His friend leaned to whisper in his ear, “that is the girl that disappeared a while ago and now she is back.”
He didn’t believe him nor was he ready to feed into the fantasy that long played in his mind. His fixed a disinterested gaze on the television screen that was mounted on the tavern’s wall. A sports game was playing and in the brief moment the camera panned to reveal the crowd, the image of a woman reminded him of someone he once knew. His friend insisted the girl across the bar was the same one he once felt for and put his life on hold for some time ago.
The girl across the bar resembled the girl in the camera’s eye and in an infinite amount of torrential bits, he tried to make some kind of connection but his mind had a hard time linking that physical being with the person he reveled with in his memory. Her hand was in her hair and she was in casual conversation with a group that seemed to be her friends. He wanted to be the person she smiled at.
Although her bright eyes shone, he saw something more passionate in her than this moment in the crowded tavern and for that brief second, he thought that he could understand. The crowd erupted in appreciation of a good play and he lost sight of her as he tuned his attention to the collective roar.
Hours later, he stumbled back inside after gulping fresh air between drags of cigarettes and slouched back into his assumed position on the bar stool. His friend was swearing up and down that the meaning of existence could be found in slice of fruit at the bottom of his glass to the girl next to him. It was her.
“you’re you,” he said to the girl on the other side of his friend.
“i am” she answered.
“i heard that you went away for a while.”
“i am back.”
“how did it go?”
“there is something to be said about getting away from all of this,” she raised her hand to indicate the surrounding rowdiness. “but really, it is all the same anywhere. I came back to feel more out of place than I did before.”
Her hair was different than the last time he saw her and her completion radiated atmospheres of sun and high altitudes. He wanted to confess that he couldn’t stop thinking of her and that his dreams were tormented of times they never spent together. He wanted to confess that she was too erroneous for him, he was too dependable for her, and that eternity was better left for fiction and films where adoration, reality, and consciousness were better left unaccountable to each other.
“there were things I missed, though, and some part of me is happy to return and to find my place is here,” she continued. “I tried to escape but I can’t imagine ever leaving and not longing to be home.”
His eyes returned to the game on screen and as much as he tried to focus on the plays between teams, his mind wandered to the struggle within him and the desire to make the game of her and him begin again. He felt the gaze of her affection was possible and wondered which of them would win this fight.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Sincerest Form of the Deus Ex Machina
“What was it?” I asked. One of the vessels had broken open and the colors were swirling out in little eddies around our feet.
“Dreams,” you said, “They were formed by irradiation illusion. It’s the interchange and scattering between light and our eyes. It is a little of what is heard, seen, sensed and touched throughout history, time and space. It is all interpersonal relationships come in from sea. We tried to take all thought material and broadened it into a being of beauty and benefit to create The Dream. We planned on all these interesting mutations to form One Dream that was real, touchable, tangible – but some things refuse to be limited in existence.”
I tried to imagine what it would be like if my world was populated by Dreams – refracting, crystallizing and expanding into infinity – but I couldn’t. I asked you what was going to happen to all the broken Dreams. “We don’t have to do anything. They will eventually just evaporate and return to nothingness,” you said.
I admired you and what it was that made you choose to do this in the first place. I wanted to know if you felt as all of your dreams were slowly dissolving. I wondered how it felt to create ten thousand new dreams and then have to abandon them. Through the silence of your eyes you said, “Well, sometimes they’re better if they occur by themselves. Dreams are because emotions can be overwhelming.”
The sun could be seen dawning through the Orchid Jungle, so you had to go but promised you’d meet me back here. I lingered there alone for a few more moments, just to prolong the beginning. As I turned to go, I glanced back for an eternity.
(Imitation of Orlean, Susan The Orchid Thief. New York: Random House, 1998. 151-152)
“Dreams,” you said, “They were formed by irradiation illusion. It’s the interchange and scattering between light and our eyes. It is a little of what is heard, seen, sensed and touched throughout history, time and space. It is all interpersonal relationships come in from sea. We tried to take all thought material and broadened it into a being of beauty and benefit to create The Dream. We planned on all these interesting mutations to form One Dream that was real, touchable, tangible – but some things refuse to be limited in existence.”
I tried to imagine what it would be like if my world was populated by Dreams – refracting, crystallizing and expanding into infinity – but I couldn’t. I asked you what was going to happen to all the broken Dreams. “We don’t have to do anything. They will eventually just evaporate and return to nothingness,” you said.
