Anthology Complex IV by M.B. Julien - HTML preview
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M.B. JULIEN
compute all the information she was receiving. I seriously don't think she was even conscious of the fact that she was staring directly at me.
Once she came back to reality, she asked me, “You remember that?” “Yeah, I remember it made you laugh,” I respond. “No, I mean the painting thing,” she quickly replied, then after a brief pause, she continued, “I have to say that you definitely pay attention to me more than anyone else I've ever known...”
I didn't reply, and shortly after, she smiled as she turned her head to watch the episode, placing her head gently onto my shoulders and taking a few chips from the bowl.
At around eight-thirty a.m. I woke up to find that Dave and Sara were still sleeping on the floor and that Lynne had fallen asleep on my side, her back slightly pressing against my arm that had been around her all night. I believe, to her, it was irrelevant whether I loved her or not, because against the bloom, against a high tide, her heart had grown to a degree such that it could harvest enough love for two people. She'll never know just how important she is to me.
Bradley Chipper runs over to the sidelines to speak to his coach, Henry Clayton. “I want you to run Scorpion Dodger-4 Left Run Option Box,” Clayton told him. Chipper nodded his head and ran back onto the field, fixing his helmet for a tighter fit as he began to slow down to a jog and approached the rest of his offensive team.
On a television screen, Al Summerall, who was at the time a sports announcer, could be heard commentating the game, “Chipper is now running back onto the field to continue this impressive drive.”
The team formed into a huddle, and as Chipper began to speak, he placed his hand on the back of Okadigbo, “Scorpion Dodger-4 Left Run Option Box,” he yelled over the sound of the roaring fans. Before the huddle was broken, Chipper had one final statement to make to his team. “We've come this far boys, we just have to go a little further,” and once finished they broke and walked to the line of scrimmage.
It was situational football, as the game had ventured into overtime and painted sudden death. Chipper and company were on the opponent's eleven-yard line, on a first down, and were within arm's length of their first seasonal win. “All they need is a touchdown,”
Al Summerall reminded viewers.
Reggie could be seen on the sideline with his hands at the top of his head, waiting in anticipation for a moment that might turn their season around. Not too far from him was Kevin Faulkner, somewhat irritated by how the game had gone so far, believing that the referees were doing everything they could to keep them winless. Ivan Lee, who was the team's center, was sitting on the sideline as well, watching in anticipation, after being injured in the first quarter of the exhibition and told his left leg had been broken.
Standing over a second-string center, Chipper looked at the defense's formation and 64 | A LEGEND IS BORN
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recounted on some of the notes Reggie had written down for him.
“Left, left, Lizard Dodger-4, Left Run Option Box!,” Chipper again screamed over the noise, changing the play and calling an audible because of what he had seen defensively, and thereafter he snapped the ball and began the play.
Dropping back a few steps, Chipper saw that his primary receiver was not open for a pass, and upon sensing a defensive lineman intruding into his area from the right, he planted his feet and dashed a bit to the left. Still strafing, he made the decision to break into a run.
Once the spy saw this, he too broke into a sprint and began running towards Chipper, who by now was at the line of scrimmage and had become a runner. Seeing that his quarterback was now vulnerable, Bert McCormack made a dive-block at the legs of the defensive spy who was running towards Chipper, tripping him up, and giving Chipper an opportunity to continue his run. As he lay on the ground, Bert watched on as Chipper continued his run deeper into enemy territory.
At this time, a cornerback and a linebacker began to close in on Chipper, who showed no signs of slowing down or sliding. He was now at the six-yard line, literally six yards away from victory for a desperate team in a desperate city.
Clayton, who was slowly walking up the sideline and watching too, in complete suspense, began to clench his fists as Chipper ran down the field. “He's at the six, the five, the four!,” Summerall yelled, and as the cornerback and linebacker closed in, they were intent on stopping Chipper at the goal-line.
With what seemed to be a predetermined eternity, time slowed down for the entire arena, but Chipper had already known from the start what he wanted to do. Just prior, once the cornerback and the linebacker finally met with Chipper, resulting in a simultaneous block-tackle, Chipper leaped into the air head first, which forced a high and low tackle from the two defensive players, and with designed determination, at last he spun his way into the endzone in helicopter-fashion; the attending referee observed the scene as he ran up to the location of the tackle, then at once, he threw his arms into the air signaling the touchdown was successful, and therefore ending the game.
“Chipper wins his team the football game! What a finish! What a finish!” Summerall exclaimed through the television as players erupted onto the field. The entire arena was filled with screaming fans who reiterated the explosion of a senseless volcano.
“That was the first overtime game in the history of the league,” Alec Berg, who was the attending referee who declared the touchdown, told the interviewer, “and it was a historic and unprecedented night for football fans everywhere. I remember another ref in my squad running up to me as time was winding down for the end of the game, and he asked me, 'What happens if no one scores again?' I didn't answer as I was sure someone 65 | A LEGEND IS BORN
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would eventually add a few more points to their score, but it never happened. Once the clock reached all zeroes, everyone was kind of confused, the players, us refs, the staffs, no one really knew what happened if the teams were tied at the end of the game, so when Clayton walked up to me and asked me, 'What happens now?,' I said to him, 'I think we play some more.' And so we played some more.”
“Man, I remember that game like it was yesterday,” remarked Kevin Faulkner. “We went into OT and the ****ing coin didn't flip! We gave 'em our choice and he went to flip the coin and the damn thing did not flip, it went into the air and stayed evened-out, so that's where the controversy started. That's why I always said ball possession should be chosen by a skills game, like a match in Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat or something, and not the luck of a flip,” Kevin finished.
“That's why I call him 'Woodchipper,' Okadigbo told the interviewer, “because if you put him through a woodchipper he would come out fine on the other side. He proved that with that game winning dive, spinning like a helicopter in the air, and when he landed, he was fine.”
“There were rumors going around that at the beginning of the second half you started losing your composure and began trash talking at the other team, is this true?,” the interviewer asked Chipper.
“It is,” Chipper laughs. “You know, when you're trying your hardest to score some points but you keep getting sacked, either because you're holding on to the ball for too long or one of your linemen has a bad play, it starts to take its toll on you. It gets even worse when your opponents are standing over your body taunting you after they throw you to the floor. So one play, I decided I had enough and I shot up and got in the face of one of them and eventually pushed them, drawing a penalty against my team, but it was worth it because that's what got me going.”
“Something in him snapped,” McCormack insisted. “He was looking at the ground, like on one knee, just contemplating something. After getting sacked and the guys celebrating over him, he started playing like a man possessed. I'm telling you, that was the game #13 came out, that was his coming out party. He kept getting sacked and driven into the ground and players celebrated over him, taunting him, and he got up and shoved one of them and got a penalty, and then after that he got his mojo going. He was talking
**** every play, man, pointing his fingers at the defense, “I'ma throw it your way, and he would actually throw it their way and still complete the pass. He talked **** to the defensive line every play, sometimes even the safeties.”
Bert looks around, “I'm sorry, is it okay if I curse? You can just edit it out right?”
“That's fine,” the interviewer says.
“What really got him going, before all the trash talking, was the most vital key 66 | A LEGEND IS BORN
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component to winning that game,” Calvin Marshall said, “Once he finally got up after having the wind knocked out of him, we went into a huddle and he told us the play. We walk up to the line, right, and he begins the hard count. After he snaps the ball and drops back, he looks around, but as usual no one is able to get open. But, instead of throwing the ball away or getting sacked, this time he did something different. He found an empty patch of grass and he ran towards it and gained three yards. He did the same thing again the next play, and instead of sliding down, he ran head-on into a defender. He did it again for the third straight time and got enough for a first. After that, receivers were getting open, and that was the first time in the season every one realized he had wheels, and so the defenses started to observed that.”
“I think him finding out what kind of player he was was the most important thing that happened to him football-wise, and maybe for the team,” said Chipper's daughter, “He brought in a new element to the game, and defenses didn't know if he would run or throw the ball.”
“Brad is the reason I watch football today. I remember I was flipping through channels one day and I just happen to land on the game as he was getting ready to hike the ball, making all these hand motions and even clapping for the ball to be snapped, and then he scrambles and then flies in for that game winning touchdown. I remember seeing him run down the field like a little kid, hopping up and down. Suffice to say, I tuned in the next Sunday to see him play,” recounted an old fan.
With a score of 22 to 16, Chipper had won his first game in the league as a starter and as a rookie. There was no doubt that this game would be a momentum-shifter for the entire team and was a microcosm of things to come.
“I was standing next to Coach during Chipper's third run, and Coach looked on and simply nodded his head,” Reggie Rice commented. “I think he wanted us all to learn what type of players we were, and I think he nodded his head because he felt like Chipper was learning who he was. It was cool, man, because after he showed them he was a double threat, they started respecting him, and that's when he started pointing fingers at them, letting them know that neither him nor the team was going to go down easy. That last play, that won us the game, it was supposed to be a passing play, but I think Chipper had it in his mind that he was going to run from the very start. And then after the ref signaled the touchdown and called the game, after all my excitement, I went to find Chipper and when I saw him he was on the other team's sideline going off. It was the only time I ever saw him lose himself. Ever lose composure. I think what it was was that one of their players had said something to him after a sack, and Chipper took it personally. That was one thing Clayton realized that he was missing from his new approach to the game, from all his theories on football, he realized he hadn't calculated 67 | A LEGEND IS BORN
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heart into it all. Something that can't be calculated. Going into the locker room after all the excitement, I saw a rare smile on Coach's face, and I remember him saying there was one thing we could check off the list; a winless season. To win the game, to win it the way we did with Chipper's final leap, that was it. None of us knew it at the time, but that day, inbetween all his self-doubt and his lack of talent, in between all the boos and the disappointing games, inbetween the chaos that he didn't know how to deal with, a legend was born.”
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(2:1 / 4 / IV)
Part 2
M.B. JULIEN
Chapter 11
TWIN SOULS
2:1:2:11
AT the age of seventeen, a senior in high school, Lynnette found herself often confused in her Algebra 2 class. Primarily the study of mathematical symbols, algebra was one to frustrate a mind that was more privy to a canvas.
Ultimately failing this class filled with algebraic expressions, it would become mandatory for Lynnette to visit her guidance counselor twice a week, on Tuesday and on Thursday, as she was performing at a whole on a level sub-par to her peers.
The next Thursday, she walked into the school's office and made her way to her counselor's room, wearing a yellow and black dress that once belonged to Emily.
“You will have to take Algebra 2 again this semester,” her counselor told her,
“because you need at least three years of mathematics to graduate.” Seeing Lynne's low mood level, her counselor asked her about her life outside of school, and Lynnette's answer gave the implication that she suffered from low self-esteem and emotional issues, which was common to students who lacked the energy to do well in the classroom.
Though her counselor would never learn that Lynnette suffered from a strange type of hyperactivity disorder.
The next visit, which came the following Tuesday, upon hearing that Lynnette was not eating lunch due to the lack of funds, her counselor gave her forms to take home that could be filled out by a guardian, and if she qualified, would allow her to receive lunch for free. Her family's financial state would eventually grant her this commodity.
“You start eating regularly and you will be able to focus and have the energy to perform better on your tests,” her counselor advised.
Leaving her counselor's office, she traveled to her next class, Creative Arts, where she sat down next to a male acquaintance. In a somewhat flamboyant fashion, he remarked on her shoes, saying that they were ugly. Of course this offended Lynnette, but she said nothing in return, and after school was finished, she found herself sitting on the shore of Cellardoor Lake as she grasped pieces of sand between her toes. Slowly, she was learning how to express herself. Learning how to express her feelings and how she felt about the world and the people in it.
At exactly the same time, across the state, the narrator, who at the time was eighteen and as well a senior, sat in Senior English, looking out of a nearby window. This inattention to the studies would ultimately result in the failing of the class, and soon the narrator would be required to attend a social group which was created to motivate students to do better in their classes.
It was a small group, of about six students, and was led by a sociology teacher. There 69 | TWIN SOULS
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they discussed various subjects that the students were most interested in.
Came the next semester, the narrator again sat in Senior English, taking the class again, as it was required to graduate.
“I can't read the nutrition label on this package,” I said to Sara. I jokingly asked her for her glasses and after she gave them to me I lifted up the product once more to read it, but of course vision only decreased. We traveled over to the next aisle of the huge supermarket, which was named Publiks, and found Lynne and Dave adding more items to the grocery cart. Lynne let out a small laugh when she saw me wearing her daughter's glasses, and soon after Sara tugged at my arm to give her back her spectacles. I eventually gave her back her glasses and and we met with Lynne and Dave.
My vision returning to normal, I again saw “Moonbeam,” the black and yellow dress with the belt in the middle that she had recently purchased. A part of me wanted to chop her up into little pieces and eat her uncooked.
As the four of us continued down the aisle, I lingered a bit, eyeing some of the products on the shelves, and then eventually eyeing the pair of mother and daughter before me.
Lynne and Sara obviously share the same DNA, and exclusive to the both of them is their mitochondrial DNA, which can only be inherited by the child from their mother. If you imagined a single helix which had a type of ball which could travel up and down the helix following the coil, you would notice that after a single full loop, the ball would be in the same position as it were before, but on a different section of the helix.
Perhaps a better way to imagine this is to picture Lynne as plot X for a particular location on the helix, and then you do a complete loop to the next ring, where this particular location is plotted as Y for Sara. Lynne and Sara are somewhat the same person, but are at different stages in their life, likewise to the ball in the helix being in somewhat the same location, but on a different ring.
Now we take that coil, and instead of looking at it from a top view, we line it up with our sight as if we were looking through it like a telescope. The helix would now look like a flat circle, and the ball's position, whether it were on X or on Y, would appear to occupy the same area, even though it isn't. You change the point of view, or point of perception, and suddenly awareness of how it works is lost.
This woman and this girl are sharing the same universe and sharing the same mDNA, but they can never share the same plot, because the helix is somewhat a symbol for time and there can only be one ball on the helix at a time, and it can only go in one direction.
Though we go round and round for all eternity, the helix is not a flat circle, as it extends outwards and creates time for mothers and daughters to exist on different rings.
At the end of the aisle they all stopped and I caught up with them. We were now 70 | TWIN SOULS
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standing in front of a bunch of supplies one might buy for school. She grabbed two composition notebooks from off the shelf then looked at me, asking if two was enough.
What is she talking about? How does she know I need composition notebooks?
