Meta hunger

The snow started on schedule, at 5 pm. The interstate police set out to ticket everybody who had even thought of driving this evening. In one of the cars they forced off the road . . .

I do want to continue this story--the beginning is intriguing!--but I'm tired and very hungry. If I don't go to bed now, I'm going to wrap a banana in cheese and swallow a horse. And then tomorrow I'm gonna be angry and even hungrier. Nah. Better go to bed now. I'll chew my pillow in the night and wake up in time for a healthy lunch. Maybe then I'll consume my cheese-wrapped banana -- that actually sounds quite good, you know. Half a minute in the microwave, a sprinkle of almond slivers. Yes. Then we can talk about who ate who and the aliens are among us.

My library

Even the upholstery is just the way I imagined it: light blue cushions set inside the dark blue frame, adorned with thin red seams. I run across the room and jump on top of it. Not a sound! It accepts me in its folds as if I were a volleyball. I lean back on the left arm, stretch my legs across the cushions and cover them with the flowery cotton quilt that had been carefully folded over the right arm. My next project is to imagine the placement of the bookshelves. I swiftly picture a two-storied gallery all around the perimeter of the room. The spiral staircase to the second story is buried within one of the bookcases. The balustrade is laden with flower boxes; there's a flourish of greenery all along the gallery. Then, of course, I require a desk. And a journal table! A chandelier? Or simply a few well placed torchiers and a desk lamp? I am leaning towards a combination; no amount of light is ever sufficient for me when I'm reading or writing. Okay, the gallery--done; desk--let's place it in the middle of the room for the moment being--done; chandelier and a desk lamp--done. What else? Books--a few of them are already there, I'll imagine the rest some other time. Paper, pens--I carry those in my backpack, no need to bother. A computer, a printer? But do I really want these in my library, occupying a large portion of my desk? I should probably imagine a dedicated space for them, somewhere in the corner. I probably need to expand the walls of the room to make sure everything fits comfortably. Imagining things is a tricky endeavor! In fact, I am growing more and more weary with every new leap of fancy. I need a nap. Good thing I have this pretty blue and red couch right here. Ah, that's much better. To be continued.

The break up

Get this: so at night I have this ridiculous dream that my parents disown me because I refuse to tell them the name of my boyfriend. And then in the morning my boyfriend breaks up with me because, apparently, I said "Mommy" and "Daddy" in my sleep a couple of times too many for his taste; he finds it weird. "I am not looking for anything complicated right now," he tells me, "I've got enough problems of my own." What an asshole! The funny part is that I don't think I would've been at all upset about this break up, if I didn't just spend half the night fighting with my parents. And I had used his trustworthiness as an argument in my favor!

Twenty-six

During the breaks, we played hopscotch with modified rules: the pebble could only be picked up by the person who standing on one foot could recite a non-repeating Shakespeare sonnet. "Mine eyes have drawn thy shape," etc. etc. At night, we practiced. To this day, I cannot fall asleep until I have gone through the lines of numbers 27 and 151 in my mind. I also have a special fondness for numbering my writings.

What I think is a contradiction

A word, a look -- she nourishes without even trying. She doesn't bake cakes, she uses no candles, she weaves not comforters out of words; but with a single smile she ignites the most powerful desire in the deepest of souls -- go figure, find a way how to extinguish it! --But you said, she nourishes! --Yes, and what is nourishment if not eternal striving? --Oh, who elected you a philosopher?! Shame on you. --And yet you know it, her look, her touch, her laughter, and you're doomed to the life of poetry. --Her? Do you mean, his? --Dude, this is pure theory talking. Let's not got personal. --Well then, I have no idea what the hell we're talking about. --Neither do I. --So why are we still talking? --Are we? We, who? --Please, at least don't go all metafictional on me now. --Forget about it. Let's go eat some cake. --Let's go drink some beer. --Wine. --Vodka. --Wine. --Fine.

Fighting gravity

She has perfect posture. Vertebrae sits on vertebrae and she needs no muscle strength to fight the force of gravity. From one look at her you'd think she was raised to be a musician or a horse rider. In fact, she was both. A pianist, a jockey, and, moreover, a yogi. She started practicing yoga when she retired from the racing track. By day, she practices yoga, and by night, she plays jingles and pop songs at the local piano bar. "I always wanted to explore the space within my body," she says about it when queried. People are always fascinated with her.

