Electrical Currents and a Lucky Fifty Words

It was something she needed to say, something she should say, and probably, most importantly, something he needed to hear. She knew this. She knew all of this, and so she sat, impatiently clicking her pen as the thoughts traveled in tiny and incomplete electrical currents, readying themselves for her fingers but not yet making any sense. The pad of her thumb cradled the shape of the end of her pen, and as she saw her body adjust to the lag-time, she worried that the words, if they ever came, would be but crude and rehearsed shells of themselves, stumbling along the pale blue line like a wounded animal. She peered to her left toward a pile of scrapped drafts, the words of which were too clichéd and too impersonal, too vague and too elusive, or simply too much, which made them sound insincere even if that was not the case.

She closed her eyes and took a breath and tried to create an image that depicted the emotion, as emotion on its own is not concrete enough to grab hold of a heart and make a difference, but the emotion of present was too overwhelming in its power to force into something so confining as an image. By luck, her mind chose to carry her through her memories, to return her to a place where the words were not so hard to come by, where she feared never gaining in place of fearing loss. It was a much easier place to be because what she feared was what she had, what she knew, and what she wanted is what she had been or at least had hoped to be moving toward. But now she was happy, and what she feared was going back to place she knew to be not as happy. And so the image came.

I picture myself before you as a stool with one leg slightly shorter than the others – a little wobbly, pretty uncomfortable, giving the illusion of balance but never quite achieving it. That means you’re the little wooden wedge that my short leg now rests on. I feel solid with you.

What she said in those words to him meant more than he would know because what she said in an abstract and indirect fifty words could be said more accurately in six: he was a part of her

Fading: A Laura Horton/Scott Foley Collaborative Effort.

Video by Scott Foley. Words by me!
--please excuse any grammatical errors... my Spanish skills are a bit lacking--

Cuartos vacios tienen una tendencia de causar una tendencia de insuficiencia en una persona: su felicidad no suficiente para borrar las sombras en los rincones, su imaginación no suficiente para pintar las paredes. Mientras les estiran sus pensamientos a alcanzar los rincones del cuarto para crear un ambiento menos amenazante, menos inmenso, destine, come si fuera una gota de sangre en un baño lleno de agua.

Pensamientos que usualmente pasan como el dolor de la piel después quitar una curita, ahora gotean en gotas coaguladas y se adhieran a las paredes y a los azulejos de techo como si fuera el moho negro.

Ella siente pequeña, mas pequeña que normal, mientra sus hombros se desploman a su cuerpo para escapar el escalo frío, y el resto de sus pensamientos se escapan a la carpeta para desparecer.


(Translation:)
Empty rooms have a way of making a person feel insufficient: her joy not enough to erase the shadows in the corners, her imagination not enough to paint the walls. As she stretches her thoughts to reach the corners of the room to try to make it feel less threatening, less massive, she fades like a drop of blood in a bathtub.

Thoughts that usually pass like the stinging of post=band-aid skin drip out of her in coagulated blobs and cling to the walls and ceiling tiles like black mold.

She feels small, smaller than usual. As her shoulders drop into themselves to avoid the chill, the rest of her thoughts spill out onto the carpet to disappear.

Saint Valentine Probably Had a Temper

Sometimes, my heart beats so fiercely I have to hold my hand over my chest to prevent the whole thing from exploding in some violent bloody mess. I think it’s feeding something, like a vampire tree readying itself to burst through my skin, taking root by crawling through my body like cracks in concrete, reaching toward my fingertips in ribbons of gnarled wood, bending and arching like arthritic fingers stretching after an extended grip.

I know I should be dreaming in butterfly wings and streams of bubbles reflecting the sun in patchy rainbow squares, in kittens yawning or the tickle of furry creatures nuzzling my neck, but it doesn’t feel quite grounded when I compare something with depth to something that rides the wind so effortlessly, or something with strength to something so sweet and vulnerable.

It’s not that it’s painful (although I’m not sure would go so far to say that it’s painless considering how hard I fight for words only to find that they come when I don’t want them, like razored lightning: violent but fleeting), but it doesn’t feel like open meadows and fluffy clouds. It feels like the satisfying final breath of a wild exploration that ends in dirty sweat and blood-stained skin, probably because years of wrangled thoughts and caged emotions have turned my love into something like a steep rock-face soaked in equatorial sun, and we’re left gripping with our toes, laughing at the elements for thinking they have a chance.

Crushed Velvet Insulation

My minds feels as though it's wrapped in crushed velvet, a fabric I've always associated with a discreet form of violence because when I touch it the wrong way, go against the grain, each thread attacks my finger like a dull arrow shot from too far away.  I'm of the opinion that a boa constrictor could do damaging things with crushed velvet if it found a way to make its threads sharp.

