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| Tuesday, August 25, 2009 |
| Arousing affect |
Stepping barefoot outdoors on a blood red shag carpet full of ashes flicked from cigarettes, she inhales deeply, and exhales into her favorite chair. She squints into the sun, her lips grimacing at the brightness of the day. Just over the hump of the nearby mountain she glimpses the dismembered wings of angels, hanging deftly with white puffy clouds against the backdrop of the blue blue sky. She is disappointed that she doesn't feel sorrow or remorse at the sight of their perfect shape. She is aware of the numbness of her soul, it dawns on her that perhaps it isn't numbness, nor apathy, but that she is too lazy to rouse the feelings of her heart. She watches quietly as her wings transform, become serpents, become wisps, become a question mark then nothing. She wonders if they were ever really there. Her reverie is interrupted by the shrieks of a little girl riding a tricycle along the sidewalk. The child's hair blows in her face as she turns to look behind her. A dirt-crusted tiny chubby hand impatiently pushes it from her eyes as she stops her little bike, turns, then completely abandons the thing to join a game of monsters. The woman on the balcony watches peacefully from her chair. She doesn't call out when another little girl takes up the lonely vehicle. She doesn't move at all.
She indulges herself, smelling the kitchens of her neighbors wafting up to her. She imagines pots banging, mothers shouting, children lined up at tables fastidiously studying their pencil lead while daydreaming about being dragon masters and magicians. She sips her coffee and remembers the faces of the people she travelled with on the bus the previous day. The woman whose features were soft under her snores, her neck bent precariously as she dreamed of simpler times, the man with the prosthetic leg, busily reading from documentation dated two years previous, the gentle man with a baby strapped to his belly a little girl holding his pinkie in tow, oh the sounds of that baby's laughter, such joy.
When she rose this morning, the world felt different somehow. But, she is beginning to recognize this deception. For months she has felt something different, something changing. Always in the morning, when the day is new, and she is sipping her coffee while listening to the news. When the day comes to a close, she remembers this manifestation as she closes her eyes to dream, she is reminded, and so again is disappointed. Perhaps the change is slow, perhaps it isn't something to be noticed immediately, perhaps it is a gradual thing. Like the growth of a child. Each day there are very prominent, very different features. The child learns a new word, is able to hold a spoon, can take a few steps, then suddenly one day he is nearly your height and defines words like prosecution at the dinner table.
She finds she is afraid at night. When she hears the muted sounds of the television belonging to the neighbor under her, the opening and closing of the apartment doors across the hall, the shuffling of feet on the concrete stairs outside her door. It is ridiculous. She is a full grown woman after all. But, still. Sometimes a car alarm will go off in the parking lot, ringing for what seems like hours. She always jumps from her bed, parting the blinds briefly to be sure it isn't her own, then scurries back under her covers to pull the blanket over her head. Silly. Sad. True.
She sits on her favorite chair on the balcony of her second story apartment. She watches through the vinyl slats as a man steps from his shiny red car. He carefully lifts a giant fountain cup in one fist as he slowly stands and tucks a book under his preoccupied arm. He teeters a little as he adjusts the waistband of his pants. She watches a hummingbird flit around the lanterns hanging on her eve, a brave one hovers just near her feet a few moments as if to express its annoyance at not finding a meal in their cloth flowers. She giggles.
She observes the sounds of her home. The sigh of the refrigerator door opening, the burble of the coffee pot, the music in the rooms of her children, the creak of the couch cushions as she lowers her body to read. She suddenly realizes that this quiet observation, this poignant simple taste of reality from moment to moment is what she has been missing. It has been reverberating around her all along, but for some reason, she stopped paying attention.
She closes her eyes. She listens intently. She breathes deeply. She places her cheek on the velvety soft pillow of the couch. She observes quietly, recording every tick, step, clang, bang, and aroma. It visits. Happy. Happy. |
posted by katmandusuekookachoo @ 9:35 PM  |
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