Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society

Dear Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society Members,

Mr. Seymour Reid, former Director of the Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society, now Assistant Director of same said Society, is a man of operational salaciousness. That is to say that, since our incorporation, he made the workings of our Society look infinitely sexier than they actually were.

Turns out Seymour Reid is a rat. That is the reason that the Board of the Society has hacksawed a leg from the chair of his appointment.

And now that we've identified him as rat, let us tell you what type of rat he is: He is pack rat. Yes, that horrid sort of rat who scrounges life's flotsam and jetsam, like a greedy squirrel guzzling more than his fair share of acorns. Reid's apartment teemed with canister upon canister of original prints of one-off films, coiled copies of luminary cinematic cartographic works of all genres: Drama, comedy (black and romantic and slapstick), chick flick, foreign, pornographic, and horror.

The list goes on, but if you're not getting the gist, well frankly there's something wrong with you. Maybe you should consider our continuing education course SRCCS095: Cartographic Cinema Studies for Beginners, Returning Students, and Complete Dolts.

Next round of classes start in mid-June.

But back to thick of the plot: When the Society's "alleged" "remote" "film shed"—the one that "only he" had "keys" to or knew the "location" of but couldn't map from "memory"—"allegedly" "burned" "to the ground", we members of the Society all sobbed together over our collective misfortune.

The insurance money came through though, and we cooed at all the zeroes that trailed the 7. Remember how we cooed? Oh we cooed. But no amount of cooing could ever quell the tremendous sense of loss we felt. Am I right?

Remember how, in the Twinesdale Library's Community Room, we all talked for what felt like weeks about how it didn't matter that we didn't have a single masterpiece remaining to fill what would have been, without all the talking, an evening silence and charting of coordinates? We shared our feelings, became One, which is so much more than Many.

It felt romantic, didn't it, to be missing something loved by so few? It did.

But the shed? There were never any films stored there. That shed may as well have been a leprechaun crowned king of the Bermuda Triangle, because it never existed.

This pack rat, our rat, (now) Assistant Director Mr. Seymour Reid, was at home every night, hosting private showings from our archives for a party of one.

He used an antique film projector to disperse the images and dialogue that express who were are over his filthy, off-white living room wall. He'd constructed his furniture out of some of the canisters and used others as artistically painted wall-hangings, and still others he used to warm tortillas on his stove. He was, almost literally, completely surrounded by things that are and should have always been ours.

Well, we've reclaimed them! They are in their rightful hands once more. Our hands. The Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society's hands. Now please set down those towers of life-saving canisters and smack your hands together in a little clap.

Haha. I'm giddy, giggly! Can you tell? But in all seriousness...

The rumors will continue to grow, and the Society’s official position is: Let them.

Let them be like a desert overrun with Jumping Cholla Cactus. Let them be like Romanian infants gone stir crazy in their cribs, who gets more aloof and angry as their flesh and bones bellow toward adolescence. Let them be like a bathtub full of snakes in a place where mice don't exist, so the snakes feast on each other until the strongest becomes the sum of their total.

But please, be civil when you see Mr. Seymour Reid at our meetings. And please continue to make your membership dues payable to him. The Society is his namesake, after all.

Sincerely,
The Board
Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society

fold it up

Listen/download:

Rench
"Fold It Up"

(3:24)

Letter from a loved one

My dear
The time since we last spoke
Has passed so quickly
So much has occurred
In the moments
Of your life

My dear
You have framed so many photos
Hang them delicately on your walls
I see you look at them often
That pretty smile
Regretful tears

My dear
You have adorned yourself
In my jewelry
Items you have made anew
As you walk through this life
Watching it with you

My dear
You have questioned this life
I have provided for you
Paths chosen all alone
With strength
I have told you

My dear
Patience please
I hear you speak
The darkest of the night
May I still have this dance
For the rest of your life

David Attenborough's The Life of Birds

Good Boy

I'd heard him scuttling across the floor of my bedroom all that morning, his claws tapping on the hardwood each time he came over to check if I was awake. He wanted to go on a walk and I was, in his opinion, rested enough. As I slid my legs off the bed and pushed myself upright he became excited and started doing little figure 8's by the door. I pulled myself into my pants and shirt and we headed outside.

While we were walking I noticed his claws were still making the same clicking sound and I decided to cut his nails when we got
inside. We returned up the stairs and he looked at me expectantly, waiting for his treat. Normally I just drop it on the floor, but this time I made him come get it out of my hand so I could snatch his collar. He crouched and backed away, but I was too fast. I dragged him into the kitchen and got the clippers.

