La*La*Laulita:.

The refrigerator is cream colored, a little yellow after time.  The surface is smooth, but scuffed black at the bottom from rubber boots too eager to pull out food or drink. It’s rounded out on the edges and corners for a stream-lined look, something the company thought trendy. I see the icebox up above. The door handle swivels when you grab it, a result of rough hands pulling with vigor.  The door is open and I can see the icicles that have formed inside. Why does it do that?

 

The stomping upstairs is coming from all directions, circling above me, stopping, starting again rapidly, slowing up, fast again; the gait is maniacal. Salt and metal fall on my taste buds, the circling footfalls matching the dizzying twirls my brain is making. I look up and see the pictures on the fridge, the hand-picked flowers on the table, remembering all that God has given me, faith, a home, food in the pantry, and the patience I need to love my son. I reach up to the swiveling handle after gaining my balance and reach for the ice tray. The dish-towel next to the sink is ready as I pull up the handle on the tray and the cubes are released into the cloth.  I close the freezer, and look at the sunken-in couch before I go to sit down.

 

I want to sit against this freezer until he comes down, but he will want me on the couch preoccupying myself until he returns. What will I choose, needlepoint? Crochet? Mending a torn knee on his jeans? He’d like if I fixed his pants that I cared to make sure his kneecaps were covered when he bent on the ground to plant seeds, or till the earth. Otherwise, his frantic emotions become estranged from himself, and he gets confused and belligerent. He begins to blame himself if I look upset, and I won’t be able to get him out of the shed out back for a long while. It’s so old and rotted, back from when his father was still around; one of these days the whole thing will come crashing down when he’ll stand up too quickly and hit the roof with his head. He has his father’s eyes, but the height and strength of a giant.  It may be part of his abnormality, whose name I still cannot pronounce.  Perhaps he inherited from his father the anger, the physicality, the savage violence.  His father hit us both when he was still in my belly, it is a wonder I didn’t miscarry.  Maybe his strong, hard stature is the reason why he survived.  I would believe that. Even as a toddler he was stronger than me.

 

The banging, erratic footfalls I forgot while I was thinking are suddenly less distant, closer now and louder, until a door is flung open.  Silence.  I hear the door whine and become high pitched until it stops. I hear a slow click while wood meets wood.  The steps are very gentle now, calculated and careful as if he’s scared to make a noise.  Step, step, step, the stairs creak and groan under his weight.  Silence again. Some quickened shuffling occurs, then quiet feet slow down and stop on the last step.  I can see his boots and overalls peaking out from behind the closet as I peer through the short hallway separating the flight of stairs from the parlor. The denim is swaying, wavering between stepping down. The snipping of thread reaches his ears, and finally he takes the first step. He enters the room. His head is down and he is fumbling with a tattered cap he wears out in the sun.  His thumb is swollen and bleeding, a bruise already forming from when he struck himself with the hammer on accident. Tears fall from his eyes that face the floor, they hit the ground with a splatting thud after they plummet. 

 

The worn blue jeans in my hands are shaking a bit as I thread a dark blue patch over the hole.  

 

“Momma?” he implores, when I don’t raise my head.

 

“Yes, baby?” looking up, there’s a smile through the tears falling down my cheeks. The droplets fall on the patch, and I brush them away.

There’s spit around his mouth from sobbing, his cheeks wet, eyes red. The jeans fall on a pillow as I drop them and rise up from the couch. He’s so much taller than me as I come to his side. I grab his thumb, but he winces and pulls away, a bit of a mean glint in his eye as he narrows them for a moment. Now I hold my hand out gingerly, and soon the look leaves his father’s eyes as he stares back at me with all of his apologies. He gives me his hand as I kiss it better, and tell him everything is going to be alright. Momma’s here.

And I got the supplies. Making a sweater for the win?

On a different note…

I forgot it was my sister’s Birthday today….Am I a bad person?

