Of course, I love it dearly, as well, and I couldn’t imagine my life being the same without it (for one thing, I wouldn’t have met all of you fine people) but when I come to realize just how much I rely on it and how much it bothers me when it doesn’t work right… well, that’s about the time I want to go read my books and let electronics rot.
blogging
Beauty Queen [Flash Fiction]
My name is Gwen. It’s a good, strong name. That’s what my pop always said. He said: Gwen, with a gee and a double-you, you’ve got nothing to be scared of in this world because the hardest thing for you will be learning how to spell your name with those big letters in it. I don’t know what my mama said because she skipped out on me and my pop when I was still real small. My pop always said she was the second prettiest gal in the world, after me. Then he would laugh and say: you had the best looking parents I’ve ever seen.
I guess he was right. I won all the beauty pageants when I was a kid, except for that one year when I was eight when I had to be in the hospital because I tripped and broke my head open. I don’t really remember it but my pop told me that I near broke it in two pieces just like an egg. Like the egg with kings and the horses, only my pop said that because I was the prettiest gal in the world we had the money to fix me up good. I still got a scar under my hair that I can feel. It’s all bumpy, and I kinda like it. I like having this one ugly thing on my head where no one, not even the meanest judges, can see it.
Henry used to tell me that I should be happy that I’m pretty. That was before he and Mick drove into a tree and got their drunk asses killed. I’m still mad at Henry for that, even though it was Mick who drove. I would have told Henry: don’t you get in the car with him, he’s drunk as a skunk. And maybe if it was me then Henry would have listened. But maybe not. My pop told me that there’s nothing I can do now except pray for their souls. But I don’t know if they need me to pray for them because if they died drunk then they must have stayed drunk in the next life too and those two pals had the best time when they were good and sloppy together. They could laugh at anything, even me when I let them and they were the only people who dared do that to my face so I liked it and I let them.
One thing that Henry never told me was that he thought I was pretty. He just said it as if I knew it, like it was the same thing as saying: the sky is blue like the ocean. All the others always kept telling me: do you know how pretty you are? But Henry didn’t because he knew that it didn’t matter to me one way or another if he thought I was pretty, just so the judges kept thinking so. Henry told me sometimes that I was smart, and I liked that best of all.
Support
One block is set on top of another. Another block is set on that one. The tower rises slowly, different colored cubes of wood resting on one another, close but not glued together, balancing. There’s a point when the tower will topple and will need to be built again. The trick is to add blocks at the bottom, on all sides of the first block; the taller the tower, the wider it should be made with the aid of supporting blocks on all sides.
The support is key.
In the Moment
Pigeons coo outside my window, somewhere beyond my field of vision. They must be sitting on the roof right above me. Maybe they’re commenting on the heat, which is unpleasant, especially at this hour when the day is beginning to end. Or maybe they’re simply saying goodbye to the sun that’s starting its descent. I think they know that I’m writing about them, though, because they’ve stopped making their throaty, rolling syllables. They’re listening attentively now, wondering what on earth the strange fleshy being is doing, tap-tapping away on the flat black surface full of keys.
The fan is spinning lazily behind me, trying to cool down the air. The back of my tall blue swiveling office-chair cuts me off from the fan’s breeze, and I only feel a slight draft on each of my shoulders in turn as the air spins and turns, hitting the wall on one side and the closet on the other and rebounding toward my body, hunched over with knees drawn up to my chest and arms wrapped around them.
I look down to see if my toe-nails need clipping yet. They don’t. I’m proud of my toes, in the way that one can be secretly proud of things over which one has absolutely no control. My toes just grew the way they are, all straight and even, without the second toe being longer than the first. I certainly didn’t do anything to help them grow this way, so why do I still feel proud of them? I suppose because they’re part of my body, and so meaningful to me.
I haven’t always been able to do this. It’s taken me a long time to teach myself how to concentrate, even if only for a few short minutes, on the here and now and how it feels. Now that I’ve trained myself to be more aware of my surroundings, I try to encourage myself to think about how I feel and what exactly my senses are telling me. It’s extremely calming.