I'd just started on the third leg when it happened. I misjudged the length of the nail and he yelped and jerked his paw from my hand. As the thick red liquid started bubbling from the wound I flinched and reached for the dishtowel hanging on the oven door. The blood was spilling on his chest and I tried to apologize as I wiped it from his fur, but he just looked at me and began to shake. I wrapped the dishtowel over the wound, hastily finished the job and freed him from my embrace.

He stood on the foot well and didn't appear to be in pain, but something would have to be done to stop the bleeding. He sat down and started licking his foot and I got some gauze and tape, competing with his tongue as I secured the bandage. He followed me into the living room, seemingly ok with his new footwear, and plopped down on his blanket next to the couch.

Later that day he got up and started across the room. I looked up from my book and noticed that the bandage was now completely red, so I rose and followed the little trail of paw prints he left on the floor from his bed to his water dish. I watched as he casually lapped up the water, ignoring the growing pool of red liquid forming around his foot. I reached down to lift his leg and the soaked bandage came off easily in my hand. As I secured a new larger bandage around his paw he continued to drink, annoyed at my interference. I cleaned the prints off the floor and left the house for the afternoon.

When I returned later that evening, I again found the room covered in small red footprints. I followed them into the kitchen and then into the living room, where the footprints were concentrated around my dog, asleep on his blanket. I changed his bandage once more and cleaned the floors, but the bleeding continued throughout the night and by morning I was worried.

I phoned the veterinarian and she suggested we come in, so I loaded him in the car, the blood pooling around him on the seat. I apologized to the Vet for the mess we'd made in the waiting room, but she was kind and said not to worry, that sort of thing happened all the time. She cauterized the wound and sent us off, but by the time we got home it was bleeding again. I took him back that evening, but that time only an hour or two passed before it opened up again. We repeated this many times over the next few days, until I finally convinced her to teach me how to cauterize the wound at home. It seemed to work for a while, but after some time the effect of my repeated soldering dwindled to nothing.

As the weeks passed I became increasingly consumed with his care, but no matter what I tried his condition remained the same. I made him a series of washable bandages that I changed many times a day, but he still bled through them while I was at work or sleeping. I spent most of my free time cleaning up the marks and stains he'd leave in the apartment, eventually buying scraps from carpet stores to cover the areas with the heaviest traffic. At night he slept in the bathtub on a little pile of blankets, a small river of blood flowing steadily down the drain.

The first few months were hard, but I'm getting used to it now. When we walk around the neighborhood he leaves a trail of footprints that becomes almost a solid line if it doesn't rain for a while. Everyone knows about us, and most cross the street when they see us coming. It feels as though every surface in our apartment is saturated with his blood, but I no longer mind. I've stopped scrubbing the floors, I've stopped changing the carpet scraps, and I've stopped making him sleep in the tub. I let him sleep in the bed with me now.

downtimes

She chewed the top of her straw, then sucked up a sip of Diet Coke. Downtimes were a drag (she preferred to stay busy), except when Mr. Frey was around, inspecting the tables and the kitchen like some detective on one of those forensics shows.

“Sandy,” he called. “Something is sticky under here. Let’s hope it’s maple syrup.”

She set her soda down on the counter and grabbed a soapy rag from the tub, and approached the offending table. Mr. Frey pointed, his finger encircled by a heavy gold ring. Was she squidged out? No, she wasn’t. She was used to it. Plenty of other girls would be grossed out, were scared to get their hands dirty. But not Sandy. She wiped the goo with a hard-won resolve and then wiped it again. Syrup, she said to herself. Syrup.

When the table squeaked clean, Mr. Frey moved off to continue his examination in the kitchen. She tossed the rag back in the tub and resumed her straw chewing. Not as good as a cigarette, but at least it gave her something to do. She chewed till her teeth hurt. For a few days, she’d been strong, but a brutal arctic freeze had settled in, the days were dark, and she was damn tired. Weeks of double shifts were taking their toll. If she were busy all day maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but the slow times were killer.

“Sandy,” Mr. Frey said, the kitchen door swinging shut behind him. “Come here a minute.” She walked with a switch, crossing the dining room to stand close to him and his expensive-looking knee-length wool overcoat. “This weather, this economy,” he shook his head, surveying the empty room. “I know it’s been slow.” He handed her something, tucking it gently between her fingers. “If you need more work, just say the word.”

“I’ll think on it,” she replied. Then tossed her sand-colored hair, adding, “And you should think on adding sushi to the menu. You know, dress this place up a little bit.”