I suppose after she saw my puzzled reaction, she replied, “A week ago you said you needed some.” Perhaps I forgot of this, but soon after I told her that two would be fine.
She then reached over Sara, grabbing a sort of purple diary for herself, and her fingernails which had a sort of ice blue midnight nail polish created an interesting contrast, nail polish she painted on for her presentation at the library, which she opted to not yet remove.
Once again, she reached over one final time, adding several notebooks and folders for Sara and Dave which they would use for school.
We left the end, and Lynne pushed the cart making a left U-turn into the next aisle which contained frozen goods such as ice cream and pizza. Dave and Sara accelerated, leaving behind Lynne and I, and went to browse the many selections. Just at the beginning of the aisle, Lynne and I noticed a circular display in the middle of the aisle that held old off-brand films with clearance prices. As Dave and Sara wondered off, Lynne and I browsed the old movies.
After all the rummaging, we found Casablanca and Vertigo, films which were released in the years of 1942 and 1958, respectively. Being only ninety-nine cents a piece, we added them to the cart. As time went by, Sara and Dave continued to look through the frozen goods until they eventually rejoined us, putting a box of frozen pizza into the cart.
Just then I noticed Lynne staring into the cart, looking at that box of pizza, and after her gazing she told us that she used to eat this specific brand of pizza during her last year of high school. “I can't believe they still make it,” she paused, “My counselor and I would go through an entire box on my visits to him.” “You ate lunch in your counselor's office?,” I asked. “Yup, long story. Man, that brings back memories.” And with that last remark, I could see her thinking deeply back on her past.
Looking at Dave and Sara, she commented to them that it was important to eat before and during school, as to keep their energy levels on par to learn.
Some odd number of aisles down, we found ourselves in the cereal section. Sara attempted to put a box of cereal in the cart, but Lynne removed it and put it back on the shelf, claiming the cereal here was much too expensive and that she could get something similar at Chase Mart. I almost forgot about that place, considering Lynne cooks and prepares most of the food I eat. I'm not even sure she would let me eat from anywhere else, to be honest.
That was to be the final aisle and eventually we stood in line to check out. Dave 71 | TWIN SOULS
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browsed through the candy but was told he could have none. And looking over the cart, Lynne estimated its cost, “Probably one-twenty,” she told me. I gave her a hundred and twenty dollars and she soon after asked me what I wanted for dinner.
When our turn finally came, the cashier rang up all of our items, and seeing as there was no bagger present, I walked past Lynne and began to bag our groceries.
We then walked through the parking lot to the car, and after shifting her purse higher onto her shoulder, she began to hand the three of us items to place in the trunk.
Driving to our apartment building, we first stopped at my parents' home, as Lynne needed to collect our clothes from the dryer and then pull the remaining weeds from the garden she was rebuilding.
When we got home, I went to the trunk and hung as many bags as I could on my arms. “I'm not making more than one trip,” I told them. Some bags went to my apartment, but most obviously went to Lynne's. Once we were done, I left them and went to my apartment and told them I would be back come dinnertime.
I walked into my apartment and immediately found a pen laying on a desk in the composition room, and I walked back into my living room, turning on the television and sitting down with one of my new composition notebooks.
As I opened it to the first page, I saw that on the television was a documentary about an American football team and its city. I listened to it, but I did not watch it as I had something to write down.
Back at the grocery store, while walking through the parking lot, I noticed a recycling bin with a circle painted on its side; one of the sections of the cycle was colored in a type of green. After we had loaded the trunk of the car, I went over to it and opened it, seeing that nothing was inside, and I threw in some recyclable items.
Some time ago I had a dream where I was walking with God through a valley in the mountains, and he explained to me that it is possible for two particles to occupy the same location at the same time. He reassures me, though I hadn't the mind to observe or perceive this, that it is possible.
Schrodinger's cat is a thought experiment where there is a single cat inside a box, and inside the box along with the cat is a toxicity that may or may not kill the cat. Because the box is covered, we as the experimenter cannot see the condition of the cat, and in a manner of speaking, we cannot know if the cat is alive or dead, so it is in effect both alive and dead at the same time until we uncover the box to see what state the cat is in, in which instance the cat will be either alive or dead and not both, as it once was. This theory is mainly used to depict that anything that we are not currently observing is in an infinite amount of states until we observe it.
God then begins to tell me of a circle that has a single point stressed, a point which is 72 | TWIN SOULS
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able to represent both birth and death, depending on your perception of the model.
Atoms compose what we can see and touch, but can they also compose things of the abstract nature, like birth, life and death? Fate? Love? Can the abstract also occupy the same location, like matter can?
If so, considering all these questions to be true, then that would mean birth and death can carry mass, which according to God, can occupy the same area, which is the stressed point on the circle. So before we opened that box, or that recycling bin, birth and death were the same, or at least occupied the same location, and once uncovered we witnessed and perceived one or the other. It makes you wonder what exactly is processing during birth or death, what is happening to the mind as it experiences either.
I finished writing down the idea and at the same time the football program was ending. Eventually Sara came to get me for dinner, and once I was with them, I noticed that Dave had a bag of candy that neither Lynne nor I had paid for.
Inside Clinton Community High School, the bell for the beginning of the ninth and final period rang as students sat down to learn. Just prior to this, Mr. Paxton, whose class we will be observing, had taken fifteenth minutes to clean up the classroom and remove the gum from underneath the desks.
Paxton's ninth period class was an elective course, which was occupied by both juniors and seniors, and called “Critical Thinking” as it dealt with just that, thinking critically.
Though Paxton had assigned each student a particular desk, the students paid no attention to this as they sat where they liked and mingled loudly with eachother well after the ringing of the bell that implied class was now in session.
When a student, Chris Bell, saw that Paxton's attempts to gain the attention of the class by clearing his throat failed, he stood up and yelled, succeeding where Paxton failed, and the classroom was now silent, save for a softly chuckling Rebecca, who sat directly next to him and found his attention-grabbing words very funny.
“Thank you,” Paxton said to Bell as he sat down. Paxton continued, “Hello, my name is Mr. Paxton. This is 'Critical Thinking,' where we will be analyzing various elements and abstract ideas using rationality and logic.” “Rasha-what?,” a student in the back row asked. “Rationality, meaning to use reason,” Paxton answered. “Why didn't you just say that?,” another student asks.
After the introductions and getting to know each member of the classroom, Paxton finally started the class and began his lecture.
“As the base text for our studies, we will be using the first composition of M.B.
Julien's Anthology Complex, so please open your book up to page 201,” Paxton asked his class. Each student was given a copy of the first composition and opened their book to 73 | TWIN SOULS
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the requested page.
“How come we ain't starting from the beginning,” a student in the front row asked.
Paxton, smiling at the student, answered her question, “I knew someone would ask that.
That's because the great thing about this book is that it can used simply as a conversation starter, you don't have to read the entire book per se, I'm sure you will all be glad about that,” Paxton laughed, but his class did not find the same kind of humor in his remark.
Finishing his laughing and noticing no one else in the room was also laughing, he saw that one student did not open her book. After Paxton asked her why her book wasn't open, she stood up and flipped her desk upside down, storming out of the classroom and yelling curse words at him.
Once she'd left, Paxton was a bit shocked. “She crazy,” a student in the middle of the classroom noted. Soonafter, a noise began to brew within the classroom as students found a break in the lecture and tried to escape from it, but Paxton quieted them down, much more successfully than his previous attempt, and returned to the course.
As everyone was turned to page 201, Paxton began to read, “Depending on who you ask, dreams may be many things, which is why it is almost pointless to ultimately define them. This notion that a certain thing may mean one thing to you while it means something completely different to me does not only apply to dreams but to many other things. You know this because you've been in at least one debate or argument in your life.”
Paxton continued, looking at his class, “Does anybody want to try to explain what that passage means?,” Paxton scanned the area. After a brief moment of silence, a student, Malcolm Carson, raised his hand, and Paxton allowed him to answer.
“He saying, like, the answer I'ma give you right now, someone else might disagree with, 'cause sometimes there's more than one answer,” Carson finishes.
“That's exactly right,” Paxton replied, “It is important to note that like all art, Anthology Complex is open to interpretation and can be ambiguous in nature. Don't be afraid to assert your own opinions into the discussions we will have, or to tell the class and I what you think a certain thing might mean, because that's the point of art and more importantly, this class.”
“Mrs. Shorts outside y'all!,” a student in the back of the room yelled. Suddenly, each student rose from his or her desk and went to the back of the room, sometimes crashing into eachother, to look out of the window at Mrs. Shorts, who, upon viewing her, one would notice she had an unusually large behind for such a slender body type. “You know her ass so big because she get fucked in it, right?,” one student remarked.
Walking to the window later than the rest, Mr. Paxton looked out of the window as to see what the students were looking at, and at once, he realized that he was going to be 74 | TWIN SOULS
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dealing with a class in which knowledge and critical thinking was not a priority.
Coming home from the parking garage, after opening the door to my apartment, I came across a piece of paper on my floor. Wondering what it could be, I picked it up and immediately realized it was a page torn from a diary.
At the top of the page was a small message in italics, accompanied by the cartoonish drawing of a thorny black and yellow intertwining-layered rose, and below it was a sort of title that read “Sunset Soulmates,” and even below that, perhaps a poem, so I began to read it as I walked into my kitchen and sat down.
¶ Lately, something you said got me thinking about my past. Your the only person I feel comfortable bothering about it, so I hope you feel honored. :]
¶ My mother never had much, but she did the best she could to raise us right. She can be strict, but she is the reason why I give and maybe even the reason why I love so hard, which brings me to what I wanted to say in the first place. Being with you, I feel a sort of renewed happiness. I feel like an uncharted rose. But even though I feel this way, I also understand that sometimes love isn't forever, and that this may not work out between us. Even though I am not ready to let you go, and even though I don't think I could ever again find someone like you, I want you to know that if ever you aren't happy with me, you don't have to stay. I wil manage somehow.
¶ I have written you this poem (and expect more!) to profess my undying love for you and to express how I feel about my past. I hope it can be ours, like our song, or like a photograph to remember exactly what we were like when we were young.
¶ SUNSET SOULMATES
¶ I think back on those days when the Sun used to set
¶ An outstretched arm grasping for shine as if a net
¶ Sitting, lying, standing, alone, on my bed, a beach, under a tree, if only to forget
¶ “Hello,” “hey,” “hi,” “pleased to meet you,” I'd say, “my name is Lynnette.”
¶ And a year would go by, I lost one love then gained another
¶ And another year went by, and how quickly this one became the other
¶ Heartbreak after heartbreak, I decided to take a heartbrake
¶ And in that time a part of me found itself, if only for my heart's sake
¶ I fell in love with the universe, nature, ideas
¶ I fell in love with my mind, and this would prepare me for you
¶ My emotions, like wildflower, grew uncontrollably
¶ But I knew I had to survive, night to night, because one day fate would save you for me
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¶ So the years came and went, and everyday I thought of you, thought of what was meant to be
¶ I saw us playing, singing, dancing, as soulmates, in a world that was free
¶ Everyday I thought of you, being here, resting peacefully in my arms
¶ Allowing me to take care of you, lover, I've dreamt of that love for so long
¶ And in some final year, where birds chirp as two settle fears,
¶ Your eyes came to meet mine and we smiled, and I found you after so many years
¶ To be in your presence after being alone for so long,
¶ Is a feeling so immaculate, a feeling so much better than even my dream
¶ So, so many tears, so many tears that I have cried,
¶ So much depression, disappointment, disillusionment, and to my face, how often they lied
¶ But holding you, and you holding me, I have found a sacred place,
¶ I want to stay here, in this, for eternity, forever lost in your embrace
¶ And so now today, as I catch the Sun's rays on my face and in my hand
¶ I am writing you this poem, which I hope you'll understand
¶ I hope that you will see that I did not suddenly appear in your life
¶ But that I traveled a very long and difficult road, filled and packed with strife
¶ I need you to understand that I fought for you, every morning I fought for you, and that I'm fighting for you even today
¶ And I need you to know that I survived for you, so we could have this evening, and so we could have tonight
¶ Now that I have poured out my heart to you, I am thinking again of those days when the Sun used to set
¶ Those days are long behind me, as I am no longer lonely, my heart finally filled with the one person I get
“The ancient Egyptians used writing to communicate information about a person shown on a sculpture or relief. They called their writing ‘divine word’ because they believed that Thoth, god of wisdom, had taught them how to write. Our word hieroglyphs derives from a phrase meaning ‘sacred carvings’ used by the ancient Greek visitors to Egypt to describe the symbols that they saw on tomb and temple walls.” Wiker's Encyclopedia, page 215.
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I suppose to write is to express, and to explore is to be human. After I finish reading the letter and poem, I feel a warm presence around me. I feel warm arms wrap around my neck, and part of them resting on my shoulders. I feel a warm face press up against the side of my neck. I had been so puzzled after finding the page on my floor that I forgot to close the door behind me, which allowed Lynne inside to sneak up behind me.
Two winters ago, I envisioned an inevitable split from her and her children, but today, with her warmth around me, I can honestly say, and admit to myself, that I can't see us ever being apart without the intervention of death.
I think she does believe, however, possibly due to insecurities and maybe events from her past, that I might not be completely happy with her and that rays of thoughts that lead to doubt may infest my mind and cause me to leave her for another woman that might make me happier. The funny thing is, she is almost clueless as to how much I hate people in general, and the fact that there are days I miss her and long to see her is nothing short of a miracle. She has no idea that even if I was at the time oblivious to the notion, a part of me waited for her as well. That I found her as much as she found me.
At some point she gave me a kiss on the cheek, but she didn't let go. I knew why, she had no need to explain it to me.
She held on because everything behind her was a collective mural of failures, and for the psychological fear of repeating the past. But she did not know that we both chased the same Sun, together, as for every failure she had, I had, too. Unfortunately, for some people, life is one failure after another, never attaining that success.
For people like us, that's how life operates. You try your best to keep up with the rest of the world, with your contemporaries, but some of us have to run a little faster because we had a late start. A late start at life. And then one day you find that ten years have somehow got behind you, and that no one told you when to run, that you missed the starting gun. Then like Lynnette, or like me, you run and you run to catch up with that Sun, but it's sinking, racing around, to come up behind you again.
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Chapter 12
A PORTAL TO POSSIBILITIES
2:1:2:12
AS the stadium was showered with rain, the fans at Copper Field withdrew a thunderous roar for their home team as they came out, who was returning from the road with their first win under their belt.
