X
I wave stained smocks
As flags of affiliation,
But souvenir credibility
Is nontransferable.
Should I say “former” or should I say “ex”?
A festering X alarms
Like a cancellation or a marking,
Of my choice: “I decline”.
Should I say “quit” or should I say “resign”?
These Mementos swell—
My desperation with these, I quell.
“Where is the X at which I may re-sign?”
“Your manufactured mug is invalid. Retry.
Souvenir credibility cannot be ratified.”
Revolving Door
Give me a coffee mobile so I can cry in comfort and insulation,
not the “eff off” frigidity of her stinging salutation.
Her high sails say “home is near” but
diabolical Pipes promptly deter.
No Roots,
Revolving Doors.
How I was hooked by her soothing mirage,
To witness a deflated, demoralized—Wrecked Entourage.
creeching Pipes were screams of a lost steam,
A vigor the archives astutely esteem.
Reconstruct? What do you mean?
Change of course I tell you, it will redeem.
No Roots,
Revolving Doors.
Language
How it professes the mold of culturefleshagainst another.
How it envelops us to slash our assurances.
The musicality of poetry,
The narratives of prose,
The speeches of King(s)—riddled with conviction.
The abandon of “lofty” and “eloquent” diction.
It’s flavor—the values it expounds and compels.
The precipice of imagery, the reader rappels.
The intersection of the literalandmetaphorical
The open-endedness of the rhetorical.
The Craft—S t r e t c h i n g
our skills and minds.
Reconcile
The coffee cup was not used for drinking coffee. Did that make it a coffee cup then? The only thing that it cupped was empty
space.
That’s what she wondered. Not about the mug, but about whether or not he was a liar. She wanted to call him a liar. It was harsher and had a satisfaction when spoken from her angry lips. He seldom lied. A liar would be more deceptive and less conspicuous if he staggering his lies, so people would never notice. Would that make him a liar then or a person who lies? She wanted to call him a liar because that would mean his lies were not from manipulation but from pain. She envisioned shattering that coffee cup into a million shards, and she wanted to call it a coffee cup.
The page was used for writing. The page could hold her pain. So she wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote until she found finality from vomiting out the words. The ink made her lies tangible. She could view them clearly and reread them and realize she is trying to force those words. And then later, she’ll reflect on it. She’ll laugh and cry. The truth could not be disengaged from, as the page could not be swallowed up by pop-up distractions and illusions.
She no longer wondered.
The coffee cup was not used for drinking coffee because she did not drink coffee. Coffee was not poured in that coffee cup, but it was still a coffee cup. She could not justify having it and she could not reconcile her life with his. She could not be with him.
Living Viciously
I hurriedly scavenged the booklet’s contents for the choicest attraction. Arms extended and neck strained, I recovered the castle-esque features of the structure from the mediocre luminescence of a vintage lobby light fixture.
“Celeeeeste,” I beckoned in a contented, operatic intonation. “You’re going to DIE when you see what I found for us,” I stated, salivating over our newest cultural charmer.
My celebration would have persisted, were it not for the intrusion of a swelling silence.
“Celeste?” I called out apprehensively whilst emerging from the pocket of artificial lighting.
A shutter of the eyelids reoriented my focus. In a distant quadrant ahead, was my daughter. Her hasty cadence and projected course spelled endangerment for the suitcase tugging along at her command. I was bewildered as to what warranted such Spanish-bull-run urgency. An approaching pivot into another boundless corridor muted my puzzlement and provoked my fight-or-flight response.
“Wait!” I implored, darting in her direction.
***
My insistence to arrange a camaraderie between Celeste and her European roots has been as seamless as rolling a boulder up a hill: back-breaking. Questionable Renaissance Fairs and historical dramas frequented my initial commercial mediation. The crude comedy and sprightly strum of medieval instruments appealed to me, and the dare devilish sword-swallowing satisfied her latent craving for bloodshed. It’s basically an amusement park, I thought. Children, apparently, have mis-calibrated mortality meters. Vibrant cherubs behaved like barbaric spectators at the Colosseum, roaring at the prospect of spit-smeared metal sinking down the gaping pipe of a sword-swallower. The amusement and thrill of the medieval binge climaxed with a fortuitous episode of food poisoning, so we went on a diet: no more Ren Fairs. There was no rationale in offering comfort to my shitting daughter on the reverse side of a port-a-potty shit hole; the two cannot be reconciled. Strangely enough, I never got sick.
