black figures – objects from the dark sky – jumping off from his office window, aiming for his car, which was, by now, slowed to a stop. His eyes, still distracted with the living dead bodies falling on top of his car, Robert did not see the approaching zombie jumping on the front of his car, banging his head on his windshield until a huge crack was made, and the zombie knocked himself out cold. Purple blood seeped through a crack in his skull and nose bridge. But no, the zombie was not dead. His mouth opened, eyes widened. When the zombie gave an earsplitting moan, the head could not help but vibrate with spit spurting out of his hole of a mouth. The zombie started to lick the crack, as if it were his lover. He licked it until his tongue started bleeding from the broken glass. Robert could see yellow, thick puss gushing out of the zombie’s eyes as the zombie grew more interested – more excited – in licking the windshield, his tongue, and tongue only, finally making its way through the glass.
Robert could not help it. He pinched the tongue.
At his touch, the zombie wailed and screeched, “Tongue for tongue!” The zombie’s head banged into the saliva-infested crack and broke through. He stuck his tongue out as if to give tongue action in a kiss with Robert.
Robert couldn’t take it anymore. He opened his door and rushed out, crawling head first. Headlights blinded him right before an on-coming speeding car’s tire crushed his head.
The car abruptly stopped. Out of it, stood Cynthia. She knelt down next to Robert’s body, his head as smashed as a watermelon thrown out the window of a three-story house. Her hands reached in her cleavage for a zipper that led all the way up to her forehead. She unzipped, uncovering the face of a most sexy zombie.
“It’s a cold, cruel and unfair world out there,” she said, with a curled lip.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Short story: "The Secrets That I've Saved Her"
The Secrets That I’ve Saved Her
by Bernadette Tinio
November 1999
Our house was of glass and sat on top of a hill next to an apple tree that danced with the breeze on good days, but moaned with the rain on the days that needed moaning; and conversing too, when dialogue was buried. It was as if the tree and its apples – especially the apples – were the cries of the confessional spirits of me and Scarlett, beating from our insides, in our glass house.
The drumming of the rain on the glass was too loud.
I took out the cutting board and began cutting. To start with, we were having salad spiced up with sliced apples and dressing. After preparing the salad, I moved over to the steak and started cutting that too. She sat cross-legged, waiting at the table, not saying a word. I hesitated when I gave her her food and the knife. But she took them quietly.
We sat at our table, eating our foods in silence. Every now and then I looked over at her, but her head was always down. Scarlett, I resigned to believe, just preferred to carry herself like that these days. The loud and wonderfully proud lady I had met in the beginning disfigured into a silent, breathing and hurtfully beautiful piece of flesh, organs and bones. Where did her spirit go?
Squeezed out through her small spaces, and concentrated in one hidden spot. But where was that?
Our dinner was eaten and I blew out the candles that had seemed like nothing but unnoticeable bits of the background of a play that was so dramatic; it didn’t even need a background. And yet we hardly spoke over our salad, apples, steak, and red wine that looked like blood if you thought too much of it.
_____________________________________
In bed, I wore a white cotton tank top with shorts. She wore a silk gown, the one she had bought for me on our second Christmas together. Then she had worn it with a playful, devilish smile; now she wore it with obligation and ugly routine stitched on her curves. The chilled bed, I could tell, would need a lot of time to get warm. I leaned over her, her back to me, and was about to whisper something on the soft hairs of her ears. But at the last second, I decided not to. Still, my mere presence over her and my almost spoken words only chilled her. She curled herself, caught up and almost frozen in the coldness of the sheets like an exotic and mysterious creature, fossilized and found on a rock that could be mistaken for a glacier.
I left her alone. That’s what she seemed to be wanting. Abandoned, somewhat, on my side of the bed, I rolled on my left to face Scarlett. It was like looking at the back side of a rocky mountain you only thought you knew so well. But there were new crevasses, undiscovered by me, that were running a little too deep. I didn’t know how I was going to go to work the next day, with Scarlett and her odd behavior on my mind. But I was tired, and it was a bed that I was lying down on after all. I stretched out my left hand toward her, with all my four fingers.
____________________________________
Scarlett woke up on an empty bed. The warmth that may or may not have built up during the night was now gone for good that morning. She sat straight up and erect and stared out of the glass window, remembering the day they had gone to the store to buy curtains, but then decided against them. They figured they were on top of a hill with no one else around, so what’s the use of getting curtains? They have nothing to hide . . . or so they thought and felt.
Scarlett stood up from the bed slowly. She turned and faced it, as if looking at it would help her remember how she received the night, how they both did. The sheets were all a mess on the side she wasn’t sleeping on, but not so much disturbed on her side. She left the room, determined to fix the bed after breakfast.
Walking through the house to the kitchen, Scarlett looked out the glass windows. The storm had not quite died down from last night. Gray clouds, like the under belly of a fevered and sweaty sheep, covered the sky, and drizzles of rain were merely the invitation for another huge storm later in the day. Scarlett’s joints ached as she bent over to pick up a knife from the knife holder under the sink.
She decided to have chopped apples on top of her oat meal for breakfast.
Apple after piece of apple journeyed into her mouth and went down to her stomach. After fifteen minutes, her bowl was empty; but her mind, gradually sharpened with each minute after her waking, became set, steadily, on the apple tree outside the glass window.
She lay down on the carpet and spread herself like a dying star emanating the last of its light. Her head turned toward the window.
The apples on the tree, she saw, kept swaying with the wind and were getting bruised with the whipping rain that was beating at them like something abusive and unnecessarily criticizing. The apples – what wrong had they done to deserve such a beating? Is it wrong to try to grow and provide pleasure to the mouth, body, and soul of another?
These thoughts seeped through the folds of Scarlett’s mind before she got up again and walked back over to the kitchen to where the knives were. Her hand reached for the same knife used to chop her apples. Cleansed with hot water and soap, the knife fit in her hand, unfittingly.
The phone rang. Scarlett walked over to it with the knife still in her hand. Was fate calling? Maybe fate was on her side, or maybe it was in the course of changing its mind, or perhaps fate had mercy after all.
“Hello?” Scarlett put the knife down on the table with her trembling hand. It was her older brother on the phone, already yelling accusingly. She combated his narrow-viewed words with a half-scream. “You didn’t have to do that!” Tears ran down her battle field of hot, wet, and red flesh. Capillaries on her cheeks rushed with angry emotion and surfaced in the form of a bloody war that filled her face, as her brother was screaming over the phone. There was more yelling from the both of them.
Before he hung up, he said, as if he actually meant it, “She deserved what she got.” Scarlett slammed the phone on the receiver and picked up the knife at the same time. An angry and irate fate must not have fallen off the blade of the knife when she reached for it again.
The knife opened her skin very slightly as she directed a line across her wrist.
___________________________________________
I came home at around six-thirty in the afternoon. Scarlett greeted me at the door, but there was something about her smile that told me something had happened – perhaps something harsh – in the afternoon while I was out at work. Of course she didn’t tell me what, and I didn’t expect her to tell me. Expecting her to speak about her day has come to be foolish thinking. And the fool that I am sometimes, I am not a fool about this: Scarlett is hiding something.
Yes, ever since the incident a month ago.
I had out the cutting board to slice some fruits for our dessert after dinner.
“Darling, please go out by the apple tree and pick some apples. Some of them fell to the ground because of the storm this afternoon.” Scarlett was looking out the window.
“But we have enough fruit already for dessert.”
“Darling, please.”
___________________________________
My raincoat flapped in the rain and wind, like a whip, slapping against my legs as I bent down to pick up the apples that had fallen on the ground. Scarlett watched from the kitchen window. I motioned to her that I needed a basket to carry the apples in, yelling through the rain. But she didn’t understand. The barrier of glass, although transparent, could not help her read my intentions, actions or words.
I came back inside with a dozen apples or so, tucked in my shirt folded outward to hold them in. Scarlett took the apples from me and meticulously washed each one for at least one minute. Then she prepared a glass bowl for them and chose one for me to cut up, along with the other fruits I had already cut for our dessert.
She sat, again cross-legged, at the table, waiting for the dessert until I brought it to the table from the counter. I sat down next to her and looked into her eyes. “Why the apples?” Scarlett took a bite of her fruits. Determined to understand her, I asked again. “Scarlett, honey, why did you make me go out in the rain to get the apples?”
“Oh, no reason.”
“There has to be a reason, Scar—”
“No reason.”
I slammed my left fist on the table.
Scarlett, her face immediately red like her precious apples, jumped a little in her seat, but remained silent. I felt her stare resting, sternly, on my missing left ring finger, which was bandaged up. She extended her hand to touch it, but I was too heated up in the head. Why has Scarlett been acting weird? Why has she suddenly shut herself up, like a beautiful bird that was willingly and stubbornly staying in the cage after given the opportunity to fly away and show the world her majestic wings? Over mountain tops and peaceful lakes, and traffic filled streets, her body reflecting on the windows of apartments where yells could be heard, but singing just the same.
I raised my left hand over my head and stormed over to our room.
It was from our bed that I heard Scarlett moving dishes around, utensils clanking to each other and on the plates. Now I was the one curled up in bed. I was on top of the sheets, determined not to speak to her.
In the dark of our room, there I was.
__________________________________________
My eyes closed and then opened. Now it was two in the morning. The moon outside, full and impregnated with . . . with . . . something. Whatever it was, the moon couldn't help but shine through the glass window. My eyes moved over to Scarlett’s side of the bed. She wasn’t there. But then the door creaked open slowly. A dark figure with the kind of elegance only Scarlett could force came into the room. Scarlett lay down next to me. I watched her, or a shadow of her. It was like although I was looking at Scarlett, without her knowledge of that, I felt my view into her heart and mind was blocked: she remained a dark figure inside and out. It was as if we were both blinded at that very moment.
Thirty minutes of Scarlett’s progressively slowing breathing passed, and I was still wide awake. I reached over to grab her hand. We held hands without her knowing for a few minutes. Does that mean that we didn’t hold hands?
Mine slid over to her wrist. A bulge of what felt like scar tissue protruded over it. It was a single line. Where was this from?
_____________________________________
I closed my eyes and saw a fall afternoon. It’s October 1999. I know it is because the leaves are in the cross between turning red and tryingly staying a summer green. In this one month old memory bottled in a dream, Scarlett and I are in her family’s house. It was just me and Scarlett and a movie in the living room. Her parents were both out and so was her brother.
As my tongue circled hers, the front door opened. Her older brother. Muscles and more muscles, hidden and restrained deceivingly under businessmen attire. I released myself from her, quickly.
“You. I have to show you something.” His thick pointer finger shot at me. I had met Cain twice before whenever I came to drop Scarlett off at her family’s house in the past. He had always been a reserved, yet agitated man, much like a quiescent volcano. The potential Cain had . . . .
“Cain, what are you doing?”
He ignored Scarlett. “Follow me.”
“Scarlett, it’ll probably just be for a second, right Cain?”
“Yeah, just for a second, Scar.”
“Maybe I should come.” Scarlett got up and grabbed hold of my left hand, as I was walking over to Cain. Naturally, she rubbed her thumb on my ring as she did so.
“No, you stay. You—” again he pointed at me, “Come. It’s in the backyard.”
A twig scratched my shin as I followed Cain into the forest area behind their backyard. Cain was searching for something. He kept muttering to himself, and laughing, like a mad scientist or a literary critic, or any critic for this matter, gone insane.
Finally, in a clearing, there it was. A huge red and purple flower, growing proudly and naturally.
“You see this?” Cain pointed at the flower against the overcast sky, a fragile lighthouse that can be overtaken by the foam of the waves. My eyes followed. “I found this here when I was a kid. Scar wasn’t even born yet. Look at it.” He gently touched one of its petals with his muscular and veined, thick hand. I could imagine the lighthouse crumbling.
“I see it.”
“When I was a kid, I watched it grow. Each day, it got bigger and bigger.” Cain had eyes only for the flower. “One day, my friend died. We were best friends. We were real close. But then we started to separate. I’d have baseball practice but Vinny . . . you know what he liked to do? Knit. He fuckin’ liked to knit.”
“What’s wrong with liking to knit?”
“Shut up. It didn’t help that I saw him . . . with one of my team mates. So one day, I was in a fight with him. You could guess what we fought over. The next day, I saw that he had knitted himself a noose. He hung himself with it.”
I saw a small tear drop escaped Cain’s eyes as if it were escaping a jail house.
“And I came back here and saw the flower. And it was still growing. Vinny was dead and the flower kept growing. It’s not natural.” At that, Cain took an ax that was hidden behind a nearby tree. With one big sweep, he killed the flower, cutting it off from the root.
“What was that for?” I yelled at him and ran over to the flower, now lying on the floor. I kneeled down beside it as if it were a person. Cain looked at me and winced. His face was wet and so was his shirt. That’s when I realized it had been raining the whole time.
Cain dropped the axe and reached into his pocket. A box cutter. He walked toward me. Worried, I gripped the flower more sternly and stood up. “Cain, what are you doing?”
“He shouldn’t have killed himself.”
I was now moving backwards, trying to get away from him, the murdered flower in my hand.
“He shouldn’t have killed himself.”
Suddenly, Cain increased his steps and walked faster toward me. I didn’t want to take any chances. Out of the clearing and back into the wooded area, I desperately ran.
As I was zig-zagging in and out of trees, the red and purple flower still in my hands, I always feared Cain behind me. His breathing, his movements, everything about him I began to fear. I became paranoid until I ran out of breath and decided to hide behind the trunk of a fallen tree. I stayed there for at least five minutes. I looked down at the flower and noticed blood on my hands. There were thorns from the flower that I hadn’t seen until now. It was hard to pull the flower off of my hand since the thorns dug into my skin so deeply. It was like snake fangs burrowing in flesh for the kill. I had to use my other hand to get it off. The skin stubbornly stuck to the thorns as if they were glued together; I was connected to the flower. When I finally did get it off of my palm, I saw holes in my palm with blood dripping from them, like the tears I saw falling from Cain’s eyes.
When I was sure he couldn’t possibly be near me, I stood up and quickly looked around.
No Cain in sight.
I started walking, but then I felt a tap on my shoulder.
A huge thick stick came in my field of vision. I got knocked out cold after falling to the floor hard. The last image I saw before the blackness consumed me was Cain’s face, his tears dripping on me and his hand with the box cutter moving toward my left hand, spreading out my fingers.
______________________________________________
The bandaged left hand and missing ring finger twitched as the sun swept through the window. Alone. Scarlett wasn’t there anymore. Sweaty faced. A faint delirium passed through the mind brought on by the memory dream.
Out the window, Scarlett was by the apple tree.