                                       Books of the Passed

The fading, imitation porcelain gleams in the sunlight coming through the windows.  The thick material rests beneath a dull glaze, cracking and dissolving with wash and use; the handle is chipped.  It sits on the long, linoleum counter, which is bare except for a napkin dispenser with ketchup and mustard on one side, salt and pepper on the other.  Stale, dry coffee residue is on the rim of the glazed faux-porcelain. It was left by the lips of the sipper who abandoned it a few minutes ago.  Looking at the mug, Davies finally realizes it should be cleaned.  He looks to his right, behind him; his boss thinks the same thing, staring through furrowed brow at the cup, then the leaning, apparently dazed, Davies.  The mug sits, with an emanating aura of expectance that pierces Davies.  He looks down at the book beneath the counter. Descartes’ name leers at him. He grabs it, looking pensive for a moment.  He passes by the mug from behind the counter and takes off his apron, watching it leave his grasp and fall upon the dirty mug.  Davies turns back.  He gets the idea to spit on the apron, but thinks better of it.  Not in this life.  He walks toward the outside, looking at his reflection in the window as he leaves.

            The sidewalk is damp in some spots, which is drying after the rain.  Sodden, grimy leaves inhabit the outermost rim of emptying puddles as the sun pokes through the overcast skies.  The golden orb ducks behind a cloud.  It had phased in and out all day; Davies noticed the fluctuation of light through the windows of the cafe.  Staring at the blurred light behind the foggy precipitation, Davies steps off the curb.  Looking to the left after his second step and into his third, he notices a cab coming fast.  He closes his eyes with enough time to hear his legs crumple; however, there is no pain. 

He expected an emotional and painful reaction to this occurrence. Instead he opens his eyes and sees concrete in his immediate and peripheral vision, no feelings flooding his body or consciousness.

            Everything is quiet, however his sense of vision in still in tact..  He only sees directly in front of him though; he can’t move his neck, or anything else for that matter.  Feet rush towards him; black high heels with hosed legs, quick slacks with black shined loafers.  The taxi driver’s face comes into focus, leaning on hands and knees trying to get face to face with Davies. He’s yelling something in a panic. Everyone seems to be panicked, and yelling, or shocked or crying as a crowd forms.  Everyone looks loud, but that doesn’t affect Davies.  Instead, he notices the puddle in front of him, on the right side of his window of vision.  He watches it, the pool’s border of leaves being dispersed by the onslaught of a liquid.  Red is moving them apart, breaking the perimeter as a new puddle forms inside, dark and thick.  Davies watches the steam rise from the burgundy puddle, until it is set in a commotion and a foot jumps in, pushing the leaves back to the perimeter of the puddle where they once were.  The burgundy turns black, the commotion looks quiet, and Davies feels himself falling asleep.

v   

            Everything is quiet again, as Davies opens his eyes.  He feels as if getting over vertigo.  Blurred vision allows a trip and fall, proceeded by a feeling of embarrassment as he tries to get a grip on his surroundings, figuratively and literally. He tries to recall what happened earlier. 

            “I don’t remember drinking last night,” he murmurs inaudibly and blankly, as his vision comes into focus.  He looks back behind him, looking for the cause of his spill.  A rough, rectangular prism made of stone sits behind him, standing atop another rough, stone tablet.  It looks like an altar.  Everything is quiet, until background noise surfaces.  Davies notices a scrap of his pants stuck to a jagged edge on the altar; he must have been lying on it before he got up and fell.  A voice that sounds submerged in water comes from behind Davies, and he jumps as he hears it.  Turning around, a man sits staring at him with interest.  Davies isn’t sure how he knew the man was staring at him though, because where eyes should have been there was nothing.  Davies almost turns away, embarrassed once again, but decides instead to stand his ground. 

            “Where am I?” Davies asks the question blankly, and then realizes the atmosphere surrounding him for the first time.  Everything is gray, a barren landscape, with dark trees that show signs of fall and a lake that is calm and undisturbed, it’s waters clear but deep and dark.

            “Well where were you, young sir?  What did your body tell you before you woke up?  Was it you, feeling what you felt?”

            The man with no eyes looks at our young lead, a bit of a smile breaking out on his face.  Davies looks questionably at the small grin, the sockets, the wispy hair, the robe the man wears. 