The layer allows my thoughts to float and mute themselves: my words are slow and my motions diverted. I have to work just a little harder than usual to do usual things. My alarms are in pairs, my coffees in trios, my spills anticipated, my knees permanently bruised. Yet, nothing is out of place. My hair and teeth are brushed, my face and sheets washed, my coffee and bed made. The bills are paid, the week is planned, checks signed, groceries bought, schedule adhered to. The routine is set, and I am not off-track, off-beat or off-kilter. But Ms. Clavel with her French accent and her habit is tearing through my veins, fretting about nothing concrete, muttering her catch-phrase.

You're right, madame, something is not right. My mind is not held hostage by unfinished thoughts. They seem to be, quite obstinately, jointly hosting tea parties, getting comfortable with staying somewhere before complete.

Dear brain, things are about to get wildly uncomfortable.

Heart Rhythms and Sawdust Memories

In a room filled with sawdust,
each fragrant inhale is a pleasant reminder
of something being created.
If the light shines
in the right spot,
it can be hard
not to get dizzy
from the way the dust rides the air,
the way each particle
adds texture to the moment:
everything's blurry,
slightly out of focus.
The colors blend a little,
painted by
the settling sawdust,
and the balance of hues
creates an imbalance in heart rhythm –
an intoxicating moment of peace.

I could fall asleep.
The safeness I feel,
here in this room,
smelling the textured air
now painted with memory as well as debris,
it's never been quite so easy to slip
into my dreams.
The walls were never so welcoming,
the details never so unimportant.
(My yesterday had a flickering light,
reflecting off of and back into the room.
Maybe that spot is covered now
with the film of
those pieces of things we broke in frantic creation,
maybe all the new details
 have diverted attention,
but it doesn't bother me now.)
 

Undeleted Nonfiction

These are words I wouldn't want to say to walls.  These are words I'd rather swallow and have rot my organs than hear come out of my mouth, or out of my fingertips, but I suppose I'm not supposed to do that anymore.  I'm not supposed to pretend to not feel.  I'm not supposed to go back to numb.

But I could. I could pretend like it doesn’t still hurt. Like I don’t remember your face and hear your voice in that moment and clench my fists, digging my fingernails into my palms until I draw blood. Know that I could. Know that I'm so good at pretending like it doesn't hurt, you wouldn't know the difference.  

I wish I could blame you for my needing to say this, but it’s not entirely your fault. Because what I said to you to make you say the things I'm now reacting to, the trigger to everything, wasn’t completely true.  I answered a question in haste, in a nod of a head, ready to accept any answer you offered. Maybe you deserved more.  Maybe you didn't, maybe you shouldn't have asked, but maybe you deserved more.

The truth is I have never told this truth before. I have told the full story in half truths or half the story in full truths but never all of it and true together.

I have it, though. I have it, emotions and all, if you want it. I think you’d like that part of it, that part of the truth. The truth I’ve never told.  I don't. To me it's like a dirty secret, buried under a floorboard or tucked into the carved out pages of an old encyclopedia, because though I'm sure there's beauty in feeling what I felt, in the humanness of it all, feeling that kind of human was more shameful than beautiful. There's is no liberation in looking for meaning, only the feeling of being a receipt crushed into the tread of construction worker's boot as he braves the slushy sidewalk corners to avoid the crowd.

Carved Boxes and Open Palms

I'm dealing with an absence of things to say, things to think, as though my life has stored its meaning in a carved wooden lockbox because the beauty of it seemed to rest on some complementary frequency but thoughtlessly misplaced the key, leaving the two of us, my life and me, to sit and stare at this work of art wordlessly, afraid to speak lest it be something inane and offensive.  We'd like to actively hope for a means to access the meaning it holds within itself, but more frequently the delicate woodwork and the stained iron of the lock leaves us in a state of hypnosis.  (Keys do not walk themselves to open palms, yet here we sit with our wrists askew, waiting for a weight to fall into our fingers).

We tell a story  – or I do anyway, as my life nods along – of someone who knows where and who to be, of someone who might have lost a key but broke the hinges or manipulated a paper clip because meaning was all too important to be left stagnant in cedar.  This someone is as oblivious to what the future holds as we are, as afraid, as happy to sit and wait for something to come to her, but she is also certain that there is more, some undiscovered fulfillment in the pursuit of dreams and the wild pull of ambition. She sweats when only breath is demanded and bleeds when they call for sweat.

In moments of disenchantment, she grabs onto shards of broken hope and turns them into prisms, which then turn her the temporary relief of her moments of optimism into a mesmerizing splendor – dreams of dancing with green and purple to watch them envelop her in yellow, blue and red instead.

The words of her flow out of me and into the air to settle in the intricate carvings of the box, which now balances atop a bench beneath the readied swing of hammer, the beauty ready to be traded for meaning though not without intent to find beauty in the aftermath.