_____________________________________________
“What are you doing?”
Scarlet relaxed her shoulder and let down the bow. “I’m practicing.”
Twelve apples were perched on twelve wooden sticks stuck in the ground. They were all aligned, one after another vertically across Scarlett’s view so that she need only aim at the one apple in the front in order to pierce the bow through all twelve of them.
“You’re practicing?” This seemed random. First the disorientation of the dream memory, and now Scarlett was practicing the bow and arrow. An utter mystery filled with surprises that sometimes frightened you was what she was. “Where’d you get it from, the arrow and the bow?”
“What darling?”
“Where did you get the bow and arrow from?”
“When I was younger, my parents took me and Cain to the Grand Canyon. The golden days, when we were younger. Judgments seemed so far away then.” Her eyes drifted far off into the trees, not thinking about the apple she had been aiming at while talking. Scarlett’s voice had become more strained than it was in the past, like a smooth piece of paper that had gotten wet by water, and was now plagued with crinkles. It no longer was recklessly melodic with each corner of intonation; rather, it was purposeful with a daunting flame underneath. When she did speak now-a-days, it was to say things she would allow herself to say, to let go. “His name was Joe, Indian Joe. Cain and I met him when we were trying to get ahead of our parents around the rocks.”
Laughter and disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Scarlett, put down the bow and arrow; you might get hurt.”
“No, we really did meet this Indian Joe.”
“How come you never told me about this?”
Her arm began to tense up again, as she was getting ready to shoot.
“You don’t know many things about me, about my past. We’re always so focused on the present, but sometimes the past just shows up, so unexpectedly.” Like the bow and arrow. Like Cain. “I’m trying to say, he painted us a flat stone of huntsmen, and gave me this bow and arrow. ‘To shoot down what’s been shot down already in the minds.’ That’s what he told me.”
She bent her head down. With one eye closed, and the other in total concentration on the apples, Scarlett inhaled and was about to shoot.
“Are you any good?”
She smiled for the first time since she had shown signs of some strange oddity in possession of her, that which had made her peculiarly reserved and deeply darker than before. Deranged in her eyes, Scarlett laughed.
And to demonstrate her prowess with the bow, she shot the arrow through all twelve unlucky apples.
_________________________________________
Scarlett took a knife from under the sink and stole herself into the basement, carrying her bow and arrow. Inanimate objects were stored away for memory’s sake in their basement. The ticket stub of their first movie together, the now broken sled they used after the huge snow storm hit back in ’97 (they had accidentally crashed into a steel fence, and left it fortunately unscathed and laughing), a cell phone that was rendered broken by the both of them when business calls for Scarlett were beginning to become too annoying and too much in between them. The basement was the perfect place for her bow and arrow thought Scarlett.
It was also the perfect place for her to draw another line over the bulge on her wrist. The knife cried blood.
___________________________________
The stove was a blur and suddenly flew to the other side of the room. The refrigerator floated up to the ceiling. The television soared from left to right. Sprinkles of flashing lights, like those used in a play to indicate lightening, rendered my squinting eyes. And the pulsating throb on my head was too much. It wasn’t long until I realized I was having a huge migraine. I felt my way to our room from the back door, using the wall, and when I finally got there, I let myself fall to the floor.
In a vision, Cain was in our house. He had broken through one of the glass windows. He was after something, in dire need of destroying it in the hopes of destroying its meaning, us. He wanted it, the purple circle I used to wear before I couldn’t wear it any longer, thanks to him himself. He couldn’t find it because I had it in my pocket. If I couldn’t wear it, I carried it around. Either way, it stays with me.
In this vision, I hid in my and Scarlett’s blinded closet, watching Cain ransack our bedroom looking for the ring. I began to laugh. It was so involuntary. Yes, and so very necessary. It was my victory. But when he heard me, he rushed to the closet door.
My breath quickened as I braced myself for his wrath. Suddenly, Scarlett barged in the room with her bow and arrow. Scarlett, my savior, my rescuer, my own mystery novel that gets me every time, yet assures me that there is a resolution that can be reached.
She shot Cain’s head with her arrow. And Cain collapsed on me, hard.
"Scarlett, your own brother."
_________________________________________
She gave a little jolt and the bed shook, but she was still obviously asleep as Scarlett dipped a wash cloth into a bowl of ice cold water. Brook had earned herself a fever. After hearing a thud on the ceiling, Scarlett had rushed upstairs to their bedroom and found her on the floor, Brook’s purple ring on the floor next to her pocket.
_________________________________________
Late that night I awoke in the peaceful dark. Scarlett was lying next to me, sleeping soundly like she does. A tray on a small table next to me held a bowl of water with a small towel.
On my left, Scarlett was lying down, her back to me, again.
My eyes made their way to our glass window. The moon, gaily bright, and the silhouette of the apple tree with its apples, seemed to have a mind of their own -- the stealthy and secret way they romanced in the night, the moonlight with the shadows of apples.
My hand moved over to hers. The bulge. It was still there. I caressed it as a tear fell down.
As if for comfort, or for an answer, a tune gently floated through my mind as I leaned over to Scarlett. I sang it to her in the soft of my voice:
While this woman is sleeping here
I tell her what I can't if I were to wake her.
Powerful but hardly will she ever hear,
the secrets I've saved her.
Well you are famous, indeed,
for all your shyness.
Ain't that sweet?
But ain't this a fine mess?
We're in so deep;
I must've gotten lost in the process.
Let’s just let things be easy.
And an honest one you've made me,
because the solace that you gave me
has proven problems ain't the main thing to fall apart.
The archers sloping shoulders.
And its story is tale is tall
thus reminding love is allegorical.
I mean the goal here after all
is not to hurt at all.
_______________________________________
Scarlett felt a soft brush of air or wind, like a kind spirit, gently kissing the fine hairs of her ear.
by Bernadette Tinio
November 1999
Our house was of glass and sat on top of a hill next to an apple tree that danced with the breeze on good days, but moaned with the rain on the days that needed moaning; and conversing too, when dialogue was buried. It was as if the tree and its apples – especially the apples – were the cries of the confessional spirits of me and Scarlett, beating from our insides, in our glass house.
The drumming of the rain on the glass was too loud.
I took out the cutting board and began cutting. To start with, we were having salad spiced up with sliced apples and dressing. After preparing the salad, I moved over to the steak and started cutting that too. She sat cross-legged, waiting at the table, not saying a word. I hesitated when I gave her her food and the knife. But she took them quietly.
We sat at our table, eating our foods in silence. Every now and then I looked over at her, but her head was always down. Scarlett, I resigned to believe, just preferred to carry herself like that these days. The loud and wonderfully proud lady I had met in the beginning disfigured into a silent, breathing and hurtfully beautiful piece of flesh, organs and bones. Where did her spirit go?
Squeezed out through her small spaces, and concentrated in one hidden spot. But where was that?
Our dinner was eaten and I blew out the candles that had seemed like nothing but unnoticeable bits of the background of a play that was so dramatic; it didn’t even need a background. And yet we hardly spoke over our salad, apples, steak, and red wine that looked like blood if you thought too much of it.
_____________________________________
In bed, I wore a white cotton tank top with shorts. She wore a silk gown, the one she had bought for me on our second Christmas together. Then she had worn it with a playful, devilish smile; now she wore it with obligation and ugly routine stitched on her curves. The chilled bed, I could tell, would need a lot of time to get warm. I leaned over her, her back to me, and was about to whisper something on the soft hairs of her ears. But at the last second, I decided not to. Still, my mere presence over her and my almost spoken words only chilled her. She curled herself, caught up and almost frozen in the coldness of the sheets like an exotic and mysterious creature, fossilized and found on a rock that could be mistaken for a glacier.
I left her alone. That’s what she seemed to be wanting. Abandoned, somewhat, on my side of the bed, I rolled on my left to face Scarlett. It was like looking at the back side of a rocky mountain you only thought you knew so well. But there were new crevasses, undiscovered by me, that were running a little too deep. I didn’t know how I was going to go to work the next day, with Scarlett and her odd behavior on my mind. But I was tired, and it was a bed that I was lying down on after all. I stretched out my left hand toward her, with all my four fingers.
____________________________________
Scarlett woke up on an empty bed. The warmth that may or may not have built up during the night was now gone for good that morning. She sat straight up and erect and stared out of the glass window, remembering the day they had gone to the store to buy curtains, but then decided against them. They figured they were on top of a hill with no one else around, so what’s the use of getting curtains? They have nothing to hide . . . or so they thought and felt.
Scarlett stood up from the bed slowly. She turned and faced it, as if looking at it would help her remember how she received the night, how they both did. The sheets were all a mess on the side she wasn’t sleeping on, but not so much disturbed on her side. She left the room, determined to fix the bed after breakfast.
Walking through the house to the kitchen, Scarlett looked out the glass windows. The storm had not quite died down from last night. Gray clouds, like the under belly of a fevered and sweaty sheep, covered the sky, and drizzles of rain were merely the invitation for another huge storm later in the day. Scarlett’s joints ached as she bent over to pick up a knife from the knife holder under the sink.
She decided to have chopped apples on top of her oat meal for breakfast.
Apple after piece of apple journeyed into her mouth and went down to her stomach. After fifteen minutes, her bowl was empty; but her mind, gradually sharpened with each minute after her waking, became set, steadily, on the apple tree outside the glass window.
She lay down on the carpet and spread herself like a dying star emanating the last of its light. Her head turned toward the window.
The apples on the tree, she saw, kept swaying with the wind and were getting bruised with the whipping rain that was beating at them like something abusive and unnecessarily criticizing. The apples – what wrong had they done to deserve such a beating? Is it wrong to try to grow and provide pleasure to the mouth, body, and soul of another?
These thoughts seeped through the folds of Scarlett’s mind before she got up again and walked back over to the kitchen to where the knives were. Her hand reached for the same knife used to chop her apples. Cleansed with hot water and soap, the knife fit in her hand, unfittingly.
The phone rang. Scarlett walked over to it with the knife still in her hand. Was fate calling? Maybe fate was on her side, or maybe it was in the course of changing its mind, or perhaps fate had mercy after all.
“Hello?” Scarlett put the knife down on the table with her trembling hand. It was her older brother on the phone, already yelling accusingly. She combated his narrow-viewed words with a half-scream. “You didn’t have to do that!” Tears ran down her battle field of hot, wet, and red flesh. Capillaries on her cheeks rushed with angry emotion and surfaced in the form of a bloody war that filled her face, as her brother was screaming over the phone. There was more yelling from the both of them.
Before he hung up, he said, as if he actually meant it, “She deserved what she got.” Scarlett slammed the phone on the receiver and picked up the knife at the same time. An angry and irate fate must not have fallen off the blade of the knife when she reached for it again.
The knife opened her skin very slightly as she directed a line across her wrist.
___________________________________________
I came home at around six-thirty in the afternoon. Scarlett greeted me at the door, but there was something about her smile that told me something had happened – perhaps something harsh – in the afternoon while I was out at work. Of course she didn’t tell me what, and I didn’t expect her to tell me. Expecting her to speak about her day has come to be foolish thinking. And the fool that I am sometimes, I am not a fool about this: Scarlett is hiding something.
Yes, ever since the incident a month ago.
I had out the cutting board to slice some fruits for our dessert after dinner.
“Darling, please go out by the apple tree and pick some apples. Some of them fell to the ground because of the storm this afternoon.” Scarlett was looking out the window.
“But we have enough fruit already for dessert.”
“Darling, please.”
___________________________________
My raincoat flapped in the rain and wind, like a whip, slapping against my legs as I bent down to pick up the apples that had fallen on the ground. Scarlett watched from the kitchen window. I motioned to her that I needed a basket to carry the apples in, yelling through the rain. But she didn’t understand. The barrier of glass, although transparent, could not help her read my intentions, actions or words.
I came back inside with a dozen apples or so, tucked in my shirt folded outward to hold them in. Scarlett took the apples from me and meticulously washed each one for at least one minute. Then she prepared a glass bowl for them and chose one for me to cut up, along with the other fruits I had already cut for our dessert.
She sat, again cross-legged, at the table, waiting for the dessert until I brought it to the table from the counter. I sat down next to her and looked into her eyes. “Why the apples?” Scarlett took a bite of her fruits. Determined to understand her, I asked again. “Scarlett, honey, why did you make me go out in the rain to get the apples?”
“Oh, no reason.”
“There has to be a reason, Scar—”
“No reason.”
I slammed my left fist on the table.
Scarlett, her face immediately red like her precious apples, jumped a little in her seat, but remained silent. I felt her stare resting, sternly, on my missing left ring finger, which was bandaged up. She extended her hand to touch it, but I was too heated up in the head. Why has Scarlett been acting weird? Why has she suddenly shut herself up, like a beautiful bird that was willingly and stubbornly staying in the cage after given the opportunity to fly away and show the world her majestic wings? Over mountain tops and peaceful lakes, and traffic filled streets, her body reflecting on the windows of apartments where yells could be heard, but singing just the same.
I raised my left hand over my head and stormed over to our room.
It was from our bed that I heard Scarlett moving dishes around, utensils clanking to each other and on the plates. Now I was the one curled up in bed. I was on top of the sheets, determined not to speak to her.
In the dark of our room, there I was.
__________________________________________
My eyes closed and then opened. Now it was two in the morning. The moon outside, full and impregnated with . . . with . . . something. Whatever it was, the moon couldn't help but shine through the glass window. My eyes moved over to Scarlett’s side of the bed. She wasn’t there. But then the door creaked open slowly. A dark figure with the kind of elegance only Scarlett could force came into the room. Scarlett lay down next to me. I watched her, or a shadow of her. It was like although I was looking at Scarlett, without her knowledge of that, I felt my view into her heart and mind was blocked: she remained a dark figure inside and out. It was as if we were both blinded at that very moment.
Thirty minutes of Scarlett’s progressively slowing breathing passed, and I was still wide awake. I reached over to grab her hand. We held hands without her knowing for a few minutes. Does that mean that we didn’t hold hands?
Mine slid over to her wrist. A bulge of what felt like scar tissue protruded over it. It was a single line. Where was this from?
_____________________________________
I closed my eyes and saw a fall afternoon. It’s October 1999. I know it is because the leaves are in the cross between turning red and tryingly staying a summer green. In this one month old memory bottled in a dream, Scarlett and I are in her family’s house. It was just me and Scarlett and a movie in the living room. Her parents were both out and so was her brother.
As my tongue circled hers, the front door opened. Her older brother. Muscles and more muscles, hidden and restrained deceivingly under businessmen attire. I released myself from her, quickly.