***
Heaving stale motel air and operating under disadvantaged illumination, I fumbled for the spare room card. Swiping a microchipped card to reach my tiny human felt high- profile to me, but given this ill-timed unaccompaniment, I’d say this meeting was of utmost importance.
Click. Access granted.
Huddled on the motel futon, my 10-year-old fugitive was bundled in a fetal position. A stickered iPad brandished itself as a virtual shield. The fetal position is a posture of protection, protection from the intensity of my gung-ho cultural campaigns. Creasing the pamphlet on the third page, I thrust it between her and the device—the latter of which, I snatched with my free hand.
“You can’t—”
“I can’t what?” I dared.
My daughter huffed acquiescently and entertained the contents of the booklet. “A castle!” she cried.
A blazing countenance of indulgence squashed any doubt. That was a cue to gingerly slip out. Throwing a glance over, she clutched the limp brochure to her frame as tightly as her dainty digits could manage.
***
The morning was the tinder to rekindle yearnings never so strong.
I fervently traversed the motel hallways and forked over our room keycards. Curating artifacts may warrant travel but has never afforded the exotic variety. We yearned to escape this musty motel in Minneapolis. Yearnings can be quelled, pacified, but never permanently relieved. Mont Saint-Michel Abbey catered to Celeste’s fantastical sensibilities enough for the brochure to materialize into a checklist: Rome, Paris, Berlin, London and onto an Edinburgh-bound-train toward my late husband’s summer childhood home.
***
We arrived at zero dark thirty. Phone reception was erratic, as we were at the outskirts of Edinburgh. The greater Edinburgh area, more precisely. We both couldn’t sleep. Normally, Celeste would have been an entranced marionette, manipulated by a network of corded electronics. Instead, our existing technological encumberment spearheaded an unfettered session that was unexpected, but welcomed.
“What does it mean to live viciously?” my little inquirer blurted out.
“Live viciously?” I echoed.
My ignorance unceremoniously mummified me. Is this some touted adage of pop culture?
This rude realization—or lack thereof, rather, jostled my buffering brain to autocorrect ‘viciously’.
“Did you mean vicariously?”
“The second,” she assured with alacrity.
Now, I could have conveniently splayed a lexicon of synonyms and a finely-tuned dictionary definition to quell her burning question, but my linguistic penchant and maternal condition forbade me. “Can you recall what the Roman Catholic Church calls the clergyman directly subordinate to the priest?”
“A vicar? Those men we saw in bathrobes at that church?” Her face was petrified.
“Yes,” I snorted. “Vicars are garbed in special robes. A vicar, if necessary, will serve as a substitute for the priest. He is the deputy, while the priest is the sheriff.”
The next moments either introduced me to Celeste’s covert ventriloquism, or the rawness of dwelling in a quaint, foreign province was a primer for paranoia. The acoustics of my interlocutor’s voice became absurdly mangled and coarse, “Barney Fife always did become crazed whenever Andy put him in charge. The transfer of power possessed the man.” The only Barney Celeste knows of, if any, would be the tubby purple dinosaur.
I swiveled, well attempted to, but the stool supporting me hissed in rebellion:
Screeeeech. Screeeeech.
Not the ambiance of an elated daughter, certainly. I directed my eyes to his face and could discern the traces of a residual smile; they were nostalgic and well, vicarious.
“Grandpa!” Celeste stampeded Harold with affection.
We were not anticipating the old man’s arrival until the morning. ’Twas no intrusion though; my paranoia began to dissipate from this male familial presence. Grandpa Harold periodically visits Edinburgh for work and pleasure; having a family post in Scotland caters to an unmatched frugality with minimal hassle. His officious disposition has garnered him connections (some ruffians perhaps) but connections, nonetheless. Perhaps that’s why he has kept a tether here. He has lodged here enough to warrant the acquisition of a key from the locksmith, whom he undoubtedly knows by name.
