11/9/2017 1 Comment Frank and IOne night I had this dream. I dreamt that I drowned Frank Sinatra, in a shallow pond filled with soapy black water. He did not struggle. I even think I maybe saw a slight smile cross his stony face as I placed his body in the water and pressed my hands against his chest. I watched the air bubbles being released from his mouth and reach the surface only to break apart, and join the chilled air of nowhere in particular. When the air bubbles ceased and I saw his eyes close for the final time, I drew back onto the bank to contemplate a book I had just finished reading, and I wondered what the weather might be the following day. As my eyes grazed the rocky horizon, craftily skipping over Frank’s lifeless body, I noticed a scorpion slip into the pond on a pair of crooked legs and swim out to the center. With the skill and precision of an anxious frog, I then watched him leap onto the sunken chest of my drowning Frank Sinatra, take a delicious chunk from his stiff lower lip, and swim languidly away. Frank’s lip began to swell, it swelled to the size of the dark pond, until nothing could be seen but stretched and blotchy skin. I stood from my spot on the bank to inspect this site, and just as I reached the water’s edge, I saw the scorpion ascend into the sky, not a care in the world. I crouched by the pond and began calling out to Frank, asking if he was still in there swimming, or if the scorpion had taken him with it. The mess of skin then began to sway and tremble, and from underneath the old shell of a swollen lip Frank Sinatra appeared to me, this time smaller, and very much alive. He was about the size of a doll, one that I remember playing with as a girl. He smiled at me and nodded a hello, I bent down lower to get a better look at my undrowned Frank, and as I did he wrapped his miniature arms around me as if asking to be held. I was never much of one for refusing something so small, and so I picked him up, and held him like the doll I had held so many years ago… almost as one holds a small child, but with a grasp more tender, so as not to break any arms or feet. I asked him how he was feeling and he said fine, I asked him if he would like a drink of water and he replied calmly: I have had enough water for many, many lifetimes. With no words to argue I simply nodded and carried him to a platform hidden in a field of quiet reeds. I set him there gently and propped his head on a flat rock, his gaze wandered over the night sky above us, one filled with few stars and many memories. He then began to speak; he spoke of everything and nothing, of himself and of humanity. His voice was of one very far, yet very near, I did not look him in the eye, but instead stared blankly at the same stars he saw, letting his words fill my eyes and ears. He told me that though he had many friends, he was very lonely. He told me that he regretted never truly knowing his mother, that she was only a familiar face and a soft set of hands, nothing more, nothing ever. He told me that he had never truly felt love, that he had only begun to sing of it out of irony, it brought him deep sadness that we had all taken him so seriously. I am deeply troubled. …He lamented… I am full of regret. With no response from me, he sighed and began to hum quietly to himself, a song which I did not recognize; perhaps he was making it up. I asked him if he might accompany me to a nearby mountain, where the thin air might help our minds to rest finally under these dim stars. He sighed again, this time drawing his gaze over the surrounding mountains. He sat up with no words, and he fixed my large head in his small hands, and placed a warm kiss on my forehead. We lingered there for a moment; there were no sounds, and no movement among the brush. With a deep inhale, Frank Sinatra, about a third of his size, stood up and walked slowly back to the pond from which he had come, it was still as soapy as ever. With one last glance in my direction, he proceeded into the water; he descended into it as one would walk down stairs, his small body disappearing just a bit more with each step. I wondered to myself how someone could walk into such shallow water and disappear as if it were deeper than the sea. But before my thought had finished, so had he-- and my dear Frank was forever gone.
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11/2/2017 3 Comments Complications in a Fake FightIt’s complicated. It’s so complicated. Is it really that complicated? Take off your clothes. Sit and a circle with covered eyes and sing. Scream. Disappear. It doesn’t truly matter. Welcome to the rest of your life they say, smiling and locking the door behind you. It’s an unspoken truth; there is only one escape, a last resort, an unspeakable. But don’t take it from me. Listen to their speech, their speeches, so many speeches! We all want to be so smart. We want to figure it out before anyone else. I’m the genius in the room, learn from me, respect my words as I spill them all over you. Disgusting.