Combination lock

It was a simple, 4-digit combination she had been using regularly, two, three times a day. In fact, just a few hours earlier that same morning she wound the stupid doll in under a minute, proud of herself that she could do it without Feyg noticing anything. "Mommy, Mommy, what's wrong with Julie? Is she going to die?" Feyg was wailing now, picking up a powerless arm of her robotic sibling and letting it drop back down onto Lidia's knee. "Mommy, Mommy," sobbed Feyg staring at the face that just a minute ago had that dear silly, confused look, and now was completely unrecognizable, skin pulled tightly around the rigid plastic bone structure underneath, without a single wrinkle of expression; a face of a lifeless doll that Julie was. Lidia herself did not have the stamina to look at that face and kept her eyes firmly planted on the girl's belly button, right hand typing and retyping the numbers into the back of the body, left arm reaching out to Feyg. "Look at me, dear, look at me," she begged her eldest daughter, and catching the glance of the tearful pale blue eyes, promised: "Everything is going to be alright. Julie has a little fainting spell, that's all. She'll be alright in a moment, you'll see!" But what is the damned combination? What is it? Another minute of this, and Feyg is going to know that something is dreadfully wrong, she will take Julie for dead, and will look at her with endless suspicion if she suddenly comes to life just like that. She will know that something is off, different, and will then inevitably discover the control pad on her sister's back, her true doll nature. What am I going to do? "Feyg, do you remember when we celebrated your sister's birthday? Do you remember when it was? What date?" Lidia made a desperate attempt. "Aaaa!" cried the girl. She didn't even hear the question. The sobs were violently shaking her shoulders. Her head fell on her chest. With only one arm unoccupied by Julie, Lidia barely managed to catch her eldest daughter when she fainted.

Dramatic performance

My neighbor was snoring. You never expect this of the young and the beautiful, but there it was: horrific croaking coming from the nasal cavity of a blonde with the profile fit for a Grecian urn. I tried to keep my eyes on the musicians and my ears attuned to the performance, but eventually I developed a strong suspicion that the first violinist was eying my neighbor with eyes green of anger and only extreme professionalism kept her from dashing across the proscenium and stuffing her bow through the mouth of the second row predator. The music went BRAMS and BA-BACH but my neighbor, with her head lying almost perpendicular to her body on the back of her chair, was oblivious to all. HRUH-HRUCHH. HRUH-HRARCH. Her luscious hay-colored hair spilled all over the velvet seat cushion. In the dimmed light of the Symphony Hall, her skin looked like it was carved out of marble, and the open mouth revealed a set of picture-perfect incisors and canines. She would've been a great bite model for the new orthodontic treatment commercial I had been envisioning. HRUH-HRAH-ARGHH. I exchanged glances with the first violinist. Mute, she was begging me to do something. I turned to my neighbor again with the view of gently tapping her on the shoulder, and suddenly noticed that she was staring at me. Her pupils were partially visible through the narrow slits of her eyelids, yet her head remained strangely contorted. Her upper lip moved. SHEEEH. I screamed.

Grief

The cafe owner's crime was that a member of the bereaved fathers group that met there on Sundays at 6 pm suddenly became violent and physically assaulted several of the other grieving parents as well as idle coffee drinkers. Three noses were broken, two reputations irreparably damaged, and one precious laptop flooded with scalding liquid.

Theory of beauty

It hurts me to look at you. Your beauty forces my eyes to drip with tears. I reach for my sunglasses in the glove compartment and only when your features become hidden in their dark shadow am I able to tune back into our conversation. "It's crazy that beauty must be so subjective," you're babbling idly. "For example, look at this building over there,--" and you point to this or that run down high rise we're passing, "its architect at the very least must've found it appealing once, or at least practical and not ugly... Or take the old paintings. Renaissance. The women they found beautiful in those days! It's crazy, I tell you." I nod so violently that my glasses fly into my lap and I have to readjust and secure them over my ears. "If what you're saying is that beauty is a constructed concept, I completely agree with you," I admit freely, finally reacquiring the ability to speak now that I cannot see you any longer. "It is determined in every age by certain social, economical, and political forces. As well as by the dominant ideology and the contemporary discourse of power." To be completely honest with you, I find this inability of yours to discern the beauty of the Renaissance women as comforting as the sunglasses on my nose.

Part tree, part deer

His sense of self became so diluted that he was now part cherry tree and grew a pair of antlers. Death was another state of being, reincarnation inevitable. He scooped up another forkful of wild mushrooms, sniffed the cream sauce, and then placed them in his mouth and chewed slowly, vaguely gazing at the empty seat on the other side of the table.