“You. I have to show you something.” His thick pointer finger shot at me. I had met Cain twice before whenever I came to drop Scarlett off at her family’s house in the past. He had always been a reserved, yet agitated man, much like a quiescent volcano. The potential Cain had . . . .
“Cain, what are you doing?”
He ignored Scarlett. “Follow me.”
“Scarlett, it’ll probably just be for a second, right Cain?”
“Yeah, just for a second, Scar.”
“Maybe I should come.” Scarlett got up and grabbed hold of my left hand, as I was walking over to Cain. Naturally, she rubbed her thumb on my ring as she did so.
“No, you stay. You—” again he pointed at me, “Come. It’s in the backyard.”
A twig scratched my shin as I followed Cain into the forest area behind their backyard. Cain was searching for something. He kept muttering to himself, and laughing, like a mad scientist or a literary critic, or any critic for this matter, gone insane.
Finally, in a clearing, there it was. A huge red and purple flower, growing proudly and naturally.
“You see this?” Cain pointed at the flower against the overcast sky, a fragile lighthouse that can be overtaken by the foam of the waves. My eyes followed. “I found this here when I was a kid. Scar wasn’t even born yet. Look at it.” He gently touched one of its petals with his muscular and veined, thick hand. I could imagine the lighthouse crumbling.
“I see it.”
“When I was a kid, I watched it grow. Each day, it got bigger and bigger.” Cain had eyes only for the flower. “One day, my friend died. We were best friends. We were real close. But then we started to separate. I’d have baseball practice but Vinny . . . you know what he liked to do? Knit. He fuckin’ liked to knit.”
“What’s wrong with liking to knit?”
“Shut up. It didn’t help that I saw him . . . with one of my team mates. So one day, I was in a fight with him. You could guess what we fought over. The next day, I saw that he had knitted himself a noose. He hung himself with it.”
I saw a small tear drop escaped Cain’s eyes as if it were escaping a jail house.
“And I came back here and saw the flower. And it was still growing. Vinny was dead and the flower kept growing. It’s not natural.” At that, Cain took an ax that was hidden behind a nearby tree. With one big sweep, he killed the flower, cutting it off from the root.
“What was that for?” I yelled at him and ran over to the flower, now lying on the floor. I kneeled down beside it as if it were a person. Cain looked at me and winced. His face was wet and so was his shirt. That’s when I realized it had been raining the whole time.
Cain dropped the axe and reached into his pocket. A box cutter. He walked toward me. Worried, I gripped the flower more sternly and stood up. “Cain, what are you doing?”
“He shouldn’t have killed himself.”
I was now moving backwards, trying to get away from him, the murdered flower in my hand.
“He shouldn’t have killed himself.”
Suddenly, Cain increased his steps and walked faster toward me. I didn’t want to take any chances. Out of the clearing and back into the wooded area, I desperately ran.
As I was zig-zagging in and out of trees, the red and purple flower still in my hands, I always feared Cain behind me. His breathing, his movements, everything about him I began to fear. I became paranoid until I ran out of breath and decided to hide behind the trunk of a fallen tree. I stayed there for at least five minutes. I looked down at the flower and noticed blood on my hands. There were thorns from the flower that I hadn’t seen until now. It was hard to pull the flower off of my hand since the thorns dug into my skin so deeply. It was like snake fangs burrowing in flesh for the kill. I had to use my other hand to get it off. The skin stubbornly stuck to the thorns as if they were glued together; I was connected to the flower. When I finally did get it off of my palm, I saw holes in my palm with blood dripping from them, like the tears I saw falling from Cain’s eyes.
When I was sure he couldn’t possibly be near me, I stood up and quickly looked around.
No Cain in sight.
I started walking, but then I felt a tap on my shoulder.
A huge thick stick came in my field of vision. I got knocked out cold after falling to the floor hard. The last image I saw before the blackness consumed me was Cain’s face, his tears dripping on me and his hand with the box cutter moving toward my left hand, spreading out my fingers.
______________________________________________
The bandaged left hand and missing ring finger twitched as the sun swept through the window. Alone. Scarlett wasn’t there anymore. Sweaty faced. A faint delirium passed through the mind brought on by the memory dream.
Out the window, Scarlett was by the apple tree.
_____________________________________________
“What are you doing?”
Scarlet relaxed her shoulder and let down the bow. “I’m practicing.”
Twelve apples were perched on twelve wooden sticks stuck in the ground. They were all aligned, one after another vertically across Scarlett’s view so that she need only aim at the one apple in the front in order to pierce the bow through all twelve of them.
“You’re practicing?” This seemed random. First the disorientation of the dream memory, and now Scarlett was practicing the bow and arrow. An utter mystery filled with surprises that sometimes frightened you was what she was. “Where’d you get it from, the arrow and the bow?”
“What darling?”
“Where did you get the bow and arrow from?”
“When I was younger, my parents took me and Cain to the Grand Canyon. The golden days, when we were younger. Judgments seemed so far away then.” Her eyes drifted far off into the trees, not thinking about the apple she had been aiming at while talking. Scarlett’s voice had become more strained than it was in the past, like a smooth piece of paper that had gotten wet by water, and was now plagued with crinkles. It no longer was recklessly melodic with each corner of intonation; rather, it was purposeful with a daunting flame underneath. When she did speak now-a-days, it was to say things she would allow herself to say, to let go. “His name was Joe, Indian Joe. Cain and I met him when we were trying to get ahead of our parents around the rocks.”
Laughter and disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Scarlett, put down the bow and arrow; you might get hurt.”
“No, we really did meet this Indian Joe.”
“How come you never told me about this?”
Her arm began to tense up again, as she was getting ready to shoot.
“You don’t know many things about me, about my past. We’re always so focused on the present, but sometimes the past just shows up, so unexpectedly.” Like the bow and arrow. Like Cain. “I’m trying to say, he painted us a flat stone of huntsmen, and gave me this bow and arrow. ‘To shoot down what’s been shot down already in the minds.’ That’s what he told me.”
She bent her head down. With one eye closed, and the other in total concentration on the apples, Scarlett inhaled and was about to shoot.
“Are you any good?”
She smiled for the first time since she had shown signs of some strange oddity in possession of her, that which had made her peculiarly reserved and deeply darker than before. Deranged in her eyes, Scarlett laughed.
And to demonstrate her prowess with the bow, she shot the arrow through all twelve unlucky apples.
_________________________________________
Scarlett took a knife from under the sink and stole herself into the basement, carrying her bow and arrow. Inanimate objects were stored away for memory’s sake in their basement. The ticket stub of their first movie together, the now broken sled they used after the huge snow storm hit back in ’97 (they had accidentally crashed into a steel fence, and left it fortunately unscathed and laughing), a cell phone that was rendered broken by the both of them when business calls for Scarlett were beginning to become too annoying and too much in between them. The basement was the perfect place for her bow and arrow thought Scarlett.
It was also the perfect place for her to draw another line over the bulge on her wrist. The knife cried blood.
___________________________________
The stove was a blur and suddenly flew to the other side of the room. The refrigerator floated up to the ceiling. The television soared from left to right. Sprinkles of flashing lights, like those used in a play to indicate lightening, rendered my squinting eyes. And the pulsating throb on my head was too much. It wasn’t long until I realized I was having a huge migraine. I felt my way to our room from the back door, using the wall, and when I finally got there, I let myself fall to the floor.
In a vision, Cain was in our house. He had broken through one of the glass windows. He was after something, in dire need of destroying it in the hopes of destroying its meaning, us. He wanted it, the purple circle I used to wear before I couldn’t wear it any longer, thanks to him himself. He couldn’t find it because I had it in my pocket. If I couldn’t wear it, I carried it around. Either way, it stays with me.
In this vision, I hid in my and Scarlett’s blinded closet, watching Cain ransack our bedroom looking for the ring. I began to laugh. It was so involuntary. Yes, and so very necessary. It was my victory. But when he heard me, he rushed to the closet door.
My breath quickened as I braced myself for his wrath. Suddenly, Scarlett barged in the room with her bow and arrow. Scarlett, my savior, my rescuer, my own mystery novel that gets me every time, yet assures me that there is a resolution that can be reached.
She shot Cain’s head with her arrow. And Cain collapsed on me, hard.
"Scarlett, your own brother."
_________________________________________
She gave a little jolt and the bed shook, but she was still obviously asleep as Scarlett dipped a wash cloth into a bowl of ice cold water. Brook had earned herself a fever. After hearing a thud on the ceiling, Scarlett had rushed upstairs to their bedroom and found her on the floor, Brook’s purple ring on the floor next to her pocket.
_________________________________________
Late that night I awoke in the peaceful dark. Scarlett was lying next to me, sleeping soundly like she does. A tray on a small table next to me held a bowl of water with a small towel.
On my left, Scarlett was lying down, her back to me, again.
My eyes made their way to our glass window. The moon, gaily bright, and the silhouette of the apple tree with its apples, seemed to have a mind of their own -- the stealthy and secret way they romanced in the night, the moonlight with the shadows of apples.
My hand moved over to hers. The bulge. It was still there. I caressed it as a tear fell down.
As if for comfort, or for an answer, a tune gently floated through my mind as I leaned over to Scarlett. I sang it to her in the soft of my voice:
While this woman is sleeping here
I tell her what I can't if I were to wake her.
Powerful but hardly will she ever hear,
the secrets I've saved her.
Well you are famous, indeed,
for all your shyness.
Ain't that sweet?
But ain't this a fine mess?
We're in so deep;
I must've gotten lost in the process.
Let’s just let things be easy.
And an honest one you've made me,
because the solace that you gave me
has proven problems ain't the main thing to fall apart.
The archers sloping shoulders.
And its story is tale is tall
thus reminding love is allegorical.
I mean the goal here after all
is not to hurt at all.
_______________________________________
Scarlett felt a soft brush of air or wind, like a kind spirit, gently kissing the fine hairs of her ear.
Background info (the 'behind-the-scenes') about my next piece, "The Secrets That I've Saved Her"
Yes, it’s true: I haven’t written a blog in almost three months. Usually I like to write at least one per month, but summer laziness got to me, as well as other preoccupations in my mind. Not only that! These past several months I had been working on a short story – the most complicated one, I think, that I’ve ever written. Before writing it, I had re-read past short stories I’ve written and saw that they were mainly linear, traditional. That has got to go. Or rather, I wanted to experiment with different frameworks of story -telling; that is, I wanted to play around with perspective/point of view, in a way that was accommodating to the message I wanted to get across in this next short story that I’ve been working on.
It is entitled, “The Secrets That I’ve Saved Her,” and was birthed from multiple sources of inspiration. The first of which was an underrated song by Jason Mraz called, “Happy Ending” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciIGrV1-G1o). I highly recommend that you give it a listen if you really want to get into the mood of the story. While the song makes references to the tale of William Tell in a way that highlights a relationship between a man and a woman (rather than a father and son, like the tale was), I could not help but picture the personality of the woman being described in that song. Before telling you more about the song, I should probably give you the gist of what the tale of William Tell is about.
In Switzerland seven hundred years ago, or so, there was an unjust, harsh ruler, named Gessler. He set in the market place a pole, ontop of which was a hat. Those who passed the pole by would have to bow to the hat to show loyalty and respect to Gessler. One day, William Tell, who was known for his skill with the crossbow, as well as steering ships, was walking with his son in that very marketplace; but, when he saw the hat, he didn’t bow down. Immediately he was arrested by soldiers under the command of Gessler. When Gessler himself showed up, he gave William Tell an ultimatum: Tell was to shoot an apple off the head of his son. If he did that successfully, he would be free of charges. Tell was overcome with disbelief, but took the challenge nevertheless. Within a few moments, the apple was split in half: Tell had successfully shot the apple. However, he had with him two arrows, the first of which was to shoot the apple. But what was the second one for? Gessler demanded to know. William Tell admitted that if he accidentally killed his son, he would use the second one to kill Gessler for revenge. Gessler was outraged and demanded to his guards that Tell be imprisoned in the island across the sea, separated from his son.
Promptly, the guards and Gessler himself embarked on the journey to bring Tell (who was tied down) to the island, when suddenly a storm ensued. The guards, knowing that Tell is very good with boat-steering, told Gessler that they should release Tell so that he can safely get the boat across the sea to the island. Reluctantly Gessler agreed and they released Tell. However, William Tell took advantage of that. While pretending to steer, he suddenly jumped off the boat onto a rock, leaving the guards and Gessler in the hands of the storm. From afar, Tell killed Gessler with his bow and arrow.
He had freed his people from the brutal rule of Hermann Gessler, and was seen as a hero who will forever love his son.
So that’s the legend of William Tell in a nut shell. Probably not one hundred percent accurate, but you get the general picture. Although the legend emphasizes Tell’s love for his child, Jason’s song emphasizes the love a man has for a woman, his lover. And that is the kind of love I was aiming for in the short story. Well . . . sorta.
Another source of inspiration was this idea of secrets, a concept that has been barraging me these past several months, with a fury. It has given me added stress, so I decided to take that and make use of it creatively through this short story. Everyone has secrets because everyone lives a little with implicitness. The past may hold cavities for secrets to grow in, or to just simply die in. That’s what I’ve learned these past few months (all this may sound highly suspicious but you need not worry). Therefore, one of the main themes I’ve embedded in this short story is the notion of keeping secrets. And quite frankly sometimes secrets and the spreading of them are fueled by judgments and ignorance. Likewise, I’ve decided to make another of the more important themes of this short story about the act of criticizing oneself and others because of judgements. Not to mention the act of surpassing judgements by dealing with the good that’s in front of you. Judgements have been made already, and the damage from criticism has already hurt.
So, that’s all I’ll say about “The Secrets That I’ve Saved Her.” Don’t want to spoil anything. I'm posting the actual short story in my next blog because if I post it here, this blog would seem extremely long. So anyway, I hope you enjoy reading it and finding meaning from within your own interpretation of it.
It is entitled, “The Secrets That I’ve Saved Her,” and was birthed from multiple sources of inspiration. The first of which was an underrated song by Jason Mraz called, “Happy Ending” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciIGrV1-G1o). I highly recommend that you give it a listen if you really want to get into the mood of the story. While the song makes references to the tale of William Tell in a way that highlights a relationship between a man and a woman (rather than a father and son, like the tale was), I could not help but picture the personality of the woman being described in that song. Before telling you more about the song, I should probably give you the gist of what the tale of William Tell is about.