“In my experience, dear, dressing up has never been as profitable as dressing down.” He gave her a smile, his eyes lingering on her abundant breasts, then he headed out the door, bells clinging, and down the handicap ramp to his black Cadillac, motor still running. In her hand was a crisp twenty-dollar bill, folded in quarters. She slipped it into her back pocket. When the Cadillac had pulled out of the parking lot, Sandy stepped into the kitchen.

“So, I’m gonna run out for a minute.”

Bev gave her a stern look, maternal and disapproving. “You best not be smoking.”

“I’m not!” she swore. “I have to get to the Kmart. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“What is it this time?” Bev was the no-nonsense head cook. Despite thirty years between them, she numbered among Sandy’s best friends.

“I told you,” Sandy said. “I have a TV on layaway.”

Bev, who was finishing up the dinner rush prep, wiped her hands on her apron. Sandy expected her to lay in about paying down her student loan, but all she said was, “Put on a fresh pot before you go.”
Then the bells on the front door clanged. The TV would have to wait.

“Seat yourself,” Sandy said to a young woman with a small child waiting just inside the door. She trailed them to a booth and placed two menus on the table. “Cold out there today, huh?”

“Pancakes!” the little girl said from somewhere inside the purple scarf bundled around her head.

“Sorry, honey,” Sandy replied. “We stop serving breakfast at one o’clock.” She glanced at the clock on the wall; it was a quarter after two.

“But,” the mother said, “Mr. Frey said we could come for pancakes any time.” Up close, Sandy could see that she was just a girl herself. Nineteen, maybe twenty, with a four-year-old in tow. And if she knew Mr. Frey…

“Let me ask the cook.” She gave the child a wink.

In the kitchen, she asked Bev, “Mind whipping up some pancakes?”

“Pancakes?!” Bev was indignant, like she’d just been asked to slaughter a kitten, dip it in batter, and fry it up. “The griddle’s already clean. Can’t do it.”

“Bev,” Sandy cooed. “It’s one of Frey’s girls. She’s got a little kid and the kid wants pancakes.”

“God damn it,” Bev said. “I don’t care who it is. I said no.” Bev was hardened from twenty-five years’ active duty, serving on the front lines of the school cafeteria. She’d been to hell and back, she’d seen it all, and she knew when to take an order and when to go AWOL.

“Come on,” Sandy tried again. “I’ll clean the griddle up after.”

“Like hell you will.”

“Bev.”

“No.”

“Be-ev.”

She was built sturdy, short and squat, and with her hands on her hips, staring you down, she could be scarier than a Kubrick drill sergeant. But Sandy knew beneath her armor she was all soft and lumpy inside, and little kids, no matter how monstrous they were, well, they still had to eat. She turned her back to Sandy and fired up the griddle, then peered over her shoulder and said, “Where’s my coffee?”

Sandy brought the news back to the table, where the mother had just finished detangling the child from her puffy pink jacket. “And what’ll you have?”

“Just coffee for me,” the mother said. Her face was preternaturally pale, her eyes were sunken into gray pockets, and the rest of her was indistinguishable beneath a frumpy worn-out coat.

While the coffee was brewing, Sandy asked Bev to make it a tall stack, with bacon and hash browns on the side. Then she fixed up two glasses of orange juice and brought them to the table. She expected the mother to pick up the juice and gulp it eagerly but she didn’t touch it, and instead gazed over at the coffeepot, slowly percolating. “Coffee’ll be another minute,” Sandy said.

When it was ready, she poured a mug for Bev, adding one packet of Equal, just the way she liked. Then she brought another mug to the mother and poured it. “Bottomless cup,” she heard herself say, but the mother hardly noticed, as she watched the little girl coloring with nubs of crayon on the back of the paper placemat. A few minutes later, she brought out all the food. But the woman seemed embarrassed, agitated.

“I don’t think we need all that,” she said plainly.

“Nonsense,” Sandy said, putting on her perfect perky waitress act. She stepped away from the table, as the girl dumped syrup all over everything. Sandy resumed her perch at the counter, chewing on her soda straw, and spied the woman plucking a piece of bacon off her daughter’s plate. She even sipped at the juice.

Later, Sandy brought out the bill, charging them for a short stack and a cup of coffee, barely four dollars. The woman, only a few years younger than her, looked up at her with kind eyes. “Thank you,” she said.

“Is Mr. Frey good to you all down the way?” Sandy asked.

“Better than others I know,” she said. “But I’d rather be in here.”