I admired you and what it was that made you choose to do this in the first place. I wanted to know if you felt as all of your dreams were slowly dissolving. I wondered how it felt to create ten thousand new dreams and then have to abandon them. Through the silence of your eyes you said, “Well, sometimes they’re better if they occur by themselves. Dreams are because emotions can be overwhelming.”
The sun could be seen dawning through the Orchid Jungle, so you had to go but promised you’d meet me back here. I lingered there alone for a few more moments, just to prolong the beginning. As I turned to go, I glanced back for an eternity.
(Imitation of Orlean, Susan The Orchid Thief. New York: Random House, 1998. 151-152)
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
hobbies of learning and discourse
I decided I am uncomfortable discussing identity constructs. It’s messy and complicated and I don’t know enough about Life and Communication to be confident in any Statement I make. This is not to say I am apathetic to the foundations and movements of different groups. Anyone who wants to join in matrimony should be allowed to do so. Have 16 wives or husbands or lovers…. I don’t care. A human is a human is a human and anyone should be allowed to love and display such. But now I’m reading that some self-identified LBGTQA radical groups don’t want to be granted the same institutional rights as everyone else because that is just the Powers That Be trying to assimilate them? Ideas of Heretonormativity and Homonormativity …discuss….
I decided I would be uncomfortable discussing any combination of gender and sexuality in a public space. I’ll listen to people talk about it, but me and my white on white hetero relationships don’t bring anything new to the story. I don’t like when people talk about their bedroom life. It’s probably my religious upbringing that makes me feel a little prude like that. This is not to say I don’t believe that Combinations of Relationships shouldn’t allow to exist.
Movements are not for me. However, knowing my Self, if i Identified with something different that what I do and was ostracized for it, I’d be pissed and probably want to join an appropriate movement to demonstrate the unfairness of the situation. Or maybe I’d rather change things quietly from the inside – sleeper cell style. I understand that radical movements would rather not be assimilated into society but rather have space made for them and their cause, but I think there is a line between radicalism and extremism. Radical movements are tricky because if they are not radical enough, their actions could go unnoticed or if the actions are too radical, it may only increase exclusion.
I believe in the power of the Media which can spread new ideas and open up space for discourse by reaching the Masses. Of course, spoon feeding is not always the Answer, but if I to choose a way to make a change, that would be the way for me. I think it is undeniable that American Society’s way of looking at Gender and Sexuality has become more accepting than, say, 15 years ago. Ellen, and before her, that characters on Roseanne, may have not changed everyone’s opinion on the politics and semantics of LBGTQA rights, but they did open doors for discourse.
Sometimes I feel guilty about feeling guilty that I am a Privileged White Female and that I should find a Cause to support, but if I did would my feelings of biased advantage just increase? I guess it’s kinda a moot point with me because I found happiness of just Being Okay with dismantling normative ways of thinking within myself and all that I can ask of me is to be open and understanding to others. Humanity is always going to find something to argue about… it separates us from the robots.
I decided I would be uncomfortable discussing any combination of gender and sexuality in a public space. I’ll listen to people talk about it, but me and my white on white hetero relationships don’t bring anything new to the story. I don’t like when people talk about their bedroom life. It’s probably my religious upbringing that makes me feel a little prude like that. This is not to say I don’t believe that Combinations of Relationships shouldn’t allow to exist.
Movements are not for me. However, knowing my Self, if i Identified with something different that what I do and was ostracized for it, I’d be pissed and probably want to join an appropriate movement to demonstrate the unfairness of the situation. Or maybe I’d rather change things quietly from the inside – sleeper cell style. I understand that radical movements would rather not be assimilated into society but rather have space made for them and their cause, but I think there is a line between radicalism and extremism. Radical movements are tricky because if they are not radical enough, their actions could go unnoticed or if the actions are too radical, it may only increase exclusion.
I believe in the power of the Media which can spread new ideas and open up space for discourse by reaching the Masses. Of course, spoon feeding is not always the Answer, but if I to choose a way to make a change, that would be the way for me. I think it is undeniable that American Society’s way of looking at Gender and Sexuality has become more accepting than, say, 15 years ago. Ellen, and before her, that characters on Roseanne, may have not changed everyone’s opinion on the politics and semantics of LBGTQA rights, but they did open doors for discourse.
Sometimes I feel guilty about feeling guilty that I am a Privileged White Female and that I should find a Cause to support, but if I did would my feelings of biased advantage just increase? I guess it’s kinda a moot point with me because I found happiness of just Being Okay with dismantling normative ways of thinking within myself and all that I can ask of me is to be open and understanding to others. Humanity is always going to find something to argue about… it separates us from the robots.
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