Monthly Archives: May 2017

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Time Capsule

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Every year I go to my father’s for his birthday.

I don’t take him out for a meal, or to see a film or anything like that. We talk for a while, I give him his gift, and then we do what we’ve done every year for the last 7 years…we open up his time capsule. Inside, there are 5 items, each as important as the last. We take them out one by one, examining and discussing them. The first is a beautiful, golden ring. He puts it in the time capsule, because he wants to make sure it never gets lost, and he wants to give it to me when I get married. He says it’s a perfect fit, and I know it’s true, because I’ve tried it on. On the inner curve of the ring, there’s an inscription that reads, “Your smile is my oxygen.”

Next would have to be the camera. It’s a small, black camera that he took all of my childhood photos on, and that he took every photo in general on for as long as I can remember. He and my mother bought it at a thrift store before they got married, and he’d used it ever since. He even took every photo from their honeymoon on it. He tells me that I should do the same, ‘keep it in the family’, so to speak.

After that would be the corsage. It’s a beautiful shade of pink, and it fits perfectly on my wrist. It was my mothers as well, and she was the one who put it into the time capsule. He got it for her on their prom night, and she still cherishes it he says.

After the corsage comes the key. It’s the key to the first place my parents owned. It was their dream house. He says my mom wishes they still lived there, but I know better, that she’s happy where she is now. She’s happy where they are. But, that aside, it’s still an important piece of their history, and therefore, it’s made its way into the time capsule.

Finally, the last item in the box is a baby photo of me. It was taken by that same camera, in the hospital, mere moments after I was born. In the photo, my mother is holding me, beaming so happily, and my father says it’s her favorite photo of all time. After we’re through, we repack the time capsule, put it back onto the top shelf of his closet and go to dinner. We do this every single year.

We do this every single year, and we will continue to do so. We do it for mom. She’s been gone a while now, but they made that time capsule together on her deathbed in the hospital, where they spent her last days together. She told him that this way, they’d never be apart. This way, none of us would be apart. My father won’t admit it, but he misses her more than he lets on, though he tries to stay strong. But, if you look at just the right angle into his eyes, you can see her, still caught in his gaze, looking just as beautiful as the day they met.

We miss you, mom.

Dad especially.

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We Could

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We could tangle in the sands on a moonlight stricken beach
We could put our heads up in the clouds, no dream is out of reach
We could read every book, and discuss them end to end
We could climb every tree, every branch would never bend

We could learn every language and study all our years
We could tackle every demon, and conquer all our fears
We could throw away all of today, and instead dream of tomorrow
We could procrastinate and investigate, accept the joy and sorrow

We could learn every skill and trait, and work every job
We could learn the names of all the stars, our time will not be robbed
We could argue every point of view, grow and learn and love
We could use these skills to show others what they too are capable of

Yes there’s still so much for us to do, with the time that we have here
I want to do it all with you, I’ve made this very clear
I want to explore the universe, because even though it’s true
That it’s glorious and wondrous, the real beauty is you

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Cravings

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i crave simple things.

i crave rain on my windows in the morning, sudden light showers without warning; i crave whimsical planning, stardust daydreams, fireworks and cozy streams . i crave nature, a garden, something green, growing something that can be seen. i crave hiking and biking, fireplaces and pretty faces. fresh warm towels and candlelights, taking baths and neon signs; dream catchers and pastel colors, toothy smiles and helping others.

i crave sunday mornings and breakfast nooks, reading books, kitschy looks; i crave bake sales and ptas, holding hands and pda, i crave trips to the park and walks in the dark, eating sweet delights and kissing under starry nights. i crave berry picking, sweater knitting, baking, painting and bridal fittings; arts and crafts and lanyard making, sidewalk chalk and picture taking; summer night fireflies, flagstone walkways, big green eyes; koi ponds, fountains, christmas lights, aquariums and flying kites.

i crave all these, yes it’s true.

but most of all…i crave you.

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Close To Monsters #6

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CloseToMonsters017

Todays “Close To Monsters” is brought to you by the reality of ignoring all your real life problems. Dishes in the sink? Not showering for weeks on end? Can’t find employment? None of it matters. Listen to “ABBA” instead. You’re just too cool for life.

