When Genres Collide

 

You know how art imitates life, and then sometimes life imitates art imitating life? After a while you have to ask yourself  what is life and what is art.  More important: what’s real?
But if you were art and you asked “What is real?” would you really have a hope of finding an answer? I mean if you’re unreal and your world is unreal, what would you have to juxtapose that unreality against? You could hope, I suppose, that the author has left you some clues as to her reality, but what if she is art imitating life, and you're just art imitating art imitating life?

I ordinarily wouldn’t be allowed to ask questions like these because I’m a romantic comedy. Lucky for me, however, I’m a romantic comedy that centers around a cute 30 something who happens to be an aspiring author, a little nerdy (sans glasses though, that would be too stereotypical) , but pretty. The kind of gal that keeps looking for love, but misses the opportunities because she over intellectualizes everything and often misses the obvious. For example, last week I was signing my self published transcendental comics at an expo and had a near miss with a handsome fella that works for the book store that invited me.

Wait, we should back track here. I’m leaving out the details that really define my genre.

So I was invited by a bookstore that has been carrying my self published graphic novel. They were exhibiting at this big convention in Oakland. My creative partner, the one who draws, the one who usually deals with the guys from this store, couldn’t go. Her sister's baby shower fell on the same day.
Thus I found myself strapped into high heel sandals and squeezed into skin tight leggings paired with an oversized t-shirt that hung off one shoulder as I wriggled my way through a convention center, toting a small blue suitcase full of our books, alone.
I never actually wear high heels, so I was totally unprepared for the pain and obstruction of mobility. As I approached the entrance hall, I attempted to call my contact from the bookstore, who I’d never met. In theory he would bring out the badge that would gain me entry.

The call went straight to his voicemail.
“Hi, this is Annabelle from Sophist Comics, I’m just outside. Give me a call back when you get this.”
I stood there holding the phone in one hand, the suitcase in the other, my oversized water bottle tucked under one arm, my purse under the other, teetering like a two year old's block tower, alternately fumbling phone and water bottle, biting my lower lip anxiously.
I called again with the same result and realized that he probably wasn’t getting reception in the bowels of this beastly mega-building. I’d have to convince someone to walk me to the booth, or page them on a loud speaker or something.
But just then my bladder was too incredibly full, so I waddled to the ladies room. I’d just locked myself in a stall when the cell phone rang. I hesitated. It’s kind of weird to talk to a strange guy for the first time from a bathroom stall. I might not get another chance though, and he doesn’t need to know I’m in the bathroom right? So I answered.

“Hi Annabelle? This is Rory from Amazing Comics. I‘m outside, you must be here somewhere.”
“Hi Ro-”
Flush, flush, FLUSH. Suddenly the toilets in the neighboring stalls become active and somehow this triggered the motion detecting unit in my stall to flush too. Loudly.
“-ry. I just stepped into the bathroom. I’ll be right there.”

Bladder not relieved, I hustled back out of the stall, but I had to wash my hands to prevent the spread of disease. I pumped soap from a plastic dispenser into an outstretched palm then waved it under the faucet. Nothing happened. The motion detector didn’t respond.
There was another silver protuberance hanging over the bowl so I waved my other hand frantically under it and it promptly dispensed more foamy soap. I then had two hands full of soap and the water still wouldn’t come on. I began to pass my hands under the faucets of every sink in the row to no avail.
I started panicking. This was taking forever. Rory would be wondering what was keeping me, and would, no doubt, come to the simplest vulgar explanation.

At last, an aged and diminutive Chinese woman holding a broom and upright dust pan emerged from the side lines. Wordlessly, she shook her head and pushed a small black button at the base of one of the faucets. Water gushed freely.

Despite my embarrassment and nervousness, or perhaps because of it, Rory was extremely nice to me. He sat beside me at the table where I waited to sign the comics that nobody had ever heard off. We chatted casually and soon I was completely at ease.
We joked about his name, about attendees in ninja turtle t-shirts. He confided that he used to have to wear huge glasses until a recent eye surgery. We had one of those sweet awkward moments of intense eye contact after I blurted that I would have liked him even more with the glasses. Then at last I packed all of my books back up and started saying good bye to the surrounding exhibitors.
“Can I help you carry your things out?” Rory asked, his hand lingering on mine after the parting hand shake.
And here’s where my quirk, the overly analytical mind, provided the necessary plot driving obstacle to the romance.
“Uh, I got it in here. I guess I can get it out again. Thanks. It was really nice to meet you!”
Smiling one last time, I waddled , awkwardly, painfully away, a modern, self sufficient gal.

Only later did I realize it had nothing to do with whether or not I needed help carrying stuff out. That was just an excuse so we could leave the convention together, share an elevator ride, stop at the hotel bar for a drink, exchange numbers, meet in a few days at a coffee shop, rendezvous for dinner a week later, escape for a weekend in Quebec, lick frosting from an engagement ring plucked from the crest of my birthday cupcake, etc.

I slap my palm against my head when my creative partner explains all of this to me. We will have to plot another encounter, a trip to the comic book store, a walk past the French school where he also teaches, a slutty dress worn to somebody else’s book signing where I will hide behind a shelf when I see him laughing with a pretty woman who will turn out to be his sister.
You understand, a romantic comedy. That’s me.

When I walk down a sidewalk there’s a smile on my face and my hair bounces in slow motion. I say hello and good morning to the elderly. I don’t know how pretty I am. The sun comes out when I stroll through parks, poets stand me up for dates in tea houses, I’m accidentally rude to nice guys, I rescue kittens from fire escapes and handsome divorcee Dad’s rescue me when I get stuck on fire escapes with kittens. That’s just how it is. And I don’t mind at all. Well, maybe a little, but for the most part I’m content. Embarrassment and awkwardness may fill every scene of my life, but we know two things for sure: I am pretty and eventually I will live happily ever after despite all obstacles. So it’s totally worth it.