“This ain’t much…”

“For her.” She tilted her head at the girl. Sandy looked at the child’s small face, hoped she’d grow up better than her mother, better than her, hoped she’d get away from this hardscrabble town a hundred miles from nowhere. A flash of gold and green stole her thoughts then, as Sandy saw the mother’s hands. Her fingernails were impossibly long, perfectly polished with a detailed design at the tips.

Did they make her angry? Probably they should have. Probably someone else wouldn’t have even noticed. But she did, and it made her sort of sad, sort of what-the-fuckish, who had money for manicures but not enough for food?

She stood dumbly for a minute, then the mother gathered up the child, helped her into her jacket and wound the scarf around her neck, slipped her hands into her mittens, then threw on her own coat. She deposited four single dollar bills onto the table and fished the loose change from her pocketbook. They left, bells clanking in their wake. She’d tipped a mere twenty-two cents.

Sandy sighed, got herself a new straw to chew on. Mr. Frey made it seem like the answer to all her problems. After all, the diner did not afford him that Cadillac, the strip club did. She’d thought about it. Just do what she was doing here, but without her top on and for better tips. These double shifts were really getting to her. Maybe she’d be better off working nights at the club. She felt tired beyond her years.

Bev, who had finished scraping down the griddle for the second time that day, came out front and asked, “Manny here yet?” It was three o’clock and her shift was ending, but she couldn’t leave until Manny the night cook arrived. He showed up at ten after, and Bev took off. Sandy knew that as soon as she got home, she’d start cooking supper for her husband and her daughter who had moved in with her three children. A lot of mouths to feed. And Bev would feed them all.

Before the dinner crowd trickled in, Sandy grabbed her coat and stepped outside into the frigid wind, the snow piled in clumps, and lit up. Not because she had to, not even really because she wanted to, but because that’s just how it was. She needed a day off, a day to stay at home, to lie in bed, to watch movies all day. One day to recharge. Forty more dollars she owed on the television. One week’s worth of cigarettes. But it was just so hard. All of it.

HoodRich, 2009

Original photograph that I also embroidered.

puppy love

allesthesia

The ghost sits on the end of Elizabeth’s bed and runs an ivory comb through its long, ghostly hair. The comb, thinks Elizabeth, looks like the type that Victorian ladies used to use to pin their hair up, an ornately carved piece that fits perfectly in the hand, ivory from a real elephant or a real whale or a real something that used to be alive. Just the same as the ghost used to be.

The ghost is dead. Transparent. Overall deceased-looking. The comb is dead and solid and as real as any other object in Elizabeth’s room.

The ghost is wearing a dressing gown. The ghost is wearing a nightgown under a dressing gown. The ghost is humming softly to itself as it combs through the insubstantial wisps. The ghost raises its head and looks straight through Elizabeth, deep, gaping holes where its eyes should be, but aren’t.

Elizabeth thinks how strange the word “comb” is, how it’s one of those words that loses its meaning with repetition. It’s an odd word to spell out, too, with that strange combination of the M and the B. She would close her eyes to visualize the word spelled out, but unlike the ghost, she can’t see without eyes, and it’s important to her to be able to see right now. Now, with a ghost with no eyes at the end of her bed.

Sydney is down the hall, in the kitchen. She is probably making toasted peanut butter and jelly, her favorite before-bed snack. She is probably untying the twist-tie on the bread, pulling out two pieces from the middle of the loaf, putting them in the toaster. She is probably laying out the peanut butter, the jelly, the knife and plate. Sydney is doing all of this without any idea that at the same exact moment there is a dead woman in her bedroom, staring at and through Elizabeth. Sydney has always been Elizabeth’s greatest defender but this time Sydney isn’t there. She is in the kitchen and she is not thinking that Lizzie is maybe in trouble, maybe paralyzed with fear. She is probably thinking about how she hopes she doesn’t burn the toast.

+++

(Another ghost lives in the space between their kitchen wall and the wall of the adjoining apartment. Every night between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. it floats into their neighbor’s kitchen and begins to make a ghostly meal. It chops nonexistent vegetables, dices spectral meat, stirs unreal pots of stew that nevertheless come to a real boil. One night, months from now, Elizabeth and Sydney’s neighbor will wake from a strange dream about a woman he once loved, and he will stumble to the kitchen doorway. He will be searching, he thinks, for a glass of water, and he will see his ghost standing at the stove, stirring a stew that will never be real enough to eat. He will look at it, and he will whisper, “Elizabeth,” shocked and hopeful. Not Elizabeth his neighbor with the beautiful eyes and quiet voice, but Elizabeth, the woman he once loved.