            “I don’t remember… the last thing I remember is work.  A man left a mug for me to clean up, and I didn’t want to do it… I was sick of wasting time waiting tables, of being afraid of my boss, of indecision, of failure. I want some security, some sense of self,” Davies is desperate, looking at the Stranger.  “Instead, all I feel is minimum wage with shit tips and disappointment.”

Davies stares down at the ground, worn, gray dirt underneath his feet.  A spark flies through his mind, rocketing from his frontal lobes.  “That’s it,” he said.  He pulled out the book from his pocket, Meditations on First Philosophy. 

            The Stranger’s sockets widen and constrict, with the appearance of a jack-o-lantern, as the book appears.  The Stranger walks over, grabbing the book out of Davies’ hand and leafing through it.  Pausing, he closes it. 

            “If I knew where I would be after all was said and done, some of these things would not seem so important: can I trust my body, do I trust myself… what is the point?” The Stranger points at the book, a pursed, knowing smile on his face; he points to his head.  “Don’t let yourself be fooled with life’s technicalities and specifics.  In the end you are all that you know.  What is this desire for outside approval? Trust yourself, your soul.  Here, come this way, I have something to show you.”

            The Stranger grabs Davies by the arm, pulling him toward the lake.  There is a dirt mound that rests near this large body of water.  The two walk around the mound, and as they approach the other side it becomes obvious that this is not just a pile of dirt.  A recess at the bottom of the mound leads up to the flat façade of a structure. The mound is the roof, and the front boasts 2 paned windows, and a door warped and rough like the altar. Both must have been hand-chipped, with no regards to evenness or smoothness.  There were hundreds of knots in the door, however something was wrong. They were not knots.  Where wood should be, in the hard round core, eyes stared back.  There must have been hundreds of eyes darting all over the landscape, focused and concentrated, with irises all different colors and sizes.  Davies looked at the Stranger and saw a content smile on his face, looking forward at the door and moving to grab the knob to go inside.  The eyes were brilliantly white, no aging, red veins, or discoloration.  Davies came inside the door and saw the Stranger motioning toward something.  Niches in the wall held candles. Dried wax poured into the tiny alcoves and down onto the dirt they were carved in; a small entrance space was designated for entry after the door, and in the right corner of the space a spiraling stair was carved, niches with candles all the way down.  Walking down took a period.  It seemed like hours the further the pair went.  Deeper down, rooms appeared, branching from the descending stairs.  Careful nooks appeared as bookcases in the rooms, holding loose papers, quills, more candles, and of course, books.  There were countless amounts of these rooms, some lit up, some dark, and others completely empty, not even with niches for candles.  The occupied (but unmanned) rooms had names of ownership, words of wisdom, phrases, numbers, or riddles carved across the top front of the entrance.  The process of walking past all these chambers went on for a long episode, as the strangers travelled further down.  Finally, a much brighter light than in all the other rooms appeared at what seemed to be the end of the journey.

            The walls of the staircase brightened and brightened until a room opened up in front the viewers.  Bookcases made up the entire room, which was in the shape of a circle.  Books, scrolls, candle niches with burning flame, ink and quills were again everywhere.  The walls were filled up with the array of objects, and in the center of the back wall was a mound for a desk.  Candles and wax melted all over the desk-like structure, more dried wax pools than in any other niche in the whole place.  Loose papers were on the mounds, pasted to walls, in between books, and underfoot.  Next to the desk there was another heap of dirt, in the shape of a bench.  Another stranger sat on the bench. His back was turned, and he was unaware of the new presences.

            Davies thought about where he was and what he was doing with these two strangers.  He clutched Descartes in his hand, holding onto it like it was his sanity.  The second stranger turned, jolted, when his comrade bent over his shoulder and whispered.  The second stranger startled, exclaiming angrily, “Rene, do not startle me like that!”

Davies looks at the book he clutches, thinking back to things the first stranger has said: “  ?” Now, there was the news of his first name.  This place is not of earth, Davies knows, but he has not questioned about that until now.  The altar, the empty rooms, the questions Rene has asked… this place and the landscape. 

