Waking Up

Image via Tumblr

 

In his arms, I danced to the edge of the parapet; we spun in feverish circles, the world blurring to pastels and violin heat and the scent of copper hair. Laughing, he stopped at the edge, but I whirled out past him, intent on the wind lifting my sleeves like wings, suddenly homesick for something I couldn’t name.

“No!” he cried. “Don’t look!”

But I saw it: the watery world stretched out below me, waves thrashing on the rocks like desperate lovers, eternally returning for one last kiss. Their cracked voices pulled to me, their endless struggle for contact grinding the music to a halt. I tripped, the wind leaping to catch me. It burned like salt tears, and I gasped. There were shouts behind me, crashes and the shattering of glass birds, falling to the stone as the spell began to break. Against my will I turned.

There they stood at their feast, feathers dusting the golden plates, wine dripping off the once-white cloth. The betrayer, the seducer, the broken heart, the soldier. I saw them all now, as they were; their mouths were red with blood and their nails were caked with dirt. The ground shuddered like an animal disturbed from slumber. I turned away from the revel, and in the darkened sea rose a great monster, a column of writhing, roaring water, maw stretched wide in anger.

With intent it headed straight for this, their white and shining fortress. In great lashes of sea spray, it spoke, the air cracking with salt. They were knocked to the ground; only I remained, his words a call to me alone, a call to home. I stared into his heart, this monster, and saw that core of gorgeous silence, the refuge at the center of a thousand chaos stirred storms. There was no room there, for anything but space.

Someday, they would still remember me, as they picked at bones gone dry and brittle. They would wheeze from cobwebbed mouths and the wind would force their words back in. They would never understand, least of all he, the one whose bloodied mouth I had kissed in vain, masking a dull ache will the smell of copper.

But he should have known, most of all, that a gilded cage still has bars.

I leapt and let myself be taken, home to the world of deep, silent hearts; where the mermaid’s keen love song can shatter any spell.

—————————–

Some nights, I hardly sleep.

Fairy Tales: Those Hands

© LibraryIreland

i have my mother’s hands.

long fingers; back of the hand roped and laced with large veins; short, dirty nails; big, hard knuckles.

strong hands.

spider hands.

the hands of a thief.

yet the thing i stole was mine to take, wasn’t it?

that’s the difference between us, isn’t it?

now i’ll never know for sure.

my eyes saw the stone first. not perfectly round, but so beaten by the water and the sand that the edges had been smoothed into a vague, only slightly offensive blob. it was not too small and not too big, and looked like it would fit perfectly into the very center of my palm; that space that warms when you hold somebody’s hand and sweats when you think about holding it.

but it was those hands that plucked it from the water, that stone that i realized had a small hole bored through it, near the edge. a naturally occurring hole, caused by the centuries-long drilling of minute flutes and drips of water. this stone was ancient, and it had seen a century’s worth of world; dirty world, as it is washed of its grime in a clean, cold creek. i turned it over in those hands, wiped away the bits of moss with those hands.

a stone like this, i remembered granny saying, was a special stone. a fairy stone. through the stone’s natural eye, the world of wee things that go bump in the night would be revealed to the blind human.

it was that hand that raised the stone to my eye; curious, impish, disbelieving. those fingers that rolled the stone so that its eye was my eye, and i saw what it saw.

“that’s mine,” the lady there said.

“and you’re a thief.”

it was those hands that dropped the stone into the rocky, narrow stream that goes on forever, from here to Glen Veigh.

those hands that scrabbled, shaking, aching, clumsy, for the stone.

and those hands that failed to catch me as i slipped, or was tripped, on the mossy bank of the Poisoned Glen.

Cheers, Hemingway

Hemingway © Wikipedia

“That’s why you’re going to be a great writer. Ever since you were a little kid, you’ve… felt things.”

I say nothing, waiting.

“Two other writers like you come to mind. Ernest Hemingway, and … hm … ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ … Harper Lee?”