Everything is spilling, spilling, spilling and we don’t know how to fix it. We patch and pray and watch the disaster unfold all around us. It’s interesting so it’s okay. I can write about this later in that secret notebook I keep stashed underneath my pillow. Pillow? A hideaway, full of dirty socks and the best kept secrets of your small existence. Everything is small but it’s so, so big and we can’t seem to truly escape. Escape? What have I told you about that? It’s impossible. Except that it isn’t, but we won’t consider that for now, it is too unpleasant. There are some people who even believe “that way” is not an escape. That after trying to leave “that way” you will instead become sucked down into the gooey bottom of the world. I miss the world as it was when there was no heaven she says to her pastor. “But there was always a heaven” he replies, doubt suddenly trailing his words. Everything is complicated. ‘I just want to go home’ she cries quietly to herself. But he’s heard her. He’s afraid of those words. His blood feels colder all of the sudden. Wasn’t she home? She sits balled up in a bed (hers?) drowning in sadness and snot. She’s crying over nothing really but with each tear that falls it grows. Soon it is everything. He feels strange. An onlooker trapped in the viewing compartment of a train as it circles its victim. A small child bound to its tracks. ‘I miss everything’ more sobs. His eyes feel wet. He is trapped, he feels lonely for her. He wants to reach out and touch her, trapped in his box. A new form of torture? Why is he there? He hates feeling her loneliness. He wants to feel his own, to touch his own skin and have it feel familiar. He sits and claws at his face. No pain. No sensation. She is crying harder. He balls up like her. It feels like the only thing to do. She is screaming. She is having an imaginary fight with an imaginary someone. They have been cruel to her. What is their name? Where did they come from? She laughs with no pleasure. She is angry. An angry laugh. Something happy—filled with poison. His fingernails begin to tingle, he looks down and tugs. One by one each fingernail exits his hand, falling to the floor of his glass looking box with graceful precision, falling in a neat pile at his feet. She is lonely, yelling at no one--a wall, a pillow, a dresser drawer. Whose room is this? Why am I here? He is lonely so lonely, he is getting smaller now, shrinking like his empathy. The girl is still crying. He no longer cares. He watches the room get small while he melts, melts, melts into his glass box. He looks to his right. His fingernails are stacked high above him. He has matched their size--finally equal but even more afraid. The girl is screaming and crying and hitting a picture on the wall. It is a picture of a house. (He does not care.) He is small and here and trapped in a box the size of a person while he is now the size of his lost fingernails. He laughs. So complicated. Dinner was cold. Tasteless and repugnant from hours spent waiting for a girl that never arrived. Lonely dinner plate discarded into a leaky sink, you don’t know where I’ve been, what I’ve seen. Give me peace and I will give you an explanation. They get no peace. Peace is for those who work hard, who toil, who suffer. Who wants to suffer? No one at the table knows what that word truly means. They’re tired, and conversation has been stifled by a loud absence. They are afraid. They wait. But it’s all in vain. They are tired. Wine bottle empty into dirty glasses into dirty mouths infecting dirty minds fueling dirty deeds. They are tired. The dynamics of the table shift and sink into and out of a comfortable or tolerable rhythm. It is late. The table dwellers begin to hunger, to worry, to wonder if all of this waiting is really worth the trouble. Trouble. Chaos. They create it and live in its comfortable mess. Happy within its fluid confines. Trouble can be found anywhere. Trouble can be sought. Is that what they’ve done? Are they seeking out such turmoil? Never mind, never mind such things are nonsense who speaks this way why would anyone want to live such a miserable life let’s just be happy and drunk and pretend the world is as bright as we painted it all those solemn years ago. Let’s go to sleep. Yes let’s lay down in the living room here and drown in the pillowy cushions and doughy conversation. Let’s ignore the empty seat, the abandoned plate and the still water glass. This is our time and we are young. We will be young all our lives so we might as well enjoy it. We are so tired. Tired and weary and worn dry from the terrors and toils of the world and its unbearable burden placed heavy on our backs. We are good people why should it happen to us. So tired, so tired and now sad. Sadness always follows a lovely evening even if the evening had a few hiccups…but c’est la vie darling that’s life and we’re living the hell out of it. Young, so young. Tired, so tired. Let’s sleep now yes, an endless sleep now and we drift quietly into a space completely our own. Free of our trouble and struggle and forgetful children. Yes let us sleep now. Peace, finally peace. A place without our troubles.
7/9/2017 1 Comment New Orleans, LouisianaLouisiana has given me an unshakeable mix of anxiety, confusion and disgust. The streets brimming with travelers and alcohol, the sidewalks broken, depleted. If you’ve traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana you’re in search of one of two things: a week straight of drunken sex-crazed nights or trouble. Trouble lines the streets here more potently than the tourist traps. You can smell the trouble: feel it soaking into your alcohol laced skin as you dodge sweaty families, unshaven homeless. Around seven o’clock in Louisiana the temperature drops to eighty degrees and everyone in the neighborhoods can be found lining their front stoop, smoking cigarettes and yelling across the narrow streets. In Louisiana, everyone is family. People call out to you as you walk by, some of it friendly, some of it predatory… the risk is in your reply, no matter what keep that scowl on your face, your scowl is your best defense.
Every house and every building in New Orleans bleeds the history of two hundred years. In these buildings you see the oppression, the triumph, you see the blood, you see the mystery. New Orleans makes quite a bit of money on its mystery. An unaware traveler will be drawn in by the stories of voodoo and magic, common sense has told them these things are a farce, New Orleans presents reasonable doubt. When you’re walking the streets of New Orleans in the evening you’ll hear a myriad of things-- you’ll hear people in loud, jolly conversation, young men calling out the windows of cars at the girls walking downtown, you’ll hear chickens and cats and drinking and laughing. In a New Orleans evening you’ll hear the unmistakable rumble of an oncoming night, the hot day is over and everything is about to happen. The drinks will be cold, the band will be loud and the people will be beautiful and fresh again. A downtown New Orleans night screams chaos and excitement, there is jump and bounce, a whoop here and hello there, everyone is out, everyone is alive. All senses are stimulated as you swoop and dodge through an enthusiastic crowd. But here, on a quiet walk through a French Quarter slum, before the evening madness has truly begun, you feel the stir of excitement, and the peace of the night. Here you will feel the wonder and the mystique of a place so laden with fable and myth, that you’ll almost forget the poverty of the buildings around you, the struggle of the few remaining locals. A Louisiana night captivates the mind in its magical history, in its unforgettable charm, in its lonely struggle to stay alive. It’s falling, falling through the cracks of a society as broken and confused as it’s sidewalks, a society hypnotized by corporations and Hollywood, a society that may never truly grasp the beauty of a place this unique, rooted in the very basin of a country wrought by the ordinary and common. |
AuthorAvery Atlas is the author of all posted pieces. Archives
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