“It follows then,” the old man’s hospitable commentary simply fueled my fanatic monologue, “that to live vicariously is to derive fulfillment from outside of yourself—latching onto a persona or witnessing the achievements of others. These experiences are a substitute for authentic living. They are an escape.”
“Then isn’t that living viciously?” she knocked again.
I paused and scolded my hasty autocorrection. Autocorrect can be presumptuous and needlessly dubious. Did you mean [blank]? Presumptions can cause mayhem and, in this situation, stifle curiosities. She knew what she was asking, or it was fate.
“I’d have to agree with the young lady,” my father announced. He stood at the far end of the den, perusing a museum of firearms.
He would cringe at my misrepresentative diction, especially given this week’s activities. ‘Museum’ reeks of refinement and preservation, while ‘arsenal’ is rugged and suggests everyday use. My father was “living viciously,” though, which is not an impressive observation in light of my daughter’s revelation. But I refrained from verbalizing the thought, lest the second premise of Anselm’s ontological premise, ‘existence in reality is greater than existence in the mind alone,’ should manifest and speak truth.
“Life becomes a second-hand existence when vicarious life becomes life. It is releasing, but it should be either momentary or serve as an accessory to expression—” Celeste bolted out of her seat and darted down the hall.
Yikes. Perhaps my lecture was too scholarly???
I surveyed my surroundings for a nerd safety net, some distraction to be let down easily. An anthropomorphic howl from my rear sobered me to the crippling verdict. Splat! My father out practicing vigilante justice, I presumed. To wallow in these visceral wounds, I rummaged through the kitchen cupboards to locate a suitable substance to grease up my squeaky swivel chair. My. The word felt misplaced in my mind. Nothing in this family home was familiar. Shelves stuffed with aging volumes of Western civilization; family heirlooms everywhere; paintings of people I don’t know; firearms long since used. Sure, Clyde frequented this summer home when he was a young lad, but these heirlooms predate him. His story is not here. Why am I here? Why did I insist on dragging Celeste thousands of miles here? Why am I, as she termed it, living viciously?
As if by channeling these repressed emotions elsewhere, I vigorously greased the stool’s swivel component. These cleaning products aren’t nearly as potent as when they were new. Perhaps the old man has some gun cleaner that could work?
I committed to the search despite my doubts. The display’s cabinets required a forceful yank to open, which kept me accountable to rifle through the shelves extensively—lest I should have to retrieve a crowbar to pry them open again.
“Ekkk!” I shrieked.
A colony of termites emerged from the recesses of the mahogany. I slammed the cabinet shut and prayed the critters would have as grueling of a time with the appliance as I had.
Maternal instinct and termite trauma reoriented me to venture out and find Celeste. She must be ravenous. I surmise now that adrenaline must have warded off any hunger pangs because she was abounding with energy.
“Dressing up for Halloween is much more than an accessory mama,” she announced with a gratified smile.
“Ahem.” The sight of her cleared my throat. These chemicals of antiquity wafting into my sinuses did not abide by any degree of propriety either.
You can orchestrate the lesson Olivia, but you have no control over how it is applied.
Studded black leather tights, an over-sized white t-shirt with “Daddy’s Lil Monster” scribbled across the chest, and haphazard eye shadow raided the miniature stature before me. Two dainty ponytails trickled across a colossal bat lugged over her shoulders.
“Exactly,” I confirmed through gritted teeth.
Where did she get that beat up bat? I wasn’t keen that it was a bat, but it was splintered at the barrel. Scotland weather is either frostbite cold or not frostbite-cold. Accounting for my pleasant encounter with these wood-feening organisms and the moderate insulation of this cabin, I surmised that we were in a goldilocks temperature bracket for termites to survive and, to my horrendous conclusion, nest into the piece of wood perched on my cherub’s shoulders.
“And is dressing up for Halloween, a trick or a treat?” I continued on, trying to maintain composure.