Are you able to be in the moment? Do you need to struggle to notice your surroundings? Do you ever take the time to concentrate on relaxing?
Life, the Universe, and Everything
I’m currently reading “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams, and finally enjoying it as it is meant to be enjoyed. For some reason, I’d started this book twice before and didn’t manage to get through it. Why this was so is mysterious to me because a) I rarely have trouble getting through books and b) it is very readable and hilarious and I have no idea why I ever set it down before.
Now, the whole bit about the Ultimate Question – to anyone who hasn’t read the book, this is a mysterious question about Life, the Universe and Everything – is brilliant, because we never actually know what the question is, although we’re told that the answer is “forty-two.” Why do I think this is brilliant? Because I think that actually both the question and the answer are absolutely useless.
I’ve never really pondered “the meaning of life,” or I haven’t phrased it in that way at least. Sure, I wonder often enough about my own life and the lives of my friends and loved ones, but ultimately, I really don’t think that we each have a single, all-consuming purpose in life, nor do we need an all-encompassing meaning.
No, I believe that life is a series of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and others, and the only meaning that really matters is that which we give it – one day, it might be the delicious taste of a square of bitter chocolate after a long shift at work, and another it might be the intensity of love that pours out of us as we watch a loved one die in the hospital.
Life is fluid, the Universe is unfathomable, and Everything is what we make of it.
Halfling
“Let’s look at the third problem now. Seven-hundred and twelve divided by fifteen.” The chalk squealed against the board, but Mrs. Pipridge didn’t even flinch. “How about,” she said, back still to the class as she finished writing. “Donald.” She turned, and her eyes gleamed with something malicious as she pointed them in the boy’s direction. “Donald?”
“Yes, Mrs. Pipridge?”
“Will you please explain how we can find the answer to the question on the board?” It was incredible how her voice became sharper the more polite she was. Donald looked at her, his mind shutting down as the numbers swam in front of his eyes. He lowered his head and saw that the answer was written carefully, painstakingly, in his notebook. He’d worked so hard with his tutor to learn long-division, and he’d finally got the hang of it. But he couldn’t manage to get a word out. He stared, terrified, at Mrs. Pipridge’s leering face and opened his mouth, willing himself to speak.
Mrs. Pipridge sighed, and Donald felt as if her breath was like the iciest of December winds, penetrating through his sweater and right into his ribs, making his heart freeze and contract. “Fine. I see you have nothing to contribute, as usual. Laura, how about you?”
Donald heard titters from behind him and felt something sticky and wet hit the back of his head. He didn’t turn around, though. He knew that if he did, he’d receive a spitball right in the middle of his forehead. It was no use telling, either, because Mick and Tommy, the boys behind him, always managed to hide all evidence of straws and chewed-up paper by the time any teacher reached their desk. They were pros.
The new school was exactly like the old one. It was supposed to be liberal and progressive – Donald didn’t know what the words meant, but he’d heard his house-mother throwing them around a lot in meetings – but the kids here were just like kids everywhere. Sure, there was another halfling here, but she got as much crap as Donald did. She just shut up about it, like him, because that was the only way to get through the day.
The Other One, as Donald thought of her, had it better than him, though. Everyone knew that she’d got it on her father’s side and that her mother, a war-hero, had killed the one who’d injected her. The Other One could at least embrace her humanity entirely and disown those parts of her that were so different. But Donald didn’t know who either of his parents were. For all he knew he wasn’t even a halfling; he might be pure Aylyen, although he didn’t think so. His skin wasn’t nearly green enough for that, and while he did only have three long fingers to each hand, his toes were absolutely normal, pink and stubby just like any other kid’s, and the doctors said that was a sure sign that one of his parents had been an H, not an A.