In Switzerland seven hundred years ago, or so, there was an unjust, harsh ruler, named Gessler. He set in the market place a pole, ontop of which was a hat. Those who passed the pole by would have to bow to the hat to show loyalty and respect to Gessler. One day, William Tell, who was known for his skill with the crossbow, as well as steering ships, was walking with his son in that very marketplace; but, when he saw the hat, he didn’t bow down. Immediately he was arrested by soldiers under the command of Gessler. When Gessler himself showed up, he gave William Tell an ultimatum: Tell was to shoot an apple off the head of his son. If he did that successfully, he would be free of charges. Tell was overcome with disbelief, but took the challenge nevertheless. Within a few moments, the apple was split in half: Tell had successfully shot the apple. However, he had with him two arrows, the first of which was to shoot the apple. But what was the second one for? Gessler demanded to know. William Tell admitted that if he accidentally killed his son, he would use the second one to kill Gessler for revenge. Gessler was outraged and demanded to his guards that Tell be imprisoned in the island across the sea, separated from his son.
Promptly, the guards and Gessler himself embarked on the journey to bring Tell (who was tied down) to the island, when suddenly a storm ensued. The guards, knowing that Tell is very good with boat-steering, told Gessler that they should release Tell so that he can safely get the boat across the sea to the island. Reluctantly Gessler agreed and they released Tell. However, William Tell took advantage of that. While pretending to steer, he suddenly jumped off the boat onto a rock, leaving the guards and Gessler in the hands of the storm. From afar, Tell killed Gessler with his bow and arrow.
He had freed his people from the brutal rule of Hermann Gessler, and was seen as a hero who will forever love his son.
So that’s the legend of William Tell in a nut shell. Probably not one hundred percent accurate, but you get the general picture. Although the legend emphasizes Tell’s love for his child, Jason’s song emphasizes the love a man has for a woman, his lover. And that is the kind of love I was aiming for in the short story. Well . . . sorta.
Another source of inspiration was this idea of secrets, a concept that has been barraging me these past several months, with a fury. It has given me added stress, so I decided to take that and make use of it creatively through this short story. Everyone has secrets because everyone lives a little with implicitness. The past may hold cavities for secrets to grow in, or to just simply die in. That’s what I’ve learned these past few months (all this may sound highly suspicious but you need not worry). Therefore, one of the main themes I’ve embedded in this short story is the notion of keeping secrets. And quite frankly sometimes secrets and the spreading of them are fueled by judgments and ignorance. Likewise, I’ve decided to make another of the more important themes of this short story about the act of criticizing oneself and others because of judgements. Not to mention the act of surpassing judgements by dealing with the good that’s in front of you. Judgements have been made already, and the damage from criticism has already hurt.
So, that’s all I’ll say about “The Secrets That I’ve Saved Her.” Don’t want to spoil anything. I'm posting the actual short story in my next blog because if I post it here, this blog would seem extremely long. So anyway, I hope you enjoy reading it and finding meaning from within your own interpretation of it.
Monday, May 9, 2011
A poem for all mothers on mother’s day
For all the mothers
both acknowledged and not,
I write you this poem,
as my only shot,
My shot to tell you this,
in tones that speak true thanks:
that I appreciate the good you all bring,
all mothers of all ranks.
Spend your day with love,
with joy, family and smiles,
because motherhood is a career you enjoy,
in steps of many miles.
You carry a heavy burden,
though it’s not a burden at all,
unless you consider our fights,
our cries and our falls.
But you’re the only true fit one
to carry us through the years.
Without you where would we be?
Unborn or in a puddle of tears.
So I thank all mothers
who work
So
So
So
hard,
who love us with all their energy,
in every beat of their heart.
both acknowledged and not,
I write you this poem,
as my only shot,
My shot to tell you this,
in tones that speak true thanks:
that I appreciate the good you all bring,
all mothers of all ranks.
Spend your day with love,
with joy, family and smiles,
because motherhood is a career you enjoy,
in steps of many miles.
You carry a heavy burden,
though it’s not a burden at all,
unless you consider our fights,
our cries and our falls.
But you’re the only true fit one
to carry us through the years.
Without you where would we be?
Unborn or in a puddle of tears.
So I thank all mothers
who work
So
So
So
hard,
who love us with all their energy,
in every beat of their heart.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Experimenting on Cinco de Mayo
These past two days I’ve been trying to increase my tolerance for alcohol by drinking. Yesterday I only got buzzed. Throughout the afternoon yesterday, I drank hard iced tea. What surprised me was that I actually liked it. I remember the first time I drank it – adding alcohol seemed like the most corrupting and horrible thing to do to such a sweet and fresh drink! But when I drank it yesterday, I didn’t think anything was wrong with it. It tasted awesome to me. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve had more experiences with alcohol now, and so I’m kind of used to the metallic taste of it. Oh gosh, but not that used to it. I’m more accustomed to it. Well, borderline friends.
You will have guessed correctly if you thought the reason I chose to try to increase my tolerance specifically right now is because of cinco de mayo. And you will have guessed correctly also if you thought I drank alone. Well, alone but partially; I had a book with me. Ironically that book was Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas. It’s on the syllabus of my “Fiction of Drug Addiction” literature class.
As I was looking to see if we had anymore hard iced teas, I just realized yesterday that our basement has so many alcoholic drinks on display in front of useless boxed mirrors against the wall; that is, we have so many choices for me to choose from when experimenting with alcohol. Some wine, some whiskey, some rum, some vodka, some Heinekens, and some hard iced tea, which I had run toward in the afternoon.
After I was finished with the hard iced tea, and loving the shape of the bottle, I decided to make a mixed drink with the coconut rum Ate Sherry brought home one night after hanging out with her friends. There were some still left over. I mixed it with sunny delight (which I was surprised to find in our fridge, as we rarely have orange juice in the house since it scares my parents’ arthritis. I’m guessing Ate Sherry also brought that home as left over when she was hanging out with her friends). I poured the equivalent of a shot and a little more (I think) into the empty hard iced tea bottle and about less than a cup of sunny d.
It tasted like there was hardly any alcohol in it. Consider it downed within minutes. There wasn’t much left in the coconut rum bottle, so I poured the rest of it (which actually turned out to be a little bit more than the first helping) into my now again empty bottle, and added the same amount of sunny d that I did last time. When I sat back down in the lazy chair, my book in hand and sunlight pouring through the storm door of our sala, I took a gulp of my drink. Now there’s the metallic taste that I missed the first time! This one took me longer to finish as I was more engrossed in my book, which had begun to intrigue me; the memoirist told of the time she woke up, totally naked next to a sleeping naked guy, in a fraternity house after a night of heavy drinking.
At around 8-ish, I make myself some dinner: left overs from the Filipino restaurant my mom and I went to for lunch that day. Actually that restaurant was on Portion Rd. Yup, we visited Ate Ila’s old house while we were in the neighborhood. I ate my dinner with my book.
Afterward I continued experimenting with alcohol. I went downstairs again and scoured the bottles on the wall. They looked like men with huge egos. Either that or they looked like majestic pyramids that only seem to put me in awe – not because of how they look like, but because of how long they can last against the prodding of time. I do some math: these bottles have been here for more than twenty years now.
Because the other ones smelled ridiculously bad (though my opinion of this may change as I drink more in the future), I chose Smirnoff, which I’ve tried once with Kuya and Liz. I poured a little more than a shot into my now empty bottle yet again, and when I get back upstairs, I add the sunny d. Yes, everything I drink will be mixed with this because we don’t have anything else to mix it with. When I sip it, I can taste the alcohol almost immediately. There’s no hiding it anywhere in the drink. Not only that, it tastes sweeter than the rum and sunny d because there was the added flavor of apple that the Smirnoff contributed.
Throughout the night, I repeat the Smirnoff and sunny d three times . . . I think. I kind of lost track by the time it was midnight. By that time, I was only buzzed. I think it was because I spread the drinks throughout the day, starting at around 4ish in the afternoon, and because I kept pigging out eating whatever snacks were around the house. In any case, I wasn’t going for drunk. I was only experimenting.
Today I continued with that experiment, but I didn’t get too far. I had to stop because my dad had suddenly decided to come home from a novena to play majong with my Lolo, Tito Monte, Tita Celia and Tito Albert – relatives on my dad’s side of the family.
Still, the idea of experimenting is securely planted in my head. I can’t wait for the summertime so I can experiment more freely. In the summer, I plan on taking little sips of the many different kinds of drinks we have downstairs. I’ll try mixing them with different juices to see which combo tastes the best.
You will have guessed correctly if you thought the reason I chose to try to increase my tolerance specifically right now is because of cinco de mayo. And you will have guessed correctly also if you thought I drank alone. Well, alone but partially; I had a book with me. Ironically that book was Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas. It’s on the syllabus of my “Fiction of Drug Addiction” literature class.
As I was looking to see if we had anymore hard iced teas, I just realized yesterday that our basement has so many alcoholic drinks on display in front of useless boxed mirrors against the wall; that is, we have so many choices for me to choose from when experimenting with alcohol. Some wine, some whiskey, some rum, some vodka, some Heinekens, and some hard iced tea, which I had run toward in the afternoon.
After I was finished with the hard iced tea, and loving the shape of the bottle, I decided to make a mixed drink with the coconut rum Ate Sherry brought home one night after hanging out with her friends. There were some still left over. I mixed it with sunny delight (which I was surprised to find in our fridge, as we rarely have orange juice in the house since it scares my parents’ arthritis. I’m guessing Ate Sherry also brought that home as left over when she was hanging out with her friends). I poured the equivalent of a shot and a little more (I think) into the empty hard iced tea bottle and about less than a cup of sunny d.
It tasted like there was hardly any alcohol in it. Consider it downed within minutes. There wasn’t much left in the coconut rum bottle, so I poured the rest of it (which actually turned out to be a little bit more than the first helping) into my now again empty bottle, and added the same amount of sunny d that I did last time. When I sat back down in the lazy chair, my book in hand and sunlight pouring through the storm door of our sala, I took a gulp of my drink. Now there’s the metallic taste that I missed the first time! This one took me longer to finish as I was more engrossed in my book, which had begun to intrigue me; the memoirist told of the time she woke up, totally naked next to a sleeping naked guy, in a fraternity house after a night of heavy drinking.
At around 8-ish, I make myself some dinner: left overs from the Filipino restaurant my mom and I went to for lunch that day. Actually that restaurant was on Portion Rd. Yup, we visited Ate Ila’s old house while we were in the neighborhood. I ate my dinner with my book.
Afterward I continued experimenting with alcohol. I went downstairs again and scoured the bottles on the wall. They looked like men with huge egos. Either that or they looked like majestic pyramids that only seem to put me in awe – not because of how they look like, but because of how long they can last against the prodding of time. I do some math: these bottles have been here for more than twenty years now.
Because the other ones smelled ridiculously bad (though my opinion of this may change as I drink more in the future), I chose Smirnoff, which I’ve tried once with Kuya and Liz. I poured a little more than a shot into my now empty bottle yet again, and when I get back upstairs, I add the sunny d. Yes, everything I drink will be mixed with this because we don’t have anything else to mix it with. When I sip it, I can taste the alcohol almost immediately. There’s no hiding it anywhere in the drink. Not only that, it tastes sweeter than the rum and sunny d because there was the added flavor of apple that the Smirnoff contributed.
Throughout the night, I repeat the Smirnoff and sunny d three times . . . I think. I kind of lost track by the time it was midnight. By that time, I was only buzzed. I think it was because I spread the drinks throughout the day, starting at around 4ish in the afternoon, and because I kept pigging out eating whatever snacks were around the house. In any case, I wasn’t going for drunk. I was only experimenting.
Today I continued with that experiment, but I didn’t get too far. I had to stop because my dad had suddenly decided to come home from a novena to play majong with my Lolo, Tito Monte, Tita Celia and Tito Albert – relatives on my dad’s side of the family.
Still, the idea of experimenting is securely planted in my head. I can’t wait for the summertime so I can experiment more freely. In the summer, I plan on taking little sips of the many different kinds of drinks we have downstairs. I’ll try mixing them with different juices to see which combo tastes the best.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Short story: "A Desert Dream"
In a lonely farmland in the midwest, there was a man, lying in bed. His eyes closed as slumber was casting over him, producing peaceful, bucolic images in his mind and smooth melodic notes through his ears. In a moment, he was to sleep.
A fairy was flying through the woods of the man’s pastoral world. She was on a mission. From the edge of the woods, she saw it: the house was devoid of light. Devoid of everything, really, except the man with his dreams. If there was any light at all, it came from the stars that shined upon the roof of the house on this moonless night.
At the window, the fairy watched the man sleeping. One quick flick of her wand and the fairy was able to teleport herself into the man’s room. In a moment’s time, the fairy, her wings flapping quietly, floated by the man’s ear and whispered, “How do you know when you’ve met one of the greatest men of all time?”
In his dream, there was a boy, traversing a desert in the southwest. Thirsty. He was thirsty and tired. His feet hurt from walking far too many miles. His steps, he could imagine, would out-number the many stars in the sky – the stars that were out-shone by the desert sun, the invisible stars; there were many of them. He dropped to his knees and began to cry. That’s when he saw the feet of an old man.
The old man offered the boy a canteen of water. When the boy finished drinking the water in it, the canteen refilled. The water burned in his throat like the fire of a dying phoenix. That’s because the water was actually liquor.
The boy coughed and the old man clapped his hand on the boy’s back. “It is better than nothing, boy,” he chuckled. “Come, follow me.”
The trailer in the desert belonged to the old man. It was his home. When the young boy entered the trailer after the old man, he looked around at the his belongings with interest. A shot gun, a small fridge, newspaper clippings and a portable radio. Those were the things that stood out to the young boy.
The boy walked toward the shot gun and the old man placed it on the boy’s shoulders. The familiar weight of the gun curled his young lips. Yes, the boy had spent many years with a shot gun. Black clumps in the blue of the sky fell to the ground – thud – to the sound of the echoing crack. Shells tapped his shoes and fell to the ground also.
Back in the sun and the sand, the old man and the boy walked. They saw the traces of a snake, gone hiding from the imperious sun. The boy drank and burned from the canteen, and the old man wiped the sweat from his wrinkled face, holding the boy by the shoulder. Their shadows on the sand resembled the future. Their feet dragged in sync.
The man awoke from his dream, and saw the sky still dark through the blinds. He could just make out the small, glowing wings flying in the distance. He said, “You look at yourself and you know.”
He curled himself under the covers and slipped his hand under his pillows. His fingers caressed the softened edges of a photograph. They sent a flow of comfort throughout his body from the fingertips. He closed his eyes and dreamed again, as if for confirmation of something that didn’t need confirming.
A fairy was flying through the woods of the man’s pastoral world. She was on a mission. From the edge of the woods, she saw it: the house was devoid of light. Devoid of everything, really, except the man with his dreams. If there was any light at all, it came from the stars that shined upon the roof of the house on this moonless night.