He looks at me and takes my hand. My chest hurts, and I put more heat on it.

“Hemingway was such a talented writer. And then one day he just…”

He pokes his temple, shooting it with two fingers.

“Pow.”

“I never understood it. ‘Why,’ I said. ‘Why did he do that.’”

He lived the life of many men, I think, in and out of his books. That and the psychosis.

“And Harper Lee? Do you know why she only wrote that one book? Even though people begged her for more?”

My eyes drift closed, clouds forming behind them.

“That’s all she had to say,” I say.

He always quotes that to me.

He waits, then pats my hand.

“You’re not crazy,” he says.

º©©º°¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨

Perhaps there is a point where writing tells you too much about yourself. Or maybe Hemingway was just crazy.

Why would he compare me to two opposite extremes: one who writes once, and is satisfied; and one who lives with a pen in hand and is driven to suicide?

Am I supposed to be finding balance? Confidence? Strength?

I’m so tired these days.

Writing and good company make me feel stronger, less like I’m in a burning house where all the doors are locked.

Maybe Harper had better company than Ernest.

Jack and Anna: Why Good Fiction Asks “Why”

© Everett Collection

I’m working on this character for my creative writing class. The actual assignment is to create a character to eventually spin a short story around. Get to know them, get inside their head, find out what makes them tick so that they act and move in a realistic sense, not a forced one.

I never understood J.K. Rowling when she said that Harry Potter just waltzed into her head one day while she was on the train – I do now. There I was, chewing on my pen like I always do, thinking of a story I was writing and how I could recycle the characters for the homework assignment. And suddenly, barging in without so much as a how do you do, here comes Jack, demanding attention.

She consumes all of my energy and attention, and I think that maybe it’s because she’s all the parts of me that I can’t deal with, combined with the things I wish I was sometimes, and the things about me that piss people off. She’s a mess, a big gaping hole of a person that can’t pick up her shit and move on. I wish I knew how to tell her story, but she’s blocking me out. Struggling to get to know her is like struggling with a demon, an inner one.

Someone once said, “Fiction is the net that catches man as he falls through the chaos of his own existence.” I think by writing characters and basically duking it out with them, we’re helping ourselves figure out who we are as well.

Writers write about this all the time on their blogs, but only in class yesterday did I consider the merit of this – creating a real, complex, demanding human being and not just a character. Prof. Chinelly told us (in more words than this, obviously) that Tolstoy’s work sucked until one day, when writing a moral story about how adulterers get their just desserts (deserts?), something happened.

He fell in love with Anna Karenina. In love. With his character. What goes that even mean?

It means he started to ask why (why!) she did the things she did – why she gave up her kids and her life for an affair, for the seductive and often unfaithful idea of love. It didn’t just make him a better writer, it made him a better observer of human nature. It stopped him from being so quick to judge, because in real life, things aren’t as black and white as the moral stories lead us to believe.

Maybe people think it’s stupid that writers care so much about characters (fictional people). But how else are we to explore the world, to question it, get inside the minds of the people we judge everyday on the street?

Every good piece of fiction, Chinelly tells us, enunciating and almost yelling as she always does when something important is coming, comments on the human condition. Questions it, looks for answers while admitting we’ll never know for sure. The bestsellers on the NY Times list don’t always do that. Sometimes they tell stories that let people escape the human condition: fear, hate, poverty, our endless neediness for connection, safety, love, and a million other things.

Is this a bad thing or a good thing? Would being more aware of the human condition make the world a better place, or only a more enlightened one? Would knowing all the shit that really goes on make us more afraid, and thus, more isolated and fearful and violent? Do we have a responsibility, then, to both make people aware and give them something to have faith in?