His ghost has no eyes either, only those same dark, gaping holes, but it seems like something’s buried down there, if only he could stare deep enough.)

+++

Neighbor-Elizabeth knows about portents and she knows that the eyeless ghost at the end of her bed is not a good one. Elizabeth’s mother was a gypsy, after all, and she instilled in her daughter the knowledge of how the world really works, along with a healthy dose of fear. Elizabeth knows what things to be afraid of, which signs are meant to reassure or give fair warning. She is not afraid of muggers, of flying, of getting hit by a car or caught in a fire. Her mother taught her that death comes in cleverer disguises.

Up and down, up and down the comb goes through the ghost’s long hair. Over and over, mesmerizing.

+++

(“A candle to burn to keep out the spirits,” her mother tells her, “and this charm to ward off the evil eye. This other one’s from your grandmother’s grandmother, for good fortune and safe travel, and… Are you even listening?” Elizabeth was, but not in the way her mother meant. “If you don’t take this seriously, who knows what will happen to you? The world is not a safe place, tehara. The world is not soft.” But Elizabeth is only fourteen and her idea of danger is still undeveloped. She nods and pretends to listen while she doodles hearts and arrows in her notebook, mixing her initials with various crushes, casting unwitting love spells of her own.)

+++

Elizabeth is sitting upright at the head of her bed, knees pulled to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. The ghost’s gaze hasn’t changed, but Elizabeth knows that now she is being looked at, not through. She can’t imagine this is a good change. From the kitchen she hears the toaster pop and a sharp intake of breath as Sydney touches the hot bread and quickly drops it on her plate. Elizabeth can hear all those little sounds; they are that close. She would just have to whisper, “Syd,” and Sydney would hear her, come down the hall, find out what was wrong, save her. But Elizabeth knows inevitabilities as well as she knows omens, and she is on a high-speed train hurtling toward a clearer and clearer fate, and no whisper or shout will derail it now. Why even try.

+++

(When their neighbor addresses his ghost by his departed beloved’s name, nothing happens at all. The ghost keeps stirring, staring at him with no eyes, and the ghostly pot keeps boiling, and the seconds tick by. But that is not what he will see. He will imagine a spark of recognition. He will think he sees his own Elizabeth somewhere in the depths of those black spaces. He will feel the air around him change to spring, to be infused with love like he used to know it, making the world Technicolor again. He will shake his head and turn around, glass of water forgotten, and he will go back to bed, to sleep. He will think it was a dream. He will feel somehow reassured.)

+++

The ghost sits on the end of Elizabeth’s bed and stops combing its long, long hair. It stares at Elizabeth without eyes, and wisps of hair fly around its face, lifting and falling as though in a breeze. Elizabeth’s mother taught her about portents and warnings, safety and danger, and somewhere in the back of her mind are all those lessons still. Elizabeth lets go of her legs and comes to her knees, leans forward. The ghost holds out its ivory comb to her, a solid thing in its spectral hand. The details of the engraving are so delicate, so intricate, so amazing, and their swirls and symbols never seem to end. In the kitchen, Sydney has started humming, and Elizabeth wishes she could stop for a moment and kiss her. Instead, Elizabeth reaches out her hand.

Queen Lucille

Polite Society to Receive Honorable Mention

Listen/Download:
"Polite Society to Receive Honorable Mention"

This is a song composed by me and my band The Olmsted Ensemble, mixed and mastered last night just for Showed & Told! This is an illustration I drew to accompany the song.

Apocalypse Monologues: Nuclear

B is offstage the entire time. A is on stage with a walkie talkie, or some other device. All communication with B is through the device. Every lights up/lights down should accompany either an electrical humming or walkie-talkie static.

[Lights up.]
B. It’s your move.
A: Okay. I move my horse up two and left one.
B: It’s a knight. Knight to G4.
A: Yeah. I believe that’s checkmate.
B: No, no it’s not. Not even a little bit.
A: Did I sink your battleship?
B: What? Bah. No. Do you want to do something else? We can watch a movie?
A: Yeah, okay.
[We hear B start a movie. A listens on his end via the walkie-talkie. A opens a bag of pre-made popcorn. We hear the crunching as lights go down.]

[Lights up.]
B: I spy with my little eye something that starts with the letter G…
A: Green beans.
B: Yeah.
[Lights down.]

[Lights up.]
[A is loudly weeping. B is consoling him.]
[Lights down.]

