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| I'd like to think it was you.When my friend's ex died, he came to me when I was hanging out with
Jeff. The man's nickname had been Cookie, and right before our
eyes, the cookie jar moved across the flat, dry counter without any
provocation. I felt something in the air, like somebody breathing
on my neck, and knew that it had been Brian.
At the diner on Saturday night, after Ryan's funeral, I was feeling
very depressed. I told Jordan how much I wanted to disappear and
never tell anyone where I was going. I told him that I was
certain that Jon would be happy if I were to die. And then I
said, "I should be dead."
There was a half-full coffee pot on the table, and suddenly it
moved. I'm not kidding. The pot actually moved an inch or
so to the left and came to rest there. I stared at it with my
mouth hanging open and then asked Jordan if he had seen it. He
hadn't. But just as he asked me what I was talking about and I
told him, "The coffee pot just moved," it moved again. It moved
back to the spot it had been sitting in, as though someone had pushed
it back and forth. Jordan saw it the second time.
I wondered if the table was slanted, and then I wondered that if that
were true, why nothing else had moved. I wondered if it had been
the moisture under the pot that had done it, but there was only a thin
ring of wetness on the table surface. Jordan suggested an air
pocket inside the pot. But if that were true, why would it have
moved so smoothly to the right and to the left again? I pressed it
gently with my finger, but it took more pressure to move it than I
would have thought.
I'm not entirely sure what caused it. But I did
think Ryan was with us... and I can't help but wonder if he was trying
to send me a message, just as Brian had done with the cookie jar.
Either way, I took the hint.
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| June 12th.I can't believe he's gone. I had this wonderful dream that we were sitting together and he was showing me a photo album. It was filled with pictures of everyone who had loved him, all through his short life. The album was so thick and heavy that the pictures almost didn't fit. I wonder where he went? I wonder what it's like .... in the in-between. | | |
| In the desert.That's all you need to know, and all I'm going to tell you. | | |
| Last Tuesday, I went to the Frida Kahlo exhibit in Philly.
I went with a class from my old high school and I got to wear a bright
orange 'Chaperone' sticker. Then I hung out with a couple of old
teachers of mine and we explored Philadelphia and met some interesting
artists, among them Christina Penrose, a painter whose rendition of a
scene in Mexico adorns my bathroom wall.
We chilled out on her roof garden, which was pretty awesome. I'd never been on a roof garden before.
Here's a view of the building across from her deck. That's not wash on the line; they're Tibetan prayer flags.
I had a lot of fun. We went to the Reading Terminal, walked to
Penn's Landing, had dinner at a Burmese resturaunt and went home around
ten-thirty.
Last night, a strange
old man tried to convince me that college was the only way to get a
good job. His house had just burnt down and he's living in a
motel. He went off on a tangent about a book he'd like to write,
something about six people who killed themselves in a town he's
from. I nearly told him that I don't want a good job, or any job,
and that I don't care, and that I don't want to endorse the enormous
Business that is College... that all I want to do is write... but I had
to get back to work.
Everyone around me is miserable. People's relationships --
marriages and other intimate relations -- appear to be falling apart
everywhere. I'm not sure what's going on with a couple of married
friends of mine, but I know they're hanging by a thin thread.
Hopefully, they can pull it back together, because I really believe in
the love they feel for each other. I think they do, too.
Next Monday, I'll be
in Nevada. Everything that's happening lately makes me think of
the friend I'm going to visit, and I hope he's doing all right after his latest heartbreak. At least I am happy with myself, and Jordan and I are happy together.
This Tuesday is my
next class. I just hope that my students are a little farther
along than they were a couple of weeks ago. I keep getting the
classic excuses: "I left my notebook at home," "I forgot," etc.
What's depressing about it is that I have a lot of writers in my
class. If I had been in a Fiction Writing Workshop in high
school, I would have done all the homework, and then some.
It's dissapointing to see people who are so lucky to be in a school
that is so much better than any -- yes, I'm going to say it -- shitty public high school who still fail to care, despite their perfect situation.
Life is all right for me, but I wish it were just as good for everyone else.
| | |
| Luis and Lucinda.Luis Sarone stared
unblinkingly at Lucinda’s eyes, watching as they moved rapidly beneath her
lids. Her lips sang a silent song and
the longer he watched her, the more he almost thought he could hear the
words. He began to wonder what it was
that a siren sang of. If he could
hear the words, what would they be? He imagined that if a normal person could
tune into those syllables, listen to those age-old magical phrases, it might
drive one insane. Something so
delicate, so powerful, was too damaging to exist within the confined spaces of
the human psyche. Only Lucinda would
ever know what she was singing and it was unlikely that she would remember
those words when she awoke.
“Lucinda,
can you hear me?” Luis whispered. He
clutched her hand in a desperate fashion, as though she might disappear at any
moment. Her face was red with sweat. Beads of perspiration sprouted from her
pores like tiny luminous insects. He
put his fingers to her neck and felt her pulse; it beat like a tribal drum, so
hard and so fast that it felt as though it might stop altogether. And that was what terrified him. “We’ve hardly gotten to know each other,” he
murmured. “Don’t…” He sighed and
squeezed her hand. “Just don’t.”
--From "A Siren for the Dead," by Rosa Sophia.
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