Epiphany of the Drowned

©Wayne Levin

Taking a handful of the rough quartz sand from the bottom, I bring it almost to the surface and then let it sift through my fingers. For an infinitely long second, it hangs, pausing, contemplative, before it drifts and swirls like snow, pink and orange and yellow in the morning sun that catches everything at an angle. When it settles, all that is left is the great still expanse of green haze, the sand below rippled like silk, in rows as straight and sensible as a plowed field. Silver fish appear out of the haze, glinting as they dip and spin, moving with the breath of the ocean. They nip at the body of a comrade, bit in half by some larger brother. They don’t mourn him. It is a cycle. The ragged edges of the dead fish flow back and forth in a dance that is almost pretty. On the surface, the wind swirls the water into honeycomb patterns that the sun catches and prisms to the bottom, a delicate, shivering lattice of rainbows. How quiet it is, an eternity of peace, a secret hidden below that only the drowned may know of.

My lungs give out and I come up for air, breaking away from the precious stillness below. The air that hits me is hot and dry, and my skin shrivels at it. Children cackle and scream, chasing fish, scaring away gulls that peck at garbage. Music plays, loud, fast, and dirty.  Fisherman stand on the rocks, chunks of bait fish in Styrofoam containers littered, red and oozing, at their feet. The Pelican chugs past in the cut, leaking smoke, pale tourists in sandals clutching deep sea fishing rods on its deck. A yacht follows, slicing a deep V through the water, American flag snapping brightly above a host of girls baking on a gleaming white sun deck. Harsh sunlight glints off the ocean and strikes my eyes, while a wave rushes me, pushing me off balance, trying to send me back to shore where I belong.

Broken Records, or, The Pursuit of Something Better

This morning I woke up early to walk the dog. It was a fine day, sun hugging the clouds close, already hot and a little breezy. We walked (well, I walked; he trotted) around the corner towards the new neighbor’s house, and stopped. Up against the fence that divides our yard from theirs and then turns at the sidewalk, there was a crime scene. At least, I would consider it one.

A pile of broken music records sat half out, half under the chain link fence, the pieces scattered no father than the edge of the sidewalk. I looked at it for a moment, processing and questioning the existence of a pile of records in my yard, before I sighed and bent down, picking up the closest one, dented and missing a piece like someone had taken a bite out of it. It was “Dreamy” by Sarah Vaughan. I sighed again and shook my head, Baxter wandering off to sniff a tree, not caring that someone had just killed the great Sarah Vaughan. In a manner of speaking.

I heard the neighbor’s gate rattle as he unwound the chain that held it shut, and I tugged Bax away quickly. This guy was new and I didn’t know if he would mind a dog in his yard. As we walked/trotted away, I wondered at the mystery of this murder scene. Perhaps someone had taken the turn too fast and they had slid off a truck bed? They were too neatly broken for that. It was like they had been dropped from straight above. What a strange thing to do.

As I went inside and got the little prince his breakfast, I asked mom if she had heard something shatter last night, and I showed her the record, still in my hand. I told her there was a whole pile of them, and she nodded.

“I know what that is, it’s those new kids from next door. I was working in the yard yesterday and looked up for a minute to see this record just come sailing over the fence. Then another, and another. I went over closer and said, ‘Hey! Whose records are these?’ They just looked at me, so I said again, ‘Are you giving me your records?’ The little one piped up and said, ‘No, they’re mine! Will you pick them all up and give them to me?’ I said no, but you can come get them yourself.

After they left I walked around to the far side of the house, and I could tell they wanted to come back in the yard because they were walking around, looking for me. They finally got brave enough to come up to me and ask if the lock on the gate was always locked. I said ‘Well… yeah, because we don’t, you know, want people just coming into our yard.’”

She fiddled with her ponytail and I started to head for the door, going to clean up the mess. “I went in soon after, but I’ll have to keep a better eye on them now… I can tell that they’re the kind of kids that would…” She hesitated. What? Steal something? I opened the door. “Would never want to leave once they got back in there.”

