Jack of Hearts
11-02-2010, 01:34 AM
Shaded and secluded in the heart of mountains one could watch silken petals drift from the rough, like tributes of soft purple lavishing the earth. They always fell in slow serenade and tilted each way in silence, in diminished sunshine.
I was sitting on the bed when she leaned forward, inches from my nose, and whispered softly to me. And I could almost see her face but the petals were falling like a waterfall. ‘Please,’ she asked me and grabbed my hand to pull me to her, ‘please...’ And so I was lurched to the side and there was very little light until we got into the glow that spilled in from the hallway where the bedroom door was cracked. She pulled hard for a girl, such a small girl who’s head only rose to my chest. The swirls of white purple descended around the nape of her neck, the pale freckle skin.
In the mountains the year before I stopped on the trail in what appeared to be an overgrown orchard. There were blossoms on the trees that fell off like snow. I stayed until very late. I see it everywhere. Now this girl was holding my hand and needed me or any other guy to want her or she became dead. She cried into me and night about being dead, not using tears but waves and her whole cheeks were wet. She had big blue eyes and I guessed that’s how all that wet got out at once. To keep herself alive, to be anything to keep alive, she needed men like she needed more of a father or less of an uncle. We sat on her bed and she hugged me very tightly and I watched the nighttime shine into her hair, said nothing and she called me a good person for that. She also took my hand and put it on the back of her thigh, underneath her skirt. Every blossom, I supposed, fell differently.
“I’ve felt all there is,” she whispered as she cried. “Please tell me you understand…”
And I said no and got up and left, which wasn’t easy because she clung hard.
The next time I cared enough to softly brush some petals to the side so that I might satisfy a curiosity,* I was looking at a television screen. Disney characters moved around it, maybe Cinderella. “Watch,” said someone on the couch next to me, “you can see the f word in the clouds.”
“For God’s sake, it’s a children’s movie, man.”
But it wasn’t. It was a punch that took fifteen years to land. That made it quite a haymaker. It landed when you realized that what they’d fed you is saccharine sweet and sickening and when you realized you couldn’t be all those things that the ‘children’s movies’ told you were good. When you realized at times in your life you were the villain of your own story. Then, if you were really smart or lucky or unlucky, you might* realize that there’s not even a you or a story, just pretty petals falling as they may. That last bit doesn’t hurt at all, but before you got to that you had to do your time crying on the bed and telling someone you’d felt everything there is to feel.
Cinderella is an adult movie.
‘I had opened up a newspaper one day and read a small aside in an article. It told me that a guy I had known since the first grade had died in his bed. Drug overdose. I nearly had to close the paper in disbelief but didn’t and realized, by reading the article further, it’d happened nearly two years prior. I hadn’t yet gone to the orchard in the mountains and so I remember thinking a little too deeply about it. From ape to human to footnote,’ I had said to someone, sometime, when they had given me an opportunity to talk. No longer did those opportunities interest me.
“… Pretty nice.” He whistled and waved a hand infront of my face, “Raymond. Come back.”
I swept my fingers over my forehead and through my hair. The office, silent except for the ticking of an unseen clock and a bird chirping outside, was crowded with boxes of books. It felt coarse. It felt like somebody had been erasing vigorously in there.
“Hey space-case. I see you have characters, imagery… but where’s the plot?”
Dancing images of purple and white and did somebody say something... “Hmm?”
“For the life of me I cannot find any sensible plot to your story,” the professor repeated while ruffling the papers about in futile search.
“Well it must be in there somewhere,” I answered while leaning over the desk as if to peak. He scanned the first page again through his wiry glasses.
“Raymond, there is no plot.”
“Oh.”
The two of us sat there looking at each other for a long moment.
“Do you understand what I’m saying? About how stories have a plot?”
“… Uh…”
“Ok, Ray. A plot is a series of events that lead up to the one big event, uh, of the story called the climax.”
“Oh,” I answered. I looked away toward the dingy window, to where the bird was singing. A little bird underneath a bush underneath a spiderweb. When it started to become glaringly obvious that the professor wasn’t satisfied I started paying attention and obliged him. “Who came up with that?”
That response drew a smile and a small laugh, “Life, my friend. Plot is everywhere. Plot is all around you. Plot is life.”