He sometimes wondered whether the Other One ever wondered if she’d be happier with other A’s. Donald wished sometimes that he’d been taken along when the A’s left Earth, but he knew it was a pipe-dream. Aylyens wouldn’t want a halfling either, would they? He was stuck in the middle, between two vastly different worlds, and there was absolutely no way out that he could see.
Mad Mary [Flash Fiction]
“Either stay, and do as I say, or go.”
I went. Many would have stayed, and been called fools for it. In my small village, I’d seen the same thing happen many a time, and always the women would throw contemptuous glances at their peer who wore long sleeves in summer and tried to spread powder over her face and neck so the bruises wouldn’t show.
And yet, now that I’m alone, walking along the path that leads from the village to the bigger city that lies somewhere by the sea, I wonder who is the real fool. I went because I couldn’t stand him anymore – not his smell, or his heaving, sweaty weight groaning above me, or his fists in my stomach when I burned the crust of the bread. Mother surely didn’t help. She told me to take it and do as my husband said. She thought that I must have been doing something wrong for him to become so angry. I tried to tell her that the devil shown out of his eyes, but she told me I was mad.
So I went. I left everything. There was no one in the village who would help me, for it wasn’t only Mother who thought I was mad. I’d been called Mad Maiden Mary all the way up the aisle, and only when I was good and married in front of God, the Church and everybody did they stop. And then only because I wasn’t a maiden anymore.
It’s my eyes. They’re large, and one is blue while the other is green. The green one used to be blue until an accident that Mother never explains happened when I was just a babe. I gather that something stuck in my eye and changed all the colors around and made it that bright green that throws everyone off. I also talk to myself, but only because there never seems to be anyone else to talk to, and I guess that God made me chatty by nature.
I walk on, my dress growing ragged at the bottom because I keep stepping on it. I don’t know how far the seashore is, and I don’t know what waits for me there. But it has to be better than what I left behind.
Friday, 9:37PM
My thoughts run together, too fast to articulate in exact form. When I try to pluck at one specific strand, the others clamor for attention and I lose my grip. My mother told me today about the time I accidentally let go of a helium-filled balloon at a birthday party. Even though I had no memory of the incident, I could picture it clearly: myself, platinum blonde hair cut in a sort of shoulder-length bob, long bangs hitting my eyebrows, howling my little lungs out as I stared up into the blue sky into which my balloon was disappearing. My parents offered to bring me another, but I didn’t want it. I wanted my balloon back. Even at a tender age, I was already aware of the difference between something that I claimed and bonded with and something that just looked similar.
It made me think of the way we put our own signature on our things, and the way those items gain a personality and significance to us. The best example, I think, is probably our beds. I know that even though I love hotel-room beds, I never sleep as well in them, even though they’re often way more comfortable than the narrow, childhood bed that I still sleep in every night when I’m at home. I managed to claim my bed at school as my own by putting sheets I chose on it and leaving my books littered in it, but even that was a temporary measure, and I sleep better now that I’m back in my old bed than I slept anytime during the past months.
This morning was one of the hardest I’ve experienced in a while. My eating-disorder loopiness reared its ugly head and I spent a half-hour sobbing because of a stupid number that means absolutely nothing. Even with the sobriety of hindsight, however, I don’t know if I’ll react any differently next week if that number won’t have changed. It’s frustrating, and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m doing everything right, and yet some things are taking so long to change.
Sometimes I want to lose all restraint, to allow myself the perfect freedom to be who I am, as silly or dumb as that may be. But the only way I know how to do that is by getting drunk, something which I don’t enjoy as much as I used to, since it now comes coupled with the awful thoughts and anxieties about caloric intake. I’ve tried getting high a couple of times, and haven’t enjoyed that in the least, either. There is one person with whom I used to be able to be entirely at ease, but things have changed and now there is no one like that, even though there is something close enough to it to be valuable and dear to me.
Maybe restraint is alright, though. Maybe there is a balance to be struck within myself, without the need for outside influence. I just don’t know. My thoughts are all jumbled tonight, and I wish I were like a girl in a young adult novel, struggling beautifully towards something fantastic in the near future.