It was a thing to say, a thing of loneliness. I walked through the garden and the yard to the fence and crouched down, looking at the record shards. I thought about the kids. I knew that they had done this, but I didn’t know why. It wasn’t a cruel mess, or an angry one. It wasn’t strewn about like vandalism; it was neat, orderly, and contained. Like someone trying to get attention.

I picked up the shards, one by one, lost in speculation. Maybe they had been tossing them over the fence earlier to get my mother’s attention. They probably knew what they were doing, and just wanted someone to talk to. I remember the first time we saw them, peering over the fence as we played with some neighborhood dogs in our yard. Their eyes had been wide in their drawn faces, clutching hot dogs half heartedly as they watched us roll in the grass with the puppies. I knew that hollow look. It was longing.

I wondered where the hollowness came from. Why were they looking for attention? Were they lonely in their new home, reaching out to strangers for friendship? Was this family not as happy as it had seemed, that first noisy day they moved in, barbecuing and chattering loudly? Maybe they act out to escape something, the same way they only talk or laugh when they’re on their trampoline, flying higher and higher.

I don’t know what else to say, I feel like I rambled without any moral to the story. In some way it reminds me of those six human needs; how we all need something from each other to feel happy. How we’re always searching, always reaching out for help or satisfaction. Sometimes it’s a very quiet plea, I think.

Sometimes I have these feelings about things, this intuition, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re just naughty children. It was just a sad, melancholy sight, those records. Those eyes. It weighs on my heart.

Why the Writer Writes

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.  ~ Richard Wright, American Hunger

Perhaps we all, at some point, wonder why we are so afflicted, writing even in our thoughts and dreams when we are not writing with our pens.

For some it is the sweet release of passions and profanities and things they should have said when they had the chance. For some it’s to share ideas, stories, histories of struggles and triumphs… their day. Some write to escape into worlds unknown and worlds they wish were real.

Sometimes you witness something so beautiful and mysterious and staggeringly intense that it seems a crime to let it pass by without savoring it, reliving it over and over in words.

Writing can be a way to feel connected, expressed and even heard. At times it feels that if you only wrote a bit more, a bit longer, reached a bit farther, you would grasp an understanding of life that humans have only dreamt of. We never quite make it there, but at least when you write about the world and what you want from it, you cease to be an onlooker; you are now a player in the game.

Others write to heal the pain of things they’ve hidden in shame, or show the world that tragedy exists and give it a rightful name. The same can be done for life’s joys and fears; a document of those little things that make life full and vibrant and weird. Sometimes we write to cry injustice. Sometimes, to wreak havoc on the heart of everything wrong with our tragic, beautiful world.

There are some who write to change the world with words, though some don’t really try. Through force or luck they break the lock on prose that opens the world’s eyes and brings it to its knees, or fires it enough that it stands and believes.

There are some who light a match to the world, and want to watch it burn. They spread lies and fears and spin their webs, gathering power in their wake. These are the most dangerous writers of all – they know how to sway the mind.

Yet whether you write for good or bad or write to just plain rant, you write because you know one thing – few things in this world carry more weight, explore farther, or delve deeper than the written word. It is mankind’s greatest invention, powerful enough to rip us all apart or bring us all together. And we, fellow writers, are its keepers.

º©©º°¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.  ~Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 19 August 1851

Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.  ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.  ~ Anton Chekhov

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air.  All I must do is find it, and copy it.  ~ Jules Renard, “Diary,” February 1895

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood.  I’d type a little faster.  ~ Isaac Asimov

Novelists… fashioning nets to sustain and support the reader as he falls helplessly through the chaos of his own existence.  ~ Fay Weldon

Down the Rabbit Hole

One movie has really resonated with me lately: the new Alice in Wonderland. For some reason, the whole concept just fascinates me. I’ll tell you why.

Inimitably, we all fall down the rabbit hole. That is, we all have a point in life where the floor gapes open beneath us and everything we know or thought was real is called into question.