[Lights up.]
A: When my mom had this bunker made, it was just another sign of her mental wacky. The preacher fed her this fairy tale, and she just believed it. For whatever reason, it just made total sense to her. My dad put up with it, because he pretty much did whatever it took to placate her. She promised she’d take everything in a divorce, and he feared losing his money more than a lifetime of misery. So, Mom got her Rapture fortress. I never got the logic of that. If she believed in the Rapture, wouldn’t she assume she’d be saved? If so, she doesn’t need to hide in a hole. I mean, nobody thinks "The Rapture is real and I am fucked!" Only the self-righteous believe in the Rapture. It was like her carrot on a stick, which was also what she used to beat me.
B: Maybe she built the hole for you, sinner, what with all your Krispy Kreme gluttony and Alyson Hannigan posters.
A: Ha! Yeah, well, if she built the hole for me, I really wish she would have populated it with more DVDs of Buffy and porn and less Ten Commandments and VeggieTales. I mean, VeggieTales? What the fuck? I’m not eleven! She doesn’t know anyone who is eleven! Instead, here I am, whiling away the rest of my, what?, years? months? memorizing the commentary track to the 1923 version of the Ten Commandments. I mean, really, if I survived the Rapture, doesn’t that mean my soul is a lost cause and she could just allow me to happily wallow and die in my degenerate filth?
B: It would be pretty awkward for everyone involved if your mother stocked her Rapture bunker for you with porno. Can you imagine your mother shopping for you for porno? You’d probably get VeggieTales-themed porno.
A: Ha! Yeah, with titles like --
B: You know, what? Let’s not go down that route right now.
A: Okay. But when it all went down, of course, it wasn’t angels or demons or fairies or unicorns or whatever. It was crazy religious nutjobs.
B: Like your mother.
A: Ha! Yeah, I guess so. Except my mom didn’t have nuclear weapons. If she did, she would have bombed San Francisco a long time ago, in an attempt to please God? (That’s the kind of logic she would work with.) So, it all went down and my parents were, you know, in Cabo and I was at home on the couch.
B: Watching Buffy.
A: Watching Buffy. And now Cabo’s gone and I live in their basement.
B: …
A: What about you? Any funny stories about your mom?
B: … My mother was a school teacher when she was younger, but she had been living in a nursing home when the strikes landed. She had Alzheimer’s-related dementia. I don’t know if she would have known what was happening. Cognitively, she probably wouldn’t have been aware. I like to hope not, anyway. I would like to think that it would have been over before it hurt her.
A: Did you ever visit her?
B: Rarely. I loved her. Of course, I loved her. But visiting her… I would be with her and find myself missing her. Missing her in her presence. It was awful. I didn’t like seeing her like that. And she had no idea who I was. It was horrible. After a while, I found myself going more to keep up appearances with the staff, so that they wouldn’t think I was a crappy son. Maybe if they thought I cared, they would be nicer to her. I don’t know. Soon after, I slowly stopped going. My visits became less frequent. I would just pay the bill. That was my way of visiting. … Man, sorry. This is miserable.
[BEAT.]
A: Are there good memories?
B: Of course. Of course there were. She taught me to drive. That was funny. Even though she was a nervous wreck, she still tried to be patient and lighthearted, though she was obviously going nuts in the passenger seat. I wasn’t doing anything crazy. We were in an empty parking lot at the mall, going fifteen miles per hour in her station wagon, and she was still grinding her foot into her invisible brake and clenching the dashboard, as if I was driving like Steve McQueen.
A: Who?
B: As if I was driving like someone in The Fast and the Furious.
A: Ah.
B: She was clearly going nuts. It was like her smiles were all just well-intentioned lies to help me feel comfortable and confidant, while, really, the fear was tying her up in knots, as if she expected me to accidentally hit the auto-destruct button on the car. And the noises she made! Just inarticulate sounds that kept her from cursing! But she suffered through with this horribly ineffective façade of pleasantry. And, of course, this did not at all make me feel comfortable and confidant. It made me feel like I was doing everything wrong and I was about to kill us both in a fiery wreck! It was definitely not a fun afternoon for either of us, but a good memory. That’s the mother I miss. And I had been missing her for years before she died.
A: …
B: …
A: What do you think the surface is like?
B: Poison.
[Lights down.]