A flash in gray matter reveals the burgundy puddle, the lack of feeling of the body.  Davies grabs at his head and hair and lunges his torso forward, falling to his knees on the dirt.  This isn’t Heaven, this isn’t Hell, this isn’t Earth.  He is in between all of these things, stuck again in an arbitrary vortex.  The uncertainty of life will be stuck in death, and there was so much to have figured out.  Davies rocks on the ground, thinking of the cumbersome reality that has become his life yet again, those this time with worse consequences; he was to be confused and lost for an eternity instead of a lifetime.

Rene realizes the distraught figure behind him, and comes and quiets Davies, patting his back, hand on his arm.

“Everything is alright now son.  Think of where you are right now.  Do you not know that you were brought here for a reason? What are your troubles in life, I know you know who I am, and you know what we do.  We have had eternity to figure out the answers to your questions, young sir, what do you think all these books are?”

Davies quiets down.  He thinks of his predicament, of what he lost and what he will miss.  Finally he looks up at Rene.  Rene looks down at Davies and smiles. 

“Young sir, your journey is just beginning.  You have many questions, and we have many answers.  The fact that you question and think shows that you are a human, a conscious being.  Keep doubting, thinking, and questioning.  It will lead to enlightenment.

Rene looks over at the second stranger who sits smiling, before he lifts himself up to head to the bookshelves.  He looks concentrated as he pours over the spines, reading, lips moving, brow furrowed.  Finally he quits muttering, and exclaims “aha!” pulling out a book.  It is large and full. Rene dusts it off, flaking off wax and dirt, then walks over to Davies, pausing with a smile before giving over the treasure.  Rene is proud and encouraging as he watches Davies.

The book is leather-bound, with golden scrawl title.  It reads on the cover: To Thine’s Self, Be True: Ponderings on Self-Reflection.  The bottom of the cover has two names carved into it: Descartes and Locke.  Davies stares down at this book.  It looks weathered and tattered; it must have been in process for centuries.  Decades upon decades of thought have been poured into this one book.  A book that represents the struggles of mankind, the struggles difficult to understand in one lifetime.  The book is massive, and Davies sets down Rene Descartes book, Meditations on First Philosophy.  It’s sweaty and warped, being rolled up and carried this entire time. For once, a flood of pure relief overtook our character.  He clutched at the massive book, and slowly lifted his hand. 

He realizes that he now has an eternity to discover truth, his purpose, his beliefs and opinions, and this book can start him off on his journey.  He fingers at the cover, with bated breath and hands quivering.  Davies pulls open the book, alighting on the very first page. 

A white light shoots out of the book and Davies finds himself flung to the ground, blinded this time and head pounding, his ears pulsating with fevered blood flow.  The book in his hands is getting brighter and brighter, Rene and Locke disappearing as Davies feels tugging at his body, as he shakes and thrashes.

v   

The light slowly fades.  Davies begins to see objects come into focus, sounds clinking in his ears, beeps and conversations.  He opens his eyes.

A man with a covered face is looking down at him, blurred yet fairly distinct.  People are rushing all around, and Davies can turn his eyes to look down at his clothes, his body bloody and lying on an operation table.  He must be in the hospital down the street from the café.  The thought of his dream brings a rush to his brain, and a sense of sadness drops over him.  It was a dream.  None of it was real, and now our character is stuck worse off than before.

Davies looks further at the state of his numb body.  His shoes are still on, his legs bent out of shape, his hands unmovable.  However he looks to see a large brown object in his limp arm.  It’s leather, thick, and with gold lettering scrolled across the top.

“Welcome back Mr. Davies.”

The doctor smiles and pats Davies on the shoulder, a look of happiness and relief on his face.  Davies looks back at the book, then smiles at the doctor; everything was going to be alright.

Is coming. Please go away, finals. nobody likes you.

I love this hair, it looks so Baroque to me.