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He’s Got Your Best Interests At Heart

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There’s a little black shadowesque man who lives in the back of my head. I’m not sure when he moved in, but he’s been there for quite a long time now, I know that, because he’s been guiding me for a while, at least since childhood. He’s faceless, his limbs elongated, and he doesn’t speak. He communicates solely via telepathy. He’s filled with doubt, anxiety, sadness, fear and frustration. He’s constantly getting me to doubt everything I think or do. Anytime I think I might be about to accomplish something, he speaks up, stating, “This isn’t the right way to do this” or “It’ll never work, you know that, don’t you?”

At first I thought he was looking out for me. Keeping me from making mistakes, but no, he’s keeping me from making progress, and yet, since he’s been with me for so long now, I cannot function without him. Sometimes he takes time off, exiting through the small trap door he installed in the back door of my head, and I get left to my own devices. Upon his return, he sighs, rubbing his forehead with his lengthy fingers and says, “Look at this mess I have to clean up now.” He’s been there more than any mother or father, and is just as judgemental as they, but it’s not the same. His disappointment isn’t said with a bitterness, a venomous cynicism, whereupon he’s not actually putting me down but upset that, much like a small child, I cannot be without supervision. He’s upset. He wants me to be okay, but he himself isn’t even sure how to give me that peace of mind.

When in doubt, I often turn to him for advice. If I don’t think I’m making the right decision, I will ask his opinion, and if he even so much as hesitates in his response, I know not to continue with it. He argues with me that others are out to get me, that my family hates me, that I can’t have friends. He doesn’t believe any of that, but he himself doesn’t know how to fix it either. He’s just as clueless as I am. That’s what keeps us glued at the hip, like paper chain children. That’s why he stays. Because he knows I have nobody else, and I need someone to watch over me. Yet I know that there’s the possibility that I will lose him. That one day, I will wake up and feel ok, and he may never come back. That the space he’d occupied in the back of my head for so long will be gone, cleared of his few possessions and he will never return. I will go on to lead a good life, filled to the brim with possibilities, overflowing with happiness. Friends, a good job, a clean safe living space.

And despite this new social life, I’ll always feel alone, because nobody can fill the void that a piece of yourself once filled.

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To Breakfast, Or Not To Breakfast, That Is The Question

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How did we, as a species, arbitrarily come to agreement that breakfast consisted of eggs.

It’s amazing that we as a species could ever agree on anything, even something so insignificantly meaningless as breakfast, but somehow it just became a common, unspoken agreement. Eggs are breakfast food. We can’t even agree on big things like world peace or simply not murdering one another because someone parked funny. I was thinking about this while making eggs this morning, which is a rare feat for me as I never eat breakfast or use the stove. But standing there, staring down at these eggs hissing in the skillet, it just sort of dawned on me that we unanimously found eggs acceptable as the true breakfast food. That’s right. Breakfast gave me an existential crisis.

Across the world, there’s a million differing opinions ending in harassment, murder, pain, suffering, oppression and yet somehow, we all agree that breakfast consists of certain foods. If only we could apply that same sort of agreement to literally anything that matters. If only simple arguments or disagreements in relationships, places of work or family matters could be boiled down to the universal law we’ve assigned to breakfast food. My parents had me, despite my father being a raging alcoholic at the time and on and off of drugs, all while senselessly beating my mother. He eventually told me he’d come see me, and always left me alone on the weekends, either not showing up at all, or taking me to his place and then passing out for hours. My mother was addicted to pain medication at times, drank a bit and told me that there was something wrong with me, that I should just “try harder” to fit in, and at one point told me I should probably just kill myself already.

This is how my parents treated me. These people were my parents. People who’re supposed to love and protect the children they knowingly have of their own volition, and yet this is how they treated me. We can’t abide by the simple universal truth that parents should just unconditionally love their children, no matter who they end up being, even if they disagree with the life choices their children make.

Yet we can all agree that eggs are a breakfast food.