At the window, the fairy watched the man sleeping. One quick flick of her wand and the fairy was able to teleport herself into the man’s room. In a moment’s time, the fairy, her wings flapping quietly, floated by the man’s ear and whispered, “How do you know when you’ve met one of the greatest men of all time?”
In his dream, there was a boy, traversing a desert in the southwest. Thirsty. He was thirsty and tired. His feet hurt from walking far too many miles. His steps, he could imagine, would out-number the many stars in the sky – the stars that were out-shone by the desert sun, the invisible stars; there were many of them. He dropped to his knees and began to cry. That’s when he saw the feet of an old man.
The old man offered the boy a canteen of water. When the boy finished drinking the water in it, the canteen refilled. The water burned in his throat like the fire of a dying phoenix. That’s because the water was actually liquor.
The boy coughed and the old man clapped his hand on the boy’s back. “It is better than nothing, boy,” he chuckled. “Come, follow me.”
The trailer in the desert belonged to the old man. It was his home. When the young boy entered the trailer after the old man, he looked around at the his belongings with interest. A shot gun, a small fridge, newspaper clippings and a portable radio. Those were the things that stood out to the young boy.
The boy walked toward the shot gun and the old man placed it on the boy’s shoulders. The familiar weight of the gun curled his young lips. Yes, the boy had spent many years with a shot gun. Black clumps in the blue of the sky fell to the ground – thud – to the sound of the echoing crack. Shells tapped his shoes and fell to the ground also.
Back in the sun and the sand, the old man and the boy walked. They saw the traces of a snake, gone hiding from the imperious sun. The boy drank and burned from the canteen, and the old man wiped the sweat from his wrinkled face, holding the boy by the shoulder. Their shadows on the sand resembled the future. Their feet dragged in sync.
The man awoke from his dream, and saw the sky still dark through the blinds. He could just make out the small, glowing wings flying in the distance. He said, “You look at yourself and you know.”
He curled himself under the covers and slipped his hand under his pillows. His fingers caressed the softened edges of a photograph. They sent a flow of comfort throughout his body from the fingertips. He closed his eyes and dreamed again, as if for confirmation of something that didn’t need confirming.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
On the concept of stealing
Everyone in his or her life has stolen at least one thing, no? I mean, to think that absolutely no one has ever slipped and committed that sin, whether it be with a stolen TV or a stolen piece of candy, is -- well it’s just absurd. But what’s less absurd is to think that you haven’t thought back on it. Some real blind thieves out there may have no moral conscience at all, and so they can steal like they can breathe in the fresh scent of a daisy on a casual walk through the park. Others are more morality-driven. One white lie and they fess up out of guilt (I assume they'll make up the worst poker players). Those who have a reason or a real justification for stealing? I describe them as morally-intertwined.
I don’t know about you, but if I find even just one ounce of a justification for what I’ve stolen – not that I steal a lot, and not that I steal anything substantial, or God-forbid, illegal – I feel guilty pretty easily. Yet, I guess that means that I spend half my time justifying myself. Just kidding (or am I??). Though I do believe that toilet paper, paper napkins and eating utensils (oh and occasionally tupperware) are always up for grabs on campus, given the increase in tuition we will have to pay next semester, eh hem.
But the other day, it wasn’t something or culinary or something dealing with toiletry that my sticky hands stumbled upon. The object was solidly rectangular, flexible and leafy: It was a chapter book. On the cover was written “Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan”. Kurt Vonnegut. I have never read him before, though I have one of his books on my bookshelf (after going online one night, originally for homework purposes, I followed hyperlink after hyperlink until I found his name and the kinds of books he writes. That was enough to get me to buy one of his books, The Breakfast of Champions Or Goodbye Blue Monday, during a mega close-out sale in the Borders near my house). Kurt Vonnegut. That name caught my eye; not to mention the large signature ‘V’ that graces each of his books published by the “Delta paperbacks” company, that also caught my eye.
The book was lying on the table all alone, as if needing company – my company. It was deprived of the love and attention of the horny eyes of a voracious leisure reader, such as myself. My finger ran across the author’s name while my mouth instinctively uttered, “Kurt Vonnegut. You are in my room, yes. And here you are too. What are you doing here . . . .”
I flipped open to the first page of the first chapter. Intrigued, I was immediately intrigued. His style of writing was simple and yet provocative. Gosh I love that clash. I read the next page and a half. My hands moved the book more comfortably close to me. By page four my eyes read each line with quick intent and curiosity. Page six and the book was in my backpack as I was walking to my next class.
In my head: “I’ll say ten Hail Mary’s tonight. I’ll read it, and then return it to where I found it. That’s all. That’s not stealing; that’s borrowing. One quick fun ride. Lord knows I don’t have the money to buy the book myself, and I doubt that any libraries would have this book on the shelf. If by the time I’m done with it and I still feel guilty, I’ll go to confession. I’ll say, ‘Father, please forgive me for I have sinned: I’ve stolen another student’s book. I’ve read it, oh but, Father, at least I returned it. You gotta give me credit for that,’.”
I arrived to class a few minutes early, so I took out the Kurt Vonnegut book from my backpack and read the back cover:
The Sirens of Titan is an outrageous romp through space, time and morality. The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course there’s a catch to the invitation . . . and a prophetic vision about the purpose of human life that only Vonnegut has the courage to tell.
How are you not captivated?! Boy was my inner candle lit; this book’s appealing, I’ll admit!
Just from the title, The Sirens of Titan, I’m brought back to the musings I felt when I took a course on Classical Mythology where I learned about the sirens who tempted and almost seduced wily Odysseus. I’m also reminded of my astronomy courses since Titan is a moon of Saturn. Immediately I know this book is going to deal with themes outside of earthy existence, perhaps something higher, something spiritual and all-uniting. And the symbolism jumps out with the main character’s name – Malachi Constant. Constant! Could he represent the ever so constant time as humanity changes, evolves or degenerates alongside it? Or the constant pitfalls of humans as they face the inner turmoils of finding the purpose of human life? Malachi! I looked it up online and discovered that Malachi means ‘messenger of God.’ Is this protagonist representative of a messenger of God, sent to tell his fellow humans the precise reasons why God made them? What He expects them to do, to not do? My goodness, will Malachi Constant be a Christ figure as the book unfurls itself to my mind?
A must-read, if only time were unselfish! Needless to say, this will be the next book I’ll bring everywhere with me whenever I find little holes of free time. Although I usually read books that deal with love/relationships (yes, I must admit) and meanings discovered through every-day events and nuances, this sci-fi--slash--philosophical book has stolen me . . . or rather, I have stolen it lol.
Dear Student from whom I stole this book,
I’m sorry. I’ll return it to where you left it . . . maybe.
Most sincerely,
Me.
p.s. I’m sorry again and I hope you were almost done with it anyway.
I don’t know about you, but if I find even just one ounce of a justification for what I’ve stolen – not that I steal a lot, and not that I steal anything substantial, or God-forbid, illegal – I feel guilty pretty easily. Yet, I guess that means that I spend half my time justifying myself. Just kidding (or am I??). Though I do believe that toilet paper, paper napkins and eating utensils (oh and occasionally tupperware) are always up for grabs on campus, given the increase in tuition we will have to pay next semester, eh hem.
But the other day, it wasn’t something or culinary or something dealing with toiletry that my sticky hands stumbled upon. The object was solidly rectangular, flexible and leafy: It was a chapter book. On the cover was written “Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan”. Kurt Vonnegut. I have never read him before, though I have one of his books on my bookshelf (after going online one night, originally for homework purposes, I followed hyperlink after hyperlink until I found his name and the kinds of books he writes. That was enough to get me to buy one of his books, The Breakfast of Champions Or Goodbye Blue Monday, during a mega close-out sale in the Borders near my house). Kurt Vonnegut. That name caught my eye; not to mention the large signature ‘V’ that graces each of his books published by the “Delta paperbacks” company, that also caught my eye.
The book was lying on the table all alone, as if needing company – my company. It was deprived of the love and attention of the horny eyes of a voracious leisure reader, such as myself. My finger ran across the author’s name while my mouth instinctively uttered, “Kurt Vonnegut. You are in my room, yes. And here you are too. What are you doing here . . . .”
I flipped open to the first page of the first chapter. Intrigued, I was immediately intrigued. His style of writing was simple and yet provocative. Gosh I love that clash. I read the next page and a half. My hands moved the book more comfortably close to me. By page four my eyes read each line with quick intent and curiosity. Page six and the book was in my backpack as I was walking to my next class.
In my head: “I’ll say ten Hail Mary’s tonight. I’ll read it, and then return it to where I found it. That’s all. That’s not stealing; that’s borrowing. One quick fun ride. Lord knows I don’t have the money to buy the book myself, and I doubt that any libraries would have this book on the shelf. If by the time I’m done with it and I still feel guilty, I’ll go to confession. I’ll say, ‘Father, please forgive me for I have sinned: I’ve stolen another student’s book. I’ve read it, oh but, Father, at least I returned it. You gotta give me credit for that,’.”
I arrived to class a few minutes early, so I took out the Kurt Vonnegut book from my backpack and read the back cover:
The Sirens of Titan is an outrageous romp through space, time and morality. The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course there’s a catch to the invitation . . . and a prophetic vision about the purpose of human life that only Vonnegut has the courage to tell.
How are you not captivated?! Boy was my inner candle lit; this book’s appealing, I’ll admit!
Just from the title, The Sirens of Titan, I’m brought back to the musings I felt when I took a course on Classical Mythology where I learned about the sirens who tempted and almost seduced wily Odysseus. I’m also reminded of my astronomy courses since Titan is a moon of Saturn. Immediately I know this book is going to deal with themes outside of earthy existence, perhaps something higher, something spiritual and all-uniting. And the symbolism jumps out with the main character’s name – Malachi Constant. Constant! Could he represent the ever so constant time as humanity changes, evolves or degenerates alongside it? Or the constant pitfalls of humans as they face the inner turmoils of finding the purpose of human life? Malachi! I looked it up online and discovered that Malachi means ‘messenger of God.’ Is this protagonist representative of a messenger of God, sent to tell his fellow humans the precise reasons why God made them? What He expects them to do, to not do? My goodness, will Malachi Constant be a Christ figure as the book unfurls itself to my mind?
A must-read, if only time were unselfish! Needless to say, this will be the next book I’ll bring everywhere with me whenever I find little holes of free time. Although I usually read books that deal with love/relationships (yes, I must admit) and meanings discovered through every-day events and nuances, this sci-fi--slash--philosophical book has stolen me . . . or rather, I have stolen it lol.
Dear Student from whom I stole this book,
I’m sorry. I’ll return it to where you left it . . . maybe.
Most sincerely,
Me.
p.s. I’m sorry again and I hope you were almost done with it anyway.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Damn it. Who is she?
I was sitting down in the social and behavioral science building on campus, minding my business, doing some writing on my laptop, when a girl came up to me, all excited.
She was wearing shocking tight blue jeans and an orange shirt bursting with images of tribal huntsmen. Her black-brownish-though-dark-purple-in-the-light hair was tied back so that one streak of hair ran down her face, as if it wanted to stand out from the rest of her hair. Her eyes were surrounded by dark brown rectangular glasses that were light brown on the inside. She carried a laptop, two skinny purses (I doubt she had anything substantial in them) and a purple jacket with fur hood, on her person, as well as a skinny ring on her right ring-finger.
She came to my empty table, smiling almost out of breath, like a cute little puppy. “Hi! Oh my God, I can’t believe it’s you; it’s been a REALLY long time!”
“Um, hello. How’ve you been?” Damn it. Who is she?
“Oh, it’s been rough. I changed my major to the other one we were talking about way back when.” I couldn’t help it. I was extremely confused and she sensed it. “You know, the day when we were ‘just walking’. We didn’t have anything else to do that day.”
“Oh, of course I remember. Yeah, we were walking.” I DON’T RECALL ANY OF THIS. I closed my mouth shut to make sure I wouldn’t say anything stupid. I was trying to glean any information about who she was and how I was connected to her by focusing on this ensuing conversation and raking my brain for any memory, any recollection of her.
“Yeah.” She seemed like she was just beating around the bush. She really wanted to talk about something else. Suddenly, this burst out of her mouth: “Why didn’t you text me back? No message or anything!”
Now I’m in trouble. What did I do with her? I honestly can’t remember her in any part of my past. I mean I only have a very vague picture of her in my head, like the unbelievable shadows of de ja vu or a memory that you can tweak to the point where something totally false seems absolutely true after much time and thought into it. Or vice versa. Such vagueness leaves you unsatisfied and curious. I mean, to a point though.
Apparently we had exchanged numbers. Did I meet her during orientation when I was a freshman at Stony Brook? Was she in my high school? What kind of a relationship did we have? Were we really tight? What did we talk about when we were ‘walking’ and why did she seem to emphasize ‘walking’ as if it were a euphemism for something else?
And now, how was I supposed to respond to her? Why didn’t I text her back or something? How am I gonna get myself out of this one!?
“Um look,” – wait, what’s her name? – “look, I didn’t mean to not text you back. I think my phone broke and I lost all my contacts, including yours. I’m so sorry.” She gave me an angry face and seemed to be looking for answers. I couldn’t help but think, well, hey, you, so am I, whatever your name is! Yeah, that’s right, I’m just trying to figure out your name at this point! You don’t seem to have it written on any of your folders or anything you’re carrying!
Her face was heating up to a dark pink mixed with her brown skin. I saw it and suddenly felt bad that, while to me this encounter seemed like a guessing game, to her, I was affecting her emotions. Yes, the me of the present and the me of our past are placing an emotional toll on her now over-heating body. She pressed on. “But how about that letter I gave you the last day?”
Letter??? What letter? What was in that letter? Ok, now I was just about to give up. I was beginning to think she’s got the wrong person, but . . .
She continued. “Don’t tell me you lost the letter, Bernadette. You better make sure no one finds it.”
She knows my name – so we really DID have a history together. My God, what on earth did I do with her? What did she write to me in that letter? I hope it isn’t something people really shouldn’t see.
She was REALLY angry. I didn’t want her to make a scene. So I started shhh-ing her as politely as I could and asked if we could talk about this somewhere else.
She yelled back. “Bernadette Tinio! Don't you t try to leave me this time! Not without an explanation! You owe me that!”
I was scared out of my wits. So she knew myfirst and last name. Quit saying my name woman -- you're freaking me out!
Still, I really felt bad for her, for whatever wrong I did. I started to think that I’m a bad person. To hurt a girl? Me? Wow; I didn’t know I had it in me. But what the hell did I do??
