Come back in two halves
Apr. 26th, 2005 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonBack.
Pull back away from the screen, and the walls of the cube break down into the other cubes, dissolving like old milk in bad coffee, a slow stir of function and the forms spin into each other, the carpet is growing up the wheeled legs of our chairs, the clocks are sinking into the walls at a rate that measures the lives of Gods and planets, stacks of cardboard boxes form the architecture of a random skyline, minature cities growing on the plateaus of empty desks under the islands of flourescent lights that shine like spare change in a sun that can't be seen. The office is leaking out the windows into the rain clouds it absorbs the hard buildings and long roads through some strange process of osmosis that feeds it and makes it bigger, makes it hungry, and there I am sitting in the middle of it all. A pit in the center of a gray fruit, a seed spit out rather than swallowed.
Back from the funeral. Where I didn't cry so I would be of some use to those that could. Where the sun burned brightly above us, and the ocean salt lingered in the windless air and the explosion chorus of Harley Davidsons roared into the parking lot of the funeral home, old wolves of men, tattos faded under well tanned arms that hugged my grandmother with the love of the gentlest of monks and scholars, and I see it then, the way it gets easier to see my Grandmothers face in my Mothers, then the strangers shaking my hands too long, telling me all about my life before I could remember my life, some try to tell me about him, warm smiles that ache all the more for their sincerity. I carry it deep. In the guts. The way he would. The way my friends would. The way a Man should. Before the service, outside sneaking in a last cigarette with the rest of my family. Sitting on a stone bench, the brittle hand of my Grandmother clasping mine, glass fragile fingers wrapped in satin squeezing the jagged cliffs of my own clumsy fist. They play the 'Dead as he would have wished. The room quiets. My aunt reads. Steady and strong. The only one of us that could. Next to me my little cousin starts weeping. A little boy who lives shyily outside his family in a world of comic books and action movies, akward and eager, bright and unsure, and the mirror grows inside me, I could see myself at my Grandfathers funeral, back when I was his age, only we had an open casket then and the sight of my grandfather, with his Santa Claus face sleeping like I could go over and tap him lightly like I did when he would fall asleep in the recliner, and he'd startle awake. I remember walking up to the casket thinking that I should try it, scared because I knew it wouldn't work and the nightmares that followed and in my dreams my Grandfather would never speak again. I lean in and pat my cousin on the back, give him a squeeze, I feel the heat of his tears against my shirt and then the family huddles into each other, into one another, where one cannot the other can and i'm in the center of my own little world. It flows around me but it does not seep through. Am I a bad man for this? Am I emotionally fucked up because I can't feel it the same way they do, the little scar across the heart that bleeds when you think of him is dammed up and blocked inside. Here I am and all I could think about was who I didn't see there. A wife now a widow, a son to continue the job, a daughter that inherits the wind of his adventures. And where I saw history in my cousins tears I see my own future in the absence of my uncle, a vision of empty seats at the funeral and no one there but maybe my best friend Bill & his wife and whoever was left of my own family. What would they say? What have I done? A scrapbook filled with loveletters to the women who left, clean white pages vandalized with bad poetry, snapshots of europe and downtown and graveyards a few glued in flyers and yellow highlighted articles that mentioned a "Dj Jack Babylon", it's wrapped up and offered to the few that's left. Maybe Bill'll keep it. Maybe not.
Back.
In front of the screen. The big Fisher Price icons of Windows XP, playground software for the working stupid and borderline technophobes. Earphone buzzes and giggle whispers of my coworkers. "Who's going to lunch for anything?",
"Ohhhhhh did you hear...?", "Trying to put the fires out", "yes", "hello","NO",
"girl you ready? You call that order in all ready?". I sit in the middle, a member of the audience who fell asleep in the first act and finds himself in the same chair but on the stage for the next scene, alone and under a single bright bulb with a hundred pairs of eyes straining at me through the dark. Waiting for genius or failure or both.
Try as I might I can't just close my eyes and hope I wind up back out there on the other side of curtain, waiting for the show to start, or stop depending on when you came in. Like it or not I'm on and i'm up.
