Observation #20, 12/6: Somewhere nearby there is a faultline

(Theme: Paranoia)

The hill is slowly slipping down over the sidewalk, headed for the street. The curved trunks of trees, hooked like canes, fighting the pull of gravity, reaching skyward, attest to the slow certain advancement of the whole Arboretum, the forest threatening to crash downward, a train wreck in slow motion. Thin sick rivulets clotted with mud leak out under the strain of all that water, all that rain, storm system after storm system saturating everything, calling out the road workers and their yellow-lighted trucks - won't you prop up this hill for us? In some places they've laid out heavy netting meant to hold back the slow sudden advance of nature but it looks like thin mesh against the hulking mass of all that earth, all that stone looking down on the access road running parallel to campus. And walking along that road, the sidewalk is clear but its pores are filled with silt, the remains of the slide those workers scrambled to clear before working hours and my boots have poor traction, and I slide. It's a short leap to imagine it all coming down and how would I react, what would I do, where could I possibly go? First I see myself sprinting for the environmental science building but I know enough about velocity about speed + direction about force and weight to know I wouldn't make it. Second I see myself curling up into a ball but what good would that do except to kill me quickly, or would I be buried and slowly crushed, drowned? Third I see myself making for the slope, hoping to climb on top of something, to ride a tree down the slide like riding a wave, I've body boarded enough, but then there's that problem of speed + direction and tumultuous motion and force and I already know what happens when a wave decides fuck you, today's not your day. The hill puts itself back together. I walk home. There are no more scenarios to invent because they are exhausted. If it happens today, I am dead. No matter what I do.

Observation #17, 11/27: So it is in the Marathon

(Theme: Almost)

Your muscles strain against frigid November, winter come early, this is the last hill, the last climb your calves are burning hot against your skin you feel the rope of your hamstrings taut in their sheath of muscles your quads quiver and shake, a threat of failure, you feel your bodyheat fly out the crown of your exposed head and there, at the apex, your greatest desire – the finish line – freedom – and the distance grows greater between you and it, here and there, but you push, you push, you push to reach it, even though you know you will only trip on the other side.

Observation #16, 11/20: The Brave Young Seed Who Waited

(Theme: family)

Once upon a time, there was a seed. It fell in witch country and was carried on a wind of blood and superstition deep into the Old South. There it landed in a desperate time, when the regiment was failing so miserably it turned to sixteen year old boys. It found itself on a farm, but the seed did not put down root. The war carried it into dark days and when they were done, it rode in the pocket of a soldier into the West. It watched the soldier’s family of ten children grow out of the Texas dust, but the seed did not put down root. One of the soldier’s sons, then grown, stormed away north with the seed in his luggage. He set down his load to live like a hermit in the Arizona desert, but still the seed did not put down root. A young girl came on troubled times in her home and went South to sand, cacti, tarantulas and tortoises. She stayed for a year and when it was up, the seed found its way into her shoe where it bothered her all the way home. She finally knocked it out on her front stoop. It was a grey, rainy day, but not too cold. The seed found a small patch of earth and finally put down root. First it was one, soon it was two. With all its strength the seed drew its long lost brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins and nephews and nieces from all over the country and soon they stood side by side, a regiment in the Northwest, all connected with their roots woven together.

Observation #15, 11/15

(Theme: finding the danger in the ordinary)

                                                                                      

Sleeping:

Sleep looks at you from across the apartment. You can feel him sitting on the edge of your bed, his eyes burning through layers of plaster and drywall, matchsticks waiting to be blown down. He looks and looks at you and you feel the tingle at the skin of your neck, your temple.

No. You work. The screen of your laptop vomits technicolor noise onto the plane of your face and the sting of it keeps you awake. Still that tingling. A crawling. Something desperate to find a way into your eyes, into your brain.

He says your name.

Your forehead droops dangerously close to your keyboard, you jolt upright. Bidden, you go to your bedroom door, your feet dragging molasses-slow across cheap, coarse carpet. The knuckles of your toes are rubbed raw by the time you arrive.

Yes, he is sitting there. Tonight he looks like Hypnos, the way the Greeks saw him, nearly naked but comfortably so, sun-kissed and strong from some gymnasium or other exercise in the Elysian Fields. His hair is dark, curly, and entangled with the feathers of the white wings rising from behind his ears like a strange crown.

“Come,” he says, his eyes so dark there is no difference between pupil and iris, so dark you can see most of the room and all of yourself in them. Lost. “You must rest.”

Your stomach clenches, you clutch at the door frame for support, the bed is calling you to it, with him still sitting there, persuasive. No, no, you can’t and you won’t.

“You haven’t slept for four days, an eternity,” he shakes his head and his curls sway but his eyes do not move, do not blink. Dead eyes. “Mortals are not meant to wake so long.”

You know it can be done, it has been done. To never sleep again. To blot out all the dreams. All the dreams and every time you’ve woken up screaming. Screaming and bruised from remembered violence. Paul Kern did it in the Great War, you can do it now, with or without the bullet that left him forever wakeful.

He knows what you are thinking, can see it in the defiant definition of the muscles of your arms. “No. He nearly died for that exception and even then sometimes he slept with his eyes open and mind awake. One way or another, you will sleep the years away with me.”