The real predicament is what you do when you’re falling ass backwards through chaos, thrashing around to grab hold of something real while you still can. What you do when you land, bruised, in a strange, upside down world.

Do you heave yourself out of the muck that says “Grow up, you’re dreaming” and fight your way to triumph? Or do you lie in the gutter while the dust settles around you, retching on the refuse but pretending nothing’s wrong, that it’ll be okay if you just stay still? If you pick yourself back up and move on, have you become ruthless, or do you let yourself keep your sense of innocence and adventure? To forget your childish delight would be a wretched thing, but cold hearts, forever broken and lonely, exist nonetheless.

The nice thing about this movie’s Alice  is that she explores the idea of being an adult who never stops dreaming and exploring. She never loses her imagination, her ability to believe in six impossible things before breakfast. Yet she is far from being the cute, innocent Alice of the past. She learns to be strong, courageous, and responsible, fighting for things she believes in. Through that, she gains the opportunity to pursue the things in life that she really wants, not the things others want of her.

If only we could all be a little more like Alice.

If I Must Tell the Truth, Then I Must Tell a Lie

My life until this point has been a pretty farce
full of fairy’s tales that left me in the dark

On a night the earth grew weak
i grasped for them in agony
finding nothing more than dreams

In between the laughs
and in between the sighs

I saw the true pain grow
that beauty tries to hide

The pain of those whose worlds
they said i must not know

The pain of those whose lives
shake pale in winter’s glow

And in between those lies
and in between those pains

Lies the harsh but open wild
where i begin again

Begin to see, begin to beg
for a cruel sweet taste of life

Afraid and always searching
with two wide open eyes

There is No Gravity, the Earth Sucks

“Well it’s been a long time, long time now… Since I’ve seen your pretty face…”

His voice is raspy, as usual. He sounds like a chain smoking hooker. I watch his rough, calloused fingers stroke the guitar strings.

“It’s smile,” I say.

He keeps strumming. “What’s smiling?”

“Seen you smile. That’s what it’s supposed to say.”

He hums again. “Well it’s been a long time, long time…”

Long time. It’s been so long since I talked to him. We fought last time, over the fact I was with this man at this moment. The man who had hurt me so many times and yet was never denied my friendship. Maybe I’m just too good of a person.

We’re in a classroom above the cafeteria. It’s empty and I don’t know when the class and professor will come bursting in. It makes me uncomfortable. Everything does. I shouldn’t be here. I should be with another.

“And I’ll gamble away my time.”

His green eyes watch me and it’s hard to meet them. He wants something from me that I refuse to give him. My skin prickles with warning just being around him, but I can’t stay away from anyone that gives me attention. It’s disgusting. I’m like a fly drawn to sugar paper. I skim the surface, thinking I’ll just have a taste and be on my way, and I end up getting stuck for life.

I start to cry. I can’t help it. I’m so screwed up inside, so confused about what to do and what I want. I’m in love with someone I can’t ever have, and every day I love him more. Tears leak down my face as the guitar strums sweetly, which only makes my heart break faster. My throat feels full and painful, as if my misery refuses to slide down and disappear, bracing itself over the gaping darkness. I choke.

He throws the guitar down and leaps at me, big hands pawing at my wet face.

“No, no. What’s wrong? Don’t cry, don’t cry.”

I look up at him and whimper, and too late I realize two things. One, this man thinks I’m cutest when I cry, and two, he has absolutely no self-control. Without warning he tries to kiss me, and I cry harder as I turn away, the brush of his stubble on my cheek making me feel sick and vulnerable. Why can’t I ever just have a normal pat on the back?

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he says. “Tell me.” He pulls me to him harder and harder, like he’s reeling me in. I’m suffocating and the moment goes on forever.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” I finally say. “Not being able to be with the person you love.”

I see the disagreement in his eyes. I watch the resolve form. He thinks I’m being hurt and he can save me. Stupid.