That’s why as I shop for groceries on a Wednesday afternoon I smile at everyone that crosses my path. My floral patterned dress is conservative but flirty, my cardigan bright. Tonight's the night you know, I’ll go out for coffee with Mr. Wrong and meet his best friend Mr. Right.
An old woman smiles back, so does a middle aged man, a teen in skinny jeans ignores me, and then it happens. I have an encounter with another genre.
It’s not his clothes. They’re almost unnoticeable. T-shirt, jeans, black jacket, everything slightly rumpled. It’s in his eyes, in the deadened but slightly predatory way he glances at me.
My smile evaporates, I divert my eyes, suppress a shudder. Here is a man accustomed to hurting others, a man who wouldn’t think twice about it if the opportunity arose for him to gain something by it. The knowledge is very clear in me. I need to get far away from him fast before my genre changes in kind.
I will not be a  surprise turn for the worst Takashi Miike story. I hurry out of  the store, heart still racing.

The parking lot seems different, grayer, awash in a dingy murk. The shopping carts look rusty and run down. There is some trash in the flowerbeds. The music of the world has shifted.
I rush forward to my car. Don’t look back. Don’t fumble with the keys. You’ll play right into the thriller author's device.
Once inside the car I avoid rushing to lock the doors. Striving to maintain calm, I start the engine and drive.

Three blocks away I reemerge in my genre when a man in a red convertible pulls alongside me at the light, looks my way and flashes a smile.
On cue I spill iced tea into my lap. I’ve never been happier to be a klutz. I am back.

Belief

Belief was a golden-haired child born in the state of desire within the realm of the word.
The word: right, gleaming, sometimes dark and full of clouds.
All was true.
None was true- just like dreams during bouts of thunder.
He had never been in the realm of the Real, cushioned as he was by the pillowy softness of DESIRE and THE WORD; he only caught short glimpses of the Real, tiny fragments of light he could never remember. It was as if they had never happened. The golden-haired child, born on the white bed during the time of blue, little did it know that nothing born of the word could walk in the realm of the Real.

Belief was born in a place where the urge to fulfil needs is transferred into abstract longings whose ends can never be met, a place where yearning goes on and on because there can be no end to yearning. Belief was a necessity, a logical conclusion to such yearning. It worked like a bottle with a cork, how tight it kept all those things locked down. Blue and brown bottles all lined up and evenly spaced on the shelf, tidy and ordered and gleaming like church windows in noonday sun.

Belief was a natural product of desire. Oh, that dress. That kiss, more, more, please.
Whereas a need could be met, a desire knew no fulfillment and so it naturally blossomed into Belief.
Oh, that touch, more, more please.
It is the notion which makes us believe that what one longs for does exist, will happen, is coming eventually to those who are good, to those who believe. The houses they promised, the dream they spoke of, the heaven that awaits after toil and suffering, the approval of the father after a lifetime of whipped dog-like subservience, the love of one and only one other human.
All of it- belief.

Once, not too long ago, Belief knew he was a man of god. He was a street preacher with long blond hair pulled tight behind his head. Many people regarded him as a semi-delusional zealot who imagined he could hear God in his head. He stood by the courthouse steps and told them the evil of their ways. He was a man in an old brown suit that was one inch too short for his pale limbs.
Many people prayed to god. Hands clasped tightly, desires leaking from their mouths. They talked to him, some even thought they heard answers or saw signs in response. But when a man did nothing but stand on the street and preach and shout and lecture to the passers-by about the word of God, the majority, even the church-going people, thought that his mind had slipped into the cave of fantasy. From his own perspective, he was the only one who believed in the lord enough to give up all other things. He saw himself as truly devotional, the messenger, a solider in God’s army.

It all happened for Belief within the realm of the symbolic order. All of this happened because a symbol was not the thing itself. A car was not a car, love was not love. Words, words, symbols. It was like a shadow, it took a shape that couldn't be grasped, a shape that could take on a life of its own and birth new shapes with no correspondences to the Real. These shapes, these shadows with no correspondences, were the makers of DESIRE, the grandparents of Belief. They were dark storms that clouded the Real.

Belief constructed a world around himself, as we all do, to explain his existence. It was elaborate and full of detail, rich in explanations which he liked to share often with whomever would listen. In his world, God spoke to him, God commanded him. There was one word that mattered, one sound that trumped all others. In his world, men could do what they wanted with their women as long as they were married. It was what God commanded, what he actually wanted for the men of earth. He knew that people must be humbled, for now their pride eclipsed their accomplishments, and their ego would not let in the glory of the lord. They needed to experience the low human-state so they could one day experience a higher one.
It was the only way. He knew it. As God’s solider, it was his mission to teach THE WORD. God told him the way to humble these humans who coveted their fine clothes, their hot meals, their whims and merriment.

Belief was a prince in the house of DESIRE. He ran to and fro calling for some action or other in his name. People gladly indulged this spoiled child because it gave them Hope, his lovely sister and wife. She was only another word. Hope lacked anything that could keep it from floating away during the night. Hope was the golden-haired sister of Belief. Sticky, sweet and empty. Always encouraging one to embrace Belief, for if you stuck with him, you would get to taste her sweetness, like dime-store candy.

Once, not too long ago, there was a family that trusted Belief. This family hired him to help repair their roof which had been leaking for many years. He worked at their house for five hours one day.
On the 5th night, as had been his plan for several days, he cut a hole in their screen door, which was partially open to let in the wonderful summer-scented night air. He let himself in while the moon was still high. As everyone slept, he kidnapped Hope from her bed.
He had recognized her as his long lost sister and lover. He took her to the woods where he had told his wife to wait for him under the trees. His wife gave Hope a robe and told her to change into it.

Hope and Belief, together once again, offered justification to the house of desire. Like the children of a couple that has become disenchanted with one another, they were the fantasies that made all other fantasies survive.