“Week five,” Chipper's daughter, Lauren, sighed, “what a drag that was. It was a completely defensive game, ending six to three, a total of three field goals by both teams.
It was real smashmouth football, if I'm using that term correctly. A lot of contact and few passing plays from either teams.”
The rainy weather that poured down onto the field made way for a total of five combined fumbles from both teams, as well as a slew of other missed opportunities for points and conversions.
“That game was brutal,” commented cornerback Boe Tamana, who played for the home team, “and all of us, by the end, even though we won, we always suspected they were cheating somehow. Of course, at the end of the season, they were fined for illegal equipment.”
In the third quarter of the contest, Clayton could be found speaking to an official of the match down the sideline, irately, and claiming that the opposing team was in violation of the league rules. At the end of the season, this opposing team would eventually be penalized and fined as it was discovered that the offensive linemen were in use of illegal speakers in their helmets.
“There was a rare 1st and 4, and I remember that play because it was one of the most ridiculous catches I had ever seen in my life,” remarked Stan Davino, who played the tight end position for the home team, “Chipper had thrown the ball Cal's way, he started bobbling it and then was hit by a defender. After being hit he slipped onto the field, and the ball was still in the air mind you, and after he slipped and fell the ball fell somewhere near him and he extended his arm and caught it. All that rain pouring down and somehow he still had the sight to see it.”
After a 1-3 start, the home team would go on to win a defensive slugfest battle and improve to 2-3.
“Coach knew that the opposing team watched film on us, so he made sure Chipper didn't start running until the second half,” said Joseph Lee, who was the backup to Okadigbo. “When he did start running, that opened up the passing game, but we had a difficult time scoring once we were near the redzone, which said a lot about our team.
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and every win we got, we earned, and that's the thing, some people are given their wins and other people have to earn their wins with what they got. The people with easy wins, they don't know how difficult it is for some people to get that same win, and so they will never know what it means to really be a champion. A real champion.”
Inside one of the halls at the Copper Field facility, a quote could be found and read which was inscribed on the hall's floor.
One of my favorite things about sport is the fact that every season you get to start over. It doesn't matter what you did or who you were or how well you did in the preceding season, every team is equal at the beginning of the season and you get a fresh start. You can't really say that about life. You can start over in life, but you can't really start over, and more importantly, not everyone is equal when they do start over. Some people are born privileged and others are born poor, but in sport, everyone has that same equal shot at glory at the beginning of the season. - Henry Clayton
Two Sundays ago, I had a dream. Lynne and I were walking through the woods hoping we could find a connecting bridge to another island. As we walked, she read to me aloud from an old book we had found somewhere underground.
“And at once, he rose to his feet, 'Old lady!,' he shouted, 'What is it that you want with us? Why have you confined us to these islands?' And the old lady replied, 'For atonement!,' and as he blinks the old lady vanishes.”
“That's it?” “No, there is something here in italics.” “Pray tell, what does it say?” And again she began to read.
“The islands were magical, fantastical, and something of a fairytale land. Though it came flowering with gemstones, there was something dark among them; shadows that moved swiftly and silently across the surreptitious walls, secretly dragging us into their world.”
As she said the word “world,” we began to hear the whispers of an old lady, saying,
“These islands are remnants of a distant world... Here, are you now, but also in a forgotten past,” she finished.
The farthest the human eye can see is 2.6 million light years away, and when you look up at the night sky to see a distant star, you are actually seeing that star as it was long ago. There is a chance that in reality, that star has already imploded and died, and yet to you, it is still alive.
This illusion is a byproduct of space and distance, and the simple fact that light has to travel but can only go a certain speed. If vision can be that tricky, should we begin to question the things that are nearer to us? The things even within our grasp? If our senses and objective reality can behave this way, is it possible that our consciousness itself can lag?
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Look around yourself, everything you see has mass. Some things have more mass than others. My question is, is it possible for the human brain to sense mass in a way we aren't conscious of? For example, our brain tends to perceive the objects around us in collective particles as opposed to individual particles, so when you observe a bowling ball, you are seeing a mass of many particles together and not little tiny individual particles separated, this is how our brain sees things.
But, what if for a minute minute we transformed into beings capable of seeing the universe for every single individual particle it is made up of, instead of seeing it in its collected form as we do now? How would space and time behave?
I'm running off the rails here, so let me get to the damn punchline. If our brain is trained to see the world in a collective-particle format, instead of an individual-particle format, then this addition of mass may slow down and lag or drag our perception on the universe, whereas if we saw the world in the individual-particle format, where there is less mass for objects, things would move infinitely faster through the dimension of space when the force of gravity is applied, which would also affect the dimension of time. Like that star, we are in the present, but also in the future, and subjectively in the past, we just can't perceive that because our brain uses the collective way of observing the universe.
Look around you one more time, and imagine everything where you are now being 2.6 million light years into the future. Now come back to reality and observe your current existence. These two places, that distant future and this current existence, they might both exist occupying the same space at the same time, but only one of them is perceived by the human brain, and that perception is dependent on the way the brain observes its universe; in the collective format, or the individual format. Or this might all just be a bunch of nonsense.
As the old lady's whispers died off, Lynne and I saw two deer running through the forest. This was the first time we had witnessed other life on the islands.
Immediately after they disappeared, we saw smoke coming from the direction they had ran from, and soonafter fire followed. The entire forest was blazed as the fire streaked onwards towards destruction. After some time, we saw that in the distance a cloud was coming our way.
It inched closer to the fire and later we could hear rolling thunder from it; and just above the fire, a strike of ice blue midnight electric lightning struck and detonated a nearby tree. After the rain from the cloud completely washed away the fire, a mysterious portal appeared. Intrigued, Lynne walked towards it before me, and as she inched closer to the portal, as if to go into it, I saw her attire change into the form of a pink and peach sleeved-dress.
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dream, and eventually, after writing on that notebook's final page, I added it to my second shelf. Leaving my apartment, I saw the young girl from the apartment above me walking down the flight of stairs.
She held the door open for me as we both exited the building, and immediately I heard a friend call for her, “Becca!,” and she vanished. Where the hell is Lynne. Probably riding that stupid ass fucking bike.
Tossing a bag into her bicycle's front basket, Lynne footed one pedal and lifted her other leg over the bike to foot the other pedal, and soon began riding down Fulcrum avenue.
She had just purchased an assortment of seeds that she intended to grow around the apartment building, creating a garden she would eventually name after her one true love.
Now that the reconstruction of the adjacent apartment building had been completed and sunlight was able to reach her apartment garden, she planned to add friends for her peace lilies, her crown jewel being the addition of zinnias, which, for three years now, would not have been an option, as these were sunpowered plants.
Tao and May-ling, who were currently stopped at a red light, happened to see Lynne riding by, and recognizing her, Tao honked, then waved. Lynne smiled and waved back, then continued riding on.
“She look stupid riding this bike, especially in that dress,” May-ling suggested. “And foot, it is ugly and gross,” she finished. Tao, scratching his brow and accelerating, asked,
“Why are you so judgmental?” “What?,” May replied, “It is not judgement if it is true.”
“But how can you say that about another woman? I thought you all had a secret society where you get together and tell eachother how pretty you all are and make plans to destroy manhood.” May begins to laugh, “She wear dress only to make up for foot.” “Oh, is that why you don't ever wear dresses, because your body is perfect,” Tao replies. May slaps him on the shoulder and he laughs.
“She look like girl who never had hard day in her life,” May snobbishly suggested.
“You know, she actually does, except of course for the day she had part of her body removed,” Tao say sarcastically. “I mean, besides that,” May finishes the conversation.
Stopped in front of a bench, Lynne removed her headphones and then reinserted them into her ears for better hearing, and the lyrics came rolling through vibrantly, “But you stopped to speak with me, rainfall romancing me, dragging me into your world...” This song was titled “Portal,” by Jane Hudson, and was off the 1962 album “Harvest Moon.”
In fact, Lynne was wearing Pink Portal, the long-sleeved thigh-cut dress May-ling seemed to dislike, or at least, dislike on her, and as she rode the wind breezed through her pink and peach flavored autumn.
Singing along in her mind, she wondered where she would be ten years from now.
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What her life would be like, what her world would be like, what she herself would be like. She wondered how much would change, how much would stay the same.
Perhaps it was this moment, riding past a diner, that would briefly inspire her to plan a romantic dinner with her love, if at least to remember a time before any coming darkness.
Still singing in her mind, she thought about what life with her lover would entail, what great and vast worlds beyond obscurity they would explore together, what ideas they might discover. Rainstormed and roused, ready for a myst odyssey, she rode off peachly into a portal of possibility.
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Chapter 13
A LINK TO THE PAST / ORIGINAL TITLE: FADED MEMORIES
2:1:2:13
“... SHE says she comes here every now and then to see if it's changed at all, or in an attempt to visit the past,” finished reading page 145, Sandeep, who was a student in Mr.
Paxton's Critical Thinking class.
“Okay, now turn back to page 56,” Paxton requested, and then selected a student at random to read. “Even after years have passed and we've moved on from that place, when we think about it and try to remember it, when we try to think of what it may look like now, all we can remember is the way it looked when we left it,” the student read.
“As human beings with the capability of memory, we often find ourselves visiting the past, whether it be mentally, or even physically, as in literally going back to a place we used to live,” Paxton suggested.
“The problem is, places and things change over time whether we want them to or not, and we can't always go back. Some of the characters look for a way back home, but the problem is home just doesn't exist anymore,” finished Paxton.
Seeing that Latasha, the student who had previously flipped a desk and stormed out of the classroom, actually had her book opened, Paxton decided to calmly ask her a question. “Latasha,” he startled her, “have you ever thought about someone you used to know, or a place you used to live?” She shrugged, and answered “No.”
“That's 'cause you ain't got no friends!,” a student from the other side of the classroom yelled. Standing up, Latasha scanned the room for Briana and proceeded to walk towards her, and to make a long story short, the class erupted into a brawl.
Paxton was eventually able to split the two girls up and restore order in the classroom, but this disturbance would be just one of many inside a classroom that was simply not fit to learn.
Continuing the lecture, Paxton decided, for the time being, not to include the students, but to just simply speak, regardless as to whether they listened or not. As he spoke, the chatter among students rose, “...What Julien is suggesting is that we should never dwell on the past, or even on the future for that matter, at the expense of the present. This is reaffirmed,” Paxton is cut off by the sound of the bell and immediately all the students rise to leave the classroom.
“This is reaffirmed in the final statements of the book,” he spoke over all the noise.
“Please read chapter twenty-eight tonight!,” he tried to yell.
Malcolm Carson, who had returned to the educational program after identifying Darius Browne as the triggerman to Detective Tom Fields concerning one of his cases, walks down the school steps and begins to walk towards his bus.
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Though there was a considerable gap in his educational years, he was however socially promoted to the junior level of high school, which, if one were part of the academia, would understand that this promotion was a microcosm of how poor the city's schooling system really was.
On the other side of the high school were Chris and Rebecca, who too had just exited Mr. Paxton's ninth period class, and “escaped” from the high school property completely avoiding any other students. Their stealth was due mainly to the fact that they were a biracial couple; Chris, being African-American, and Becca, being Irish.
Once out of sight, they held hands as they talked and walked down the street, eventually kissing eachother goodbye and Becca running to a nearby train station to catch her train ride home.
As the bell rang to signal afterschool, as well to dismiss all the buses, inside one of the bathrooms of the high school, Latasha and Monica could be found performing oral sex on Andre, who was the student who would spread rumors about Mrs. Shorts sexual activities, and who also occupied a seat in the backrow of Paxton's class.
On her day off, Karuna had visited Kathleen and was now leaving the residence. She entered her car and turned on the radio, “...We are losing nine thousand residents a year due to many reasons, but mostly crime and poor schools,” she heard.
She continued to listen as she drove back home, but eventually ended up calling James Paxton, a teacher of a high school she was recently romantically involved with.
“All the students in my Critical Thinking class are underachievers. Basically students with no futures who are going to be left behind for the streets. How am I supposed to teach, much less find motivation for it, if they can't pay attention long enough without a fight starting or them talking among themselves like I'm not there?,” Paxton asked Karuna, “It's not right, the system throws them away and at the same time it throws me away, like we're nothing,” Paxton finished.
“I understand, I understand. We have a dual classroom with three teachers in it and all I really am is a second mother to my students,” Karuna remarked. There is a brief pause, which Karuna eventually breaks, “You know a few months ago I was way over in the 39th district, right? Did you know over there high school starts at seventh grade?”
Javier, Vyncente and David took turns playing the video game Super Big Ups on their classroom's donated video game console, and as time passed, eventually switched the game to Mega Man X.
At the back of the classroom could be found Mrs. Gonzalez, who was currently grading David's bookreport, of which he had done on the book for children entitled
“Godzilla.”
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who liv there and they allways run away from him. He can nock bildings down and crush cars with his bear feet. Doctor Wu-Jinobi tries to kill Godzilla with a big bomb, but Godzilla doesnt die. Godzilla goes into the wader and swims away because he is hert and all of the chinese people are yelling at him to go away. The End. (Godzilla sounds so scaaaaary! Were you scared while you read it?)”
At the other end of the room is Sara, playing with Patricia, who instead prefers to be called Pattie. As they play with legoes, Mrs. Anderson grades Sara's bookreport, which concerned a children's book named “Little Bill and Little Jill.”
“Little Bill and Little Jill is a adventure book that takes place in Spane. One day, for a class field trip, Bill and Jills class goes to Spane to visit a populer zoo, but Bill and jill get lost in the zoo and get lost away from there class. In the adventure, Bill and Jill run into alot of animuls and each animul they talk to helps them to find there class. They talk to a zebra, a lion, a monkee, a lizard, a scorpeon, and a lot of others like birds, too. Then finally at the end they find there class and they are togeter again and go back home to the United States in america. (Oh wow! It sounds like they had a really fun time meeting the animals, Sara! What was your favorite animal that they visited?)”
As Lynne drove to South Kennedy Elementary School, she took an acetaminophen pill and then took a sip of water. Exiting her car in work uniform, the Sun blared at her orange and brown rorschach colored plastic hairband.
Small talking with someone at the front office whom she had grown to know, Sara and Dave finally found her and they left the school to go home. Along the drive, after spotting Ms. Palmer, Sara mentions to her mother that she had accidentally bent the frame of her glasses.