This is what was going through my head:
1. She knows my name, which means she knows me. There aren’t too many people around Stony Brook named Bernadette. And certainly not Bernadette Tinio. But, she wasn’t using any nickname of mine. That means that we didn’t know each other long enough for her to adopt one of my nicknames. That could actually be my fault because I supposedly left her.
2. There is a letter involved. The contents of that letter are to be private. I have no clue what’s in that letter. Maybe details of a conversation we had? Details of something we did? She also said she gave me that letter on the last day. Last day of what? Last day of school? Of which year?
3. We walked all day together one day. Maybe the letter disclosed what we talked about during the walk? I have no idea where we walked, only that we had nothing else to do. Based on her body language, the walking might actually mean something else. Again, I wouldn’t know what that something was.
I didn’t want to fess up. No, I was too proud to give up my face. I felt like I was in this situation too deep. So confused but still rolling along, I told her, “Look, I’m really sorry for leaving you hanging last time we met.”
“No message, no text, no call!”
If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that sometimes, I’m really stress-intolerant. I mean this was just too much for me. And she was pushing it.
“I know, I know, I know. Again, I’m sorry. But I really have to get to class.” Did I really have class? Hell no. But I wanted to get out of there. I packed my stuff and was about to leave. Of course she wasn’t gonna let me go without one more outburst.
“You’re leaving again?!! When are you gonna learn?”
I was walking past her.
“Hey, I’m talking to you!” She put her hand on my shoulder. I continued to walk away. Just like what all those teachers in the past told me to do when facing ‘dangers’ like this. Just walk away. She surprised me with her grip though; she had the grip of a true mad girl. I mean mad, as in crazy. She was actually able to stop me, and walk in front of me so that her face was in front of mine. I braced myself for whatever verbal lashing she felt I deserved for always finding the right time to leave her.
Finally she said to my face, “FINE BERNADETTE, LEAVE AGAIN. F*** YOU!”
OH LORD. I looked around and people were staring. I didn’t care. I wanted to punch her. I REALLY, REALLY wanted to bash her head in -- not that I'm a violent person, but you'd want to bash her head in too if you were me at this point. But I held in my anger, which was fueled by her over-the-top annoying insistence of our shared past. Instead I just walked out of there making sure she heard the slam of the door.
I hoped to God I wouldn’t encounter her again. What on earth did we do together? And after this storm, I still don't know who she is! Who are you?? Well it doesn't matter 'cause I'll never know now. I just know that to me, she is my enemy and apparently, I am hers. And you know, come to think about it, I'M NOT SORRY for whatever it is I did. Maybe you deserved it -- I wouldn't be surprised, whoever you are!
She was wearing shocking tight blue jeans and an orange shirt bursting with images of tribal huntsmen. Her black-brownish-though-dark-purple-in-the-light hair was tied back so that one streak of hair ran down her face, as if it wanted to stand out from the rest of her hair. Her eyes were surrounded by dark brown rectangular glasses that were light brown on the inside. She carried a laptop, two skinny purses (I doubt she had anything substantial in them) and a purple jacket with fur hood, on her person, as well as a skinny ring on her right ring-finger.
She came to my empty table, smiling almost out of breath, like a cute little puppy. “Hi! Oh my God, I can’t believe it’s you; it’s been a REALLY long time!”
“Um, hello. How’ve you been?” Damn it. Who is she?
“Oh, it’s been rough. I changed my major to the other one we were talking about way back when.” I couldn’t help it. I was extremely confused and she sensed it. “You know, the day when we were ‘just walking’. We didn’t have anything else to do that day.”
“Oh, of course I remember. Yeah, we were walking.” I DON’T RECALL ANY OF THIS. I closed my mouth shut to make sure I wouldn’t say anything stupid. I was trying to glean any information about who she was and how I was connected to her by focusing on this ensuing conversation and raking my brain for any memory, any recollection of her.
“Yeah.” She seemed like she was just beating around the bush. She really wanted to talk about something else. Suddenly, this burst out of her mouth: “Why didn’t you text me back? No message or anything!”
Now I’m in trouble. What did I do with her? I honestly can’t remember her in any part of my past. I mean I only have a very vague picture of her in my head, like the unbelievable shadows of de ja vu or a memory that you can tweak to the point where something totally false seems absolutely true after much time and thought into it. Or vice versa. Such vagueness leaves you unsatisfied and curious. I mean, to a point though.
Apparently we had exchanged numbers. Did I meet her during orientation when I was a freshman at Stony Brook? Was she in my high school? What kind of a relationship did we have? Were we really tight? What did we talk about when we were ‘walking’ and why did she seem to emphasize ‘walking’ as if it were a euphemism for something else?
And now, how was I supposed to respond to her? Why didn’t I text her back or something? How am I gonna get myself out of this one!?
“Um look,” – wait, what’s her name? – “look, I didn’t mean to not text you back. I think my phone broke and I lost all my contacts, including yours. I’m so sorry.” She gave me an angry face and seemed to be looking for answers. I couldn’t help but think, well, hey, you, so am I, whatever your name is! Yeah, that’s right, I’m just trying to figure out your name at this point! You don’t seem to have it written on any of your folders or anything you’re carrying!
Her face was heating up to a dark pink mixed with her brown skin. I saw it and suddenly felt bad that, while to me this encounter seemed like a guessing game, to her, I was affecting her emotions. Yes, the me of the present and the me of our past are placing an emotional toll on her now over-heating body. She pressed on. “But how about that letter I gave you the last day?”
Letter??? What letter? What was in that letter? Ok, now I was just about to give up. I was beginning to think she’s got the wrong person, but . . .
She continued. “Don’t tell me you lost the letter, Bernadette. You better make sure no one finds it.”
She knows my name – so we really DID have a history together. My God, what on earth did I do with her? What did she write to me in that letter? I hope it isn’t something people really shouldn’t see.
She was REALLY angry. I didn’t want her to make a scene. So I started shhh-ing her as politely as I could and asked if we could talk about this somewhere else.
She yelled back. “Bernadette Tinio! Don't you t try to leave me this time! Not without an explanation! You owe me that!”
I was scared out of my wits. So she knew myfirst and last name. Quit saying my name woman -- you're freaking me out!
Still, I really felt bad for her, for whatever wrong I did. I started to think that I’m a bad person. To hurt a girl? Me? Wow; I didn’t know I had it in me. But what the hell did I do??
This is what was going through my head:
1. She knows my name, which means she knows me. There aren’t too many people around Stony Brook named Bernadette. And certainly not Bernadette Tinio. But, she wasn’t using any nickname of mine. That means that we didn’t know each other long enough for her to adopt one of my nicknames. That could actually be my fault because I supposedly left her.
2. There is a letter involved. The contents of that letter are to be private. I have no clue what’s in that letter. Maybe details of a conversation we had? Details of something we did? She also said she gave me that letter on the last day. Last day of what? Last day of school? Of which year?
3. We walked all day together one day. Maybe the letter disclosed what we talked about during the walk? I have no idea where we walked, only that we had nothing else to do. Based on her body language, the walking might actually mean something else. Again, I wouldn’t know what that something was.
I didn’t want to fess up. No, I was too proud to give up my face. I felt like I was in this situation too deep. So confused but still rolling along, I told her, “Look, I’m really sorry for leaving you hanging last time we met.”
“No message, no text, no call!”
If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that sometimes, I’m really stress-intolerant. I mean this was just too much for me. And she was pushing it.
“I know, I know, I know. Again, I’m sorry. But I really have to get to class.” Did I really have class? Hell no. But I wanted to get out of there. I packed my stuff and was about to leave. Of course she wasn’t gonna let me go without one more outburst.
“You’re leaving again?!! When are you gonna learn?”
I was walking past her.
“Hey, I’m talking to you!” She put her hand on my shoulder. I continued to walk away. Just like what all those teachers in the past told me to do when facing ‘dangers’ like this. Just walk away. She surprised me with her grip though; she had the grip of a true mad girl. I mean mad, as in crazy. She was actually able to stop me, and walk in front of me so that her face was in front of mine. I braced myself for whatever verbal lashing she felt I deserved for always finding the right time to leave her.
Finally she said to my face, “FINE BERNADETTE, LEAVE AGAIN. F*** YOU!”
OH LORD. I looked around and people were staring. I didn’t care. I wanted to punch her. I REALLY, REALLY wanted to bash her head in -- not that I'm a violent person, but you'd want to bash her head in too if you were me at this point. But I held in my anger, which was fueled by her over-the-top annoying insistence of our shared past. Instead I just walked out of there making sure she heard the slam of the door.
I hoped to God I wouldn’t encounter her again. What on earth did we do together? And after this storm, I still don't know who she is! Who are you?? Well it doesn't matter 'cause I'll never know now. I just know that to me, she is my enemy and apparently, I am hers. And you know, come to think about it, I'M NOT SORRY for whatever it is I did. Maybe you deserved it -- I wouldn't be surprised, whoever you are!
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Meeting people and surprising them is a thrill in itself
For the past few months there has been a learner’s permit sitting at my desk, staring at me – and it’s not mine. It belongs to some sixteen year old girl with a Spanish last name. I had found it when I was running months ago. It lay on the ground helpless and lost. Curiously engaged, I picked it up, looked at it and read the address. I pocketed it and continued my run, making a mental note to drive to her house one day and return it to her. Meeting people for the first time – and first and only time – is always exciting and fun for me because and solely because I don’t know what to expect. This rush of uncertainty at the thought of the experience of meeting someone and seeing their reaction to seeing me pumps me up, strangely. I don’t know if I’m perverted or not, but surprising people, even people I’ve never met (weird, right?) excites me.
Two months pass and I haven’t returned the permit due to school and stuff.
I got a call today by Ate Sherry. She says she’s coming home soon, in around thirty minutes or so. Seeing the permit on my desk in my room, I ask her if she knows how to get to the address of the sixteen year old girl. I’m excited to hear that she does in fact know and that she’s willing to pick me up as soon as she gets home to bring me to the girl’s house.
My hands are clammy and my body begins to engross itself on an adrenaline rush. About fifteen minutes pass by as I sit at my computer. Then, my mouth opens and out comes do-do-do’s in the rhythmic motions of a song with intense drums. I get out of my pajama pants and change into jeans, keeping my same top on – a blue shirt over a white, skinny long sleeve. As I hit the climax of the song in my head, I leave my room to get my jacket and put on my shoes.
Ate Sherry’s here, yes!
I leave the house, locking the door behind me, and run to the car. Oh I’m exhilarated.
Ate Sherry tells me that she knows the place because she and Jeremy run there all the time. All the while I’m hearing the intense drum song in my head, making for myself a soundtrack for my mission of returning the permit and finally meeting the person whose picture I’ve seen on my desk for months.
We’ve reach the place and Ate Sherry pulls the car over. My heart is pounding like hardcore dance music. It’s turned into a techno beat. I get out of the car and jump over the black ice that has made their driveway perilously accessible. It’s not until I reach their front door that I realize the driver’s permit is warm and a little wet from my sweaty palm that was hovering over it. Letting go of the permit, I ring their door bell, which is loud and clear, even from the outside.
I see moving shadows behind the opaque glass and count. There are two of them: one is taller than the other.
The wooden door opens slightly, but the storm door is kept closed. They peer and look at me. I see a mother and daughter – the daughter is the girl on the permit. She’s cut her hair but the eyes are the same, I could tell. They’re both very protective of themselves. I could see it in the way they take their time opening the door to me. Every little move of theirs is checked first with caution. That’s understandable. The mother pushes the daughter away and says something to me from behind the storm door.
“We’re not interested.”
In my head I laugh. But when I see them starting to close the door, I say, “Um . . . uhhh, no, no, wait.” I find my eyes have widened as I begin to rummage hastily through my pocket and take out the permit. I shove it quickly against the storm door right before they close the wooden door entirely.
The mother’s face comes closer to the glass until her nose flattens against it. The daughter from behind widens her eyes and yells in surprise, “Mom, that’s my permit!”
I smile and nod, acknowledging.
“Oh, honey this is yours!” Finally she opens the door, however hardly though, and takes it from my hands. After glancing down at it, her daughter behind her shoulder, the mother looks back up to me.
“Thanks so much.” She forms a smile of appreciation on her face.
“It’s my pleasure.” That’s an understatement.
“How did you—”
Oh that’s right; an explanation is in order! “Um, I was running near Silo park and I found it on the floor,” I say plainly.
They both glance back down, looking at the permit. The mother closes the door without looking up at me. I hear her daughter screaming in delight as I leave the driveway.
As I enter the passenger seat, I tell Ate Sherry everything that has just happened.
The drum song has turned into a slow beat -- that of a sleeping heart.
Ahh, but what a rush it was! It ended a bit abruptly, but still.
Two months pass and I haven’t returned the permit due to school and stuff.
I got a call today by Ate Sherry. She says she’s coming home soon, in around thirty minutes or so. Seeing the permit on my desk in my room, I ask her if she knows how to get to the address of the sixteen year old girl. I’m excited to hear that she does in fact know and that she’s willing to pick me up as soon as she gets home to bring me to the girl’s house.
My hands are clammy and my body begins to engross itself on an adrenaline rush. About fifteen minutes pass by as I sit at my computer. Then, my mouth opens and out comes do-do-do’s in the rhythmic motions of a song with intense drums. I get out of my pajama pants and change into jeans, keeping my same top on – a blue shirt over a white, skinny long sleeve. As I hit the climax of the song in my head, I leave my room to get my jacket and put on my shoes.
Ate Sherry’s here, yes!
I leave the house, locking the door behind me, and run to the car. Oh I’m exhilarated.
Ate Sherry tells me that she knows the place because she and Jeremy run there all the time. All the while I’m hearing the intense drum song in my head, making for myself a soundtrack for my mission of returning the permit and finally meeting the person whose picture I’ve seen on my desk for months.
We’ve reach the place and Ate Sherry pulls the car over. My heart is pounding like hardcore dance music. It’s turned into a techno beat. I get out of the car and jump over the black ice that has made their driveway perilously accessible. It’s not until I reach their front door that I realize the driver’s permit is warm and a little wet from my sweaty palm that was hovering over it. Letting go of the permit, I ring their door bell, which is loud and clear, even from the outside.
I see moving shadows behind the opaque glass and count. There are two of them: one is taller than the other.
The wooden door opens slightly, but the storm door is kept closed. They peer and look at me. I see a mother and daughter – the daughter is the girl on the permit. She’s cut her hair but the eyes are the same, I could tell. They’re both very protective of themselves. I could see it in the way they take their time opening the door to me. Every little move of theirs is checked first with caution. That’s understandable. The mother pushes the daughter away and says something to me from behind the storm door.