A small ceremony was performed and Belief proclaimed Hope as his wife. He become one with her, as he would many times afterwards, many times each day. Hope was found nearly a year later walking on the street of a town she once had seen through very different eyes. The colors she remembered had taken on a fractured quality, as though she had merged with some other creature while chained in the woods. The blue authorities wrote down her words:
"Anything I showed resistance or hesitation to, he would turn to me and say, 'The Lord has commanded you to do this. You have to experience the lowest form of humanity to experience the highest.’ I watched him from the ground, talking as he did with emphatic movements. Then he would get on top of me and humble me once again.”

Belief and his first wife were taken into police custody. They were both declared mentally unfit to stand trial. It was Belief's explanation that the court saw as unstable. His preaching on the courthouse steps, his very thoughts on God.

If we could only have Belief we would join God in Heaven and bring Truth back to life. With Belief’s hand in mine, it was okay to kill and take another’s land. His presence supported actions borne from desire, his company justified all actions. Human thoughts became God’s thoughts.

With Belief at your side, you will do any number of absurd things; set out cookies for an immortal in a red suit, or eat crackers and wine and call it the flesh and blood of your God, or burn a person at the stake, or drive your neighbors from their homes and push them into the sea, or destroy all of the natural resources available to you and the rest of your race. With belief, it is what God desires, what God has asked for in an inaudible voice that shook the walls with its power.

The writer of a particular text about Hope used words like “horrific and sick” to describe Belief. This is the conflict. One man believes he is doing what God wants him to do. He is humbling a young woman so that one day she can reach a higher state, so they can both become what they were meant to be. This is Belief.
One deed is thought of as righteous, the same deed is seen by others as evil. Both are words used to describe an action.

There is nothing that “can’t” or “shouldn’t” be done when you can say that Belief is with you. No door can be closed to you when you come from the house of Desire, frothing at the mouth with want of a satisfaction that can’t be had, golden Belief and fair Hope marching at your side demanding that you take, take, take. Take what you want and say it was for Belief. Your basket is full, Belief is there at your side, a parrot on your shoulder.

Even in custody, Belief continuously sang hymns to himself until he was removed from the courtroom. The world around him was crazy, full of evil men who had no contact with God. He sang to remind himself that he was the one with the truth. He was the one with God on his side. He had to sing to protect his world. He sang to protect his symbolic order, the world he had built for himself, the only world that still had a place for him.

He ran amok under the shadowy banners of the house of Desire within the Realm of the symbolic. There it was glorious, there it was beautiful. In the realm of the Real, Belief and Hope vanished like evil spirits.
In the realm of the Real, you stand alone with blood on your hands, raw animal death under your fingernails, spattered on your face, shivering through your bones.

The Real is void of Gods, void of hope, void of salvation or damnation, void of any branch to which you might cling and profess “It is so!” In the state of the real you would not search for your lost sister, because there is no sister to lose, no “other” to humble or cling to, to subordinate or raise higher. There is an endless sea of “something” which defies explanation, which eludes capture in the realm of the symbolic. Whenever you dip your hand into the well of the Real and try to bring it into the realm of the Word, what you retrieve is transformed from life into death, from unity into separation, categorization and humiliation.

The Real cannot be perceived through the word, not through the damaged eyes of Belief or Hope, made of words as they are.
Nothing that can be said is true.
All those who speak lie, from dawn till dusk they lie and only in the darkness is the truth revealed to them, in their nightly visits to the well of the Real. Something voyages between these two realms, the land of THE WORD and the kingdom of the REAL.
When it is in one state it is one thing and when it is in the other it is another. This something is a voyager, sometimes captured by the gravitational pull of the WORD. To be free of the word and of desire you must sacrifice Belief and Hope, stop expending vital energy in supplication to these false deities. They are closest to you, and therefore easiest to reach.
Then you must tell Mother desire that you know she is a lie forged of the illusory substance of Father word and then your tongue will be tied by the white hot heat that leaves you howling and wriggling as you abandon the WORD, achieving lift off.

Wi-Bri

“Why Bri? Why? Why not see with eye so bright? Be like sister Shar, alright?”
She was talking in rhymes again, fingering dusty doilies and looking all around with her strange mech eyes. Brian himself was trying on old glasses from the 90s and early 2000’s, searching desperately through the wicker basket on the counter for a pair that
would help ease his nearsightedness.
“You know Shar. Leave me alone.” Brian answered.
The old Chinese man behind the counter sympathetically pulled out another basket.
“These ah very good. Made 2010. But more espensive.”
“Oh, that’s great, that’s fine.” Brian said eagerly and tried a pair from the newly proffered shoe box of spectacles.
“Oh, Wi-Bri,” the diminutive dark haired girl moaned afresh, “Shar die, Bri. So shame faced by brother dears mech eye fears. Old biddy buggy eyes for poor slob souls, no trade no currency, no lifes. Why Bri want to look like no life? Why not see Bri? See the world as it is Bri? Real, big vivid bright?” Her vacuous mech pupils widened as she swung her body closer to the counter and looked into the basket of glasses. Brian pointedly ignored her and slipped a pair of specs with hardy black plastic frames onto his face.
“You prefer trade or coins?” Brian asked the old Chinese man.
“You have silver piece?” the old man asked.
Brian nodded and Shar sighed.
“What in trade?”
“Bathhouse tokens or this watch.” Brian showed the man the antique watch on his wrist.
“I also have eggs.”
“Everyone have eggs.” The old man said with a dismissive gesture. “I like take bath. Hot bath?” old man asked.
“Yes.” Brian told him. “With soap and a towel.”
The old man grinned broadly,
“Oh, I take.” He said, holding out his hand.
Brian took the token out of his pocket. It was an old corona bottle cap with a stylized bear stamped into the aluminum.
“Oh. Very nice.” The old man nodded feeling the raised aluminum shape of the bear.
“It’s down by the dock.” Brian told him, “Look for the bear on the sign out front.”