“It is a treat, but it would be better if I could actually be Harley Quinn,” she contended.
“Why?” I asked with a tinge of disgust, which I immediately recanted with an intrigued nod.
“Her hair looks like cotton candy,” she replied, disheartenedly.
In a hefty swing, she unloaded the weight of the slugger and the world from her shoulders. “I don’t want to settle for a costume, momma!” My initial reaction had a vigilant underpinning; I was convinced that a thousand of those hideous insects would gush out of this unidentified piece of wood. To my relief, none of this mayhem I fashioned in my mind occurred. Instead, she plopped down on the couch, and I followed suit.
“Do you live vicariously? When you dressed up as that Scottish lady, did you want to be her?”
“English—her husband is Scottish. But yes, I wanted to ‘put on’ her strength, courage, and tenacity. I was running away from my insecurities. I was running away from myself and toward someone else.”
“Can’t you be all of those things without the costume?”
“I can and you can,” I admitted. “Plus, my lungs aren’t crushed from that constricting corset,” I added, phew-ing in relief and parental pride.
“Alrighty, now. Go put that bat back where you found it.” I instructed.
She reluctantly retrieved the bat and trudged it into Harold’s room cater-cornered from the lavatory.
Where did the old man go? It must be 3 am. Perhaps if I can get a signal, I can reach him.
Scouring my purse for my phone, I grazed a crinkled material obstructing my view. The brochure. I plucked it out and tried to warp it back to its intended configuration like the reseting of a joint. The pages resisted my manipulation; its elasticity was compromised by the rigidity of the crease pried open at Mont-Saint Michel Abbey. The deep, furrowed crease—a scar, essentially. A token of my crazed fixation for mediocrity. Scars are remarkable edifiers because they refuse to be cast into oblivion. My scars rebuke: Do not run. Do not escape. Everything you are seeking is within.
″Ekk! Momma!” Celeste squealed. A raccoon scurried out of the bedroom at her heels.
“Run! Get out,” a deep voice commanded.
Celeste and I rushed out of the cabin, nearly stumbling over each other. Her head nestled against my chest, my heart pounding along with the bang, bang, bang of Grandpa Harold’s rifle.
#fiction
Paternally Pensive
· You yourself have called yourself a “cowboy” but you have never herded cows and are not a boy. Why do you, and the rest of society, generalize “cowboy” to any man in western attire?
· You often refer to yourself as a “jack of all trades and master of none”. Does that fact mean that you disagree with the phrase quality over quantity? Explain your reasoning, or are you not a master of argumentation?
· The epithet “tow-head” was wielded repeatedly to reference your light head of hair. What is the purpose of “tow” in this context? Is it an insult? If you don’t know, why do you use a word you do not know the meaning of?
· You insist that the desert-native plant ocotillo is pronounced (OH-ca-TEE-ya). Why is the pronunciation of ocotillo (OH-ca-TEE-yo) a debate with you?
· Growing up, you frequently told your daughter: “Living in the southwest meant that I was a minority amongst minorities.” Bearing characteristically Anglo-Saxon features with blue eyes and a head of fair, almost white head of hair branded you a glaring minority on a micro-level amongst your Hispanic peers minorized on a macro-level. What did you learn from being the odd one out?
· White light, when siphoned through a triangular prism, will unfurl a spectrum of colors. Can you explain why ‘colorless’ is a synonym for ‘white’?
· True or False: Is the medicalization of alcoholism harmful? Does it arm alcoholics such as yourself with the defense: “It’s a disease; I cannot control it.” What are qualifiers for disease anyway? Is illness merely nature’s work, or does nurture have a role too? Is the very ambivalence of disease a warranted catalyst for confusion?
· Why do you repeatedly call my bestie Adelina, "Adeline"? A subconscious urge to anglicize her? If my hypothesis is veridical, then you must have had a subconscious urge to hispanize my mother’s name when you addressed her as “Carolita” on cards or whenever the summer sun extricated her ethnic ambiguity. In any case, "Adeline" repeatedly championed Carolita’s home-made salsa, so I suppose her ravenous ravings would second your evaluation.
#nonfiction