“We’re not interested.”
In my head I laugh. But when I see them starting to close the door, I say, “Um . . . uhhh, no, no, wait.” I find my eyes have widened as I begin to rummage hastily through my pocket and take out the permit. I shove it quickly against the storm door right before they close the wooden door entirely.
The mother’s face comes closer to the glass until her nose flattens against it. The daughter from behind widens her eyes and yells in surprise, “Mom, that’s my permit!”
I smile and nod, acknowledging.
“Oh, honey this is yours!” Finally she opens the door, however hardly though, and takes it from my hands. After glancing down at it, her daughter behind her shoulder, the mother looks back up to me.
“Thanks so much.” She forms a smile of appreciation on her face.
“It’s my pleasure.” That’s an understatement.
“How did you—”
Oh that’s right; an explanation is in order! “Um, I was running near Silo park and I found it on the floor,” I say plainly.
They both glance back down, looking at the permit. The mother closes the door without looking up at me. I hear her daughter screaming in delight as I leave the driveway.
As I enter the passenger seat, I tell Ate Sherry everything that has just happened.
The drum song has turned into a slow beat -- that of a sleeping heart.
Ahh, but what a rush it was! It ended a bit abruptly, but still.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Short story: "I Know What Flying Feels Like"
The other night I had this freakishly awesome dream. I was a criminal and had stolen someone’s car, some guy’s whom I didn’t know. It was a dark blue civic, nothing spectacular. I first hijacked it, threatening the man with a gun. Once I got him out of the car, I drove it. I drove it fast and hard. Then, feeling extremely guilty and scared, I decided to get off the highway (yes, I was driving on a highway) and at the ramp, I drove the car into the ditch. Luckily I didn’t get hurt much, but I now found myself without a ride home and with possible coppers chasing me. So, I flew home. What else could I do, I thought. I gave myself a running start until my feet were no longer on the empty asphalt.
Then, voila! I was sky high flying over the city. I wasn’t horizontal like Superman; I was more like walking, except my steps covered a lot of ground. I found myself over my house and flew in through the window over the kitchen sink. By that time I had already forgotten I had stolen a car. Kuya, Steph and Ate Sherry were home. Even Ate Sherry’s friend, Jeremy was there. They all saw me fly in and immediately asked how I was able to do that. I thought about it and fount it tremendously difficult to elucidate such a high feeling. I ran a little in the kitchen and started flying. “Like that,” I told them, knowing they probably still had no clue how to fly. They all started running, but never took off. I was the only one who could fly.
The feeling of flying was so amazing. It was like defying gravity with an attitude because I was smiling the whole time. Weightlessness. It made me a little lightheaded but in an addicting kind of way that was somewhat pleasurable?
When I woke up, I realized something weird. I felt like I really knew how to fly, even though I never did anything similar to it, in real life.
This dream is the basis for this short story that I came up with.
"I Know What Flying Feels Like"
By Bernadette Tinio
“I know how it feels like to fly.”
“What are you talking about, old man?”
“I know what flying feels like.” The old man’s lips curled into a smile that quickly erupted into a puff of raspy giggle.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just a crazy old man, with a banged up leg from war, who’s going blind, you know that? Thought I should remind you.” The old man continued to giggle aimlessly, looking into the smoky air in front of him.
The garage was gray, cold and cluttered with tools that haven’t been touched in ages. They flooded the garage, taking it over with aggression, as if they had the authority to do so because of how old they were. The tools were in total denial of the fact that they have now been deemed useless and obsolete by its owners, like a king’s not giving up his throne much to the displeasure and annoyance of his people, seeing as he, the king, was already past his prime. Honor held a permanent place in the hearts of the tools, which people have long gone overlooked. Even the table the four men sat at was proud and yet blind at how it was too old for its own liking, being on the edge of total dilapidation.
It sat four elderly, balding men, all in their late sixties, except for the extremely old man, who was nearing his eighties. Donald, whom the old man was talking to, dealt the cards around so they could play another game of Texas hold’em. The cards spewed out of his yellow stained fingers and trembling hands. “Bleh,” blurted Donald, coughing up phlegm, looking for a garbage can, and then, not seeing one, swallowing it down with premature resignation. He was too lazy to look or ask around for a can in which to spit out his phlegm; plus, he often lost his breath easily just walking around because he had given almost forty years of his life to smoking, limiting his lung capacity-- and had gone bankrupt because of it. Now he lived in his son’s garage, much to his own chagrin and loss of dignity, playing poker with the three other men around the table every Friday night, with nothing else to do. “Crazy, old man . . . flying . . . crazy,” murmured Donald, speaking to himself as if he were confirming reality and denying the old man’s flights of fantasy.
Raymond shot Donald an eye of annoyance, saying, “Give it a rest, Donald. Let the man have a go with it. He’s near the end anyhow.” It wasn’t that he was siding with the old man. It wasn’t even that he felt sympathy for him. The old men was simply a nuisance, a pestering, old nag.
“Hey, pass it around, don’t keep hoggin’ it,” added Raymond. He was an obese man wearing a buttoned shirt that looked like the buttons might explode any minute. Many years ago, when he was still married, his wife had bought him that shirt from her department store for Christmas. It used to be a well-fitted button down, forest green shirt with pale, yellow stripes. Raymond insisted on keeping it even after his wife had left him for reasons along the lines of his choosing food over their sex life for the umpteenth time. She was a feisty one, and he didn’t always used to be obese. It was as if he were the one who got bored first, and now he was paying the price in his wifeless corpulence. Charles passed Raymond the rolled up weed and he smoked one good hit. “Ahh, that’s the stuff.” He scratched his large stomach and then, after looking down at it, sucked it in. If only, he thought.
Raymond passed it back to Charles who, like Donald, smoked for most of his life. However, on top of that, he had also married alcohol. Bottles of booze were in every corner of his lonely, small house: under his bed, under his pillow, in his closet, and even in the bathroom cabinets. In fact, next to the chips he had won in poker so far, he had a bottle of beer. Alcohol was his right hand man, and had always been there for him, especially during his divorce with his wife, who couldn’t take his beatings any longer during his drunken nights. Charles gulped down a quarter of his beer and remembered for a split second the night he had slapped his wife for talking back to him. Really, all she had asked was where he had gone that night, but he saw it as a cancerous jealousy of hers. Was there in fact another woman? No, unless alcohol wore breasts.
Charles shifted in his dark gray corduroy pants after leaning over to retrieve the weed from Raymond. He inhaled the rolled up paper, closing his eyes. After a while, he exhaled and immediately gulped down half of his Heineken. Smoke filled the garage like fake smoke filling up a stage, for musicians. Certainly the musicians in this garage were the old men, complaining about their lives in used up voices and tired accents, while they played poker and smoked pot. This was what life came down to, for them.
The old man, shuffled his dealt cards, and coughed. His old, wrinkled arms made their way to Charles’s hands and took the small, rolled up paper. After inhaling, he waited and then exhaled. Giving it back to Charles, he giggled something about flying, until his coughing resumed, escalating in a huge cough that made him bend over the table, the other men patting his back. He took the weed and smoked again, exhaling with an air of finality and relief. His eyes shot wide open and the widest grin monopolized his face.
Looking up at the dangling light at the ceiling, the old man yelped, “I’m flying. Yippy!” The other men ignored him and continued to play with the cards. In his mind, the old man saw that he was indeed flying, touching the ceiling, no longer limping on his legs. And from up top, his vision seemed to have improved so that he didn’t even need his glasses. He took them off and set them on the table near his now empty seat.
“What are you doing, old man? Put your glasses back on,” said Donald, who grabbed the old man’s glasses. He tried to hand it back to the old man, who, to him and the other men, was still sitting at the table. The old man waved his hand as a child would resist vegetables, absolutely refusing to put his glasses back on. In the past, when he was wearing glasses the old man had always felt older and so unlike his youthful self who did not used to wear glasses, at least not until after the war. To the other men sitting at the poker table, the old man was annoyingly and stubbornly refusing their help to put on his glasses, but in the his mind, he was flying near the ceiling, using his arms like fins, swimming through the air.
“Can’t you see that I’m flying? Charles, Ray, Donald, come fly with me,” said the old man holding onto the top of a shelf that carried rusty, outdated tools that were probably as old, if not older, than the old man himself.
“Quit you’re talking about flying. You ain’t flying old man. You’re sitting down. Now shut it!” yelled Charles, who took the old man by the shoulders and shook him.
At the table, the old man’s eyes flew to the back of his head and his mouth opened, displaying his false teeth and releasing the potent stench of too much mary jane – more than he could handle at his age. He bent over the table again, except this time, his head fell and banged the middle of the table causing the poker chips to pop up in the air and clatter as they fell and hit the table as his head just did.
“Raymond, call 9-1-1!” yelled Charles, guilt rising in his face in the form of worried eyebrows. He tried to wake up the old man, pushing him back on his seat, and slapping his face, right smack on his stubbed cheeks. “Come on, come on, old man! It wasn’t me, honest fellas!”
“Look what you did! The man was just having some fun. You didn’t have to kill him!” yelled Raymond. Perhaps he was sympathetic after all.
The old man, still at the top of the shelf, let go and flew around the room, his mouth gaping in awe at the feeling of flying. Giggles continued to rise from within him like little children being released for recess time from the classroom. He was happy up there, giddy almost.
Raymond heard the ambulance outside and rushed out the door, his stomach jiggling as he breathlessly ran across the lawn, waving his hands like a drowning swimmer. Once the ambulance men were in the house, they rushed immediately to the old man and laid him on the stretcher, skillfully placing a bag valve mask over his mouth.
The ambulance rang across the town and Donald’s car, holding himself, Raymond and Charles followed.
All the while, the old man’s hands held the top of the door frame, his face turned upward toward the starry night sky. Moments later, in his lower peripherals, he made out the white-blanketed earth and sprinkled lights of red, green and yellow.
--------------------------------------------
Donald, Raymond, and Charles sat in the waiting room. An abyss of guilt overwhelmed Charles, The immense guilt forced him to say aloud, “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t shake’m too hard. The ol’ man was just going out of his mind is all and I wanted to snap him out of it.”
“No, it wasn’t your fault,” said Donald, patting Charles’s shoulder. “Maybe this is his time.” He looked at both Raymond and Charles. Right in the eye.
Raymond, who had bought a pack of mallomars from the vending machine, shook his head violently, causing his cheeks to wobble. “No, no, no, this isn’t his time. You’re just sayin’. It was all your yellin’ at him. It wasn’t Charles’s shakin’ that did it. It was your yellin’ at him.”
Donald’s right hand rounded into a fist, hiding his yellow-stained fingers. “You want to fight, fat fella?”
Just as Raymond started to make a move to the other side of the vending machine for protection, the men heard a doctor call, “Stat, Watson unit!” A simultaneous gasp escaped the mouths of Raymond, Donald and Charles.
Suddenly it didn’t care the cause of the old man’s state.
-----------------------------------
The cold air filled his lungs as ice cold lemonade might fill the stomach of a carefree little girl in the summer. The night was cloudless and naked, save for the stars and the full moon. There was no smoke from factories, or night time flying airplanes. It was pure deep purple and with sparkles of piercing white. The moon was a feminine sun, a welcoming doormat. To what?
An unbridled smile and laugh grew permanent on the old man’s face. They began to define him. He swam through the air, higher, higher, and higher yet. It got to the point where the cars were no longer discernible as separate moving ants. Cities looked grouped together. And then the world itself soon looked like a ball a child might play with.
Surrounded by complete nothingness but the happiness emanating from his blissful soul, he looked to only one place: the moon.
-----------------------------------
It was that sound. The one that sings of death in utter indifference. A machine’s voice laughing at the technological accomplishments of man because it was made to hurt the living as it proved someone had died. A dreaded song it was indeed. The cardiac monitor sang its solid, single, sustained tone, as flat as the old man’s body lying on the hospital bed, surrounded by the downward-facing faces of doctors, nurses. Raymond and Charles, a look of disbelief on their faces. Donald just stared at the dead old man.
Out in the night, in the universe, the old man was flying, higher and higher. “I’m coming!” screamed the old man, swimming closer and closer to the moon. His knees bent youthfully, his eyes could see as sharp as it was when he was sixteen, and he had the energy of a strong horse. In high volume, as loud and dignified as possible, a choir of angels sang the ending of Mozart’s “Lacrimosa,” as he neared the moon, smiling that smile.
Then, voila! I was sky high flying over the city. I wasn’t horizontal like Superman; I was more like walking, except my steps covered a lot of ground. I found myself over my house and flew in through the window over the kitchen sink. By that time I had already forgotten I had stolen a car. Kuya, Steph and Ate Sherry were home. Even Ate Sherry’s friend, Jeremy was there. They all saw me fly in and immediately asked how I was able to do that. I thought about it and fount it tremendously difficult to elucidate such a high feeling. I ran a little in the kitchen and started flying. “Like that,” I told them, knowing they probably still had no clue how to fly. They all started running, but never took off. I was the only one who could fly.
The feeling of flying was so amazing. It was like defying gravity with an attitude because I was smiling the whole time. Weightlessness. It made me a little lightheaded but in an addicting kind of way that was somewhat pleasurable?
When I woke up, I realized something weird. I felt like I really knew how to fly, even though I never did anything similar to it, in real life.
This dream is the basis for this short story that I came up with.
"I Know What Flying Feels Like"
By Bernadette Tinio
“I know how it feels like to fly.”
“What are you talking about, old man?”
“I know what flying feels like.” The old man’s lips curled into a smile that quickly erupted into a puff of raspy giggle.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just a crazy old man, with a banged up leg from war, who’s going blind, you know that? Thought I should remind you.” The old man continued to giggle aimlessly, looking into the smoky air in front of him.
The garage was gray, cold and cluttered with tools that haven’t been touched in ages. They flooded the garage, taking it over with aggression, as if they had the authority to do so because of how old they were. The tools were in total denial of the fact that they have now been deemed useless and obsolete by its owners, like a king’s not giving up his throne much to the displeasure and annoyance of his people, seeing as he, the king, was already past his prime. Honor held a permanent place in the hearts of the tools, which people have long gone overlooked. Even the table the four men sat at was proud and yet blind at how it was too old for its own liking, being on the edge of total dilapidation.