     I moved out with some friends when I turned 19, thinking it a permanent move, a definitive move.  More or less I was crashing, as I didn’t pay rent.  Nonetheless, I was somewhat of a permanent fixture at the Blue House.  We lived in a duplex in a very seedy part of town.  I remember sitting alone in the front room, looking out the window as I contemplated where I might find a nugglet to pass the time.  I sat clutching the piece we called Spoon, pensive yet also distracted.  I watched my landlord’s house as a bum mosied on down from around the corner, and wandered up to the unsuspecting residence.  He tried to open the door and jimmy the lock, but I figured him a jack of all trades, master of none; at least none that didn’t involve the careful skill needed to light the rock without burning it. 

     Anyways, he didn’t get in because the door knob, however reminiscent of the vessel used to secure his high, was not in fact a crack pipe and therefore he was inept.  He left, and I got resurrected off the black charr that was left in Spoon.  Smoking rez was always an experience, a show of desperation and lack of concern for my time.  It was a different high than weed itself, and I was usually left feeling as if I might have smoked some of the sacred rock out of the bum’s pipe of choice. 

     When at the Blue House, I was stoned most of the time, or drunk.  We were poor though, and sometimes reduced to scouring around the couch cushions and behind furniture to produce a bud.  I came under the idea one of these times to wear a t-shirt for thirty days straight, just a plain white t-shirt (please excuse the phrasing, it is not an ode to the lame band you’re thinking of).  I walked around the trendy part of town where I lived (or ironically bummed around, I am what I satirize)and noticed the people often dressed in the midtown fashion of garage-sale chic, often buying used and used-manipulated-new.  This was a trend for shop owners of midtown, to buy old garments and take them apart, and putting them back together with different pieces or rearranging to make a new piece.  Well however midtown chic it was, I considered it a low form of couture, if you could even call it that, and marveled at the ridiculous ways that these self-proclaimed hipsters dressed.  I remember walking down the street and spotting a post quarter-life male strutting around in a German Oktoberfest hat with an outfit evocative of Hansel.  He looked ridiculous to say the least, and the fact that he sported his outfit so jauntily completely threw me off. He even had on a suede vest and dickies cut to above his ankles, with ankle boots underneath.  He looked stupid, and his attitude supported my claim.  I hated mid-town chic and the attitude surrounding it, the holier-than thou perspective that left an aura of pig-headed stoutness by the wearer.  I wanted to punch them in the face.

     But I didn’t and they did, and I wore a white t-shirt for 30 days straight to show them how unimportant their stupid style was.  My story however is rather anti-climactic.  Not only is there the fact that I have few white t-shirts and I don’t know how to do laundry (I think you catch my drift), but the only people that noticed were the people that knew what was happening as it was happening, which was probably limited to my boyfriend and sister.  Most people’s reactions were “Oh, I didn’t even notice,” or producing a sour face as they looked at the stains on my shirt.  I wanted to show the midtowners that I could dress plain and still feel good about myself, still walk jauntily down the street head high, but without my nose turned up.  At least not turned up too high.  I still hated them and thought they were isolated in their belief that they were special. 

     Whats the point of my story though, the anti-climax probably leaves you asking.  I guess the point is that I achieved what I wanted, partly. I still felt good about myself while wearing the same shirt for 30 days, and after I felt even better than I did it after.  Sorry for the sappiness, I guess that a point to my story is necessary though.

at school right now in the computer lab trying to finish up my essay before class in twenty minutes… Good thing I have another hour and a half break to finish my essay on Tumblr and Hype Machine.   Met my friend Charlie in the parking lot and he gave me my first American Spirit, needless to say I got a pretty intense buzz, and in the morning too, so I feel all loopy :S lol.  I’ve already done half though so we should be good, it’s just a rough draft for now.  I’ll post the draft later ;)

Edith Piaf - Non, Je ne Regrette Rien (LIVE 1962)

Dans une monde ou les personnes pensent qu’ils savent la verite, je pense que c’est possible qu’ils ne sont pas… c’est possible, non?

Hey everybody, this is my first time on Tumblr, and also my first post… I’m doing an essay on the cultural significance of certain websites and what they say about our society, so this is why I joined…Let’s see what this site is all about ;)