The moment you take a picture, you create a link to the past. Not my words but the last words of a wedding photographer. The sentence was seen in a scene on a wall from a maze dream. Section 6 compartment 4.
Sitting at the desk located in the composition notebook room, I was glancing over an old photo album of Lynne's. There must have been around a hundred and fifty pictures, most faded or fading to a certain degree.
Each photograph has a sort of digital code at the bottom right hand corner in yellow bold print, and the first photograph that caught my attention was S-56:C-145, which was of Lynne in her wedding dress kissing her new husband, a message written on the back: We did it! I married the man of my dreams. My soulmate. There is no one else in the world like him – together forever. 22
S-16:C-23: Graduating high school, my gown was too long! 18
S-1:C-299: My first bike, I think I was 6.
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S-7:C-39: This guy was supposed to be a football player, but I don't know who he is. As you can see he was hugging me way too tight!
S-212:C-430: Me in the first dress I ever bought with my own money. 16?
S-32:C-56: Sara at 2.
S-8:C-8: David at 1.
S-3:C-321: Me and Silvio at prom. 18
S-8:C-51: Sara having ice-cream soda at a carnival. We got lost on a roadtrip and somehow ended up here.
S-6:C-4: Me in my all-time favorite dress, I think I also had it in my life before this one.
(Yes, yellow is my favorite color) 25
S-5:C-11: First ever flowers man! They didn't die, anthurium plants. 22
S-7:C-321: Train ride back home. Loved the view. 24
S-90:C-98: Mom snapped an unsuspecting picture of me painting my first painting. I think it's a flower I made up in my head. 8?
S-6:C-43: Sara and David, new bikes!
S-7:C-54: Random bird. I named him/her Taylor.
S-2:C-19: Sunset in fall. On the roadtrip right in front of our motel rooms. We watched it for a brief while until he decided to walk away. True Love.
S-32:C-967: My old guitar that I could never figure out how to play. 15
S-2:C-3: Someone thought I was beautiful enough to be a model for a day. 23
S-69:C-39: My yearbook picture. Don't laugh! 18
S-73:C-111: Some fucker stole this bike from me. 19
S-2:C-89: Me in front of my new high school. 13, maybe 14
S-72:C-76: Sara and David, ready for first day of school!
S-33:C-76: Beautiful lake. My favorite place in the world. ♥
S-4:C-56: This whole place was covered in thick ice. Other worldly. Mostly large bodies of ice, lakes, mountains, deserts, all created of pure ice. 21
S-2:C-765: Me in my Pink Floyd T-shirt. 17
S-45:C-274: Me covered in dirt after gardening. Bought some pink and peach colored-fused roses! I am grateful for the peace gardening brings me. 26
S-9:C-322: And then me covered in paint after painting. These are green and orange colored-fused roses. I have a real desire for nature! 26
S-4:C-909: Our first apartment, taken from the window of our 48th floor. Pretty city, especially at night. 20
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begins to speak to me, telling me that a wolf can smell over two-hundred and fifty million different things, and that people can only smell five million. Soon after, I woke up.
I had fallen asleep on my couch but began to hear weird pounding on my window.
When I raised my head to look up, I saw that it was Jack, somewhat standing on a ledge and yelling at me to let him in.
After letting him in, I asked him why he didn't just use the buzzer to get inside the building, and he tells me that the landlord had fixed the apartment's front door. Confused, he hands me a case, which he later tells me is his new album, called “The Second Mind.”
He begins to tell me that it's about life and death, goes on to say that down below, brown cancer grows, and an orange crash weeping waits for me there. After looking at the case, I wake up.
Sitting at the edge of my bed, I realized that I had woken up now twice, a dream within a dream. Those were rare.
The occurrence posed a question to me. If the universe is expanding, and if mass or matter is increasing, could time be slowing down? That is to say, as M increases, T
decreases.
Or, if time is instead increasing, might it get large enough that it would implode under itself as would a massive star under its own gravity? Would it then even begin to go backwards into the past, or perhaps repeat things that had happened before?
Another thought has occurred to me. If time is changing in value and not staying constant, can we use time to accurately measure anything? Could we accurately and objectively measure the age of the universe or our own ages if time is constantly changing? Maybe some of us are older than we think.
I got up from off my bed and grabbed my car keys and met Tao out in the parking lot.
I was driving him to the airport tonight because he was going back to China to help teach a few classes. Once we got there, he got out to get his luggage and there soon after saluted me, and I then woke up.
Another thought has just occurred to me... If space is expanding faster than the speed of light, and in effect, if time is slowing down faster than the speed of light, will it eventually get to the point where it creates the illusion of eternity?
Waking up again, I finally became lucid and knew that I was this time finally actually awake. Excellent. Looking out of the window I saw that it had recently rained, and that in the distance there was a large tree that had fallen, perhaps from lightning.
As I defocus from the window-view, I hear soft knocking on my door. I go to check who it is, and after I open the door, Lynne extends her arm towards mine, grabs me, and begins to lead me down our hallway, every once in a while looking back at me with a deep smile on her face.
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I noticed a few things; the lights in the hallway were completely out, making it pitch black, and this realization led me to her ghostly appearance; she bore a sleeveless ruby shirt and a long gold skirt.
When we got outside, we saw that it was snowing red and yellow leaves. She then led me to her car and began to speak to me, telling me that she wanted to explore the vast world with me.
As we drove around, our way became blocked by many falled tress which had now obstructed the streets. As she went into reverse to find another way, she turned on the radio for us to have music to enjoy.
As the night fell, I saw that we were now driving on a beach, a shoreline, and at some random moment she stopped the car and began to gaze at a small house right near the waters. After a while I asked why we were stopped in front of this small house, and she begins to tell me that she has always wanted to live here. “A small quiet home by the lake, where the incoming tide soothed you to sleep and made for a peaceful and gentle life.”
I thought about what she said, and then saw that the red and yellow leaves were now falling down on our car, and immediately after, she turned and said to me, “But here, nothing can grow.” A deep sadness now overcame her face as a single diamond tear fell from her eye. She then began to look over my shoulder, and when I looked behind me to see what she had seen, I saw that the body of clear water had developed into a high tide and was directly coming our way.
I woke up, again, and immediately started thinking about the dream. I thought of how strange it all was, and then I retired back into my composition notebook room and sat down to look at Lynne's photoalbum again.
I flipped to where I left off, and the first picture I saw was one that was taken at the carnival we stopped at. It consisted of myself, Lynne, whose arm was around my body and other hand on the top of Dave's head, Claire, Sara, Dave and the backdrop of a Ferris wheel and other rides and games and costumes. On the backside, a message written in blue pen that covered the entire surface.
S-81:C-711/C31X2: There is a single red leaf in that pile of green leaves. I feel that I have discovered a type of rare love that grows, like a rose, into a jewelry dress of prose. It is unusual, frictionless like a silk skirt, but as my heart expands, this beautiful love that I feel slows down time into a fading eternity.
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Chapter 14
THE CIRCLE CITY
2:1:2:14
LAST night, I had a dream. Passing by each streetlight in the dark world, I noticed that my shadow followed me every which way I went.
I finally reached a huddled mass of onlookers, and as they moved in the night under a bluish white light, their shadows too seemed to dance as they followed their masters. I stand there, thinking, not of the white shade, but of the white shade who once spoke of a black shade way back in The Emerald City.
The people were crowded because another homicide had been displayed. A man, tied up at the feet and hands, had had his neck broken in half and dangling. Just moments prior, a detective had removed a black seven-sided die from his mouth, which upon first seeing, would show you four red-colored circles.
A day later, in another part of the city, I found myself walking to a similar crime scene. This time it was a woman, who was dismembered at every joint, and in her mouth too was a black seven-sided die, though the circles on this one were green. It too, had landed on the number four.
No one in the crowds, not even the detectives assigned, knew who was committing these terrible crimes, but I did. I knew. And these dice, they were his calling cards.
Something creative and new he had dreamt up.
After I left, I returned to my motel room, and sitting on a chair staring out of a window, I realized I had begun to talk to myself. I didn't notice it at first, but in the middle of a sentence it dawned on me, that the man in black was beginning to repulse me.
That what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams had begun to harm me mentally.
Upon this realization, my words repressed back into thoughts, and I noticed an electric sign nearby, “The Ruby Motel,” it read, some letters missing light. “Ruby Motel?,” I thought to myself, and I immediately knew where I was. The circle city, Indianapolis.
I woke up, and like clockwork, I sat at the edge of the bed and thought about the dream. I came to many conclusions, conclusions I couldn't have made while I was in the sleep state, simply because in my waking state I had a composition notebook that gave me answers to cities I had not yet visited. In the same context, I can see that there really is no difference between a person's past self and a person's future self that is so dividing as much as the division of the knowledge that one in the present might hold. Because I was able to read and reread The City That Never Sleeps, I was able to make connections that I could never find while staring and thinking at that Ruby Motel sign.
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conclusion that, while he does not, the man in black does.
I developed a theory on the black dice; they were seven-sided because each number represented either a vice or a virtue, the red-circled die a symbol of the capital vices, and the green-circled die a symbol for the heavenly virtues.
Doing research on both of the victims, I found that the man suffered sloth, and that the woman delivered diligence, which were exact opposites on the vice-virtue scale, so I'm assuming these were represented on the dice as the number four.
What I gathered from this was that neither fate nor coincidence are discriminate in who they charge. At any moment, on any end of the balance, any person can become victim to evil.
You can take a person who is completely indifferent to their own existence, a person so immovable on the subject of life that for them to watch an infant struggle between life and death has no affect on them at all, makes no difference to them of the outcome anymore than the choice between a democratic or a republican president, and then take another person who is harrowed by the thought of failure, a person who works hard every single day of their life and finds absolute meaning and motivation in every one and in every action, so much that they greet every stranger on the street with words of affirmation and spends each night worrying that they are not living life to the fullest and the best of their ability; and after you have both of these people, you put them into an uncertain and indiscriminate universe and roll a die with their name on it, and whether their name is written in emerald or in ruby, whether it lands on three or on four, they both have the same chance of being visited by an unfortunate event.
There is so much indifference in the world, and it doesn't always come from a person.
Poverty, violence, crime, oppression, they are the true indifferences in our world. And sometimes, but not all the times, these are what make a person indifferent. Maybe God doesn't play dice, but surely Satan does.
When I came back home from the eastern side of the state many years ago, I felt the most alone I had ever felt in my life. I felt that there was no more I could do, no more no less that I could change, for the universe had already calculated my fate. I simply wanted no more to do with humanity, and as the days sludged by I was unaware that my mind was in the process of decay.
I kept in minimal contact with Jason, an individual whom I'd met in the trade of carpentry, until I completely lost touch with both him and reality. That was the first time, during one of those long stretches of time, that I realized that I had partially lost my mind and that I was beginning to talk to myself, sometimes outloud, most of the time in my mind. It still happens to this day, but often I won't realize that I am talking to myself until I realize it.
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Getting up, my phone began to ring. That terrible ringing sound. I walked over to it, and for the first time I saw that the caller identification read “Lynnette J. Parker.”
“Jay Parker, how are you today,” I joked. She didn't get it. We spoke for a few minutes and I told her that the mechanic had finished and switched everything out of the car. I told her the total cost and told her that I would help pay for it; for the first time, she did not say thank you, perhaps because it was settling in her mind that I took care of her as much as she took care of me. I'll tell you, there are some people who ask for an inch and then they want a mile, and then there are other people who don't ask for much but you want to give them everything. I think Lynne used to be more like the former, but these days, it seems like she is more of the latter.
Afterwards, she commented on how she was going to be working a double shift, as an associate had called off for the day. I commented on how she was working too hard, and needed to take a break.
Mrs. Parker ended the call on her cellular device and returned to her employment.
Today, or rather, tonight, she had received $118 in tips.
Her and her manager were the last ones to leave Max's Diner at around nine p.m., and after she turned off the lights and said farewell, she went and sat in her vehicle and took the time to think.
About twenty minutes into the city, twenty away from home, she sat in her car and looked at the city lights, the same way she used to many years ago. She watched as people walked by in the night, some alone, come coupled, some partied.
The time came when she eventually turned on her car's radio and as she listened to the music, she continued to watch the lights and the people as if the two were meant to go together.
She pulled her head back to rest on the seat, and her head tilting autonomously, she caught an image of her face in the side-mirror. She looked into her own eyes and observed herself as the music in the background continued to play, “...She leaped out of the sea, and with her she brought along a pleasant amber mystery...”
She suddenly began to think of a joke she had been waiting to use on her love, and at the thought of the joke she caught herself smiling at herself in the mirror.
When the music stopped, she realized that it was 9:48 p.m. and that she had completely zoned out to the music and the imagery of the city, and it had dawned on her, occurred to her, that for the first time in a very long time, she was tired; physically and mentally.
Drawing a deep breath of exertion she sticked the shift and reversed out of the parking space and drove to a leisure lounge, which was where Olya worked as a service clerk.
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Driving up to the establishment, Olya had already been waiting for Lynne and entered the vehicle. They greeted eachother and Lynne began the drive home. Once stopped in front of Olya's building, they said their goodbyes and Lynne watched as Olya entered her apartment building and walked past the locked door, and Lynne eventually went home.
“In the sixth round, with the one hundred and ninety-ninth pick, we have selected quarterback Bradley Chipper,” said a representative of the home team. Chipper, fearing that he would not be chosen, happily walked onto the stage to accept his place in the league, waving to his family members as he walked by.
“He won't admit it, but he was as excited as a little boy on Halloween,” said Chipper's wife, Vivian. “After they finally won their first game, he went around looking for advice on how to be a better player, and someone, I can't remember who, told him that everything he needed to improve was in his mind. A few days later, he started taking little timed math quizzes, he believed that would improve his decision making abilities under time.”
The sixth game in the season was a divisional game, which ended 34 to 32, as the home team improved to 3-3 and went to five-hundred for the first time in many years.
“I stopped watching after the second loss,” said Poole, “I figured it was going to be more of the same from last year, but then someone told me that we were three and three and at first I didn't believe them. This was the pretty much the mindset of any football fan in our city, 'We won a game?' I mean, yeah, it's one thing to win one game, maybe out of luck, but when I saw that they won three games straight, I started to pay attention.
Thought maybe this isn't our year, but it could be the year things turn around.”
