Hazy Shade of Winter, Less Than Zero, pills, sheet walls, redaction, and deciding to live.
From a hit by The Bangles, to the bloody and '80s adulating reach of American Psycho, episode number 38 starts and ends with more bangs than a West Texas brothel in the 1800s. Seven writers from the site complete the landscape here, with a lead by area_man, and wrapped nicely with thePearl and Mariah, so you know the new blood between them holds its mud.
Here's the link to the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLsEjqj8g6s
And here are the pieces featured on Prose. Radio.
https://www.theprose.com/post/816235/when-the-zoloft-hits https://www.theprose.com/post/816024/searching https://www.theprose.com/post/816017/they-call-her-fickle
https://www.theprose.com/post/816230/the-day-i-decided-to-live https://www.theprose.com/post/816225/if https://www.theprose.com/post/816122/i-redact-my-forgiveness
https://www.theprose.com/post/816108/perceived
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
Fresh ink and new blood, and more: Amount of strength, honeyed earth, a muted past, seasons, and screams of the dying.
Some new blood and fresh ink flavor Prose. Radio's number 37, with a handful plus two pieces from the inimitable talent of our writers. Good to see all the new writers bringing their style to pages of Prose. --And also good to see Last and area_man in the mix with them today, and AndyDrew closing it out with something beautiful and dark and light, in its own way.
Here's the link to the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5iHmKR3IOg
And here are the pieces featured.
https://www.theprose.com/post/816003/christ-like-without-the-benefits https://www.theprose.com/post/815932/lake https://www.theprose.com/post/815971/back-and-forth
https://www.theprose.com/post/815979/the-watch https://www.theprose.com/post/815993/space-age-bodhisattva https://www.theprose.com/post/815994/seasons
https://www.theprose.com/post/815920/wee-woo-bus
And.
As always...
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
The Watch
Any second, the loss... unclasped from hand
and we are falling, in sense and person
disparate, separated by a muted past...
a totem of figures, and long shadows that hug
and laugh... at efforts, so easily disorganized
...lost some place along the green, tallied
expanse, the face of the master mime,
tick marking in space, still, and rolling
forward, by luck, in the calendar
returned back, to me, affixed to the wrist
... the sundial on my heart
Sinnerman, a mind horse, a sky in haiku, anxiety, stigma, and luckier than most.
The satin chalk tone of Nina Simone formed today's intro, and was followed by five pieces authored with the feel only our writers deliver, every line, every time. Led by a new kid on the block, three more add to the lift, with a close by our man of the SoCal streets, to make episode 36 one mean mofo of a show, yo... Yeah, tons of coffee...
Anyway, here's to the week ahead. Summer is officially usurping the west, and the road east is looking really good.
Here's the link to Prose. Radio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljZo8mlUCMg
And here are the pieces featured.
https://www.theprose.com/post/815461/mind-horse https://www.theprose.com/post/815448/a-vibrant-blue-sky https://www.theprose.com/post/815436/the-red-man
https://www.theprose.com/post/815376/stigma https://www.theprose.com/post/815402/ayahuasca-death-trip
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
It’s a Turn Down Day
It’s a Turn Down Day
May 13, 2024
If you have the chance
If you dare to dare
Take it and run as far as you can
For any direction you go
Beats not going at all
I stood on the bridge overlooking the ice floe. Seventy feet down, freezing cold water, and a pitch black night have all of the makings of a successful suicide. I contemplated my action as I weighed my options.
I am 14 years old with a bleak future. If past performance is indicative of future returns, I will be sadly disappointed. Such is my life.
The slow moving ice reminds me of the clouds in movies where the protagonist and antagonist both see different visions within. You would think the same clouds would only have one POV, but that would make for poor cinema.
Once again, I am disappointed with my lot in life.
What do I have to look forward to? Ending another sentence with a preposition?
It is not as if everyone hates me, or doesn’t understand what I understand. I didn’t ask to be born, but who gets this prenatal choice in the first place? I am told, by people whose life doesn’t seem so envious, that I have much to look forward to. These wizards of wit cite my first kiss, prom, graduation, college, marriage, having kids and seeing them grow, and retirement as examples. However, where I live, nobody has mastered these skills. Nobody fondly reminisces about each of these watershed moments. Shouldn’t someone, somewhere, set the gold standard for others to follow? Why hasn’t my school hired one of these people? That would be a class I might not ditch.
And yet, as I look down, the ice beckons me to follow its ordained path. Its siren song resonates in my mind, almost alluring, almost bewitching me to action.