[Lights up.]
A: How long will we be down here?
B: You should stop thinking of here as temporary. You live down here now. There is no up there. This is your world. The hole you live in is your home.
A: But for how long? Months? Years? Decades?
B: Forever. There is no surface. The world is an evil, burning husk. There is no civilization. There is no culture. There is no surprise party waiting for you to poke your head out like a groundhog.
A: Damn, man, how do you know? How do you know? You don’t know that!
B: I do know that, and so do you.
A: There must be other people out there.
B: I bet there are, but they’re other mole people, like us, living in holes, watching DVDs, eating canned goods. Maybe some people are living communally. Maybe some families are living in luxury holes. Maybe some people were able to make contact with others, like us. Maybe some people are living alone, without even VeggieTales.
A: It sucks not knowing.
B: You know. You know you know, you just don’t like the knowing.
A: Maybe someone’s coming.
B: No one’s coming.
A: …
B: I’m sorry.
A: At least I have you.
B: At least I have you.
[Lights down.]

[Lights up.]
A: Do you think the mole people who aren’t alone are trying to make babies? To keep the human race alive?
B: I bet there are people trying to procreate. I don’t know how smart that is, with limited food, water, air, space. With no health care. No nothing.
A: If there were another person in my hole, I’d want to have as much sex as possible.
B: You’d probably have as much sex as you had before.
A: Damn, man. Why you gotta go there?
B: Plus, what then? You’ve added another person to your hole. What happens then? Where do you go from there? It’s not like the holes are going to be connected with a series of tubes, where all our holes will form some underground city.
A: Shouldn’t they try to reproduce?
B: Reproduce with what? Their siblings? What’s the point? Why would you raise a kid in a hole? What would you teach it about the world? "This hole is the entire world!"
A: There’s an existentialist crisis waiting to explode.
B: And why? Just to check "Did my poorly thought-out part to save humanity" off a list? Do they just plan to keep filling up their holes with inbred offspring? So, that, what?, when the space aliens of the future come and open our holes they’ll find a cluster of dead mutants? Doesn’t sound like much of a plan to me.
A: Man, sometimes you sure do suck.
B: Sorry.
A: You talk as if we should all just be patiently waiting to die.
[Lights down.]

[Lights up.]
A: I think about all the petty, stupid shit a lot.
B: Me, too.
A: Like trying to hunt down the various issues of the Buffy comic book. Like it fucking meant something. "Hey, look at me! I have a perfect collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic books! Bask in my oily sheen!"
B: Squabbling with my then-wife.
A: Not talking to that girl at the comic book store.
B: All the moments of potential squandered with bickering.
A: I watched a Hell of a lot of TV. Like, I really studied Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you know? And Angel. You could have asked me anything about it, and I would have the answer for you.
B: We would fight over the stupidest things, like leaving the lights on.
A: Like, of all things, that was my specialty: the lives of fictional characters. That was what I was really good at. That was the one thing.
B: Or vacuuming. God, I hated vacuuming, but, really, it was just vacuuming.
A: I never fought back.
B: I became so small and dark.
A: My life sucked sometimes, and I never fought back.
B: It was like my crappy life was a kingdom, and I fought to preserve it. Preserve it from stupid crap, like having to vacuum.
A: I never stood up for myself.
B: If I were her, I would have left, too. And if I could be me, again, I would have done a better job.
A: I just took the beating.
B: I loved her. I should have really done a better job.
A: I took the beating, and then watched TV.
B: I think about things I should have done differently thirty years ago. What kind of life is that?
A: I should have done a better job with me.
[Lights down.]

[Lights up.]
B: So, the clock is ticking down, it’s 37 to 35, [STATIC]
A: What?
B: [STATIC] dribbling down the court, and even though the crowd is going absolute—[LONGER STATIC] can’t hear a thing
A: Hey, man, you’re breaking up.
B: and I leap out from half-court and hurl the [STATIC] worth and the clock is ticking, [STATIC]
A: Hello?
B: ball flying through [STATIC], buzzer’s about to [STATIC]
A: I can’t hear you.
B: 3-2-[STATIC]
A: Hello? Hello! HEY! Are you there? [rattles device around] HELLO?! Hello? No.
[Lights down]
…

For the love of February...

Romancing the winter...

jumbled people-names

Upon arriving early in the morning, I was paired with a very experienced hospice nurse. The first patient’s room we entered was occupied by a man in his 70’s and his wife, who was watching her husband die of metastatic lung cancer. He had been a client of the hospice unit for about two or three weeks and she hadn’t left his side. In his room was his bed draped lovingly with a handmade blanket, a collection of family photos, and his wife’s cot in the corner, impeccably dressed with sharp plaid sheets. Her suitcase was packed with care, neatly pushed under the cot. The nurse told me she had done this every morning, by 7 o’clock, since her husband’s admission. I remember thinking how strange packing that bag would have been. What type of clothes are appropriate for this setting and, worse, how many days worth should be brought?