“Everyone had problems with Kevin, he was something of a drama queen. A bad call against us, he goes berserk. Kicker misses a chip shot, he's in their face. That's just the kind of person he was. And it didn't help that he was kind of lazy. All of us, even Kevin, we wanted to win games, but I felt that sometimes he wasn't wiling to put in the work, all he wanted to do was fire his mouth when something went wrong. So I'll tell you, when Taylor Lawrence made the game winning field goal, he wasn't running his mouth.”
“Three minutes after he made the field goal,” Lauren said, “we couldn't find dad.
Some of us went searching for Chip and eventually found him under a bench hyperventilating. I had never seen anything like that before. He got way overexcited and lost. That's when I realized that even though he was my father, he still had the heart of a playful child.”
“Our kicker was as good as gold. I think I maybe saw him miss one time during that season, and that's a big maybe. Two seconds left on the clock, score was thirty-one thirty-two, and he nailed it like it was nothing. Fifty yard field goal I think? My heart was beating out of my chest as the ball sailed,” recounted Chipper. “I just kept thinking, as the 92 | THE CIRCLE CITY
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ball flew, about what Bowman said to me earlier in the game, 'No team that started O and three ever made it to the playoffs,' and I say this to you today with the satisfaction that came with winning all those years ago; for the rest of your life, no one can ever tell you that you couldn't do it.”
Clayton walked up onto the stage and to the podium and began answering questions from the crowd. “What have you changed to win three games in a row?” “More practice, more discipline.” “What would you say was a big improvement over last week?” “We only turned the ball over three times,” Clayton laughed. “How do you feel about your offense?” “We're still adjusting our playbook and playing style but I think we can go out there and challenge defenses. Thank you, we're on to the next team.”
Clayton walked out of the conference room and into a long hallway lit by yellow lights, and in his turbulent mind, he foresaw a sea of hands.
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Chapter 15
AMBER ORANGE
2:1:2:15
¶ 9/5 – TODAY is my birthday. No I will not tell you how old I am. Yesterday my love and I ate dinner where I work. Nothing special, just a simple meal. We celebrated it yesterday because, despite it being Labor Day today, I will be working in the afternoon.
¶ I decided, after coming home last night from dinner with him, that I am going to surprise my husband with a romantic dinner. I already know his favorite dish, I just have to figure out the setting.
¶ I have to admit, I am a tad bit nervous, as Ive never done anything like this before. As far as romantic dinners go, I've always only had one partner, and usually he made all the decisions, so this being my own thing, I have quite a few decisions to make.
¶ Now that I think of it, the last time I had been on a date before yesterday must have been like three years ago, and its funny because that also happened on my birthday. I had been living in a new apartment, trying to move on with my life, when I made the terrible mistake of actually thinking my abusive ex-husband might of changed. That his promise to stop hitting me might be real this time, and that I at least owed it to my kids to try and give the our family another shot at being happy.
¶ I talked to him on the phone and he told me that he wanted to take me out for my birthday. He told me this would be the beginning of a new phase in our relationship. I was skeptical, but also blinded by love. I said yes, and the following week I found myself all costumed up in one of my yellow dresses. I dressed myself up in every way for a man who couldn't even see me.
¶ We went out a few more times, and I thought to myself that maybe he really did change, and maybe we were happy again. This small opening is why after so long, I offered him my body. We had sex, but I didn't feel anything. I didn't know why I felt that way then, but I know why now, it was because my heart belonged to someone else. I wish I knew what I know now back then.
¶ After we did it, I drove back home at around midnight. I stayed in my parking lot, in my car, for a while, thinking about why I felt so ugly and so disgusting, and the whole time, I felt like someone was watching me, telling me that I shouldn't have to give my body or my love to someone who doesn't deserve it.
¶ The next week, I acted on that voice and received the worst possible reply I could have ever received from him. It was so bad that I slept in the backseat of my car, because I was so ashamed of myself, that I didn't want anyone to see my bruises. Especially not the person who holds my heart today.
¶ That's all in the past now, and today I'm with someone who shares fifty-percent of the 94 | AMBER ORANGE
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relationship with me. I want to give him everything; all of my heart and all of my soul. All of my love and all of my body. Even more than this, I want to give him all of my art.
¶ I've shared with him now several poems I've written, most of them for and about him, and he commented that he enjoyed reading them and that he was glad I found a way to express myself. He told me he was my #1 fan, but seriously, he is my only fan. My only light.
It's 5 A.M. right now and I'm staring out of my window, and in a sky filled with darkness, he is my lucky star.
¶ “It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indif erence of the universe.”
At six a.m., as the Sun began to rise, Lynne left her apartment, leaving sandwiches next to a pot of lipstick plants on the kitchen table for Sara and Dave.
She went down the flight of stairs and out of the apartment building, wearing Autumn Wind, the orange dress paired with green leggings, and tended to her garden. She did some light gardening, watering flowers of many kinds, and decided to leave the rest to the sunshine that would come soon.
As she walked around in her garden, she noticed that some of the plants were turning brown and orange, and the thought of death and pain entered her mind. Though there was death in the garden, there was also life; apple-crunches of red roses, Peace Lily stardust, boasting sunrays of sunflowers, sapphire zinnias, enchanted grapes of balsams, freshly plucked tulips of ember, white stargazer lilies, alliums of fuchsia, fennel grass blades of yellowish-green, seasoned ladybirds of anthuriums, alluring aromas of catmints, all organized and sectioned off by wooden fences for the display of complete beauty and appearing on both sides of the apartment building.
She tended both the life and the death in her garden, she kneeled over to smell the many groups of flowers, and in doing so, she smelled both life and death.
She then entered back into her building and back into her apartment where she changed into her running clothes. She slipped her orange shoe onto her silver foot, her other orange shoe onto her flesh foot, her white sports-shirt onto her hardened upper body, her blue basketball-shorts onto her firm lower body, then exited and entered what was now daylight.
As she began to run, in the distance she noticed the coming of gray clouds. By the time she was walking back to her apartment, the gray clouds had now become silver and began to drizzle over her, slapping the top of her head and shoulders with droplets of ember orange cloudbursts.
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last year was found dead in a prison shower room today. Roland “Spider” Price aided police, testified against his peers and...”
Paxton shut off the radio as he pulled into his parking space and soon after marched into his place of employment. Teaching a number of periods, he eventually came to the ninth and final period.
“Why we gotta read this stupid book, it don't even got a plot. He just crazy going on and on about nothing,” commented Latasha, “Some of the stuff he say don't even make sense.” “It's actually unclear if the narrator is male or female,” said a student from across the room. Latasha raised her head, yelling, “Was I talking to you?!,” and it went on like this for much of the period, Mr. Paxton being unable to control his class.
During the middle of the class, it began to storm outside, raining and thundering and lightnering for all to see and hear. There were moments when the lights in the classroom began to flicker.
Seeing as he could not control the class, he allowed free time, or study time, for the students to complete other works for their other classes. Amid the chatter, he overhead Malcolm and Cedric speaking about the book he had assigned.
“Nah, see, they both wrong, that's the point. It don't come out the pussy or the butthole, it come out that little hole they have at the top,” Carson said. “That's right,”
Paxton said walking over to the two, “Do you guys know the importance of that scene?”
Paxton then went on to explain to the two that the importance of the said scene was to display the true youth of two young people who were expected to murder enemies and facilitate the sale of narcotics. Neither of them knew where women urinated from, and yet, one had a handgun, and the other, a license to sell drugs.
As the three discussed various scenes, another nearby student overheard Paxton speaking of his former life, of how he had once been a lawyer.
“Yo, Mr. P, you ever put away a serial killer?,” the naive student shouted. The phrase
“serial killer” then caught the attention of a third of the class as they all waited for him to answer. “No,” he laughed, “I wasn't that kind of a lawyer.”
As the pouring rain continued to hit the windows, Paxton found himself sitting at the back of the classroom, at what should have been a student's desk, and speaking to two thirds of the class and telling them about his time as a young lawyer. He dwelled, sadly, mostly on the bad things he believed he had done. “I scammed people, and after a while, it just wasn't something I wanted to do anymore,” he told his students.
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classroom.
As the session went on, Paxton realized one undeniable truth; that regardless of age, maturity or intellect, the one thing each person could understand was an honest voice, and his honesty in addressing his students had now begin to show, and whether they knew it or not, the students were slowly being affected by this genuine truthfulness.
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Chapter 16
SLEEPLESS IN ATLANTIS
2:1:2:16
CHRIS, then aged fifteen, crossed the intersection of Pearl boulevard and Spinel avenue, when a ring of gunshots could be heard to the west.
Ducking and running into an alley, he hid behind a plastic dumpster to wait for calm.
After about a quarter of a minute, he witnessed crowds of people running in the same direction, yelling and some tripping along the way.
Once it seemed that calm had been restored, Chris now heard a ring of sirens and saw several ambulances, police cars and firetrucks all driving down the connected street.
Chris got up, walked to the end of the alley, looked down that road, and saw the deadly scene of a police shootout. Watching from afar, he witnessed as four people were pronounced dead on arrival; a middle aged black male lying on a staircase, two middle aged white males in police uniforms lying in the middle of the road and one young black male being carried out of a police vehicle.
Rebecca, then also aged fifteen, had just come home from school and, at the expense of her homework, began reading a book titled “Sleepless In Atlantis,” which was not part of her English class's curriculum.
As she flipped to page seven, a ring of gunshots could be heard to the east. She immediately fell to the floor and did not rise until the series of pops had settled. Slowly, her door opened as her mother peered in to check on her, and after a while, they both stood fully to look out of their window and see what had happened.
Lying on the street they saw two young girls, deceased, who were surrounded by police cars, firetrucks and ambulances. As the two watched on, sapphire and ruby lights could seen flashing on the apartment building walls which came from the many vehicles'
lights.
Chris and Becca, present day, were now at Becca's home watching television. At one moment, Becca's father opened her door to ask her a question about the television remote.
He spoke in Gaelic, as neither he nor his wife spoke English very well, and she responded in the same tongue. Before he closed the door, he greeted Chris with a warm and accented hello, and though he was a different race from them, both he and his wife welcomed him into their home with open arms, a sentiment that Chris's family did not share for Becca. As for Becca's younger brother, he thought of Chris as a sort of bigger brother, and thought it was somewhat cool to have someone from a different culture around sometimes.
Sara and I sat on platformed cement playing pattycake, under orange and white streetlights, waiting for Lynne and Dave to return; she had taken him into a deep and 98 | SLEEPLESS IN ATLANTIS
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secluded place to urinate.
I could hear the sounds of Lynne's footsteps as they walked back to us from out of the darkness and under the dark blue setting Sun, wearing her black ballet-flat shoes. The black and silver matched her well, as she was wearing 47-79, which I also called “Blood
& Gold;” the silver and gold ankle length dress with the buttoned top and collar she had previously displayed for me. Of course the silver was more gray and the gold more yellow, but when a lady has a rich beauty that can be held, she can turn simple colors into gemstones.
“We got lost,” she remarked as she laughed. She and Dave then joined us in sitting on the concrete platform under the light, and as she fell into a position of the Indian style, her dress whitishly rose to reveal a golden ankle bracelet on her silver side.
“You know, for someone who works twenty-five hours a day, I would have thought you could afford real gold,” I said to her. Something funny crept onto her face after I said that, and she laughed to me, “Oh, you have jokes, huh?,” rolling her tongue underneath her bottom lip. She didn't fire back, perhaps because the miniature gold rosehead which hung off the bracelet was more a symbol to her of honest, real and true love than a superficial fashion statement.
The reluctance to go home was not confined to wayward men. Or wayward women, either. Or wayward boys and girls, for that matter. We simply strolled leisurely down Eden avenue, which was darkly lit and furnished with trees, Dave and Sara exploring a bit at some of the things they saw.
After we had crossed a street, she somewhat brushed up against me and took my hand into hers, interlocking her fingers into mine, and then began to speak as she looked up to me, “A golden rose symbolizes the successful and completed search for your soulmate, which ended in unity and brought two minds together into one,” she finished.
I thought about what she said, and then thought about one of the origins of soulmatry in general, how it was taught that in initial creation, there was one soul, or one body, but something caused that soul and body to split apart in half and cast away from eachother, and it was each half's purpose to search for their other half to reunite.
In the natural world, there is cell division, known as mitosis, where a cell creates a copy of itself as they divide, and there is cell fusion, where cells of the same type combine together for efficient function. This process made me think of Lynne and I as cellmates.
If we refer back to the “echo” theory, where our universe and existence is simply an echo that will eventually fade out into nothing and nonexistence, and combine this with the notion of “objective nature,” is it possible to find flaws in the universe by observing it?
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Imagine that the phenomenon of an echo is actually a design flaw that found its way into the universe. That is to say, our universe actually is an echo of another universe, and we can hear echoes inside our own universe as an error because the overall design of our universe, the design being that of the echo, has somehow leaked into the design for us to witness. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but whatever.
If this were true, we could substitute the phenomenon of echoes for anything else and this might help us discover and understand things we otherwise don't have the ability to comprehend as human beings. Though the symbolism of Lynne's golden rose is a bad example, it still works; the idea that she and I were once one being, and then split apart with the task of finding eachother to reunite, it can be found in the same phenomenon of the cells that divide and fuse.
This also makes me wonder, could the universe have been part of something else, but then splitted away, and is now back on the path to reunite with it? Where else might one find this concept? Can we find other design flaws or strengths in this manner?
“Don't hold my hand in public,” I said as I removed my hand from hers, and slapping her hand afterwards in discipline. She was shocked, or maybe more amazed, and then displeased, and her several attempts to catch my hand again failed miserably. After she gives up, she simply wraps her arm around mine, interlocking our arms together as we walk under a white light that would blend with her silver ankle.
“I bought the bracelet at a yard sale,” she told me. “They actually had two of them, and I would have gotten you one, but I've never seen you wear jewelry,” she jokes. I didn't reply. What she said wasn't even that funny. You better not be laughing.
After perhaps a minute or two of walking down the lonely avenue, I looked ahead to see Sara and Dave huddled in front of a bush making a play for an insect, and at this moment, Lynne began again, “Do you know why we work so well together?,” she asked,
“It's because we're like old people who act like kids... True love doesn't age.” I looked at her, and she up so close to my side, “We are like colorless diamonds in the rough,” she finished, and she gave me one of her cheesy ear to ear smiles. “You're so romantic, Lynne.” This I said to her with an indifferent face.
Walking again in silence and then reaching the huddled children, Lynne and I saw that they were looking into a hole which probably was the residence of a small creature.
