The F/utility of Futility.
“You can’t argue with a brick wall,” she said. And, sighing, she leaned forward in the chair, gave her cigarette, which she’d been neglecting, a dainty flick. The ash landed softly, without a sound, direct center of the head of the tallest and most vibrant of all the violets buried in the narrow garden preceding the patio. The flower swayed under the weight of the ash, encouraged perhaps by some imperceptible breeze.
“That’s true,” he said, smirking, nodding then shaking his head. But you’ll keep trying!
Laugh’s Perfection. Kicks, a good night’s sleep, and the sweetest dreams. A few chapters upon waking. A.M. sex. Stretch. Shower. Hair that seems to style itself. A simple, healthy, delicious breakfast (prepared by someone else). Duds—bought, and even set out, by someone else—a clever outfit, which fits both you and today’s mood perfectly; your favorite shoes: slip-ons that seem to go with everything. Soft forehead kiss before you leave the house. A driver you can trust. The office greets you with a smile, a stable of studs practically oozing jokes. It’s payday. It’s showtime. Swiss. The reviews are in: They say you are sharp, hip, downright irreverent. Ho! you are a hit. Have a drink, enjoy a cigarette….
One life has enough material for countless lifetimes. (What else?)
In this house. …bickering’s contagious. Just listen to the angry cadence for ten minutes and you’ll be part of it.
Electric jumble/buzz: Refrigerator, lamps, ceiling lights, hairdryer, smart phones, microwave, two TVs (bookending the homecarcass, turned on to the tuned-out roughly 24/7, typically spewing either cop-and-robber fantasies or melodramatic doctor-patient relationships—often both, simultaneously), etc.
Metallic clatter, splash, clang: Miscellaneous silverware, soiled grooves and all, dragged down with slipshod drawer, which laughs and spills its shiny guts upon bloodstained particleboard flooring (unfinished).
Soft scrape, short yelp, dull thud, prolonged scream: The paterfamilias, bursting through front door, trips and falls over unruly pile of innumerable cheap shoes (and a few expensive ones, too). Dropping his cigarette, he curses his kids’ skate shoes, school shoes, play shoes, running shoes, water shoes; curses tattered slippers, coffee-stained white, stolen in bulk each hotel holiday; curses Crocs of assorted colors; curses several pairs of work boots—same brand, same model, same size—each of which is smeared with soot and oil and ash and/or dotted with splattered spray paint; curses the randomness of booties, which got here how and are still here why?; curses a fancy pair of pumps—the only dress shoes in the bunch—matte black, strapless, stiletto heels, which, as he points out, have never been worn.
Bark, chirp, mew: Eternal chorus of neglected but not altogether unhappy animals. The bird tosses pellets of tasteless foodstuff from its cage, flaps clipped wings, drops B.M. wherever it pleases, squawks at all hours. The dogs bark at nothing, lose their hair, scratch at exposed scabs (caused, in one case, by last month’s porcupine attack; in another, by this year’s mange). The cats purr for no one, strut like hot shit, sully the house till they manage to escape.
Sporadic arguments, too many to count, which volume ranges from Loud to Please Shut The Fuck Up, genre ranges from dark and funny to grotesque, horror and/or psychopathic thriller.
The only semblance of silence is the sound of her eyes—black hole on hazel ring on white ball of red lightning-struck sky—her once beautiful eyes, lolling round, staggering like rusty bolts in battered sockets. After twenty-five years, she told him, nothing much surprises.
And yet, these days you sigh and perform that antagonistic maneuver ever more often.
For silence is the final desperate cry of a lovelorn housewife. Those tired eyes, so sick of watching nothing happen. Those tired eyes, sick of everything, frustrated to the point of cataracts—they roll up, over, and away.
chris315 asked: who are you? My spidey senses are tingling.
I Am He Who Is Called I Am.
Justice, pt. 2 (Remembering Yoda & Bukowski). Sometimes when I think of the distance between us it makes me want to cry. But, without fail, I do not cry.
The lesson is inherent in the action. This is what I have learned: Don’t try.
Justice. Another friendship ends in tears. And the next one…
Shameless self:
rikethink:
Ronnie Dogfist was the first to respond. One too many calls to arms, I guess. But Ronnie had always had an amazing predilection for quick responses. Once, when he was two, for instance, poor Ronnie pooped his Pampers, but by the time dutiful kind mother figure came to clean him—not five minutes later—Ronnie had walk-crawled to the nearest bathroom and back, so when his cries got her attention and she came, mother figure found him sitting exactly as he sat before except that now he held a pile of torn toilet paper in his lap, behind him a nasty smile smeared pretty snail-like ’cross the rosy carpet….
(“At the First Annual Punk-Rock Kiwanis Convention” is a multi-perspective potboiler I am in the process of writing, of which one segment will be posted here each week, more or less, until I am firebombed, struck by lightning, selected to accompany the latest fact-finding mission to Atlantis, or, well…oh, until the story is finished.)
New Year Snow Coma. The heart is a fleshy engine which works overtime even as it works normal hours. It was designed to perform a specific function—a series of functions—and it works dutifully if not tirelessly at this job (which it has no option of quitting, of course, for its role as a heart means it has no capacity for deciding to quit). Fate, that is, the idea of fate, hardly affects the heart. For the human body, just like any crude machine, is merely an amalgam of parts, each one built innocently upon the last most innocent (but isn’t “ignorant/ly” much closer to it? yes; ignorance is ubiquitous, whereas true innocence is impossible), arranged thus simply and pragmatically: situated in such a way that somehow the whole neat mess becomes almost mysteriously complex, infinitely more than just a simple sum….
I am trying hard not to hold local folks’ sadly fickle feelings against them. I am trying like hell to find my own slippery feelings, hold them tight.
Ah, innocence is bliss.