The man in the bed had recently made a significant change in condition. Two days prior to my meeting him, this dying man had stopped speaking, stopped responding, and slowly slipped into what appeared to be unconsciousness. He was receiving ample pain medication as well as a medication to help keep his airway as clear as possible. This man with whom I never had the pleasure of speaking took slow, irregular breaths, often with many seconds between them. I noticed that his breaths produced a unique, calming rhythm as we all sat with him in near silence.

When we walked back into the corridor, the red-haired woman with the tightly packed suitcase ran to us with an unmistakable urgency. “I think something has happened” she whispered, “He hasn’t taken a breath in a long time.” The nurse and I hurried into the man’s room. Indeed, his slow, off-tempo respirations were eerily absent this time. He lay there, in his bed, without even his chest moving up and down. The three of us stood surrounding him, saying nothing, watching. Then after what seemed like an eternity of silence, the nurse went to the nurse’s station to retrieve a stethoscope. With it, she listened to the exited man’s silent chest, waiting in vain for any sound to be made. The nurse removed the stethoscope from her ears and took a step back.

“He’s gone” she stated. The man’s wife started to slowly shake and cry quietly. The nurse, who had developed a very special relationship with her, went to her to offer a very soft touch on the arm. Seemingly, with the sensation of this touch, the woman’s quiet tears became one long, loud wail, the sound nearly animalistic. She began to violently shudder, her shoulders wrapping in on her chest.

“Don’t go, Dad” she sobbed. “I won’t know what to do without you.”

I stood alone at the foot of the bed while the nurse and the newly widowed woman cried and touched the peaceful man. I attempted to hold in the tears which threatened to burn my cheeks, but listening to the woman’s guttural pleas to her dead husband forced them from my eyes. While I cried, I began to realize the overwhelming power of lifelong love and the devastation of losing it. I began to envision myself as an old woman, standing by the side of my future husband. I could see our life together, rolling up a screen like such slow film credits; a life of love, of struggle, of joy, gone in one moment. Now, this woman was left to continue a paired life alone. I began to wonder whether the life with this man was worth the devastation of losing him in the end. Would it be better to live and die alone than suffer the pain of such severe loss and longing? Amidst my naive mid-twenties thoughts came a pain in my chest--MY heartache I felt for the broken heart personified standing beside me. At that moment, I knew the depth with which I felt for this stranger’s lost love, all emotion is worth it in the end. However, the END was no longer the finale of some metaphor or extended romance novel. The end of this shared life stood before me in such explicit, blinding detail. Real heartbreak is something my 25 years had no way of preparing me for. So…I cried.

Yup.

Found in NYC, Wooster Street Between Grand and Canal.

a particle through

I'm cutting the shapes of all my concerns into folded sheets of white paper of a standard dimension. I have dilations of apprehension and contractions of doubt, tonight. The moon is cutting through with a cocky grace you can't really be sure of.

For now, the sun's absent from the scene, totally blotted by an opposing meridian.

Here's the crux of my problem: I'm terrified that the bulb up there has popped and is forever gone; that it won't ever buoy up again.

It's love, I guess. One that bubbles up your skin, makes you recoil from even gentle touch, and then makes it come off dead in layers. It's a love that impregnates itself in your pores, latches to your tissue and metastasizes.

It's something to love in beaches and parks, bringing stained glass to life, cleaving through dastardly gray clouds, breaking up the dull eave of woe that overhangs winter. It's something to pray for, or beg for if your prayers aren't answered quick enough.

I keep cutting and the scissors start to dull from my constant snips. The result of my work is piling up around me. I'm like the jut of a mountain whose foot has been erased.

Somehow, cutting helps balance the scales of my worry.

There's a pattern that's starting to emerge.

The house is waking up. Slippers scrape softly from all of the rooms and converge in the kitchen. There's drowsy, bad-breathed laughter and the acidic threat of caffeine. There's the dry tumbling sound cereal makes as it gets dumped into a ceramic bowl.

And footsteps once again. Predatory footsteps this time. Many feet gently swarm outside my door. A hand encroaches upon the long brass doorknob.

The door opens without any kind of plea.

Mom shakes me. Dad shakes me. Sister and brother shake me. They take what I've done in handfuls and let it fall over me, laughing.

And the edges of the windows warm with the first indication that there will be another day.

paper kisses

Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, CA. December 2008.