Standing over them and asking them questions, the thought of insects further entered my mind as I noticed Lynne's lovely black butterfly design on her silver foot, gifted to her most likely by Sara.
Suddenly and quickly, a brown moth flew out of the hole, alarming both Sara and Dave, and flew directly into the street, being missed barely by a lonely driver on the road.
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noises of the street died off with it.
Dave looked up and asked me what my favorite bug was, which I told him was the praying mantis, and for a moment I wondered why he wondered, and I wondered if he wondered why I wondered.
Ten minutes later, Sara and Dave were again well ahead of us, and Lynnette and I again, almost like ketchup and mustard, silver and gold, night and day, pearl and spinel, flaws and strengths, pen and paper, sugar and salt, east and west, thunder and lightning, sapphire and ruby, milk and honey, dawn and dusk, husband and wife, walked together, her head on my side, our arms into one another, talking to eachother under the silver pepper of the paper Moon, “Gorgeous golden goddess, give me yellow light under this white heaven,” she laughed. “It's from a book I'm reading.”
This reminded me that she had taken both “White Lights” and “Rosalynnette” to the hospital and had donated them for display. Of her talking about how they were mounted side by side to eachother, for the entire world to see. Or I guess actually for anyone who walked down that hallway.
At the end of the avenue, Dave and Sara waited for us, and together we all walked across the street and eventually came to a bridge overpass.
When we got to the middle of the overpass we stopped and gazed down at the busy highway. It stood out at us, its lights giving it an orangish-yellowish glow against the dark sky, its speeding cars passing by with the sounds of swoosh and swash, feeling the large trucks roll by with awesome force; I looked at the lit highway in a way that I had never before.
Before we would leave it, we would have an oxygen challenge. We all held our breath on the overpass to see who could hold it the longest, and for a while we all looked like were underwater, our eyes fixed on the city before us and the highway that connected to it. Sara, in the end, won, and showed a surprising ability to hold her breath.
Nearing our apartment building, I feel a slight twitch that came from my index finger.
It had occurred yesterday as well, but I don't think it's anything to worry about.
I remember, about seventeen years ago, finishing my tenth or eleventh composition notebook. And I remember thinking to myself, as I closed that last page, “If I don't get help, something in me is going to collapse.” What I'm saying is, I was aware that I might have lost my mind. I was aware that the habit I was developing could, in reality, lead to more madness; but as it turned out, it was the writing that eased my mind.
One thing that I knew, but failed to understand, was that there were others out there who were exactly like me. I don't just mean other people who share some of my flaws and strengths, I'm saying there were people who were exactly like me; emphasis on the word exactly.
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Lynne and I suffered in different ways, but in ways we are mirrored, almost a reflection of eachother. The most important thing she's taught me is that I am not alone. I honestly feel like if she ever stumbled into the room of composition notebooks and began to read through them, she would be the one person in the entire universe who understands. Probably because she belongs in a nuthouse.
There is indeed more than one way to solve an algebraic math problem, and there are both simple and complex ways to arrive to the same conclusion. Take, for example, a product of two. You can get there by adding one and one, or you can go a different route and divide two by one, each resulting in a product of two.
You can also get to a product of two with the expression: (((88x6) - (900 / 2)) - 80 +
2) + (3x+2) = 2. What I've chosen to learn from this is that at the end of it all, we all end up at two, and the only difference is the avenue we took to get there. But, what if the avenue affects the end result, and gives you a variation on the number two.
The avenue I took has gifted me sociological issues, and for the most part, that world I used to live in is now lost on me, it's gone from me, and there is no way back to it. I cannot undo the expression, it's already been solved and I've already seen the answer, and I feel like, in a social sense, the only people I don't have to pretend around are Lynnette, Sara and David, for if I were to put my guard down around anyone else, they might see who I truly am, and looking into me, they might see the avenue I took to get here.
Entering our apartment building area, we saw Jack and a woman standing near a car and talking. She was black, and Jack looked as if he were trying to romanticize her. Once he saw us, he waved, and I waved back as we went in. “She's gorgeous,” Lynne commented, “I wonder if she's his.” She was indeed quite the looker, but I sure as hell didn't say that to Lynne.
The four of us get to the second floor and as we walk down the hallway, I stop in front of my door and tell them that I'll be over in a minute or two, and we part ways.
I walked through my living room and towards my telephone, with a plan to call Brandon, but as I put the receiver to my ear, I hear talking; the voice was strangely familiar, of a teenage girl, and after listening for a moment I recognized that it was the girl who lived above me.
“I don't know, it's just so tight...Well after we can rest if you get tired, and then maybe do it again. Just don't laugh or anything because that will embarrass me...” I became intrigued and sat down.
“If it hurts me I'll tell you...Just don't laugh...If you're too rough I will tell you, you know that...I'm just happy that we will be eachother's firsts. I feel like we're together for a reason, and I just want to grow old with you...Okay, that's fine. I'll see you tomorrow.
Okay, bye...I love you...”
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A dial tone came into the phone and I thought about what I had just heard, and then dialed Brandon's number.
When I walked into Lynne's apartment, I found her sitting on the living room floor with a video game controller in her hand. She had changed clothes, switching from Blood
& Gold to one of my black shirts, which fit her loosely, and a pair of red basketball shorts. I thought I told her to stop wearing my shit.
She looked back at me, angrily, almost like a child, and yelled, “How come my fucking plants won't grow?,” she asked. I looked at the screen to see her playing Animal Crossing.
She saved her game and then got up to go to the kitchen. At the same time Sara came out of the bathroom in different clothes as well, as she had just taken a shower, Dave I suppose was in his room, doing something.
I sat on the couch as I watched Sara flip through television stations, and eventually she stopped on channel sixteen, which was showing a film called “Sleepless In Atlantis.”
Sara yelled to her mother about it, and I soon learned that this was Lynne's favorite film.
Friday night, midnight, Lynne and I sat on the couch and the kids laid out flat on the rug, all watching some movie about a sleepless city. At 1:00 a.m., we agreed to have a No Sleep contest to see who would be the last one to fall asleep. At 1:06 a.m. Lynne went back into the kitchen and placed a hot plate of food on the kitchen counter. I watched her as she stared at it, calmly saying “fuck it” in a repeated fashion, and finally grabbing the plate and running into the living room, still repeating the words “fuck it” over and over again and setting the plate down on the floor, her hands nearly burned from the exhibition. At 1:27 a.m., after eating most of the food, Sara and Dave seemlessly fell asleep at the same exact time, leaving only Lynne and I as contestants. At 1:29 a.m., I began pulling on her nose. At first she found it cute and amusing, laughing a bit, “What are you doing?,” she asked in a squeaky and whiny voice, and when I let go her voice returned to normal as she snorted in laughter. I kept at it, and the pulling of her nose soon became irritating to her, so I began to run my finger between her lips and at the same time made the sound of a motorboat. “Man, I'm not playing games with you,” she tried to say against my finger, but it came out in motorboat. It was now 1:35 a.m. and I continued to play with her, that is until she had finally had enough and stood up. “Stop!,” she whisperly yelled, so as not to wake the kids. I reached up for her breasts and she immediately smacked my hand away, again yelling in a whisper, “What the hell is wrong with you?” As she started to walk away, I reached out and pinched her butt and she reacted quickly, turning around and again slapping my hand away. By now I was in complete whisperly laughter. She stared at me coldly, “Fuck you,” she said, and she continued under her breath as she walked away, “Good for nothing...” I didn't hear the 103 | SLEEPLESS IN ATLANTIS
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rest. I think my laughter added to her dismay, for, right before she got into her bedroom, she took a hardcover novel off her kitchen table and threw it across the room directly at me, the spine-bridge of the novel smacking my forehead and nose. This was uncalled for, as I did no bodily harm to her, and yet her reaction left me mildly concussed.
She entered her bedroom, closing the door behind her, and I stayed seated on the couch for maybe thirty minutes until she finally came back out.
She walked over to me and then sat at the opposite side of the couch, as if she didn't almost just kill me with a goddamned book. Soon after she re-positioned herself to lay on her back, her knees in the air, and then after this took off her silver shoe and began rubbing her stump on my thigh. “Stop,” I told her. I wasn't in the mood. But she didn't stop. I grabbed her lower leg and removed it off me, but this time she raised her stump to my face and against my cheek. I pulled my head away, and when I returned it, she then began to rub her stump all over my lips. I became somewhat angry, yelled at her to stop in a whispering fashion, and she said, “Now you know how it feels.” And finally she stopped.
A movie called Poseidon was now playing on the television, and it was at that moment I moved closer to a laying Lynne and laid on her, the back of my head resting on her stomach and chest. As she put her right arm around my neck, she said, “You should move in with us, it would be easier and would cost you less.” “No.” “Okay,” she replied gently.
We stayed up, neither of us falling asleep as we both wanted to win the contest. I don't think either of us were really watching the movie. At some point during the night, or morning, I guess, she put her hand of her other arm into my hand and interlocked our fingers.
“Don't laugh,” she told me. I looked up at her in confusion, a crooked little smile on her face. “Don't laugh or I'll get embarrassed,” she continued, and I was still confused.
She then, at first very softly, began to sing to me. It was a simple song, about an archangel, but the way she sang it made it seem like it was about much more than that, as if she was trying to tell me something but it was obscured in some way. I listened, as much to her emotion to the words she sung, and with an echo in her hypnotic voice that was given to lace, she sang to me a very enchanting and a very beautiful song of soul and grace.
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Chapter 17
BLACK BUTTERFLY
2:1:2:17
¶ I watch you
¶ You have no idea, but I watch you
¶ I watch you from my window when you come home
¶ I watch you from my car when you head out
¶ I look back and watch you when we pass eachother in the hallway
¶ Baby, you don't have a clue, but I'm a watcher and I'm drawn to you
¶ I'm a weirdo
¶ You have no idea, but I'm a weirdo
¶ I'm weird when I'm around you, but I'm weirder when I'm alone
¶ I'm weird, very weird in person, and I'd be a hundred times weirder if I ever got you on the phone
¶ I'm weird from 12 to 12, but after midnight, I swear I'm a freak
¶ Honey, you don't have a clue, but I'm a weirdo and I'm drawn to you
¶ I stalk
¶ I stalk because I want to know if you're available, or if you're with some other lady
¶ So I stalk you down the street, sometimes even lurk beyond the road
¶ I follow you into stores, into malls, into parks
¶ I sometimes hide in my garden, wait for you to leave, so I can stalk you in the night
¶ Darling, you don't have a clue, but I'm a stalker and I'm drawn to you
¶ I'm a creep
¶ I walk on eggshells to avoid you, but I hide behind the vineyard just to touch you
¶ I'm a creep, but not a normal creep, I'm a creep just for you
¶ I'm a creep, but I'm not violent, I'm just a creep, a creep afraid of you
¶ Sweetheart, you don't have a clue, but I'm a creep and I'm drawn to you
¶ I'm psychotic
¶ If I don't see you I go crazy, if I don't see you I go insane
¶ I'm a psychopath and if I'm mad, please get out of my way
¶ I'm a psycho, I'm a psycho, I'm a psycho just for you
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¶ I am shy
¶ I don't know why but I always have been, it's just the way I am
¶ I'm shy, but I fantasize, I dream of the night we first make love
¶ I'm shy if I like you, but never shy if I love you
¶ I'm shy, so what, one of these days I'm going to talk to you
¶ Oh, Romeo, oh, Romeo, you don't have a clue, but I'm shy and I'm drawn to you
¶ I am a black butterfly
¶ I watch you in the dark so I can't be seen
¶ I'm weird like a dancing lady in a feverish dream
¶ I stalk like a little lion who is hungry for lean
¶ I creep like a shadow as if from a horror scene
¶ I'm psychotic like a psycholady small and mean
¶ I'm shy like a child but don't treat me like I'm green
¶ There you are, I see you, come to me now
¶ I'm obsessed with you, but I can't move, I'm frozen, I won't let you get away
¶ So I will create time to grow the things that I will kill
¶ A praying mantis, a moth, lacksided and doused in shrill
¶ I am attracted to flowers, bill and bill and bill!
¶ Haha! It worked! I'm catching up to you now and I will suck out your soul!
¶ I will press my lips against yours and breathe in your spirit and swallow it whole!
¶ Wait, what's this?!? Noo! Where did you go??? Come back to me!! Come back to your Juliet!
¶ …..
¶ And then I looked behind me, and I saw you, caught in a web of your dreamy eyes, paralyzed by the poison of your eternal love
¶ Oh, my prince, you were the catch that I was after
¶ But I looked up and I was in your arms, and I knew that it was I who was captured
¶ How could I let this happen, I laid down so many traps, and yet so, the hunter has been captured by the game!
¶ Oh my dearest one, you don't have any idea, you don't even have a clue, but I am so, so many things, and I'm so desperately and dearly drawn to you!
¶ 9/15 - I leaf again and again through those miserable memories, and keep asking myself, was it then, in the wind of that remote autumn, that the rift in my life began; or was my excessive desire for life and love only the first evidence of an energetic but tired heart?
¶ Why didn't you come for me? Why didn't you come and save me? I waited for you.
Why couldn't you see that it was you that I loved, not him. Not anyone else, only you.
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¶ Isn't it funny? I tried so hard to catch him, but at the end of the day he was the one who caught me, and I couldn't escape from him. I thought about him everyday; I was caught in the web of his majesty.
¶ The first time I ever saw him, I was immediately drawn to him. I was nervous and couldn't stop laughing, I'm sure he noticed. I could tell right away, almost like a yin and yang, that he was the complete opposite of me; calmer, taller, a man, wore black, strong, handsome, and just like a yin and yang, I felt connected as if we were puzzle pieces that were meant to go together, meant to interlock with eachother. There is always an ember inside of me, on the tips of my fingers, on the surface of my lips, on the points of my breasts and in the tunnel of my vagina, that always wants to touch him like that puzzle piece, to hold his hand, to spoon him in bed, to jump on his back, to make love.
¶ Olya told me she's lived in seven cities in seven years, and she's still not sure if she has ever climaxed. I think part of the climax is in the commitment. Now I'm not saying that I'm the expert on commitment, but I'm sure that a lack of commitment is why marriages fail and why friendships end. No one knows what commitment is. I'm not even sure I truly do. What does it mean to be committed to a person or an ideal?