------

Brian made his way to the bathhouse after depositing Shar in their family home. His father and stepmother were waiting for her there. They were both Mech eyes as well.
“Are you sure you won’t stay for dinner Brian?” the petite woman with black hair streaked with gray asked him.
He found it difficult to look at their faces for too long, their lifeless robotic eyes terrified him.
Brian shook his head and said,
“Thanks Mary Anne, but I should get going before it gets too late.”
His father put an arm around his shoulders and walked him to the door.
“Thank you for taking Shar out with you son. It’s good for her to get out now and then. Nice glasses by the way.”
“Thank you.” Brian said, “And you’re welcome. She did meet some nice people her own age. In a camera shop.”
“Mech eyes?” his father asked.
“Does it matter?” Brian asked, “But of course, they would be mech eyes to have the interest and the silver to spend on camera components. Only mech eyes care about pin hole cameras dad. No Lifes are busy trying to live.”
“You’re not a no life Brian.” His father said
“I know that. Do you? Or are you all shame faced because of bug eyed Wi-Bri?” He hauled himself out from under his father’s arm. “Goodnight Dad.” He said opening the door to let himself out..
“Wait Bri,” his father protested his departure, but didn’t answer the question. Brian paused at the threshold.
“We delivered a number of healthy kids this spring,” his father said at last, “why don’t you take a goat with you?”

-----

Ursula smiled at him when he walked into the bathhouse with the goat trailing behind him on its tether.
“For you, my love.” He said and she began to laugh until tears came out of her eyes, her real lovely human eyes. She stood up and kissed his cheek and took the goat from him.
“Really Brian? Are you giving me this goat?”
“Yes.” He said, and “she’s ready for a milking.”
“Oh, fresh milk!” Ursula gasped with pleasure.
He followed her out the back door and up the steps that led to the roof garden and her hen house. Brian showed her how to milk the goat and then they put it in with the startled chickens.
Back down stairs they admitted an wrinkled old mech eye and drew a warm bath for him. The old fellow wore an ancient pair of goggles to protect his mechanical eyes from the steam and the possibility of rusting.
“I had the cataracts”. The old man told Brian in a quavering voice as he helped him ease into a steaming tub. “I was quite blind before I let them take out my eyes. Maybe I shouldn’t have waited so long. I had to rely on my son too heavily during all that time, but I couldn’t stand the idea of it. In my time, there was a simple surgery for cataracts, a new lens was put on the eye, my mother had the procedure done by a real eye doctor in just an hour. But so much has been lost. I’m a relic is all. I see fine now, I see all that they said I would. I don’t know as I like seeing all those boogie woogies, but I can take care of myself again.” The old man’s wrinkled body relaxed in the water and he turned his strange silver and copper eyes on Brian, the shutters widening a bit, “I’m surprised that you have your own eyes son. I didn’t know anyone as young as you still did, other than those who are half mad or too sick to do for themselves.”
“Well,” Brian smiled, “There are plenty of people who think that I am mad, because I don’t want the new eyes. The truth is, they frighten me. I don’t want to see all they say that I’ll see.”
The old man nodded,
“I understand that.” He said. “What about your mother? She feels the same way?”
Brian blushed a little. The gentleman was referring to Ursula, his lover, but he made no effort to correct the old codger.
“She’s not like me. She just can’t do it because she bleeds easy, thin blood, some kind of disorder. She’d probably die under the knife. Lucky for her, the eyes she was born with work just fine. And lucky for me too, cause I think they’re lovely.”

-----

“Wi-Bri, come drink with sister Shar and friends.” She invited.
Brian was stunned. Ordinarily Shar preferred if he waited for her at another table, somewhere discreet where she could disavow any familiarity. He never minded the arrangement. He wasn’t sure if he could stand a social encounter with so many Mech Eyes. Those from Shar’s generation were as incomprehensible in their speech as she was.
“Please Wi-Bri?” she pleaded
Soon, standing at the bar with them he regretted, oh so deeply, having agreed. Shar’s new boyfriend, Lexi, was leaning in close, metallic owl eyes swallowing Brian up.
“You must be a good fellow Wi-Bri, no more bringing shame to sharing flower Shar and outstanding family. Lexi’s family not allow marriage with no life in mix, much prestige lost. Now Wi-Bri, we must agree that love most beautiful, most precious, and cheri Shar, most beloved to love struck Lexi, follow Wi-Bri? You must agree, Wi-Bri, to mech eye implants and see the real like Shar and Lexi and let us all be love joined, not lost to silly fears. Wi-Bri must come now with Lexi and Shar and friends to Lexi fathers house for implantation, Lexi father great mech eye maker. With mech eye Wi-Bri and 5 goats, great match made. Lexi Shar forever joined and Wi-Bri see at last.” And here Lexi grinned wide and the others all murmured and nodded in enraptured approval as Lexi clapped Brian on the back.
“Now, let’s all go!” Lexi cried and they began to shuffle Brian out of the Bar, en masse.
“Wait, wait,” Brian objected, “You want me to get mech eye implants right now?”
“Yes, yes,” Lexi said jubilantly, “Right now, together we go all to Mecha, pilgrimage most sanctified, my father’s workshop, Mecha where you will come to see, really.”
“No,” Brian said, “I don’t want them, absolutely not.” But they continued to shuffle him along and suddenly he realized that he must make an antisocial break, one that would surely devastate Shar, if he intended to remain with his eyes intact.
He tried to come to a halt, to push them off of him and step away,
“No!” he bellowed. And they all paused. Then someone jabbed a needle into his arm and he could hear Shar say,
“Shar told Lexi, Wi-Bri a no go embarrassment, make scene, scream and scream.”
“Yes, Shar baby, right, right. No problem though, smart baby Shar, good to bring dream shot. Now Wi-Bri come along, very nice, very quiet.” Now Lexi’s giant copper eyes looked into Brian’s own stunned lid-veiled eyes.
“No worry brother Wi-Bri. When next we meet, Wi-Bri will see, then all will be right. And also, delight Wi-Bri, no cheap aluminum at Mecha, only very best, stainless, steel, silver, copper, very nice. And best of best brother Wi-Bri, you will really see. You will see. When Wi-Bri wakes, he will see.”
Then the world grew dim around the edges and the voices seemed far off and he felt himself drooping and at last, darkness and oblivion settled in.