“Oh. So life is moving toward some big event?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“There. You’re doing it again, Raymond. You eyes are glazing over. Where do you go when that happens?”
I never went anywhere. I just watch the petals fall.
I was sitting on the bed when she leaned forward, inches from my nose, and whispered softly to me. And I could almost see her face but the petals were falling like a waterfall. ‘Please,’ she asked me and grabbed my hand to pull me to her, ‘please...’ And so I was lurched to the side and there was very little light until we got into the glow that spilled in from the hallway where the bedroom door was cracked. She pulled hard for a girl, such a small girl who’s head only rose to my chest. The swirls of white purple descended around the nape of her neck, the pale freckle skin.
In the mountains the year before I stopped on the trail in what appeared to be an overgrown orchard. There were blossoms on the trees that fell off like snow. I stayed until very late. I see it everywhere. Now this girl was holding my hand and needed me or any other guy to want her or she became dead. She cried into me and night about being dead, not using tears but waves and her whole cheeks were wet. She had big blue eyes and I guessed that’s how all that wet got out at once. To keep herself alive, to be anything to keep alive, she needed men like she needed more of a father or less of an uncle. We sat on her bed and she hugged me very tightly and I watched the nighttime shine into her hair, said nothing and she called me a good person for that. She also took my hand and put it on the back of her thigh, underneath her skirt. Every blossom, I supposed, fell differently.
“I’ve felt all there is,” she whispered as she cried. “Please tell me you understand…”
And I said no and got up and left, which wasn’t easy because she clung hard.
The next time I cared enough to softly brush some petals to the side so that I might satisfy a curiosity,* I was looking at a television screen. Disney characters moved around it, maybe Cinderella. “Watch,” said someone on the couch next to me, “you can see the f word in the clouds.”
“For God’s sake, it’s a children’s movie, man.”
But it wasn’t. It was a punch that took fifteen years to land. That made it quite a haymaker. It landed when you realized that what they’d fed you is saccharine sweet and sickening and when you realized you couldn’t be all those things that the ‘children’s movies’ told you were good. When you realized at times in your life you were the villain of your own story. Then, if you were really smart or lucky or unlucky, you might* realize that there’s not even a you or a story, just pretty petals falling as they may. That last bit doesn’t hurt at all, but before you got to that you had to do your time crying on the bed and telling someone you’d felt everything there is to feel.
Cinderella is an adult movie.
‘I had opened up a newspaper one day and read a small aside in an article. It told me that a guy I had known since the first grade had died in his bed. Drug overdose. I nearly had to close the paper in disbelief but didn’t and realized, by reading the article further, it’d happened nearly two years prior. I hadn’t yet gone to the orchard in the mountains and so I remember thinking a little too deeply about it. From ape to human to footnote,’ I had said to someone, sometime, when they had given me an opportunity to talk. No longer did those opportunities interest me.
“… Pretty nice.” He whistled and waved a hand infront of my face, “Raymond. Come back.”
I swept my fingers over my forehead and through my hair. The office, silent except for the ticking of an unseen clock and a bird chirping outside, was crowded with boxes of books. It felt coarse. It felt like somebody had been erasing vigorously in there.
“Hey space-case. I see you have characters, imagery… but where’s the plot?”
Dancing images of purple and white and did somebody say something... “Hmm?”
“For the life of me I cannot find any sensible plot to your story,” the professor repeated while ruffling the papers about in futile search.
“Well it must be in there somewhere,” I answered while leaning over the desk as if to peak. He scanned the first page again through his wiry glasses.
“Raymond, there is no plot.”
“Oh.”
The two of us sat there looking at each other for a long moment.
“Do you understand what I’m saying? About how stories have a plot?”
“… Uh…”
“Ok, Ray. A plot is a series of events that lead up to the one big event, uh, of the story called the climax.”
“Oh,” I answered. I looked away toward the dingy window, to where the bird was singing. A little bird underneath a bush underneath a spiderweb. When it started to become glaringly obvious that the professor wasn’t satisfied I started paying attention and obliged him. “Who came up with that?”
That response drew a smile and a small laugh, “Life, my friend. Plot is everywhere. Plot is all around you. Plot is life.”
“Oh. So life is moving toward some big event?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“There. You’re doing it again, Raymond. You eyes are glazing over. Where do you go when that happens?”
I never went anywhere. I just watch the petals fall.