All I need to accomplish is to not accomplish anything. Just let go. Just take that leap. Just trust that when I chose not to decide, I still will have made a choice. A final choice.
I find myself on the perimeter of my Venn diagram in the land of null set alternatives.
The floe looks comfortable, looks viable. It covers bank to bank, from upstream to downstream, as far as the eye can see. The cold air offers me nothing I don’t already have, which is not much. The combination of the two is almost overwhelming.
Then, I no longer think in terms of “almost”.
If anyone cares, let my tombstone read, “It's a Turn Down Day.”
And I dig it.
In Blood
Dear Plexiglassfruit,
Of all the letters I may have sent, I have never written to my mother-- my real mother. I suppose I never believed that she was there, waiting, as recipient, and I'm not sure what I would have said, in years past, on paper.
My mother-in-law says she cannot imagine, as a mom, not being proud of me. She is very kind. There is pride, and Pride; and I have understood that for my mother I am on the cold inverse of the sentiment. Mother puzzles over me and makes comparisons. I tacitly admit the rationale. I make odd choices; everyone voicing an opinion, has told me as much.
Mother has graciously let it go after all, as notable, but uninteresting. We both know that I don't have anything to offer her--- I am useless as a backscratcher. There is simply nothing I can do for her, pragmatically. She has lived life as a sort of barter, with the eye on always coming up ahead. Having expected a man to take care of her, she has learned that money takes care of her. She steels herself to this state of affairs.
She told me a few years ago that, for Enlightenment, I am not ready.
(*My sister, yes; She has paid her dues, I suppose.)
I can only marvel at the confidence of the proclamation. I lay no claims, and wouldn't dare cast judgement... I guess I hadn't much thought about reaching Enlightenment, sitting out here in the dark peripheries of our misunderstandings. My childish hope was that we take care of each other.
If I were to write to my Mom, in abstraction of all that binds us in our interpersonal experience, I would write something she would likely dismiss as "dispassionate essay:"
Dear Mother,
Motherhood is not at all what I expected.
You cryptically said to me, a couple years in, when my child was almost three that "Now" I understand, and know. Truly, I do not. I rather sense some discrepancies in our perceptions and acknowledge the inaccuracy of my own viewpoints. The insinuation I feel is that, now, presumably I understand what it is to be pegged. Saddled. Of course, with affection and responsibility. Because that is the sentiment that I associate with our family reflection of child rearing-- The burden wrought.
And I observe the key differences that may or may not have been fully voiced. That motherhood "happens" in different ways. It has been expressed as lament, in our family circle, as the limitation of self. The facts remain, Mother, that you yourself said you were "not ready," and my sister though eager, was "surprised" by pregnancy. You've each countered that I was so reluctant and calculated as to "sap the Romance out of it"... well, certainly everyone's notion of such fantasy is varied. I have never doubted anyone's Love, in the short- or long-term.
I understand that having a child, or children, is tiring. The state of being on alert, all the time, is not necessarily shared by all parents though. I have learned this in watching the families of my preschool students. I also know it, from being left, so often unattended as a child, without adult supervision; under the care of my sister, two years older, and sometimes not even that. I understand the impulse that sometimes overwhelms and makes a parent want to withdraw. I have felt it.
For whatever it was that made you want to pull away, Mom, I am sorry.
I hope I never hit you, pinched you, scratched you, spit at you, demeaned you or otherwise made you feel faced with contempt. I am wracking my memory for any such incident and cannot remember. And I cannot think of a thing more heartbreaking, abusive and demoralizing. A form of domestic violence that has no legal recourse, the abuser being a minor and outside of the law.
So, as you have doubtlessly wondered: what then do I think of Motherhood? I have not found that being a parent is aww and diapers, sleepless nights, and adventures. That was understood. To be sure, I expected it to be, for lack of a better word, "work." I hoped for Motherhood, as an ideal; an opportunity I suppose. I was looking to be fully present, and now, have these constant questions: ...Have I done the right things? Where have I gone wrong? ...What can I do to make a correction for my apparent, yet undeciphered, errors? ...for surely, the evidence shows, if only in my own sight, that I am doing something not right... to have fears about my child.
Of all of this, naturally, you are unaware. You are not here; pictures sent show only smiles, and I have said nothing, except the underlying truth that yes, I am happy to be a Mom.
Perhaps it is of these misgivings that you speak of... when you say, "Now...you know."
M.