I Stepped Into The Wasteland

I stepped into the wasteland this morning. I knew, walking into the cold, fog-filled morning, what to expect. I had lived in it for many years. I had walked the trail. Followed the well-marked lines and over the highlighted boundaries. And though I expected it and had some vague sense of the death scent and dim florescent lights, it was stronger than the memory. The building was a wide one story square. We stood in quiet order, spilling from the open double glass doors to the edge of the parking lot. The sun had not peeked out from behind the clouds, and a woman close to me stood clutching her paper cup of coffee. The young man next to me, covered in a large black hoodie, kept a small bottle of orange juice in his pocket. I held my large jar of tea and goat milk close to my heart. “It’s not so bad,” I told myself, the line is moving fast. It’s nice to be out in the world with my tea.” I focused on the warmth of the glass, reaching me though the black wool jacket. The minutes passed and more joined the line. This was a necessary evil in a world of rules. Of bureaucratic technicality and parking signs and permits and details that required our money. We stood in line. The boy in the hoodie coughed and spit into the small pocket of ivy within the cemented sidewalk. I made a face, slightly disgusted at the sound. “Man, you know how close that guy came to hitting me? This close!!” There was an old Cadillac parked illegally in front of some parked cars. Two black youth stood by it. One talking loudly, the other just listening. I turned to the old man behind me. “It’s moving pretty fast.” “What’d you say?” he asked me. “The line is moving pretty fast.” “Yeah, it’s not so bad.” We talked for another twenty minutes while the line was slowly categorized by the gate keepers behind a desk close to the front door. The old man had moved to the city in 1950 and bought his double flat for $11,000. He said it was a lot of money at the time and that to buy it, he spent all his reserves, he could have bought a lot more properties in the neighborhood, in what is now known as Million-Dollar Hill. I turned to wish him good luck on his driving test, but he didn’t hear me, he was already focused on the black woman behind the desk, the woman that would give him a number. I held a small paper ticket in my hand. B042. They had just called B020. I took a seat, the old man chose another spot. I tried to read, but instead I looked around at the many rows of plastic chairs that lined the building. Sitting in almost every one was a bored looking human. This was the necessary evil. The bureaucratic monstrosity that moved like a leviathan without feeling, content only to take the living breath out of all that entered. I looked around again, unable to focus on the letters on the page, on the letters that could take me to another world, in fact, into a galaxy very far away, but there was too much in the room. Too much impatience, boredom…too much. I studied the people standing by the windows of the bureaucrats, the people who had come even earlier than I. B026! It was the cold unfeeling voice of a robot. A female sound that never felt joy. I felt myself becoming impatient, I closed my eyes and brought my attention inwards. “We should have called…” I heard the woman behind me say. “I know,” agreed her boyfriend. My eyes opened. Yes, I should have called. I thought about it so many times the day before, I just never did. Was it to snuff the suggestion? I looked around. There were no happy faces. The people slumped in their hard plastic chairs. This was a necessary evil. Necessary, but soul sucking. I watched the girl standing in front of me. She was tall, with long slender legs, but something seemed a little strange about her body. I scrutinized the contour of her shape through her tight jeans. Her feet were exposed in Coco Chanel sandals, worn for fashion on this cloudy day. I watched her, realizing that she had no hips, she was nearly a solid line. The lines made by her tight panties showed through her jeans. A small leather bag hung by a faux metal chain from her shoulder. She turned and looked around the room, making a face, one she must make often. I closed my eyes once again. I pulled my attention in. B042! It had been an hour. “I’m happy to see you!” I said with a smile. The woman behind the desk did not look at me. She was a small, portly Latin woman. She wore a pink short sleeved sweater. I looked at the small gold pendant on her neck, hanging from a thin gold chain. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but assumed it was religious. “What can I help you with?” She took my forms, I gave her my plastic card, a promise of money contained within its shape. I took some new forms and drove into the city. Hillsides covered in houses greeted me. In the heart of the city, there was traffic. There were a few still sleeping on the cold street. I searched for a place to park and entered another building. More lines, more people coughing. There were more numbers and more waiting and no one wanted to be there. I tried to find his eyes. How would he look at all this? I felt a smile coming from deep within me. For a moment, for the tiniest brief moment, I look around with his eyes and not my own. It all seemed a little pretty, a little humorous. I might use these people later, in a way they would never think of. The monster Samoan woman behind the counter. The other giantess who refused to give me a parking permit because of a technicality. The bureaucrats that were lined up like cattle behind glass windows. I stepped into the wasteland. There were rules and regulations, there was the desire, the desire of something inhuman, that thing wanted life. It took it. It took life with all the waiting and boredom and protocol. I closed my eyes and pulled the breath within me. I looked around. I remembered the day when I was on the street taking photos and everyone was beautiful. “Maybe it’s because you’re really seeing them,” my friend said. For a moment, in the small room, I looked into the wasteland. There was a man with one regular shoe, the other was a high platform. “His legs are different sizes,” I thought to myself. He was beautiful. I looked into the wasteland and saw a flicker. Both remembering and forgetting in nearly the same instant.