But I suppose the world can’t be that simple, can it. It has to be complex, otherwise it’d be devoid of meaning. Foreign policy and marital problems can’t be solved by something as simple as hashbrowns. But wouldn’t it be nice if it could be? Wouldn’t it be nice if we all just took a step back, realized we all, at one point or another in time, accepted that eggs are a breakfast food and go, “Hey…we all agreed on this. We can get along.” They say peace is impossible. I don’t think it’s impossible, but it is hard. Yet, we’ve shown time and time again that we do have the capacity to get along, to agree on things, to follow a certain line of thinking where we’re all okay with the outcome. If only it could be applied to everything really important.

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

I’m starting to think it might be a lot more important than that.

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This Is My Jam

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When I was a little girl, every year in elementary school at the end of the year, they piled us into the auditorium like cattle, made us sit on the floor and watch a video presentation of photos and video clips and such taken over the course of the year of the kids, and along with the video was the song “Forever Young”. Every single year they did this, every single year we heard “Forever Young”.

Do you really want to live forever?

That’s an actual lyric from this song they played to kids in elementary schools. To be honest, I doubt a lot of kids wouldn’t take any note of that, but being who I am, I did, and it fucked with me. I had family members die when I was still in elementary school, it’s true, but I don’t think it was until having that hammered home in my head every fucking year that I truly became self aware of mortality. Ever since then, I’ve had a problem accepting that I will die, and once I had that realization, the realization that we all die anyway no matter what, I hit an even bigger realization: Why bother living at all. Hello suicidal tendencies, thanks Alphaville.

And with there being so many songs out there about mortality, about life and death and sadness and existence, why the fuck was it the quintessential 80s prom slow dance anthem that made me question life as I knew it? The real issue is that once you hit that peak, there’s no going back either. That’s one oopsie you can’t unwhoopsie. As if a kid doesn’t have enough problems leading into adolescence, I hardly doubt nihilism is something they also should have to deal with. I had a lot on my plate as it was; being autistic, keeping my sexuality a secret and being somewhat ashamed of it, and great now I have to wonder about the meaning of life itself on top of it. Great. Book reports? Fuck book reports. Existentialism is where it was at.

But…there’s shockingly an upside to being that self aware, especially that young. It really puts everything into perspective, makes you realize you need to make the most of the time that you have, if you want it to mean a damn thing once you are gone. For me, that meant writing as much as I could and creating as much art as I could. Something to leave behind. Something that meant something to someone. Something that meant anything to anyone. The way I saw it, the only things that lasted were the things we created to last, so we needed to leave behind as much as we could for others to remember. Or, you know, remember at least until the sun explodes and literally everything dies, but still.

Existence, it’s…a weird thing, honestly.

People literally tell you that life is a gift. That it’s precious. They often tell you this while they’re eating an animal. Life is only precious if it fits their idea of what life is and who deserves it. Not that I’m any sort of animal activist, but still. They tell you that you’re so lucky to be here at this point in time in history. Really? A planet plagued with overpopulation, with war and famine and injustice and hatred and greed? I’m lucky, huh? I guess we are, because it allows us to create art mocking these things. It allows us to write songs that speak out against these things. Songs that enlighten us and change our frame of mind. Songs about being young forever. Yeah, I would like to be forever young, actually. When you’re young everything is fresh and new and exciting, not stale and cold like when you’re older. Maybe that’s the point of the song. To recognize how jaded you can become. To push the truth that to survive, you need to stay forever young, even if only at heart, because otherwise you risk becoming cynical and spiteful and cruel. Being forever young allows you to deal with things with a childlike innocence, a view of the world where everyone isn’t just painted black and white but with every color in the crayon box. People say kids are inherently evil. People say that hatred is taught. I think I’ve stated before that I think love is the one that’s taught, because you have to teach kids not to hit and to share, but that doesn’t mean kids are entirely evil in general.

Kids should get more credit than they’re given for seeing the world a lot more clearly than any adult really does. A national tragedy happens and all the adults look for meaning, search for reasoning, ask “why did this happen” and mourn for years. A tragedy happens and a kid says, “Well…that sucks. Nothing I can do about it. Oh well.” Is it because they simply don’t understand the enormous ramifications? Possibly. But they say ignorance is bliss, so maybe there’s something to that.

People say Bob Dylan is a spokesperson for the world. People say John Lennon was a lover for the world. We’re all allowed to have our opinions, but honestly, Alphaville are the true heroes.

Do I want to be forever young?

Yes. And I will flourish because of it.