¶ I don't have a college degree and I barely made it through high school, but I'll tell you what I think: He's seen my stump, he's seen my scar, he's seen me at my worse, he's been inside me, and even though he's never chased me, he's only turned me away once. He is a reserved person, but he tells me things. He opens up to me, he shares things with me, I've seen every inch of his flesh, and whenever he wants, he knows he can snuggle with me, lay on me, he knows I'll hold him, make everything all right. I think for a while this was a tough thing for him to do, and something tells me I'm not the first woman he's had this problem with. Either way, the point is, commitment comes in the flavor of the person. I don't commit to him the same way he commits to me. Some people say I love you outloud, others never say it but instead show it in other ways. I feel most connected and committed to him after the climax. I have to touch things. For me, touching leads to feeling, a feeling of warmness, peace of mind. Ah, I think my thoughts are becoming unorganized. I always get like this when I'm trying to communicate something but I feel it more than I can explain it.
¶ Last night he fell asleep inbetween my legs and on my chest. It was unexpected, but I loved it. I loved the feeling. I don't know how to walk around this, so I'll just say it directly..
My nipples became erect. It happens every time, and there's nothing I can do about it. My body can't help the way it feels! I just needed to get that off my chest.
¶ We talked for a while, and I told him I was employee of the month at work, to which he told me, probably for the tenth time, that I work too much and I'm doing too much. That I need to take a break. Maybe I should. I was so out of it last week that I locked my keys inside my car and had to call him to come with the spare.
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didn't move because I kind of wanted to stay that way forever, but soon after he woke up with a large, pulsating and throbbing headache that was probably my fault.. After he got up I followed him to the door and kissed him on the lips before he left, and he kissed me back.
I'd like to say he did it for himself, but he probably just did it for me, to make me happy. I couldn't tell him that I loved him, like so many other couples do every day, but I wish to hell I could of. The last time I told him that, he made me cry, and its not really anything I'm trying to feel again anytime soon.
¶ There's this young girl who lives in our apartment building. I think she lives on the third floor. I was sitting in my garden one morning and she came out. When she saw me, she came up to me and thanked me for making the building look so pretty. It kind of caught me off guard. After she left, for school I think, I thought about when I first moved here, and how my zinnias died. She has no idea of the death and sadness that was here before. There's a black butterfly in every garden, whether you see it or not. They mostly come in the darkness, when there is no hour, no minute, when everything is still, because death has created time to grow the things that it would kill. .
¶ “What does anyone gain from al their labors at which they toil under the sun?”
¶ “I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards.”
¶ “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them fal s down, one can help the other up.”
¶ “A dream comes when there are many cares, and many words mark the speech of a fool.”
¶ “Again I looked and saw al the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed, and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors.”
Riding down Eden avenue on her vintage classic bicycle, in Dottie, her brown and cream colored polka-dotted ankle-length dress, Lynnette made plans to visit a nearby mall. Riding in a long dress proved to be difficult, but she discovered a workaround which allowed this.
She locked her classic inside a parking garage, in lot 5A; her chain combination number is 1-299-73-111, just incase you ever needed to borrow it. She walked into several stores, hearing Michael Jackson's Heal The World, and then Travis Bickle's III, both songs she loved, over the intercom, and then went on to examine expensive perfumes, dresses, and jewelry, et cetera, none of which, though, she intended to buy.
Now this is not to indicate that Lynnette is poor, and that she can only afford such items from a second-hand store or from a yard sale, but much moreso to forebode a future event.
Eventually she left the mall, purchasing a pair of rose gloves, and proceeded to her lover's parents' home, where she then tended a garden which needed to be weeded. Along the way, near the home, she found a random blonde wig with red highlights, which she 108 | BLACK BUTTERFLY
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put in her bicycle's basket.
Afterwards, she used her gray key on the silver doorknob to enter her lover's parents'
home, hearing the sound chimes as she entered the residence. She then removed a piece of head-scarf cloth, which was wrapped and knotted into a bow around her hair to keep her hair in place, and then tried on the wig. “Ooh lala,” she said, raising an eyebrow, and she admired herself in the reflective mirror.
Bradley Chipper, along with a fan, stood in a studio room as Chipper waited for the interviewer to return. “No, no, that was 79 post 47,” he corrected the fan. They had been discussing the famous controversial play that occurred in the seventh week of the regular season, a game that improved the home team to 4-3, and which many still argue was a game that needed an asterisk next to it. It was the first time in nine seasons that they were able to achieve a winning record within seven games.
“Leadership is the most important thing in football. In anything really. You have to show commitment to your teammates and be able to inspire others,” said Reggie, “I don't care how good you are, if you don't have that you won't win.”
The strangest game of the season would be played in week seven, in a game which would come down to the very last play.
Chipper had been sidelined early in the fourth quarter due to a concussion and would not return, Sammy Nordstrom taking over at the quarterback position. The home team, by then, was already leading the opponent 37 to 33, and required them to at least score a touchdown to extend the game.
“Kevin was getting burned all game,” said Reggie, “and a part of me was glad because he was such a cocky *******. Someone needed to humble his ***. He was making bad decisions, jumping routes, everything he shouldn't have been doing. What was worst was the fact that he would blame his mistakes on the cornerbacks, or anyone he could find really. With commitment, you don't magnify the faults in others, you help them to improve, you know? He had none of that.”
Kevin Faulkner was let off the hook in the final play of the game; the opponent had been driving down the field and was now on the nine-yard line with seventeen seconds left in the game, no timeouts, fourth down. On the fourth down, a pass was thrown towards the middle of the endzone and was briefly caught by a player from the opposing team, though, going down to the ground, the ball seemed to bobble and was called incomplete.
The play was, of course, reviewed, and eventually stood to end the game, however, later reviewings of the play would be deemed a completed catch by the league's office of officiating.
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walk away with a win.”
“We had a late bye that year, I think it was week twelve or thirteen. It was the one week I didn't have to hear Kevin's mouth out on the field during a game,” laughed Chipper.
On the television now was an old photograph of Henry Clayton, accompanied by a staffmate, David Croft, and in the background played an old audiotape with his voice, which was filled with static and white noise, “...If you are truly committed to something, I think... I think if you are truly committed, you will let it drive you into the ground...”
“What do you want?” “Excuse me?” “I said why are you calling me, idiot?” “How did you know it was me?” “It says your name now.” “Oh...” “Why are you calling? You live twenty feet away.” “I'm not at home, idiot.” ….. “I'm at the lake... Just drove here from your house...” “Kids are with Emily?” “Yes.” ….. “Watching the waves roll in under the stars and the nightsky as I hear the sound of your voice... It's real romantic at night...” ….. “That sounds lovely...” “It is, idiot.” “Alright, well, I'll let you watch your pearl stars and sapphire waves then.” “No...” ….. “No what?” “...No.” “Yes, I know no, but no what?” ….. “I missed you today.” ….. “I wish you were here with me, so I could show you this beautiful lake...” ….. “There's absolutely no one else here tonight.” “That's because most people aren't crazy.” “Shut up.” ….. “I act like I'm not shy but I am. Just not with you... Because I...” ….. “...Because you understand me, and know who I am, and I don't have to explain myself all the time, and you know everything about me, and you don't judge me, and I don't think I could have a connection like this with anyone else... I want you to know that I am committed to you, and I will always be loyal and faithful to you...” ….. “You turned my dream for life and love into a reality that I could touch...”
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Chapter 18
PAGE 6 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS”
2:1:2:18
“AND the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.” This was an epigraph written on a tombstone found in over a hundred and fifty dreams. Every once in a while I'll browse through the graveyard looking for some kind of memory.
“Where's your telephone?,” asked Tao. “It's under the couch,” answered Jack. Tao, a bit confused, found the telephone and made the call, and soon after Jack met him in the living room. Before they left the apartment, Jack grabbed a small brown-paper bag of garbage to throw away on their way out.
In the hallway of the second floor, Jack stopped Tao and said, “Hey, do me a favor will yah, throw out my garbage for me.” Tao paused for a moment, again confused, and then responded with a laugh and began to walk way.
“Come on, it's just down the hall,” Jack insisted. Tao looked back, and then walked back, saying “Give me two bucks, I'll do it for two bucks.” “I'll give you fifty cents,” Jack negotiated, though Tao persistently refused.
Seeing no deal would ever be met, Jack placed the bag of garbage in front of the narrator's door, knocking twice, and soon after he quickly exited through the back door of the apartment building with Tao.
I bet you wouldn't believe me if I told you I was afraid of the dark when I was a child.
This is true, I couldn't sleep without the lights being on. Something about the darkness is unappealing to the natural human mind, perhaps because in the dark one cannot see, this being a metaphor in the sense that people fear what they cannot understand or lack knowledge of. It's also funny, because today I am most comfortable in the darkness. I cannot sleep with the lights being on, not because I am afraid of wisdom and knowledge, I am no longer speaking metaphorically; it's just that a light can be very distracting at times.
I hear someone knock on my door and prepare to answer it. When I look through the peephole I see no one, so I open the door to find a bag sitting on the ground. I look around, and after seeing no one, I take the bag that had been secretly left for me by an unknown and mysterious person.
When I go through the contents of the bag, I find empty containers that perhaps once housed different types of foods, but I cannot comprehend the meaning behind it all.
Regardless, I place the bag in a safe location to examine later.
Sixth year, September 5th, I had this dream. Her name was Calu. Simply put, she had received one of Roach's notes and it changed her life dramatically.
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Roach was gone now, though, and I sat in her apartment and told her all about him.
What he was like and why he was the way that he was. Somehow, we began to talk about all the institutions of the world and their role on both society and the development of the human mind.
There is a theory, or hypothesis, rather, that life exists throughout the universe and can be distributed by meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids. Someone speculated that all life on Earth had actually come in this way; a form of life that could survive the effects of space occupied a spacebody and eventually crash landed onto Earth where after much time, it would evolve.
LUCA, which is an acronym for “last universal common ancestor,” is “the most recent organism from which all organisms now living on Earth have a common descent.”
That is to say, all life on Earth, Lynne's flowers, her children, me, you, the stupid dog who is always chasing the stupid cat, we are all derived from this one single-celled organism that perhaps lived billions of years ago and evolved into many different routes.
Each species developed accordingly, based on its environment. This same concept can be found in sociology and many different types of institutions.
Prostitutes, drug dealers, politicians, rapists, murderers, we often label them as bad people, but often times it is the society or institution that they inherit that produces their
“bad” actions and/or behavior, and the way they develop, the same way Earth's atmosphere played a role in how those first cells would develop. Human weaknesses like corruption and greed are always part of the chain, too.
You combine a group of educated people, and you versus it with a group of uneducated people, and the people within their respective groups will often have the same background. This is common sense. It's no wonder politicians must behave the way they behave; their system governs them, and allows them only to proceed in one way. We are all no more or less a product of our environment.
Roach's notes had now caused a rift in the local town, and people were breaking away from that notion. In a way, they were also corrupting his message. Destroying his message, and at the same time destroying him, what he stood for.
The church and the state were attacked by citizens and were bombed. Outside of the buildings that weren't bombed, people stood with picket signs. These signs are what the notes were turning into, small pieces of paper into large poster card. “Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis,” one of them read in red.
This was one of the dreams that I woke up gasping for air, because it was so intense.
Seeing the bodies blown up alive, the hate that ran in the streets. Nightmares. Killings.
Strange faces. I don't really believe a word anyone tells me anymore; I have become a skeptic because I saw how easy it was to turn a truth into a lie. Something silver into 112 | PAGE 6 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS”
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carbon. These people, they wanted to set fire to everything and watch it all burn.
“One more, last one,” I said to Dave, and he responded with a disappointed face. He had stolen once again from Publiks and I was giving out disciplinary action. I watched and timed him as he ran to the end of the block and then back to me within an allotted amount of time. He barely made it, and gasping for air, sweat pouring down his face, he declared, “I will never steal again, please.”
Looking above him and in the distance I first saw Sara, riding her bike, and soon after followed Lynne, riding her bicycle, traveling towards us. As they came closer, I saw Lynne begin to wave at a nearby pedestrian, who I eventually could see was the woman that Jack had previously attempted romancing. The lady smiled and waved back.
Lynne was wearing Rare Candy, the mostly yellow and partially green dress that cut just above her knees and was sleeveless, showing a bit of her shoulders. Sara, on the same hand, too bore dual colors; her new shirt was white and contained several red butterflies, and it was just like her mother to return the butterfly-favor.
They both came to a slow stop in front of us, and Lynne, after seeing the sadistic torture I put her son through, commented to her son, “I told you he's crazy...”
Time passed, and after I made fun of Lynne for riding that bike around, she got off her bicycle and kicked the stand, then took off her backpack and removed a blonde wig from it. She walked up to me and placed it on my head, adjusting it accordingly, and soon after, all three began to laugh.
“What are you laughing at? You want to run some more?,” I threatened, and he went silent. I was somewhat frustrated from the laughter, which caused me to flick the blonde hair on my shoulders backwards, and this sent Lynnette into convulsive laughter. “Man, I will give you...,” she searched into her pockets, “...fifty-cents if you ride my bike around the block in that wig.” I thought for a moment. “I'll do it for two bucks.” She couldn't find any more money, so instead she bargained that if I took on the task, she would cook whatever I insisted for dinner for a complete straight week.”
I looked at her bicycle, then asked if there was a way I could remove the front basket, which she replied to, “You have to ride it as is, with that wig.” Sara cut in, “And you can't ride it too fast, either.” When Dave also tried to say something, I turned around and immediately told him to shut up.
As I took the bike from her, I noticed the fading circly blotches of ice blue nail polish on her fingertips. I put my leg over the seat and footed the pedaled, then began to ride as they all laughed.
It really wasn't that embarrassing, seeing as there were no pedestrians and very few cars driving by. I turned at the corner of the block and proceeded cooly, until in the distance I recognized a tenant from my apartment building walking down the sidewalk I 113 | PAGE 6 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS”
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was riding on. It was the Filipino mother of the Korean son who stole my headphones months earlier.
Normally I wouldn't care if she'd seen me, but I already gave her the bad impression that I liked kids and wanted to do nasty things to them. My current appearance would not rectify the impression.
I ditched the bike and hid in a nearby bush and watched as she walked towards me.
Once near me, she let out a horrifying and abrupt sneeze, which led to the aftermath of her having a little bit of snot coming out of her nose, which she quickly wiped away with her bare hands.
Once she was gone, I got back on the bike and rode as fast as I could around the block and soon I was back on the sidewalk that led me back to the three idiots in my life.
