something...
What I know about myself, what truly there is to know, is more story than analogy. I am not like anything, but these words right now. We're in the past. Two days ago I heard something that stuck with me. Two people I did not know were discussing their love for their child. They were not married, all there was between them was their love for their child. They could not stop talking about her. How intelligent. How completely and totally wonderful she was. She was. That's what made them smile. These two people were not in love with each other. They only saw each other because of her. To talk about her. You realize somewhere about now that their little girl is dead, and that's all they have to talk about. Her life. What it mattered for, what it meant to them, and why they meet out here of all places to talk about her. Their words carry, their story bleeds over into our lives because. The table is twisted wire. You spill a drink, the liquid splashes through, a film of stick remains.
I don't know what to tell you. Okay, yes, that's a lie. I do. I just have to think about it. The story. Yes. I don't know what happens next, to these two people. The man's name is Jason. He wanted to grow up to be a surfer and became a semenary student instead. Her name is Rebecca. I might have loved her if things were different. Rebecca spoke to God for the first time when she was ten. At a friend's house. They were playing around with candles, pictures of angels. Becca looked in the bathroom mirror and saw her future. Her friends found her ten minutes later, convulsing, babbling like a baby. Cooing. Kawing. Smiling with her tongue out. This is what came between us. This is what brought them together. Their baby died not too long ago. Two and a half. Married a year out of college. They hooked up in California, where Becca was studying journalism. Jason was still a surfer. Hadn't found God yet. Never really did find God. Had a friend drown, though. Drunk and tethered to his board on a really bad spill. Jason cried to Becca one night, outside a small mexican restaurant, tilting the margarita glasses back to finish them off. She took him back to her dorm room and lost her virginity, despite her word to God.
We can talk about a lot of things now. Her name was Esther. She was a happy accident. Jason and Becca never even discussed marriage. It just sort of came to pass in a frantic three months in the middle of summer. They honeymooned in San Francisco. Jason got drunk one night and passed out in the hotel lobby while going down for ice. Becca panicked, thinking he'd run out on her and the baby inside her. She was weeping when called up her sister and told her all her insecurities and how Jason had slept with another woman before he proposed to her at her parents house. Becca's sister gave Becca her credit card number to reserve a plane ticket, should things fall apart before they ever really began.
Becca searched the hotel for Jason and eventually found him. She'd walked by him four times, and only saw him because she stopped to look at herself in a gigantic mirror adorned with iconographic engravings. She took it as a sign when all it was was a mirror. She found him, looking at herself. Seeing how desperate she was. Looking into mirrors.
When Esther was born, she was premature. She was kept on a respirator for ten days. When she was taken off, she had weak lungs, and several serious complications as a result. She was a beautiful baby. Quiet, happy. She put up with a lot of discomfort. Her eyes, when they first came alive, took in everything. She made funny noises, and startled at the odd noises, and she loved the new faces that entered her world and cried when they were gone. She was a baby who was learning so much about the world, herself, and the people who loved her.
Jason and Becca broke up a month and a half after Esther died. Jason cried on Becca and they talked about God. Jason went to stay with his brother, who worked as a Ranger in Redwood National Park. Becca stayed there to finish up the schooling she put on hold to start a family.
I sit and listen at a table and hear two strangers talk. About things that don't concern me. I might be paying too much attention. Listening in on their story and hearing something that is not there. There's something more I want to hear. I picture her, and I think about how her life might be different with me not in it. Fantastic, I hope. Sad. Of course. All lives are worth crying about to some degree. Maybe this is too much.
We're someplace else now. Explanation is needed. Things you need to know about me. I'm writing in my underwear at two in the morning. I'm coming down with the flu, and I should be sleeping because I need to be at work earlier than normal. Writing comes to me easier the closer I get to dream. To be asleep and be awake at the same time is a very unusual, sensual experience. Music plays quietely as not to wake the other people in the house who live here with me. Asleep behind their doors and walls. I am debating whether or not I should be honest to you, the reader, because my life is very complicated at this point. It's simple in how easily even I misconstrue it.
Another moment of my life taken out of context.
A day away from Thanksgiving. I am thinking about Christmas presents for my friends and family. I am greedy. I want to spend all my money on presents for myself, and only give them my words. I am writing stories for each of them. Stories that will be read by only them, me giving my stories over to them completely, to do with them what they will. Out of my hands. All the stories together will tell a larger story. One that they may or may not be aware of. I will keep no copies of these stories. I will print out one copy, and one copy only for each of them. What happens to those words is entirely up to them.
Another story, for all of you. This one about two sisters, who each had a lot to say to each other, but only said it to other people.