Disappearances

I tossed on my thin pillows the other night, waiting for a wave of sleepiness to carry me away. In my layered haze of drifting colored consciousness, I remembered the long forgotten wooden dining room table I ate at as a child. At its modest size, it could easily fit six people, but when there were more guests, there was a wooden insert we would use to make it longer and, during these special occasions, my mom would usually bring out the piano bench and put it at the end of the table. Two small kids would then be seated close together on the back-less bench. I don’t remember when it was bought, I don’t remember picking it out of a showroom or the delivery men bringing it inside and assembling it. Perhaps it was bought before our move to the west coast and transported by truck to a small Southern California town that resembled New England but lacked any of the snow. In my memory, it was always there in our dining room, a piece of furniture, an active and eternal element in the Harari family story. The table itself was a lacquered medium colored wood, a chocolate brown that matched the color of my hair.
Coupled with the table were six matching chairs. The seats were a cushion of woven material in an alternating weave of tan and white yarn that varied in thickness. The back of the chair was a lattice of thin woven wood which was tall and straight and the sides of the chair went straight up but tapered into a carved, elegant peak that curled like crashing waves. Because of the weave on the back of the chairs, every couple of years, my mom would take the broken ones to be re-caned by a man whom I always imagined to have a long white beard and dirty jeans.
We ate almost all our meals at the smaller kitchen table. It was a sturdy table made from blond wood, a table I would expect to find in a modern Norwegian home. One side of it was placed against the wall of our kitchen and, because of its orientation, during meals, two people sat on either end and two sat facing the white wall. The dining room table was only a couple of feet away from the kitchen table. There was no doorway separating the two rooms, the kitchen flowed into the dining room which opened to the living room. In fact, it was not really a dining room, it was a large room with a couch, TV and a fireplace on one side and a large table and bookshelves on the other. The distinction between rooms was made by the tiled floor in the kitchen and the cream colored carpet inside the dining room and also from an architectural accent of the ceiling. During Chanukah, my mom would hang a “Happy Chanukah” banner from the small wall.
The dining room table was reserved for Friday night dinner (Shabbat), holidays, for entertaining guests and other rare occasions. One of these days was a Sunday morning when my dad made his famous crepes and we little girls squealed when he flipped the flat pancakes in the pan with only one hand like a 5 star chef. There was also a rainy Saturday afternoon when my dad made fish'n'chips after my mom and I fought the enormous downpour of rain to get potatoes and white fish fillets at the supermarket. We ate that meal at the dining room table, maybe we had struggled so much to make it happen. Sometimes today, when the smell hits the air just right and the temperature enters me in the perfect way, I will say it’s fish n’ chips weather. On Friday nights and whenever we ate on it, we would cover its smooth surface with either a blue or white polyester tablecloth.
When I cleaned the house on Thursday’s, which also coincided with my dad’s regular payday, I would Pledge the dark wooden table with a soft rag and I would make sure to get the polish into all the grooves and contours of the wooden chairs. There was one blemish upon the table, a spot where my mother had accidentally left the iron face down and, because of the heat, the varnish on the wood had warped and formed a crater like a surface the size of a saucer.

As I lay drifting into sleep, I remembered this table and its little deformed scar. I cannot remember what happened to the table. When I was seventeen, we moved into a smaller condo. I cannot remember if we brought it with us. The table has vanished from our history.

And then another night, as I clutched my pillows and wished I was holding onto the soft folds of a beautiful man, I remembered a small decorative pillow I used to have as a teenager. Its origins begin long before it ever existed. When I was in eighth grade, I was best friends with Aryn Wilder. In junior high, we met another team of best friends: Erin McAdoo and Shelly Coleman. We became a close group, a close knit mass of weird alternates in a mainstream school. For Christmas, we decided to have a gift exchange. We made or bought something for each person, and that year we opened gifts at Aryn’s house, on the linoleum floor of her kitchen next to her big Christmas tree. We took turn opening gifts and the gift opening seemed to go on forever and each gift was thoughtful and beautiful and a little bit of electrified joy. That year Aryn gave me a small pewter seahorse pendant, which I have since lost in my dozens of moves but I did wear it faithfully for years. The next year, in high school, our group merged with some new girls, other awkward, artsy weird girls that we had somehow never connected with the year before. That year, we also had a Christmas party with all the new people. The next year, our group of mainstream rejects had grown to about 10, and we made or bought presents for everyone that year as well. That year, Erin and Shelly had joined forces and sewn me a small yellow purse and a small pillow. The pillow was about a foot square. On the back, what I considered to be the back, was a solid patch of blue cotton fabric with very small flowers, the standard print used for quilts. The front was made from nine patches, each the same size in 3 rows of 3. They were the same style of fabric with little flowers, but each was a different color. Red, blue, yellow and maroon. The red and yellow patches stick out in my mind. The inside was filled with a soft fluffy material. I had that pillow on my bed for years. I cuddled it at night and, when I made my bed, it was the one decorative pillow in front of the other flat ones I slept on.

I have no idea what happened to the pillow. The pillow has vanished from my history. I look around myself now, knowing that all I see, every single thing down to the smallest detail, will some day disappear from my history as well, and then all these things will be like fading dreams, like an old table, like an old pillow, like an old boyfriend, like an old human form. If they will be dreams then, if they will make that leap into a land where rules are not so fixed and heavy, are they not dreams now? Is it only my insistence on their reality that keeps them from fading even as I stand before them now? I press my face into the new thin pillows, finding comfort in their presence, relishing the thought that they haven’t yet disappeared.