Pike's wish

It had been one of the worst days of Pike's life. So bad that at lunchtime he even thought of calling his mother. He reached for the phone, then remembered she was dead. In the evening, he saw his doctor. "Yes, of course," said the doctor, smiling tiredly. "This is one of the symptoms of your disease. Your memories are becoming less present." Then Pike went home and ate chicken soup for dinner. There was no lucky bone in the soup, but he made a wish anyway, and that night the wish came true. So Pike's very bad day instantly turned into a great one.

Coincidence

In a remarkable coincidence, he fell asleep the very moment his head hit the pillow. Just a few minutes before he was wide awake, sitting on the couch next to his wife and watching TV. Then she decided to go to bed, and he followed her faithfully. He didn't fall asleep in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. He didn't fall asleep in the kitchen, taking a sip of water. He was completely aware of his actions when he took off his clothes in the bedroom. He even had time to say good-night to his wife while getting into bed and fumbling with the blankets. But the moment--the very moment--his head hit the pillow, he was dead asleep. Not dead but asleep so deeply that if she didn't feel his heart beating inside the cocoon of the blanket, his wife would've convincingly believe him dead. He fell asleep so suddenly that she wasn't sure if he'd even heard that she wished him good-night back; and he certainly didn't grant her the duly expected nightly kiss. She lay next to him, staring at the single fluorescent fish remaining on their ceiling, and thought about how strange it was that he should drop off to sleep just like that, at the very moment of collision of his head with the soft, freshly washed, linen. She stayed awake the whole night through contriving to dream up the coincidentally omitted kiss.

February's old age

February, oh, February. She's grown so big now. Last time I saw her, she was still a young girl, and now I really should start referring to her as a woman. Sometimes, though, I think that we'll turn 88 years old, and I will still talk about her as if she tied her hair in braids and outfitted herself in the old brown-wool school uniform with white collar and sleeves starched weekly. My grandmother told me once that after 80 people started growing baby teeth and hair again, so I guess the braid thing is not completely out of the question. It is strangely simple to imagine February as an old girl, pudgy and wrinkly, with a bunch of tiny white braids sticking out in all directions. She would go everywhere with a heavy walking stick and use its handle indiscriminately to grab onto things and trip other girls and boys up for bad behavior or personal amusement. She would develop this really nasty habit of taking her dentures out for airings in restaurants and on boats, then accidentally misplacing them and demanding help loudly and unintelligibly. The more vividly I picture her old age, the sadder it is to think that she is slated to die in just 18 more days. She won't live past her 29th birthday.

Lucky cat

My cat is going like a clock, swinging her leaden paw ceaselessly up and down, up and down. It's amazing that I don't get a headache. In addition to the effects of a metronome, the cat is also supposed to bring me luck. Perhaps, the rhythmical quality of its battery-powered movement is luck in itself: poor poetry comes to those who lack the understanding of the meter. Yes, yes.
Cat.
Luck.
Poetry.
Headache.
Vodka.
Cat.
Lack.

Springtime

The north-easterly wind blowing, this time, from the southerly brought in its sweep welcome tidings and bits of cellophane. The warm breeze scratched confusedly against the pavements and made little bubbles in the window panes. The car alarms went off, and nobody could figure out that it was because of the wind's slight airheadedness. The last wild cat remaining in the city, a haggard black minx with white paws, woke up in her cellar and came out onto the street in the broad daylight. She was the first to notice the bursting buds on the peach tree outside my bedroom window.

Bicycle

All the love that he had in the world was three-pronged: the right flat fang for his mother, the left flat one for his sister, and the top round one for his bicycle. The third one brought him the most pleasure, especially on those days when he gave his sister a ride to the zoo. If only it were possible to place both, his mother and his sister on the sturdy frame of his bicycle! He trembled in his thoughts and was unable to realize any additional metaphors that night. It was very late, and he was finally tired enough to think about her whom he loved instead of playing with venomous sisters and treacherous bicycles. She took over his thoughts for a considerable amount of time until the alarm clock reminded him that it was a gentle Tuesday.