Gina was around twenty-five, single. Not bad looking, not afraid of the world, she fed off innocence. She had that dark thing going for her. She made bad choices and learned to live with them. She respected honesty and beauty and people who were open to new ideas. Her baby sister, Agnes, was only seventeen. Anges was losing her innocence, but many people still hungered the innocence that still existed inside her. Agnes was alive, full of hope and dreams. People who saw her, people who had lost this, wanted her for that very reason, no matter how good looking she was, how smart she was. Both girls grew up in the same household, but Gina had a different father, she remembered living with until she was five.
Agnes had a friend, we'll call him Eric, who wanted to be an artist. He drew anatomy. Not flesh, so much as bone. He liked to fascinate himself with evolving lines that became mazes that became illusions to the eyes at so many angles. He dropped out of high school at age sixteen because no one around him seemed to care. Eric worked at a gas station part time and lived at a house with his brother's friends.
While Gina worked at a call center, she dreamt of vacations to the far north, wherever that might be. Because it was cool and wet and so much like a dream. She lived south, where it was hot, and sticky, and where it only got foggy on the highway with so much pollution. Gina called old people, who were either about to die, or were already dead. She hated her job. It had no future for her, though the industry of health care only seemed to be growing.
While Agnes was at school, fourth period, she thought about a road trip Gina took her on last summer. They went to New Orleans, without all the Mardi Gras hooplah. They went to Bourbon street and all the historical landmark cliches that marked the map. They stayed at a cheap motel with a cheap, not totally unsanitary public pool. Some nights after sightseeing, they sat in the pool and talked to different boys who were passing through. On the second to last night, Anges watched her sister make out with Derrick and Todd, and thought nothing of it. Neither of them wanted her, so she went up to her room and fell asleep.
While Eric smoked on his break, he watched the cars go by on the service road leading up to the highway. He thought about buying a new car, should he win the lottery. He thought about hanging out at IHOP afterwork with some chicks his brother wanted him to meet. Eric didn't know what he wanted, so much as he wanted to want again. He thought he might want to try Opium. God knows why. He thought about PCP. How fucking crazy that might be. If there was a world that existed outside this one, Eric thought about how fucking mindblowing it'd be to step over to the otherside, just for a lunchbreak, and maybe not ever come back. When Eric talked to his friends, mostly what he talked about was making a fresh start for himself somewhere new. He wanted to run from what he had. Not that he didn't have anything. He just had opportunity and he blew it. He hated regret, because everyone told him he shouldn't have any regret. But he did.
What I know about myself, what truly there is to know, is more story than analogy. I am not like anything, but these words right now. We're in the past. Two days ago I heard something that stuck with me. Two people I did not know were discussing their love for their child. They were not married, all there was between them was their love for their child. They could not stop talking about her. How intelligent. How completely and totally wonderful she was. She was. That's what made them smile. These two people were not in love with each other. They only saw each other because of her. To talk about her. You realize somewhere about now that their little girl is dead, and that's all they have to talk about. Her life. What it mattered for, what it meant to them, and why they meet out here of all places to talk about her. Their words carry, their story bleeds over into our lives because. The table is twisted wire. You spill a drink, the liquid splashes through, a film of stick remains.
I don't know what to tell you. Okay, yes, that's a lie. I do. I just have to think about it. The story. Yes. I don't know what happens next, to these two people. The man's name is Jason. He wanted to grow up to be a surfer and became a semenary student instead. Her name is Rebecca. I might have loved her if things were different. Rebecca spoke to God for the first time when she was ten. At a friend's house. They were playing around with candles, pictures of angels. Becca looked in the bathroom mirror and saw her future. Her friends found her ten minutes later, convulsing, babbling like a baby. Cooing. Kawing. Smiling with her tongue out. This is what came between us. This is what brought them together. Their baby died not too long ago. Two and a half. Married a year out of college. They hooked up in California, where Becca was studying journalism. Jason was still a surfer. Hadn't found God yet. Never really did find God. Had a friend drown, though. Drunk and tethered to his board on a really bad spill. Jason cried to Becca one night, outside a small mexican restaurant, tilting the margarita glasses back to finish them off. She took him back to her dorm room and lost her virginity, despite her word to God.
We can talk about a lot of things now. Her name was Esther. She was a happy accident. Jason and Becca never even discussed marriage. It just sort of came to pass in a frantic three months in the middle of summer. They honeymooned in San Francisco. Jason got drunk one night and passed out in the hotel lobby while going down for ice. Becca panicked, thinking he'd run out on her and the baby inside her. She was weeping when called up her sister and told her all her insecurities and how Jason had slept with another woman before he proposed to her at her parents house. Becca's sister gave Becca her credit card number to reserve a plane ticket, should things fall apart before they ever really began.