Law of Fractals

If you listen twice as hard, the silence will rumble with the raucous calling of birds. Awake to this reality, this invisible landscape that colors your every move, that washes you in the sound of its desire.
They dance right in front of you! They make love on your bed! They play chess on your cheeks! The sounds of their laughter makes the dogs run in circles, their moans are the source of your fevered dreams. It is all right there…next to that little toe.
If you look twice as much, with every bit of those speckled brown eyes, with every fiber you can summon, the sidewalk will turn from a gray slab to a complex pattern of texture and stories. The view will begin to wobble and twist, the houses just beyond the path will scream out with their colors and the energy around the roof will begin to ripple and the ghosts will call to you from their seats on flower pots.
If you listen, clearing your thoughts…if you listen, opening your heart…you will hear the sparkling spaces between words. Small clusters of letters will reveal themselves, showing themselves to be simple vehicles for a greater discovery. With enough patience, the clusters will melt, falling back to assume their place among creatures of orbit and light sound. They are just the link between home and adventure. They are just the servants, the thinly clothed language for discovery.
If you listen twice as hard, the sounds of the refrigerator and the murmur of the passing car and the clink of the neighbor’s hammer will rise and create the Orchestra of Random Sounds. Each exclamation is a welcome addition, a new spark that lights the path. This is the music of unwitting contributors, musicians with no microphone, no stage. They live, so they create. Some know this and listen.
If you listen twice as hard, the shouting becomes a song. The squeals become a symphony of organized anguish. I pull my hands from my ears, I throw off the blanket and fall into their pool.
A muted beat comes from the cage within me. It supplies the steady beat, the deep base that never falters. Boom, boom…booom….I am part of you, the bird cries shower me in lilting pleasure. The roar of a motorcycle plays with the skin above my breasts, wrapping me in its vibrations of ecstatic rotation.
If you look twice as hard, perhaps you’ll notice the lights are sparkling with electric blue dots. Perhaps you’ll see the naked woman with the key around her neck, beckoning you forward. If you listen twice as hard, you’ll hear her words and maybe you’ll taste the wisdom she sheds.

First of September

The old woman lay in her small bed, the morning was still dark, but it was time to rise and begin her prayers. Years of discipline, and still she could not induce her muscles into movement. It was the day, the day around which all other days of the year revolved around, like planets around a sun. Typically, she was a calm woman, a cautious yet compassionate person, un-swayed by fads or the changing eras or superstitions. But this day, the first day of September, frightened the old nun. She had lived for sixty three years, and out of all those she could remember, almost every time, on the first of September, a new tragedy bore down on her life. Today, was again, the first of September, and she lay nearly paralyzed in bed. She feared not for herself, but for the people she knew. All those around her were subject to the fury of this day, she knew not where it came from or why it persisted, but it was real, she had the memories to prove it, the tally of Septembers and their consequences. Her heart beat to an unsteady drum, she awaited the days news with a feverish chill. She had failed, she knew this for certain, despite her subtle pleas, she had not been able to convince him to avoid skydiving. The boy was nineteen, a volunteer that sprouted as organically as the fruits and vegetables he had been able to coax from the dry soil.
The abbey had seen better days, its garden walls were beginning to crack, the paint chipped without shame, for years a fog of decay had clung to the edges of the building, a fog that lingered despite her fervent prayers. Their garden had withered, the fruit trees bore only small bitter fruit and the soil dried to a powdered dust. Their two acres had once been a thriving enclosure, a small but lively home for god and a sanctuary within the city. But the steady source of donations had dried up when news of the latest priest sex-scandal had broken ten years prior. To this day, the city had still not forgiven "the church" and the abbey had been caught in the crossfire. The paper had been printed on September 1st. That was the day the abbey began to crumble.
She thought of the boy, planting seeds in his dingy overalls. He had come to them one day, looking for soil in which to work. He had wanted nothing in return, just space on the earth uncovered by cement or decorative stone…space and soil…time to let the elements conspire and breed. It had been April when he knocked on the wooden door that faced the street. She brought him into her office and he outlined his plans with an innocent smile on his red lips. He had been reading books on soil maintenance and organic gardening, he carried a small paperback in the pocket of his overalls, a small, dingy reference manual that he carried with the reverence of a sacred text. The creases of his hands were stained with dirt and his nails were dirty. To her, he looked like a beautiful angel, a youth unscathed by the clutches of a harsh world. She saw in his eyes that he still believed in warmth and tenderness, that he still held a flame in his heart for the seasons and the slow way of process.
After many months she had learned that three local colleges had offered him a place within their lecture halls, but he was headstrong, she could tell that within the first couple of minutes when he had walked though the door. College meant little to him, he said he felt god in the soil. When gently coaxed, he said he saw the divine living within a hibernating seed, a small kernel that could so easily sprout to life with water and sun. Indeed, it was magic, or the divine, or whatever word was able to hold the vast mystery of nature, and she wasn’t really sure there was one.
He had been offered a path to the world, the world of men, the world that had been carved out and demystified within the collegiate halls, and the young man choose to live under the sun, letting the wind rough his cheeks and the soil stain his hands.
In April he had come, and by the first days of fall, the kitchen was again filled with the harvest of late summer. Lettuce and carrots and strawberries and tomatoes. His careful cultivation had stirred the pot, it had infused the world within the walls with a fresh wave of energy. He fed them all with his efforts. She was fed not just in her stomach, although she was grateful for that, but her very core felt renewed, like a soft rain had come and washed away the outline of gray. It was the red-blooded energy she felt stirring within the stone walls of their sanctuary. And this is why she had failed, she had not been stern enough, she had not clearly communicated the wrath of this day. She had let him leave, knowing that perhaps she might not see him again. He had gone, to be close to god he said, to fly for a moment with the birds. She hoped, she prayed, that this day would not be as typical as the rest.