It sat four elderly, balding men, all in their late sixties, except for the extremely old man, who was nearing his eighties. Donald, whom the old man was talking to, dealt the cards around so they could play another game of Texas hold’em. The cards spewed out of his yellow stained fingers and trembling hands. “Bleh,” blurted Donald, coughing up phlegm, looking for a garbage can, and then, not seeing one, swallowing it down with premature resignation. He was too lazy to look or ask around for a can in which to spit out his phlegm; plus, he often lost his breath easily just walking around because he had given almost forty years of his life to smoking, limiting his lung capacity-- and had gone bankrupt because of it. Now he lived in his son’s garage, much to his own chagrin and loss of dignity, playing poker with the three other men around the table every Friday night, with nothing else to do. “Crazy, old man . . . flying . . . crazy,” murmured Donald, speaking to himself as if he were confirming reality and denying the old man’s flights of fantasy.
Raymond shot Donald an eye of annoyance, saying, “Give it a rest, Donald. Let the man have a go with it. He’s near the end anyhow.” It wasn’t that he was siding with the old man. It wasn’t even that he felt sympathy for him. The old men was simply a nuisance, a pestering, old nag.
“Hey, pass it around, don’t keep hoggin’ it,” added Raymond. He was an obese man wearing a buttoned shirt that looked like the buttons might explode any minute. Many years ago, when he was still married, his wife had bought him that shirt from her department store for Christmas. It used to be a well-fitted button down, forest green shirt with pale, yellow stripes. Raymond insisted on keeping it even after his wife had left him for reasons along the lines of his choosing food over their sex life for the umpteenth time. She was a feisty one, and he didn’t always used to be obese. It was as if he were the one who got bored first, and now he was paying the price in his wifeless corpulence. Charles passed Raymond the rolled up weed and he smoked one good hit. “Ahh, that’s the stuff.” He scratched his large stomach and then, after looking down at it, sucked it in. If only, he thought.
Raymond passed it back to Charles who, like Donald, smoked for most of his life. However, on top of that, he had also married alcohol. Bottles of booze were in every corner of his lonely, small house: under his bed, under his pillow, in his closet, and even in the bathroom cabinets. In fact, next to the chips he had won in poker so far, he had a bottle of beer. Alcohol was his right hand man, and had always been there for him, especially during his divorce with his wife, who couldn’t take his beatings any longer during his drunken nights. Charles gulped down a quarter of his beer and remembered for a split second the night he had slapped his wife for talking back to him. Really, all she had asked was where he had gone that night, but he saw it as a cancerous jealousy of hers. Was there in fact another woman? No, unless alcohol wore breasts.
Charles shifted in his dark gray corduroy pants after leaning over to retrieve the weed from Raymond. He inhaled the rolled up paper, closing his eyes. After a while, he exhaled and immediately gulped down half of his Heineken. Smoke filled the garage like fake smoke filling up a stage, for musicians. Certainly the musicians in this garage were the old men, complaining about their lives in used up voices and tired accents, while they played poker and smoked pot. This was what life came down to, for them.
The old man, shuffled his dealt cards, and coughed. His old, wrinkled arms made their way to Charles’s hands and took the small, rolled up paper. After inhaling, he waited and then exhaled. Giving it back to Charles, he giggled something about flying, until his coughing resumed, escalating in a huge cough that made him bend over the table, the other men patting his back. He took the weed and smoked again, exhaling with an air of finality and relief. His eyes shot wide open and the widest grin monopolized his face.
Looking up at the dangling light at the ceiling, the old man yelped, “I’m flying. Yippy!” The other men ignored him and continued to play with the cards. In his mind, the old man saw that he was indeed flying, touching the ceiling, no longer limping on his legs. And from up top, his vision seemed to have improved so that he didn’t even need his glasses. He took them off and set them on the table near his now empty seat.
“What are you doing, old man? Put your glasses back on,” said Donald, who grabbed the old man’s glasses. He tried to hand it back to the old man, who, to him and the other men, was still sitting at the table. The old man waved his hand as a child would resist vegetables, absolutely refusing to put his glasses back on. In the past, when he was wearing glasses the old man had always felt older and so unlike his youthful self who did not used to wear glasses, at least not until after the war. To the other men sitting at the poker table, the old man was annoyingly and stubbornly refusing their help to put on his glasses, but in the his mind, he was flying near the ceiling, using his arms like fins, swimming through the air.
“Can’t you see that I’m flying? Charles, Ray, Donald, come fly with me,” said the old man holding onto the top of a shelf that carried rusty, outdated tools that were probably as old, if not older, than the old man himself.
“Quit you’re talking about flying. You ain’t flying old man. You’re sitting down. Now shut it!” yelled Charles, who took the old man by the shoulders and shook him.
At the table, the old man’s eyes flew to the back of his head and his mouth opened, displaying his false teeth and releasing the potent stench of too much mary jane – more than he could handle at his age. He bent over the table again, except this time, his head fell and banged the middle of the table causing the poker chips to pop up in the air and clatter as they fell and hit the table as his head just did.
“Raymond, call 9-1-1!” yelled Charles, guilt rising in his face in the form of worried eyebrows. He tried to wake up the old man, pushing him back on his seat, and slapping his face, right smack on his stubbed cheeks. “Come on, come on, old man! It wasn’t me, honest fellas!”
“Look what you did! The man was just having some fun. You didn’t have to kill him!” yelled Raymond. Perhaps he was sympathetic after all.
The old man, still at the top of the shelf, let go and flew around the room, his mouth gaping in awe at the feeling of flying. Giggles continued to rise from within him like little children being released for recess time from the classroom. He was happy up there, giddy almost.
Raymond heard the ambulance outside and rushed out the door, his stomach jiggling as he breathlessly ran across the lawn, waving his hands like a drowning swimmer. Once the ambulance men were in the house, they rushed immediately to the old man and laid him on the stretcher, skillfully placing a bag valve mask over his mouth.
The ambulance rang across the town and Donald’s car, holding himself, Raymond and Charles followed.
All the while, the old man’s hands held the top of the door frame, his face turned upward toward the starry night sky. Moments later, in his lower peripherals, he made out the white-blanketed earth and sprinkled lights of red, green and yellow.
--------------------------------------------
Donald, Raymond, and Charles sat in the waiting room. An abyss of guilt overwhelmed Charles, The immense guilt forced him to say aloud, “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t shake’m too hard. The ol’ man was just going out of his mind is all and I wanted to snap him out of it.”
“No, it wasn’t your fault,” said Donald, patting Charles’s shoulder. “Maybe this is his time.” He looked at both Raymond and Charles. Right in the eye.
Raymond, who had bought a pack of mallomars from the vending machine, shook his head violently, causing his cheeks to wobble. “No, no, no, this isn’t his time. You’re just sayin’. It was all your yellin’ at him. It wasn’t Charles’s shakin’ that did it. It was your yellin’ at him.”
Donald’s right hand rounded into a fist, hiding his yellow-stained fingers. “You want to fight, fat fella?”
Just as Raymond started to make a move to the other side of the vending machine for protection, the men heard a doctor call, “Stat, Watson unit!” A simultaneous gasp escaped the mouths of Raymond, Donald and Charles.
Suddenly it didn’t care the cause of the old man’s state.
-----------------------------------
The cold air filled his lungs as ice cold lemonade might fill the stomach of a carefree little girl in the summer. The night was cloudless and naked, save for the stars and the full moon. There was no smoke from factories, or night time flying airplanes. It was pure deep purple and with sparkles of piercing white. The moon was a feminine sun, a welcoming doormat. To what?
An unbridled smile and laugh grew permanent on the old man’s face. They began to define him. He swam through the air, higher, higher, and higher yet. It got to the point where the cars were no longer discernible as separate moving ants. Cities looked grouped together. And then the world itself soon looked like a ball a child might play with.
Surrounded by complete nothingness but the happiness emanating from his blissful soul, he looked to only one place: the moon.
-----------------------------------
It was that sound. The one that sings of death in utter indifference. A machine’s voice laughing at the technological accomplishments of man because it was made to hurt the living as it proved someone had died. A dreaded song it was indeed. The cardiac monitor sang its solid, single, sustained tone, as flat as the old man’s body lying on the hospital bed, surrounded by the downward-facing faces of doctors, nurses. Raymond and Charles, a look of disbelief on their faces. Donald just stared at the dead old man.
Out in the night, in the universe, the old man was flying, higher and higher. “I’m coming!” screamed the old man, swimming closer and closer to the moon. His knees bent youthfully, his eyes could see as sharp as it was when he was sixteen, and he had the energy of a strong horse. In high volume, as loud and dignified as possible, a choir of angels sang the ending of Mozart’s “Lacrimosa,” as he neared the moon, smiling that smile.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
New Year's best friend is time
Happy New Year!
I can’t believe it’s already 2011. Ever since 8th grade, back in 2003, I only really focused on two years: 2007 and 2011. 2007, I’d graduate from high school. Check. 2011, I’d graduate from college. Almost check – two more semesters left; I’m graduating one semester late. Time has flown by way too quickly and took me by surprise. Some nights, I’m ok with this pace, but other nights I absolutely loath it. I have this on and off acceptance thing going on, but most times I slip on a denial mask and forget my age, or the date, or the time even, and just live. Live.
This past New Year’s Eve I celebrated Christmas with my mom’s side of the family. Ate Maricel’s got three little ones: Jarian, Kelsie and Kaden. What do I think of when I see little kids? Generic thoughts, really. They can be super excited, or quiet and shy (clingy to parents), or somewhere in between those two extremes. By eight or nine, I’ve noticed, kids usually start to develop their own personality, based on any and every input of the world they’ve been exposed to up to that point. I realize that’s an arbitrary age I chose, but I truly believe we don't really develop a strong personality until our high school years, or even college years, (if you were lost in the motions and throws of high school drama and couldn't find yourself, as I think I have), in my opinion. For instance, you could predict a specific reaction of your friend's that only he or she would have. Now Kaden’s only two, I think. [Chuckle]. He’s just plain cute.
So, as I sat here to write, I was wondering how to go about saying good bye to 2010. But then I realized something. You can’t really say good bye to a specific year, or time in life. Although you can say, “I’ll see you again whenever you pop up,” because what went on in your life, how you’ve developed, or how you’ve been impacted or influenced by experiences felt during a time period, will always have some affect on your present state, or personality. There's this connection among time, experience and self- perception (how you see yourself as you are living, I mean). I claim that all life is the building of background knowledge, essentially. I like to think of it as an on-going movie or story with lots of foreshadow moments. “Of course he’d become a doctor; he always liked fixing other kids’ boo-boos,” or “of course she ended up in this mental hospital, having grown up in that messed-up household she called, ‘family’,” or when a family needs to call the dog whisperer to fix the dog they got from the dog shelter for Christmas, the dog having been abused by his previous owner. The past is always affecting the present, interfering it. Enhancing it on a good day. Or making sense of it, most importantly. Like, if someone decides to change his or her life drastically, there has got to be a reason for doing so. Perhaps in the past he or she "learned the lesson the hard way" as the saying goes, and decided to do something about it, whatever it is.
So anyway. Change of topic. Resolution-making time, is it? Last year, my New Year’s resolution was to produce awesome abs. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make a four pack or a two pack even – I was realistic. So I just aimed at having not washboard abs, but surfboard abs, nice and flat. Lord knows that didn’t even happen at all; that was a lost goal that went in the opposite direction, lol.
I don’t know what my goal for this year should be. Should I go selfish or selfless? Or both?
Both.
My goal for 2011 is to keep in contact with people, and to help my friends however way I can. My goal is also to write more and give more time for writing. Speaking of time, I will also strive to have better time management and to lessen the number of times I procrastinate (no more staying up at freakin' 4:30 in the morning working on something due at 9:50am!).
So those are my goals. I hope I’ll have better luck with them, than I did with my humble abs.
I wonder what personality 2011 will have . . .
I can’t believe it’s already 2011. Ever since 8th grade, back in 2003, I only really focused on two years: 2007 and 2011. 2007, I’d graduate from high school. Check. 2011, I’d graduate from college. Almost check – two more semesters left; I’m graduating one semester late. Time has flown by way too quickly and took me by surprise. Some nights, I’m ok with this pace, but other nights I absolutely loath it. I have this on and off acceptance thing going on, but most times I slip on a denial mask and forget my age, or the date, or the time even, and just live. Live.
This past New Year’s Eve I celebrated Christmas with my mom’s side of the family. Ate Maricel’s got three little ones: Jarian, Kelsie and Kaden. What do I think of when I see little kids? Generic thoughts, really. They can be super excited, or quiet and shy (clingy to parents), or somewhere in between those two extremes. By eight or nine, I’ve noticed, kids usually start to develop their own personality, based on any and every input of the world they’ve been exposed to up to that point. I realize that’s an arbitrary age I chose, but I truly believe we don't really develop a strong personality until our high school years, or even college years, (if you were lost in the motions and throws of high school drama and couldn't find yourself, as I think I have), in my opinion. For instance, you could predict a specific reaction of your friend's that only he or she would have. Now Kaden’s only two, I think. [Chuckle]. He’s just plain cute.
So, as I sat here to write, I was wondering how to go about saying good bye to 2010. But then I realized something. You can’t really say good bye to a specific year, or time in life. Although you can say, “I’ll see you again whenever you pop up,” because what went on in your life, how you’ve developed, or how you’ve been impacted or influenced by experiences felt during a time period, will always have some affect on your present state, or personality. There's this connection among time, experience and self- perception (how you see yourself as you are living, I mean). I claim that all life is the building of background knowledge, essentially. I like to think of it as an on-going movie or story with lots of foreshadow moments. “Of course he’d become a doctor; he always liked fixing other kids’ boo-boos,” or “of course she ended up in this mental hospital, having grown up in that messed-up household she called, ‘family’,” or when a family needs to call the dog whisperer to fix the dog they got from the dog shelter for Christmas, the dog having been abused by his previous owner. The past is always affecting the present, interfering it. Enhancing it on a good day. Or making sense of it, most importantly. Like, if someone decides to change his or her life drastically, there has got to be a reason for doing so. Perhaps in the past he or she "learned the lesson the hard way" as the saying goes, and decided to do something about it, whatever it is.
So anyway. Change of topic. Resolution-making time, is it? Last year, my New Year’s resolution was to produce awesome abs. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make a four pack or a two pack even – I was realistic. So I just aimed at having not washboard abs, but surfboard abs, nice and flat. Lord knows that didn’t even happen at all; that was a lost goal that went in the opposite direction, lol.
I don’t know what my goal for this year should be. Should I go selfish or selfless? Or both?
Both.
My goal for 2011 is to keep in contact with people, and to help my friends however way I can. My goal is also to write more and give more time for writing. Speaking of time, I will also strive to have better time management and to lessen the number of times I procrastinate (no more staying up at freakin' 4:30 in the morning working on something due at 9:50am!).
So those are my goals. I hope I’ll have better luck with them, than I did with my humble abs.
I wonder what personality 2011 will have . . .
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