Becca searched the hotel for Jason and eventually found him. She'd walked by him four times, and only saw him because she stopped to look at herself in a gigantic mirror adorned with iconographic engravings. She took it as a sign when all it was was a mirror. She found him, looking at herself. Seeing how desperate she was. Looking into mirrors.
When Esther was born, she was premature. She was kept on a respirator for ten days. When she was taken off, she had weak lungs, and several serious complications as a result. She was a beautiful baby. Quiet, happy. She put up with a lot of discomfort. Her eyes, when they first came alive, took in everything. She made funny noises, and startled at the odd noises, and she loved the new faces that entered her world and cried when they were gone. She was a baby who was learning so much about the world, herself, and the people who loved her.
Jason and Becca broke up a month and a half after Esther died. Jason cried on Becca and they talked about God. Jason went to stay with his brother, who worked as a Ranger in Redwood National Park. Becca stayed there to finish up the schooling she put on hold to start a family.
I sit and listen at a table and hear two strangers talk. About things that don't concern me. I might be paying too much attention. Listening in on their story and hearing something that is not there. There's something more I want to hear. I picture her, and I think about how her life might be different with me not in it. Fantastic, I hope. Sad. Of course. All lives are worth crying about to some degree. Maybe this is too much.
We're someplace else now. Explanation is needed. Things you need to know about me. I'm writing in my underwear at two in the morning. I'm coming down with the flu, and I should be sleeping because I need to be at work earlier than normal. Writing comes to me easier the closer I get to dream. To be asleep and be awake at the same time is a very unusual, sensual experience. Music plays quietely as not to wake the other people in the house who live here with me. Asleep behind their doors and walls. I am debating whether or not I should be honest to you, the reader, because my life is very complicated at this point. It's simple in how easily even I misconstrue it.
Another moment of my life taken out of context.
A day away from Thanksgiving. I am thinking about Christmas presents for my friends and family. I am greedy. I want to spend all my money on presents for myself, and only give them my words. I am writing stories for each of them. Stories that will be read by only them, me giving my stories over to them completely, to do with them what they will. Out of my hands. All the stories together will tell a larger story. One that they may or may not be aware of. I will keep no copies of these stories. I will print out one copy, and one copy only for each of them. What happens to those words is entirely up to them.
Another story, for all of you. This one about two sisters, who each had a lot to say to each other, but only said it to other people.
Gina was around twenty-five, single. Not bad looking, not afraid of the world, she fed off innocence. She had that dark thing going for her. She made bad choices and learned to live with them. She respected honesty and beauty and people who were open to new ideas. Her baby sister, Agnes, was only seventeen. Anges was losing her innocence, but many people still hungered the innocence that still existed inside her. Agnes was alive, full of hope and dreams. People who saw her, people who had lost this, wanted her for that very reason, no matter how good looking she was, how smart she was. Both girls grew up in the same household, but Gina had a different father, she remembered living with until she was five.
Agnes had a friend, we'll call him Eric, who wanted to be an artist. He drew anatomy. Not flesh, so much as bone. He liked to fascinate himself with evolving lines that became mazes that became illusions to the eyes at so many angles. He dropped out of high school at age sixteen because no one around him seemed to care. Eric worked at a gas station part time and lived at a house with his brother's friends.
While Gina worked at a call center, she dreamt of vacations to the far north, wherever that might be. Because it was cool and wet and so much like a dream. She lived south, where it was hot, and sticky, and where it only got foggy on the highway with so much pollution. Gina called old people, who were either about to die, or were already dead. She hated her job. It had no future for her, though the industry of health care only seemed to be growing.
While Agnes was at school, fourth period, she thought about a road trip Gina took her on last summer. They went to New Orleans, without all the Mardi Gras hooplah. They went to Bourbon street and all the historical landmark cliches that marked the map. They stayed at a cheap motel with a cheap, not totally unsanitary public pool. Some nights after sightseeing, they sat in the pool and talked to different boys who were passing through. On the second to last night, Anges watched her sister make out with Derrick and Todd, and thought nothing of it. Neither of them wanted her, so she went up to her room and fell asleep.
While Eric smoked on his break, he watched the cars go by on the service road leading up to the highway. He thought about buying a new car, should he win the lottery. He thought about hanging out at IHOP afterwork with some chicks his brother wanted him to meet. Eric didn't know what he wanted, so much as he wanted to want again. He thought he might want to try Opium. God knows why. He thought about PCP. How fucking crazy that might be. If there was a world that existed outside this one, Eric thought about how fucking mindblowing it'd be to step over to the otherside, just for a lunchbreak, and maybe not ever come back. When Eric talked to his friends, mostly what he talked about was making a fresh start for himself somewhere new. He wanted to run from what he had. Not that he didn't have anything. He just had opportunity and he blew it. He hated regret, because everyone told him he shouldn't have any regret. But he did.
boxterjulep:
very nice...