The Game

The lines outside the amusement park wrapped around the brigade of hot dog vendors and past the lone Mexican man selling little cups of Red Fire Juice and past the young blond teenager on the outskirts of the park, a girl wearing small white shorts and a red baseball cap that matched the logo on the various novelty items she hawked from her push cart. The small cart was laden with baseball caps to match her own, T-shirts and coffee cups and pencils and shoelaces, dozens of items that people, mostly families with small children, could buy and take home to remember their time at the park. And the girl believed that they would remember their experience while they carried the items to the car and then perhaps when they used them occasionally, but she always imagined that the pencil or T-shirt would eventually become an object in and of itself, distinct from the memory of the rides and the popcorn and the $4 hot dogs. And for some reason, whenever she thought of this, she was sad.
This particular Monday, the lines were obscene, worse than they were on the weekends, on the unobserved days of the Sabbath, the lines demanded more patience than almost all people had, more than they could endure. But they did, they would wait for hours, sometimes a whole afternoon to take a 60 second ride. For a brief cluster of seconds, the roller coaster would turn them upside down, swish them to the right, to the left, in a full 360 turn. It would turn their reality into a fleeting mush of colors, their thoughts would vanish, their worries and hopes and desperate desires, for a couple of seconds, the exhilaration of flight was all that remained.
This Monday, the lines were off the charts. Three new games had just been released and the arcade at the amusement park was the only place in all of Los Angeles county to have them. The nerds did not avoid the lines. They came in van after van, truck load after bus load. This day was one of the most important of the year, a pinnacle after months of waiting and reading the buzz and the reviews and occasionally hearing sensational rumors. This was the day, the time to confirm or deny, the moment to test their skill, to feel out the new story, to marvel at the new graphics, to grow hard to the jiggling of animated women, images that always seemed to grow ever larger breasts with each new edition of the game.
The boys in line, the theft of their innocence was long gone, raped years ago by marketing firms and designers with billion dollar budgets and the very society which opened its legs to capitalism, already wet, the seeds long ago sown, decades before the first ships arrived. This land, and in particular, the nexus of Los Angeles, was the world’s most foul experiment. A conglomeration of shiny cars and skinny celebrities and a hope for stardom that kept bringing more fresh meat to the eventual slaughter. To win in this land meant losing everything. No one ever came out the same, and not in the scientific way in which everything changes and time shifts every single one of our molecules…the change here was different, it was light turning to shadow, robots crumbling to clumps of molten steel. The large white letters stayed where they were put and those in their shadows kept up the constant drinking of brown air, young men became slicker shadows of themselves. Women became painted versions of the pictures they burned upon arrival. The town bred a strangeness that was not easily described, and yet could be felt by the watchers.
To win in this land was to dive deep into the world of the unreal. Where cars were easy to steal, where they drove for hours without a flattened bug or an acquired particle of dust. In this unreal landscape, explosions earned points and no matter how many crashes the car endured, the driver could always walk away unscathed. This was the world’s hidden army. Sitting on beds behind closed doors, in the darkness of an arcade or the confines of a basement, this was the hidden race. The theft of their identify had been used as satire and parody, but they were all too present. As much as Hollywood tried to avoid its unglamorous half, here they were, in front of brightly lit screens, waiting in lines that stretched for miles.
These were the games of the year, perhaps of the decade. And they were there to mark its coming, to mark its existence, to experience its passing. And they waited, in the lines that seemed to never move, yet they did, like the lines that appeared after years on a well worn face, they made their way into the unreal.

Friend Behind The Mask

I extend my hand deep into the quick sands of time and lock my hand around something which has been pulled down deep by the strength of gravity. With grave effort, with great curiosity and a sense of awe, I unearth a little katchina doll, a creature with dark brown eyes and tan skin. Her hair is short now, but I remember when it was long and tangled, a massive web of a thick dark mane. Now I am in her kitchen. The window overlooks Beach street and a white building across the way. It is a beautiful window which lets bright sunshine in.
She chops, stirs and shuffles around the kitchen with a look of seriousness frozen upon her face. Her body is plumper than I remember. The girl I knew had muscular legs and arms, her body was lean. I try to capture her in a photograph. The photo is wrong, this is not the girl I remember, but a glance upward reveals that it is an image of the woman before me. The stress, the anger and frustration, I had thought it was all a game, a mask she liked to try on when we were younger, but now it seems bigger than her, a presence that holds her captive. Her new friends expect it. She expects it. A familiar persona.
Searching for my playmate of old, I continue to take picture after picture. I am always looking at her carefully, looking for what I want to see revealed. So often she is grimacing, it looks as if she is in great and terrible pain. Her face flickers with variations of the endless grimace. There is a smile that is a tight mask of horror, a neutral facial expression that looks as if she is baring her teeth menacingly, and a frown that seems to be the least pained of the three. Her neck is tight.
Sitting at the table at last, so much of the work has passed, and even now that she is more relaxed, she is more of something that I thought was an act as a child. I wait patiently to see my friend and at last, for no particular reason, our eyes meet and she is there for a flash, surprised and relieved that I was waiting there for her. My heart tingles warmly because she is alive behind all that heavy armor.
Later amid talks of workouts in the gym and loss of weight, I suggest that she go back to chasing after ice cream trucks. For a moment she is there again, the girl I remember, and she is glad that I remember. And I do, I do remember Angela. I remember that we tore down the burning white sidewalks, the pads of our bare feet pounding against that scalding surface with a dull thud, our hair flying wildly behind us. Faster and faster we ran, listening to the retreating sound of Beautiful Dreamer played over a loud speaker, unable to slow down lest we should feel the horrible burning sidewalk on our soles, unable to stop lest we should loose all hope of catching that van full of cold treats. We ran and ran and ran. The way I remember it, we never caught the truck. The way I remember it, we didn’t really care if we caught the truck. We said that we did care just to have a reason to run like this, like wild things down the meandering circles that were the streets that made up our neighborhood. We ran until the circle had brought us back home, to her green front yard, to the porch where all the shoes sat unused in a basket near the deep shade of a huge tropical plant.
Today we walk with shoes on, back to her apartment with its big bright windows. We walk back with my youngest daughter and, in the dim elevator, I ask my old friend if she remembers the opening line to Glinda’s song from the Wizard of Oz. I can’t remember the tune.
"I can’t sing." She tells me. But she can sing. I know she can. She can sing every song from the entire movie. She is singing it and dancing in the front yard near the sidewalk while we wait for the ghostly sounds of an ice cream truck to find its way to us.
I extend my hand deep into the quick sands of time and lock my hand around something which has been pulled down deep by the strength of gravity. I will not let go. I will not forget, not ever. So long as I am, I will see to it that our soles burn forever, that we sing, breath easily and run un-shoed for all eternity.