img 3

img 2

History in Books

I remember hovering over "Dear Zoo", lifting the worn flaps, hissing for the snake, my dad's voice grumpy for the camel.  The puppy at the end was the happiest picture in my small world, the close second was the "Dolly Dolphin" picture in the Go Fish game I played.  I remember sitting on the stairs crying over the Go Fish game because my dad wouldn't let me win one day.  But that doesn't really have anything to do with the worn, dog eared picture book that henceforth stereotyped all zoo animals in its narrow parameters.

When I was very young, perhaps seven or eight, my second cousin from England came to stay.  She wore make-up; at first I thought she was a witch.... but then I decided I loved her.  I remember her standing in the archway between the living room and kitchen in our house, and saying "The best book I ever read was the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  You should read it too."  So I did, and it was that book that taught me to long for another world.  I fell in love with Puddleglum, I wanted my God to be a Lion.  It was a deep magic from that book that made me forever morally Christian, even if it is my destiny to be devoutly atheistic. 

It was this book that made me want to be a writer.  I was so frustrated with the ending, and Aslan's promise of a "Final Chapter" that never came that I tried to craft my own.  I decided that for the rest of my life I'd devout my existence to writing this "Chapter".  It lasted for about three pages.

Doctor Dolittle, still young.  Three series of books happened for me at once, really.  Doctor Doolittle, the library at school, the yellow pages, the musty smell of age.  Naturalist, Polynesia, I had a parrot like her, or at least I told myself she was like that parrot, she sat on my shoulder and talked in my ear.  She became part of my reality.  She, and the Wizard of Oz.  Those books were from the school library too, they were cloth bound.  I traced all the pictures.  If Puddleglum was my first crush, the Scarecrow was my second.  And there I was, three Wizard of Oz books on my desk in 5th grade, and I wanted to tell everyone how great they were but I ended up hiding behind them as I was taunted.  I hated the movie.  The scarecrow was wiser in the books.

"Off to the Faraway tree, Jo, Bessie and Me."

The year after that was the year I lost time.  Every class period for six months, the class would do a review book after reading time for about half an hour a day.  I just read, probably under my desk.  the teacher didn't notice.  I didn't notice.  When he realized I wasn't turning in my reviews (finally) I was lost and confused and in tears.  I couldn't remember that slice of time where the reality of the books finished and the reality of math began.  That was the year of the Farthing Wood, the day when we escaped the forest with fox leading that was being cut down and i traveled with badger all the way and mole and it was cold sometimes but everyone ended up safe and we could hear whistler up in the sky and it was dappled sunlight and clear.

Brother.

The horizon was broiling.  Hera could feel the foam prickling her skin.  The breeze cooled her ankles. Her wet garments slapped at her thighs and knees.  Salt water blew in her eyes.

He didn't like being disturbed.

What?

I am penetrating the... her voice was lost in the burgeoning thunderous wind.

When he blinked, the stars twisted into a temporary new shape.

Anna Contemplates

Subtle nuance with you.  I am. In.

I imagine...

When you...
I
then....

I am aware of the way I blush.  It burns my cheekbones.  I feel it in my chin.

img 1

Sugar Bowl

"These owls, they're everywhere man."

Phil flashed an odd carnival smile at Katy and Robert who had just ambled into the Sugar Bowl, holding hands.  Robert gave Phil a deadpan look and walked to the counter where a kid wearing a hawaiian shirt stood expectantly waiting for his order.  Katy sat down across from him, her green eyes sharply penetrating him before she looked up at the TV in the corner.

The Pope was dying.  For some reason he was always dying here.

The seats were orange, the food was greek, but greasy and often fried.  Phil was picking chunks of onion from his normal gyro out of a greasy paper wrapper.  He looked at her with vague confidence.  "Owls"  he repeated, nodding at the table.

For half a second Katy thought she caught a glimpse of wings moving in the speckled linoleum, but it faded as soon as she focused her eyes on it.  She sighed.  "Look Phil, stop acting all crazy for no damn reason."