Night Lessons [Flash Fiction]
Stephanie got to know her sister at night. The two shared a bedroom, for the apartment was small and there was no chance of their mother and father ever earning enough to allow them to move. Cordelia complained to anyone who would listen, listing the ways a room of her own would benefit her, explaining how the pipsqueak of a sister who shared what used to be her sanctuary was disruptive to her everyday life.
Cordelia was twelve when Stephanie was born. She knew it was an accident; everyone knew it was. There was a lot of speculation among the neighbors as to whether or not the girls even shared the same father. Stephanie never heard those rumors herself, because Cordelia never told her anything. That was why she could only learn about her sister through her dreams.
Communication didn’t play an important role in their family. It wasn’t a silent house by any means; there was a television, a radio, a computer and a stereo, and they often made sounds all at once, causing a confusing sort of ruckus. Even at night, the urban streets outside streamed with traffic and sirens were heard at least once between dusk and dawn. Stephanie didn’t learn about silence until much later, and by then she wasn’t able to abide it.
The first time it happened, Stephanie was three. She awoke in the middle of the night, during a heavy rainstorm, and saw Cordelia sitting up in her bed across the room. “Coria?” she whispered into the dark room. She’d always had trouble with her sister’s name, and this butchering of it stuck with her for the rest of her life, although she never dared use it in public when she grew up. That night, her sister didn’t answer her; instead, Cordelia spoke to the wall in front of her: “No fair. Fancy dress with crocodiles. Nu-uh.” Then she lay back down, still fast asleep.
Stephanie was puzzled, and in the morning, she asked her sister what she’d been talking about. Cordelia pushed her over irritably and told her that she was making things up. “I don’t talk in my sleep, ugly-butt,” she said. But Stephanie knew that she did.
It didn’t happen every night, but once or twice a week Stephanie would wake up, quite by accident, and hear her sister mumble about tornadoes, boys, Mom and Daddy, motorcycles, and other obscurities. The nonsensical sentences began to take shape in Stephanie’s mind over time, and she watched her sister closely, yearning to understand her, thinking that if she knew things about her life, Cordelia might like her. When she had an abusive boyfriend, Stephanie was the first to know, because she heard “Bobby, don’t!” and “Makeup won’t cover the clover, it won’t work. Daddy, you try,” and other bizarre fragments that she pieced together.
Not that Stephanie did anything with the knowledge – she was too afraid of her sister’s temper to tell her parents anything, and more often than not she didn’t understand the reality of the situation in quite the way Cordelia was living it. But she felt like she got to know her sister, and that was what mattered.
When, many years later, Cordelia lay in a hospital bed, Stephanie told her about the things that her big sister had never told her and Cordelia raised her eyebrows in surprise. Her voice was almost nonexistent by this point, and it was hard for her to breathe, but she managed to utter “Smart ugly-butt. Who knew?” before a fit of coughing overcame her. Stephanie handed her a glass of water from the bedside table and helped her drink it, before laying her back down against the pillows.
Honesty is Overrated
Okay. Maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m just bitter. That is a very great possibility. And yet- and yet, there’s a reason why advice to new couples is “Less history, more mystery.” There’s a reason why white lies exist, and why we use them constantly. It’s because the truth can be harsh, unpleasant, unwanted.
Why do we blurt out the truth at the worst possible times? Why do we ruin the beauty and simplicity of friendships with bitter pills and noxious notions of some falsely noble honesty? I don’t have the answer. I also know that I have rarely accidentally said something honest – it has always been deliberate, and that makes me think that this time it was just as thought-out and planned as ever, only subconsciously. That doesn’t make it better. While we’re not the masters of our subconscious, we are the masters of our mouths, and should keep them closed tightly when needed.
I am less than a month away from my twenty-first birthday, and yet everything I’ve written above strikes me as intensely and unpleasantly adolescent. I guess we all have days of regression, and this must be one of mine.
Slightly Ignorant 