Character

photo: Neely Johnson

“We haven’t located us yet." - The Darjeeling Limited

        She lit up another cigarette. Examining the embers that disintegrate as she taps it back into the ashtray, she exhales. She immediately feels guilty.

       So much for that health kick.

       She takes another drag and another sip of her hot whiskey. She exhales. Her body feeling warm replacing the chill that has been affixed ever since she left herself alone.She looks around.

       A room full of no one. No one she knows. She wonders what it would be like to be in a photograph with each of them, as if she knew all of them. Bunny ears, crossed eyes, the works. Each of them showing their personalities without regret.  Regret that is festering in her gut every moment.

       “Zia,” he croons, “tune out the noise. Why listen when it’ll only bang up your head?” She rubs her temples, hoping that the image of the familiar photographs with perfect strangers will fade away. It fades away quicker than the blue gaze that seems to be permanently etched into her heavy mind.

       Expectations litter her mind. Weighing it down with scraps of worries, anxieties, smiles, crossed eyes that were never her own. A puppet.This life is not meant to be lived for others.

Maybe she is a bit darker than she thought -- than everyone thought. Maybe it’s the whiskey.

Lock and key

Come find me.

A brutal brawl

On a buzzing saw

Slicing my two mirrors,

Waiting to see clearer.

Reflecting my mind

A thousand times.

Shrink myself into a crystal puzzle

To be solved by that dream lover.

On the brink of cracking,

You are what I am lacking.

My Write Way

I figure I should start getting used to typing my thoughts out, even though it feels inorganic. There is something about having a pen in hand (Pilot Ultra Fine V5 writes like butter) and using it as your prophet delivering messages from that cerebral stream through your limbs and fingertips and finally to Earth (or cardboard coaster, or napkin, hell, sometimes my own hand).

A complete and natural flow.

Though many thought it was a complete waste of time, especially when I would have to write 10 page papers, I felt more involved in my writing. Rather than staring at a blinking cursor and deleting random jabber in a blink of an eye, writing something by hand is also an art. A person's handwriting is another a fingerprint: a slant to the left denotes emotional repression. A slant to the right reveals emotional expression. And what if your letters are perpendicular? You're in balance, my friend. This is all theory of course - but there must be some truth between the slants.

There is also the typewriter. That clicking sound and the way you can see the mechanism of a key sending a stamp to your paper keeps you close your art. You roll the paper in. Lock it in. And if you're lucky, you get a happy little ding! moving to the next line. Like your own personal cheerleader telling you to Keep Going!

I had a professor who only communicated to his students through this antiquated machine. No computer, no e-mail, no digital communication. A copy machine was about as modern as he got for dispersing his thoughts to his 200+ students.

One night, I was scribbling away on a paper that was due the next day. I wrote in pencil this time -- my version of having a cursor. Come 3 AM I decided it was too late to type it out (the thought of staring at a computer for another hour made me even sleepier) and I decided to type it right before my 8 AM class.

Disclaimer: I am not a morning person.

I ended up running to class, my 3-page essay written on college ruled paper, smeared with pencil and eraser marks in my frozen hands. As I stumble down the stairs to his podium, hair disheveled, and nose bright red from sprinting in the morning chill, I set my crumpled heap on top of the neatly typed, crisp, white essays. He stares at this rumpled mess in front of him and then glances at the eye sore that is my paper. “I’d prefer it if you type it next time," he said curtly.

I remember feeling embarrassed for being a nuisance. “Oh well, at least I’ll find my paper easier than everyone else!” I thought optimistically (or perhaps a ploy to bury my embarrassment).

And I did find my paper with ease, along with a note that said “I see why you wrote this way. You have my permission to write this way for the rest of the semester. In doing this you have invoked your power. Power is useless without the ability to use it.”

To this day, he still writes me on his typewriter and I still write him by hand (I have since upgraded to a pen this time).

So, here is the beginning of my attempt at drafting my thoughts out via some keys and a mouse.

But my pen will always be in arm’s reach. 

Cheers, Professor R.W.

Your plastic power has disappeared in a flash/I'm no longer your puppet/ Instead a floating beat you'll never catch/My rhythm is off from yours -BOOM!- a mismatch

photo: Lib Hedgepath

Take my ego

Stomp on it with a steel toed boot,

Leaving me raw and running on my heart's buzz.

Never mind the fumes that leak from my heart to my head,

Leading to a beating paralysis.

For in those moments of exposure,

I am in a world of hopeful mirages and ideal nightmares.

Crushed!

(mixed with lust)

Wilting for that sweet desire,

Waiting for a reciprocated smile...

Body grins like a fool

Against the bickering mind's soul

A crescent smirk

Stains a star struck gaze

Hearing only open space,

Littered with your taste

I don't have to lose my eyes to see

That a fool's heart

Wanders blindly.