The broken website

The website was obviously broken. I mean, it said quite definitively "I'm broken," or "Page not found," or some such thing. I still kept checking it regularly, once a day, during my afternoon tea break. Sometimes, I checked it twice a day, at tea-time and also while getting ready for bed at night, right after washing my face but before brushing my hair. I don't sleep well unless I brush my hair seconds prior to hitting the sheets. To be completely honest, at the end, I started checking the website compulsively, five to ten times a day, every time I sat down in front of the computer or opened another browser window. Once in a while, I would check Google Cache, just to sort of be reminded of the way it looked. None of its interactive features would work, of course, but I simply liked to see it again. I lost all hope. Almost completely.

Sunday

She believes, the sun is shining today just for her. She is walking around town with a taste of raspberries in her mouth. In fact, she hasn't left her house in days. There is no inside and outside to her house, so she goes from one sunlit room to another, greeting her guests who are always there on Sundays, and treating them to fermented grape juice and finger-sandwiches. Her cheeks are freckled and her nose is slightly red. She entertains with puzzles and poetry: "To get to Sacramento? Go up and then down. You'll meet mice who are gently tailored and whiskered." Let's have music, she decides, and immediately the bells start chiming. Her guests jingle coins in their pockets and tapdance around her. Raspberry seeds are stuck between her teeth, and she has more guests that she can count.

Inconsequential

It was not the lack of air that caused difficulty of breathing. The pile of poetry books on the bed is growing. And I've lived through this afternoon with the constant awareness that one day you will die.

African violet

"You have to make sure you don't wet the leaves of this plant. Otherwise, they'll turn yellow, shrivel up, and your plant will die," she explained patiently. We were standing in the middle of the bamboo forest, and she was holding the little potted violet that I had picked out in her hands and wouldn't let it go. I reached for it, but she made a protective move with her elbow and took a step back. "Make sure to read the care instructions in the brochure I gave you," she said sizing me up from top to bottom. I think she thought I was an unreliable character. "And don't hesitate to bring it back here if something goes wrong. We can help you diagnose the problem, but we don't give refunds on dead plants." I made another move for my green pet, but she stepped deeper into the protective shade of the tall bamboo stems. "If you do everything right, it will reward you with magnificent blooming in the summer and fall. It is a spectacular little plant." I should've been wary of such lavish adjectives in reference to the tiny little 10-leaf thing in her hands, but I guess I took her words at face value. I was terribly disappointed this fall when the plant finally bloomed, and they were tiny little blue flowers. The very opposite of magnificent, I would say.

Yellow eyes

I've been spending a lot of time in my car recently, and I noticed that my eyes have completely lost their greenish hue and are now convincingly yellow. Yes, yes, I agree with you, I am bound to cause an accident staring at myself in the mirror so much, but isn't it disturbing that my eyes should be of an unmistakable yellow coloring? Have you ever known anybody with yellow eyes? You know, I read in the newspaper today that blue-eyed people are all descended from a single person and that blue-eyeness is caused by a gene mutation. So, what do you think, should I check myself into a hospital and have them run some tests on me? I wouldn't be surprised if they found several funky genes squirting around my body. Sometimes I experience extremely strange sensations in the spot where my neck is connected to my skull, my nails are sensitive to light, and I'm almost positive that my heart is on the right side of my chest. What if my hair also turned yellow? Or my nails? Or my skin? I would die if something like that should ever happen.

Airborne

She is never sick. No colds, no stomach aches, no rotten teeth, not even a headache. For years she'd lived without insurance, but even after she was forced into buying a policy by the pervasive care of her employer, she never went to a single doctor. Oh, yes, once she went to the dentist to get her teeth cleaned. The dentist was impressed: there was no sign of plaque on her molars whatsoever. It was as if she possessed some kind of a superpower. Which she did, brushing her teeth three times a day or after every meal. But also she was a witch and knew how to fly.

Opera

Nights February spends in front of a television set, watching rented opera. The next day, she posts reviews on her increasingly popular blog. She evaluates the distinguishing characteristics of the singers' voices, the costumes and stage set, the direction, even DVD production qualities. Many complex criteria are involved in each write-up. Of course, February makes it all up; she rarely makes it through more than the first five minutes of an opera with her eyes open. "It's not that I find opera boring," she explains to a close personal confidante, "not at all. I find opera fascinating. It's the rhythmic quality of this kind of music that immediately lulls me to sleep. I have such pleasant dreams with opera flashing on the background!" So all of February's well-received reviews are based on the first five minutes of music and the rest is made up of dreams. Usually she dreams of snow-covered mountain slopes somewhere in the Swiss Alps and a lonely skier in an orange jumpsuit.