two hundred. ten.

I read something at an open mic night a while back & thought I would post it here. If you've read this blog at all some things will be a bit redundant. If you make it through to the end you should win a prize.

Here goes:

            I still long to stare at things and wonder.

I think some of my favorite things – my favorite songs, words, images – are an implication. Just a nod.

A nod in a direction, and if you tried too hard to grab on to it and bring it into the light so you could see it quite clearly, it would swiftly flee, understanding that the words that remain unsaid are powerful words. There are some things you must let others see for themselves without telling them how to see it.

My father taught me some things about seeing.

I remember the first time I saw the water as a color other than blue.

If he had handed me a canvas at any point in my life and said to me: “Paint the water.” I would have painted some blue waves, perhaps white tipped, the sea in my mind.

And he would tell me to really look.

One time I did, the time that no one told me to. I was sitting and eating ice cream on the dock. The sun was setting and there were the colors all over the water. The blue was the sky, with the pink and the orange from the sun, the green murky bits from the seaweed, the silver flash from the fish, so quick you almost thought you imagined it.

The things that surround us are anything but commonplace.

There are moments where I am overtaken by longing. There is an ache driven by yearning at the back of my throat, wishing I could open my mouth and swallow this moment whole. And I would keep it here in my chest for always. There is an ache in my fingers as if they wished I could open my hands and hold this moment, those words, that music, that sky in my hands, feel it & know it.

He is an artist and it’s the only way he can hold the sky in his hands, the only way he can know it and let it then be known. This is his reaction; this is what he does when something alters him.

You’ve heard the bit about ripples, about a drop of water causing a big reaction.

The ripples simply can’t help themselves but react.

What is created or done when you are a ripple fascinates me. I think it’s one of the most interesting parts of people – what alters them. You know? Something strikes you and you can’t help but react. It’s bigger than being grateful or angry; you’re thrown into a whirlwind of expression almost helplessly. You see or hear or experience something and you must in turn react: you must paint, dance, write, sing or create. You must go or come or stay, walk, run. Whether it is in awe or in fury, or an awful fury, or wonder, or joy, the weight is too much to sit in passive silence, to coat with weak words. No, you must answer, you must join, you find yourself altered.

      My father is an artist. As children we were all forced [against our will at times] to take his art classes. I don’t think my brother and sister minded nearly as much as I did. There was a lot I didn’t understand about drawing. My Dad would tell me to draw him. I would. I swear I would be drawing him just as he sat there with his hat on his head and his eyes down. What happened on my paper looked like a disfigured creature. I would get frustrated and begin to cry quietly out of my obsessive perfectionist nature. He would have me draw perspective drawings of shapes disappearing into the horizon line. How difficult is it to draw several squares? He always made it look so easy but I couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler. The thing that stuck the most about art class were eyes. Drawing eyes, and where they were placed. I would always draw people with eyes stuck in the middle of the forehead, that’s where eyes went in my mind.

The first time Dad told me that eyes were not placed so close to the forehead line, that they were between your ears in the middle of your face, I was flabbergasted.

What?

It couldn’t be true. When I tried it out on my next drawing it was so true. I was amazed. I had never thought of eyes sitting between your ears. One day when he asks me what I’ve learned from him, I’ll tell him that. I know where to put my eyes now.

I remember possibility. Those days when I was learning how to see, every morning was full of it, days ahead stretched out with it in abundance. My parents convinced us there was nothing we couldn’t do. They were dreamers with us, just children raising children. Grabbing the future in the palms of grubby hands we could be really something extraordinary.

If you could be anything you wanted, what would it be?

We’d lay on our backs, looking up, windswept and whimsical.

It’s different now, isn’t it? As we fast forward I’m left staring at and standing with people who might not remember possibility or hope. Or it’s one of the old things they take out and look at every once in a while with a sense of loss and nostalgia. I am tethered to hope, I think, there is a thread that ties me to it. When I fall it tugs me back.

There is one girl.

She is one who looks at hope like an old thing.

Her hands are shaking as she lights another cigarette. She is dressed in her hopeful pink dress, hopeful that he would take notice this time. When she heard the violin strings she started to cry quietly, but you could tell she had to squeeze the tears out because they wouldn’t spill over by themselves.

Several heavy drags in and she begins to talk about why she still loves him.

But he doesn’t notice her dress.

He hasn’t noticed her dress for the past 7 months, ever since she told him that she loved him. He calls her twice a night to tell her about his day. Sometimes he talks about other women. She smiles with her lips pursed. It’s forced, just like her tears were.

The window is cracked and it’s cold cold cold in the car. I’m not smoking and I don’t need the window down. I clench my knees together tighter and listen more.

She shows me a poem she wrote about a dream – dreams that are fleeting and flitting. She turns on a song about getting over someone. We both know she’s not trying, though.

He’ll come around and see what he’s been missing.

It’s lonelier to long for someone who doesn’t long back. She knows that if she turned away from him she would be totally alone but so free, content maybe for the first time in a while. But she can’t do that.

She’ll wear a hopeful dress tomorrow and she’ll make sure he remembers to call his mother to wish her a happy birthday. She’ll squeeze his knee and he’ll get angry, but oh, it was just an accident.

She closes the window.

In a moment she laughs a bitter laugh, rolls it down, and lights another cigarette. By the time he does come around she’s not healthy enough to care.