Returning, I watched them as they all laughed, and though I was still far away, their laughs were very audible. “She won't be laughing after I slash her tires,” I thought to myself.
I stopped in front of Lynne and demanded her to give me my money, and she handed over the fifty-cents with a perplexed gaiety.
The four of us entered the building, Dave and Sara going upstairs, Lynne and I going downstairs into the basement with the bicycles.
She chained together her bicycle with Sara's and Dave's, and as we walked back towards the basement door she jumped onto my back. Eventually the attack turned into a piggyback ride, and feeling her warm thighs press against my cold forearms, she whispered something into my ear, “I have a surprise for you next week.” After these words, she pressed the side of her head onto the side of mine and began to rub the sides of our faces together. It was kind of weird, like an animal rubbing against you and disregarding any sociological norms established by society.
I piggybacked her up the first flight of stairs, then the second, and finally she got off.
She walked in front of me and told me it was my turn. I laughed, but she insisted. “Are you sure you can carry me? If you fall...”
I got on her back and as she walked towards her apartment door we wobbled the whole way there. Fearing for my life I got off just before the door, surprised that I didn't completely crush her.
After being in her house for ten minutes, I noticed that in the kitchen she had popped a few pills. I remarked to her that I had never seen her take any medicine, and she confided to me that she sometimes still feels pain in her affected leg. It comes and goes.
“Are you sleeping here tonight?,” she asked me in an innocent and lovely fashion. I later found myself in her bedroom, staring at her mirror. She had taken off her dress and her appearance was that simply of a dark green camisole and light green boyshorts.
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She came up behind me, wrapped her arms around me, hugging me from behind as we both stared at our reflection in the mirror. “Luca,” I said outloud. She looked at me in the mirror and asked, “What?” I looked at her in the mirror as well, but didn't reply immediately. I simply smiled at her. She had no idea what I was talking about, but she smiled back.
For the first time, I think, I took her hand and interlocked it into mine, which surprised her. I also saw the smile on her face disappear, because things were getting serious between us. “Luca better not be some other woman,” she said. I laughed, which made her laugh.
I turned around to face her, letting go of her hand but her arms still around me. She looked up at me with anticipation in her eyes, and at once I placed my arms around her rubbing her back. Still looking up at me, I leaned forward to kiss her on her nose. I pulled back and looked at her once more, she was caught in a web and paralyzed.
At this point I grabbed the back of her head and slammed it into my chest and speaking in a quick and sinister voice I said “Lynnette where had you been all of my life?
You traveled from deep outerspace on a comet and crash landed into my life my soul my heart. You survived in harsh dangerous deadly bad environments and grew into a beautiful rose. A delicately beautiful rose for only my eyes to see!” I soon after heard Dave yell from across the apartment, telling me to shut up. I was only trying to romance his lovely mother.
She forced her head from my firm grip to look at me, somewhat in neck pain, then said, “What have you been smoking, and why didn't you give me any?”
“...Former city homicide detective Mya Jackson was wounded yesterday night during a large drug seizure. Jackson, who now serves the narcotics department, was shot twice on the side of the abdomen and was in critical condition, but she is now expected to survive her injuries...”
Pulling into the parking lot of South Kennedy Elementary School, Karuna turned off her radio and entered the public city school.
Dave and Sara gave their permission slips and the required eight dollars per entry to the zoo to their teacher, Karuna, who asked them if they were excited for the field trip they would be going on today.
The three teachers, along with six chaperones, monitored the dual classroom as they explored the large local zoo. There was much to discover, many genus of animals and plants, all possessing a different numerator but yet sharing a common denominator.
Karuna, wearing a red bindi for tradition, was walking with Dave and exploring several insect charts when she asked him what his favorite bug was. He replied, saying it was the praying mantis.
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A few yards away was Sara and Pattie, who were discussing parenthood. “I have two dads,” Sara told Pattie, “but my dads don't live with me.” Pattie, confused, then asked,
“Do you have two moms, too?” “No, only one.” “How many dads do you have?,” Sara asked. “I don't have any,” Pattie replied with sadness, “Can I have one of your dads?”
Sara thought for a moment, and replied, “Sure, but I have to ask him first.”
Soon after they both walked past a set of caterpillars, which reminded them of the caterpillar they had in their own classroom. They began to read documentation which discussed metamorphosis, and the wonderful world of biology and terrestrial life was at their fingertips.
On the whiteboard, Mr. Paxton writes in red marker the word “purity,” and then underlines this word and underneath it writes the word “love.” He turns around and begins to speak to his class, “When you see these two words, which character do they remind you of?” “...Lynne,” the class says in unison with uncertainty.
“Now you see how a couple of words brought to mind the same character for all of you? That's called symbolism. Attaching an idea or meaning, et cetera, to an object to give it a higher sense, this will give said object greater depth, especially when you take the time to analyze the object itself and stop looking at it literally. Objects in a story can also have greater representation, or I mean, they are interchangeable with other objects or ideals in the story. I think almost every character in Anthology Complex is a symbol or metaphor for something else, so today, we will be learning about identifying symbols by using Lynne as our case study,” Paxton concluded.
Elliot, who was somewhat not paying attention, was alarmed when Paxton called on him to answer a question. “Elliot, based on what we've read, which object is best associated with Lynne?” Elliot thought for a moment, then answered, “Her yellow dress?”
“That's a good answer, but there's a better one,” Paxton suggested. Elliot continued to think, and after about ten seconds, Paxton made answering the question available to the entire class. “What do we know about her?,” he asked the class, “She's a gardener, right?”
“A flower,” a student said hesitantly. Scanning the room, Paxton saw that it was Chris who had answered, and thereupon told Chris that this was the answer he was looking for.
“An author will sometimes use subtle adjectives or hints and give you clues as to what they are trying to convey, so I want you guys to give me some examples that support Chris's claim that Lynne is supposed to symbolize a flower.”
When Paxton saw that no one had any examples, he decided to give them a freebie to get things started. “Okay, I'll help you guys out,” Paxton said, then began to draw a limp flower on the whiteboard with a green marker.
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marker at the student, and saw that it was Karen, “That is exactly right. Like her zinnias, dying flowers limp. Anyone got any others?”
A momentarily silence, and then a student said outloud, “She smile too damn much.”
All of the class as well as Paxton broke out into short laughter. When he saw that it was Latasha who was speaking, he smiled and said that there was actually some truth to that answer, but wanted to hear Latasha's explanation.
“Flowers suppose to make people happy and shit. Like make 'em feel better because they look pretty,” Latasha answered. “Of course. Do you guys remember what Sarah gave to Lynne on Mother's Day? It was a drawing of a smiling flower that she named
'Happy Flower,' and in chapter nine, the narrator says a smile 'grows' onto Lynne's face, as if a smile was growing like a flower on her face, and of course, what is Lynne doing at the time?” “Gardening,” the whole class quickly answers once again in unison, this time without uncertainty.
“Yo Mr. P, if Lynne is a flower, you think her missing a foot could mean like a flower missing a petal?,” asked Carson. Paxton's eyes squinted, this was something he had never thought of before. “Definitely, but do you have any references to back that claim up?” Carson shook his head. “Well, you have your book in front of you, read through it and maybe you'll find something.”
Becca raises her hand and Paxton points to her. “He compares her to a green rose,”
she finishes. Paxton asks Becca to explain what she means. “Well, I mean, he calls her a
'beautiful sight,' and then he says how she told him that green roses are a beautiful thing to see. And then he says that she was pretty to look at and nice to smell, like she is a rose.
And I don't know about this one, but green roses are supposed to be rare, so maybe he wants to say that she is a rare flower?,” Becca concluded.
Paxton looked at Becca, telling her that her interpretation of the green rose passage was excellent, and then asked the class, “Show of hands, how many have actually smelled a rose?” No one raised their hand.
“To be honest I haven't either, however not all roses smell nice and not all roses look pretty,” he suggested, “like her zinnias, some roses die off. This gives Lynne depth, and is an image of the fact that throughout the book, she is sometimes happy, and she is sometimes sad, she is sometimes pretty, and she is sometimes ugly. This gives us the impression that like a flower in the real world, she can die. She can-” Paxton was cut off.
“Yo P I found it!,” Carson yelled. Paxton looked at Carson as he began to recite text,
“I'm leaving my apartment building and I notice the flowers. They are growing but they look funny now, as if they are missing something. I wonder if Lynne planted them right,”
Carson read.
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in the corner of the room who had not said a single word all year, “I think he's right... My mom had breast cancer and they cut off both of them. But even though she is missing parts of her body, he still likes her, and he still thinks that she is beautiful. I can relate to that because my mom has been so strong since her surgery and she is even more beautiful to me for that. Just because she's missing something that everyone else has doesn't make her ugly, it just makes her different. Like unique... I think that's why he likes her.”
For some time, the class went on like this. Students talked about the insecurities that either they themselves had or insecurities in the people that they knew. These insecurities ranged from mental to physical, body and mind, and like many important issues, followed some of the students into their homes where they discussed these matters with their family.
After the bell, Mr. Paxton cleaned his classroom, and while doing this, saw that something had been carved into a desk. “fuck cridical thinking,” it wrote. Despite this, Paxton was satisfied, for he knew his students were learning and was astonished at their progress.
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Chapter 19
LONELYLILLIES
2:1:2:19
LOVELY, lovely, lovely Lynnette; life, love, la little lady looked laced like le lonely lily leafing launderette.
These were the words that passed through my mind after opening the door to see her standing there, la madame en ivoire, or, the lady in ivory. Beautified, smiling, wearing her dress and smelling like a flower; a modest amount of make-up and heels that made her tower.
“Why aren't you dressed?” “I am dressed.” “You're not wearing that.” I looked down at my clothes and couldn't see the issue. “You're wearing the suit I found in your house,”
she demanded. I walked away, muttering under my breath, “Yeah well, you're gonna have to dress me then.”
I sat down on my couch as she walked into my bedroom, searching for the suit and tie she gave me earlier. She later came out with it, holding a gray tie she had specifically bought for me.
“Why are you wearing make-up?” “I'm wearing it for you!” “Well I'm not wearing any make-up.” She laughed. She walked towards me, set the suit and tie on the couch beside me, then removed her heels and kneeled down in front of me. She then began tugging at one of my socks, and in surprise I asked, “What the hell are you doing?”
The sock came off completely and she set it aside, then began tugging at my other foot. I realized she had taken my joke seriously, and had plans to undress me and then dress me into the proper attire.
“Raise and extend your legs, please,” she demanded, and as I raised them, I laughed, telling her she was pathetic. She pulled away, eventually removing my pants. “Raise your arms,” and she quickly took off my shirt. Now half naked, I asked her if she was going to be taking me to Lovers' Lane. “Do you want me to get another book?,” she asked.
She now began putting on the dress shirt, and as she buttoned it for me, I asked her to move her head so I could get a glass of nearby milk. She moved her head and I grabbed the glass and began to take thirst-quenching sips. She laughed softly at every sip, knowing that what was going on right now must have been the strangest thing ever to happen in this town.
She now began putting on the dress pants. “Stand up,” she demanded when they were nearly fully on, and I stood up as she raised them to their maximum. The both of us laughing, she began to tuck in my shirt.
She pushed me backwards and I fell back onto the couch, sitting as I had been before, and she found a pair of socks and once again was kneeling in front of me. “I don't want 119 | LONELYLILLIES
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those socks, I want the other ones,” I said. She got back up and went to get the other socks and finally placed them on me. “Thank you,” I said. “You're welcome,” she responded.
I stood up and she began to tie my tie. “It's been a while,” she said, which is why it took her an extended period of time to finish tying it. As she moved me around slightly, I examined her face. “I like the way you do your make-up,” I said. She smiled.
Her make-up was a mask, or maybe a secret. It was painted on by an artist, perhaps to mimic nature. Her make-up fitted her, the same way she fitted into dresses; it was done simply but it told me everything I needed to know about her. I realized then that women wore dresses and perfume and make-up to mimic a flower, the same way our lives mimic the repetition of the Sun, causing day and night.
Personally, and I'll be honest, I hate seeing people happy, but there are some people who have been through so much that they deserve to be happy, if even for a day, I guess.
I continued to look down at her as she tied my tie, and suddenly a smile formed onto her face. She smiled because she knew I was staring at her, which is why it was one of her simile smiles. “I really like when you do that,” this is what she said after I kissed her on her nose. “I love all the things about us that are just between us,” she finished.
Before we left the apartment to go to her car, she turned her back to me and as I fixed a silver leather belt around her waistline.
“Where are you taking me?,” I asked her as we drove down a night street. “I told you, it's a super secret surprise,” she stated.
My thumb twitched. Stopped at a red light, I whiffed in a large amount of air through my nose and smelled the sweet aroma that came from her body; soft butterfly perfume.
Her pale dress made her pale ember; she was the corniest person I've ever known, but she was my corn. That sounds nasty.
She was lovely in lavender; charming in crimson; joyful in jade; amazing in azure; distinguished in daffodil; gracious in grapefruit. She was pretty in pink.
Suddenly she began to laugh softly, she glanced at me still laughing then returned her eyes to the road before her, and then began to speak in the same accent she used way back during the Lynnewalk, “Yu knoe, beck en my 'ome coontree,” she laughed outloud,
“dey caul me 'Duckter Seilverhstein,' because I keek-eh dey bawl to maek goal.” Her speech sped up, “Yu know dat gaem, I tink here it is caul'd teh 'sucker', yess?”
“What?,” I laughed. “It deis dey gaem yu play, yu knoe, dey sucker, with yu feet, end yu keek-eh dey bawl, yu knoe?” I laughed again, “Do you mean soccer?” “Yess! Teh socker, yu knoe wat I tulk 'bout. Beck en my 'ome coontree, dat eis why dey caul me
'Duckter Seilverhstein,' 'cause I keek-eh dey baul to maek dey goal.” I began laughing harder because she was being such an idiot, “Oh, that is pretty cool, when did you move 120 | LONELYLILLIES
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to America?” She thought for a moment, “Weil, my famulie, yu knoe dat word,
'famulie?'” “Yes, I know the word family.” “Weil my famulie,” she let out a small laugh,
“dey cum for meny reeson, we hav litel beybeh...” She paused, and then began laughing to the point that she couldn't speak and the joke was over, “Okay, I'm done, I can't think of anything else,” she said. I laughed with her, not because it was funny but because it was entirely silly.