In those dark reflections you see the door frame splinter under your hands as exhaustion comes on like riptide, a great current pulling you toward your sheets, toward his eyes, toward oblivion and into your suffocating, brutal, ripping, bleeding dreams and

He blinks.

Waking:

You are awake. You are fully aware, every synapse singing, every nerve ending searing into your muscles, but aching with the weight. The weight of the hours lost, the weight of the comforter, the weight of the day. You want to suck in a breath, to feel your ribcage expand, but the weight is too much. It is crushing. It takes all of your strength to even open your eyes.

You knew he would be there. He’s always there. Every time you wake.

A tall figure – he must be – insect thin and dressed in black, hunched tightly and face overshadowed by the darkness of the corner made by two of your bedroom walls and the ceiling. For his thinness you call him the Straw Man, and he is watching you. You can’t see any of his features, save for the glint of eyes from the occasional passing car outside. He never moves or speaks, just holds himself there on the ceiling and watches.

He doesn’t need to make a sound. The room is full of whispers. Though you can see him there the lingering sense of terror that accompanies him is all around the room, especially everywhere that your periphery cannot reach. Sometimes you think you hear the grate of metal or the sick slick sound of serpent skin on carpet, magnified hugely, coiling somewhere nearby.

These noises, the terror, slowly pass and fade. But no matter where you are, outside of this room, outside of this town, he is always in some corner. Sometimes you think the heaviness is a thing he carries with him, presses down on you so hard that you are drowning in the soupy air, but you know it is just the weight of your life, trailing after you, growing ever shorter, ever more frail; you know it somewhere in the back of your mind.

So today, like every day, you force your leaden limbs out from under the covers, strain against your own weight to sit upright. It takes an hour to stand. You turn toward the door, you can see into your bathroom. 

As soon as you focus on the sink the carpet extends out between you and the faucet, stretching impossibly, it’s miles away, you’ll never reach it, but you heave yourself forward, thirsty, reaching.

And the Straw Man watches you go.

Observation #9, 10/25: Refract

(Theme: Fairy Tales)

Once upon a time there was a girl who lived and breathed for fantasy. Everything un-real was a delight and everything impossible brought with it a sense of joy inherent in that the thing or person or place was just that: impossible. She whiled away hours and days reading, inventing, dreaming, sculpting herself until she could look into the mirror and see something impossible. And that brought joy to her. She so loved being impossible that she buried all of the possible parts of her far, far within herself, so far that they were lost.

But one day this girl began to change. Her hips swelled and stretch marks splintered her sides like trails left by snails in the dust.

She ran to her mother, “Mommy, mommy, I’m puffing up like a balloon! What is happening to me?”

But her mother did not look up from her book, and said only “It’s nothing, dear.”

And the girl went back to her impossibilities.

But then small hairs began to appear under her arms, on her legs, and in the most embarrassing of places.

She ran to her mother, “Mommy, mommy, I’m sprouting fur! What is happening to me?”

But her mother did not look up from her cooking, and said only “It’s nothing, dear.”

And the girl went back to her un-reality.

But then her chest began to inflate and jiggle when she moved.

She ran to her mother, more hysterical than ever, “Mommy, mommy my skin is sagging and falling off! What is happening to me?”

Her mother looked up from her painting and looked through her calmly. “My dear,” she took her by the shoulders, “You are growing up. Soon you will need new clothes and a new room and new kinds of books to read. You will want different things and spend time with different kinds of people. You will change and grow and learn so much.” Her mother embraced her.

“But mommy,” said the girl, “I have already changed myself in the mirror.”

“No, sweetheart,” said the mother. “You have to leave that behind.”

And the little girl ran back to her mirror and all she could see were those possible parts she had buried rising up again. She tried and tried to shape herself back the way she used to be. She tried once, and the stretch marks burned brighter. She tried again and the hairs grew darker. She tried a third time and her chest grew heavier than ever! She tried a final time and she burst wide open, and was standing there the way she was supposed to be: impossible. And that brought her joy.

Observation #7, 10/18: Illuminate

(Theme: Vacancy)

The light went out of her eyes a long time ago. There wasn’t much we could do – that we could ever do – except hope that the ‘no’ would someday go out of her ‘vacancy’ sign. After a year passed we wondered every night if she would have wanted this, vegetating, little more than the reason for several machines to exist. After two years dad started drinking. He would go into rages, maybe because this was his fault in the first place and he knew it. He would scream about pulling the plug. It was around then that mom left us. I went to live with a friend. He never did pull the plug after I told him he didn’t know anything about what she wanted (she never was one to talk about sad things, even if I knew now it was all a façade) and that furthermore, if anyone was going to do it, it would be me. He stopped coming to the hospital after that. On the night of the third year I brought her her usual bouquet, lavender and jasmine from the park, and held her hand, and she sat up and looked at me. She said my name, and

“How long was I asleep?”

An Exercise in Collage: Margaret and the Highwayman

So we worked in collage for our latest exercise. At first I was having a hard time figuring out how to go about it. Luckily, I remembered doing a found poetry prompt in high school Literary Arts with a good friend, and decided to start over, this time with scissors and glue. Points to anyone who can identify my sources. (Click to enlarge.)