He tries to kiss me again and I shove him away, suddenly frustrated by everything about this man, myself, the very air we have to share. I’m lying on scratchy college grade carpet, surrounded by harsh fluorescent light and a forest of metal chair legs. My head is propped on a backpack, next to a guy twice my size who keeps trying to seduce me, ineptly. The room feels smaller and I want to scream. I’m still crying.

“Wait,” he says. “I have something that’ll make you feel better. I’ll be right back.”

He leaves the room and I gaze dully at the ceiling, it’s made of that stuff that looks like Styrofoam. I force myself to sink into a thoughtless state. I imagine it’s an inverted night sky, all white with black stars. I’m still staring up at it, making constellations, when the door opens and he walks back in. I hear him rummage in his backpack and I hear a chink of metal.

Click.

I feel the metal on one wrist, and before I can react, its cold embrace sinks round the other. My goes hot and cold at the same time, a sick feeling traveling from the top of my head down to my stomach like someone cracked an egg over my head.

I pull my wrists experimentally and find they’re locked together. I shut my eyes and hope this is a bad dream. I know it’s not.

I ask, “What the hell’s going on?” but he just pins my wrists to the floor and lies beside me, turning my face to his with his big rough hand and trying to kiss me again. I refuse, twisting my head around, my wrists still under his arm, some kind of Exorcist contortion. He follows, lies on top of me this time. There’s no words, but his eyes are pitying, like he doesn’t want to do this, but it’s necessary. It makes me sick and ashamed at the same time.

His mouth lowers over mine, and I move it just barely enough. He kisses my cheek instead; I can feel his breath blowing on my hair. This, I think, is one of those men who thinks no always means yes. Panic blooms in my chest, and I can’t think straight. What should I do, I think.

I could easily knee him and run, but somewhere in the back of mind, a little voice is saying, “This isn’t really happening. He’s your friend. He would never hurt you.” So I stay still while he doggedly attacks my mouth again, as if one single kiss will seal a spell that will make me fall for him and forget about the other.

My neck aches from the effort of refusing him, I feel his strength and my weakness and it’s as if time slows to a stop, sand dropping through the hourglass one grain at a time. This is real, I think. He could hurt you and think he’s doing you a favor. I think I’m going to be sick. I wrench away, curling into a ball as much as possible without my hands, my sobs turning to wracking cries. I can’t even think or be angry with him. I feel like I’ve been turned inside out and scrubbed with steel wool; utterly violated. All I want is the man I love to storm through that door and sweep me into his arms. I cry and cry.

Funny, isn’t it. How I’m all for women’s empowerment but when I’m stripped this bare, I can’t do anything. I want someone else to save me. But no one came, and he reeled back, shocked at my visceral display.

“Hey,” he said, “Hey, hey, hey, I’m taking them off, okay. It was a joke. A joke.”

I knew otherwise, but I just lay in silence while he removed them and tucked them away. He leaned back and looked me; I glanced at him and then looked away to the other wall, ignoring the question in his eyes.

“You really love him, huh.”

“Yes,” I said. But that wasn’t the point here, I knew that. Doing that isn’t wrong because I love another, it’s just wrong. My tears had stopped; my head clearer now that I was away from his touch. Now I was angry. I felt like unleashing all the emotion screaming behind my chest and flinging at him, watch him drown in it. I looked down at my outstretched hands, the bones and the swollen wrists, and felt my heart get hard and heavy. I clenched my fists.

This had to stop. Not just with him, but every person who kept trying to make me be and feel what they wanted. If I had to turn myself to stone, so fucking be it.

Just then the door opened, and a young man walked in. He looked at me and I looked away, sitting up. He walked straight past and sat in a far corner, looking at us out of the corner of his eye. I got up and walked out the door, not looking back.

º©©º°¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨¨º©©º

What makes us hold on to those who hurt us, long past their expiration date? I’m still trying to figure it out.