Pull back away from the screen, and the walls of the cube break down into the other cubes, dissolving like old milk in bad coffee, a slow stir of function and the forms spin into each other, the carpet is growing up the wheeled legs of our chairs, the clocks are sinking into the walls at a rate that measures the lives of Gods and planets, stacks of cardboard boxes form the architecture of a random skyline, minature cities growing on the plateaus of empty desks under the islands of flourescent lights that shine like spare change in a sun that can't be seen. The office is leaking out the windows into the rain clouds it absorbs the hard buildings and long roads through some strange process of osmosis that feeds it and makes it bigger, makes it hungry, and there I am sitting in the middle of it all. A pit in the center of a gray fruit, a seed spit out rather than swallowed.
Back from the funeral. Where I didn't cry so I would be of some use to those that could. Where the sun burned brightly above us, and the ocean salt lingered in the windless air and the explosion chorus of Harley Davidsons roared into the parking lot of the funeral home, old wolves of men, tattos faded under well tanned arms that hugged my grandmother with the love of the gentlest of monks and scholars, and I see it then, the way it gets easier to see my Grandmothers face in my Mothers, then the strangers shaking my hands too long, telling me all about my life before I could remember my life, some try to tell me about him, warm smiles that ache all the more for their sincerity. I carry it deep. In the guts. The way he would. The way my friends would. The way a Man should. Before the service, outside sneaking in a last cigarette with the rest of my family. Sitting on a stone bench, the brittle hand of my Grandmother clasping mine, glass fragile fingers wrapped in satin squeezing the jagged cliffs of my own clumsy fist. They play the 'Dead as he would have wished. The room quiets. My aunt reads. Steady and strong. The only one of us that could. Next to me my little cousin starts weeping. A little boy who lives shyily outside his family in a world of comic books and action movies, akward and eager, bright and unsure, and the mirror grows inside me, I could see myself at my Grandfathers funeral, back when I was his age, only we had an open casket then and the sight of my grandfather, with his Santa Claus face sleeping like I could go over and tap him lightly like I did when he would fall asleep in the recliner, and he'd startle awake. I remember walking up to the casket thinking that I should try it, scared because I knew it wouldn't work and the nightmares that followed and in my dreams my Grandfather would never speak again. I lean in and pat my cousin on the back, give him a squeeze, I feel the heat of his tears against my shirt and then the family huddles into each other, into one another, where one cannot the other can and i'm in the center of my own little world. It flows around me but it does not seep through. Am I a bad man for this? Am I emotionally fucked up because I can't feel it the same way they do, the little scar across the heart that bleeds when you think of him is dammed up and blocked inside. Here I am and all I could think about was who I didn't see there. A wife now a widow, a son to continue the job, a daughter that inherits the wind of his adventures. And where I saw history in my cousins tears I see my own future in the absence of my uncle, a vision of empty seats at the funeral and no one there but maybe my best friend Bill & his wife and whoever was left of my own family. What would they say? What have I done? A scrapbook filled with loveletters to the women who left, clean white pages vandalized with bad poetry, snapshots of europe and downtown and graveyards a few glued in flyers and yellow highlighted articles that mentioned a "Dj Jack Babylon", it's wrapped up and offered to the few that's left. Maybe Bill'll keep it. Maybe not.
Back.
In front of the screen. The big Fisher Price icons of Windows XP, playground software for the working stupid and borderline technophobes. Earphone buzzes and giggle whispers of my coworkers. "Who's going to lunch for anything?",
"Ohhhhhh did you hear...?", "Trying to put the fires out", "yes", "hello","NO",
"girl you ready? You call that order in all ready?". I sit in the middle, a member of the audience who fell asleep in the first act and finds himself in the same chair but on the stage for the next scene, alone and under a single bright bulb with a hundred pairs of eyes straining at me through the dark. Waiting for genius or failure or both.
Try as I might I can't just close my eyes and hope I wind up back out there on the other side of curtain, waiting for the show to start, or stop depending on when you came in. Like it or not I'm on and i'm up.