Three years ago she had broken up with Robert for three months.  During that time she made out with Phil.  She couldn't remember much, she had been a little drunk at the time, she just remembered worrying his lip some as he awkwardly pawed at her curves.  She knew Phil remembered it every time he looked at her.  He was gnawing his finger nail right now, looking over her shoulder, flashing his eyes to her face and chest.

"Sorry Kat.  I don't mean to worry you."

Suddenly Phil stood up, and walked over to the pinball machine in the corner and waggled the toggles a bit.  There was an "Out of Order" sign on the console, so he didn't put a coin in.  Katy was watching Robert, he knew that.  He never checked, because he knew.

He looked up at the TV.  He could have swore the Pope died last week.  But maybe that kind of stuff just didn't change here.

Anna and the Curtains

"You are very kind and non-confrontational."

Anna looked at the curtains, which waved at her slightly from the corner.  She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms.  "I am not... not... crazy, I swear.  I don't follow you around like a goon.  I know you're not perfect or any bs like that.  You're frickin' nuts is what I think."

The heating vent turned off.  The curtains hung in wide ripples, still, silent. 

"You notice me, don't you?  I can't tell you, can I?  Inopportune, crazy, mess."

She dug her fingernails into the hem.  Heavy cloth.  Dank yellow color.  It didn't respond. 

"I don't believe in destiny.  Destiny is bullshit.  And you... you'll never know what I see you as.  How can everyone else think you're so unexceptional?  I've done the stupid teenager thing.  I cried.  I did the mature adult thing.  I questioned all this.  All this.  It's not like I didn't talk it out with myself.   It's not you who changed me, it's myself.  I made sure of that.  I just needed a chemical reaction to set me off."

There was a long pause.  She looked down at her feet.  The laces of her shoes were muddy.  The heater gasped, and the curtains breathed. She looked up; they were swaying.

"My... catalyst."

stars

It wasn't enough to walk along staring at the way the sky played with the clouds, dragging them over the stars like a child dragging a blanket over its toys.

That was yesterday.


She was undergoing another transformation now.

Owl

there was a popular idealization, an icon, this owl.  He was there, his backpack tossed over the back of the chair, his hands folded behind and buried in his head of auburn hair.  There was a fashion now where the owl was popular, smeared across book bags, and t-shirts, icons, figures, somehow, always there.  Big yellow eyes.  Something to do with Harry Potter, maybe.  Some virus that wraps around the masses' hearts and dives into their wallets.

So the ceiling, one of those foam board tile things with pinpricks.  He looked up, and there it was, the owl.  Some kind of pictorial creation.  Flitting like a stop animated cartoon from slab to slab.

Hera

The Mother stood on the edge of the beach.  Her black hair curled around her temples and down her shoulders, the slick wet of them sticking to the nape of her neck with the rain that fell from the oblivion sky.  Newness of life, she was, she brought forth.  Women, we are the only ones who feel the pain in the nascent fog, heavy with wet, and life.

Hera was still lithe, still regal in her bearing.  A goddess mother after all has a form that is nothing more than a skin around imagination and eternity.  Her loose light garment stuck to her body, both were pale white, a person who grabbed the garment and pulled may at first have wondered at the elasticity of her skin.  The sea, it’s foam white horses rushing at her knees, drew back the sand under the soles of her feet.  Tiny enamel clams encrusted her toes.  Seaweed wrapped itself around her ankle.   She didn’t kick it off, but started to walk along the shore, dragging it with her as her brown eyes stared at that point in the mist where the sea and the sky merged, the pulsing line where water and air converge.

She couldn’t remember how long she had stood on this shore.  She wasn’t sure if her skin was new or a husk reawakened with the moisture in the sky.

Goddesses do not fear; they have no life to lose; they cling to the backbone of existence.  But as she stared at the horizon line, Hera noticed that the mouth of her human skin had dry lips.  Perhaps something was pushing through her pride, a certain turmoil at the sight of the indescribable pulsing against the horizon.

  She saw her brother.  He, not a mother, needed no form that wasn’t the movement of the waves as they battered the shore and the sky.