jordan4657
09-16-2014, 01:51 AM
The old woman let the childproof lid drop to the floor and tossed one of the white pills to the back of her mouth, feeling that familiar click on her back teeth. She closed her eyes and swallowed it dry, testing the waters. She attempted to swallow another one but it got caught in the back of her dry throat and began to dissolve, filling her mouth with an unbearable chemical taste.
She placed the bottle back on the table beside the keys to the rusted station wagon out front, picked up a newly emptied rock glass and headed to the kitchen.
The woman fished a nearly empty bottle of vodka out of the freezer and turned it upside down into the glass. It was barely enough to stifle the taste of the pill.
On the couch again she scanned the table in front of her. Her eyes honed in on the prescription bottle once more and she leaned forward with complete certainty, but her outstretched arm was frozen in a moment of unconscious deliberation.
For some reason beyond her she instead picked up the car keys that hadn't been touched for days.
-------------------------------------------------------
The traffic on I-5 looked beautiful and uniform, like blood through a vein. Exits branched off like capillaries slowing the vehicles as they pressed towards their destinations. Sometimes it's chaotic, horrifying. All these metal caskets hurtling through space, inches from disaster. Today was different somehow.
Through the frame of the bus window he shifted focus from one vehicle to another while his hand - seemingly independent of his body - took notes on the experience of seeing without the usual vertigo.
His hand came to a stop mid-sentence and he flipped back to one of the first pages in his small moleskin notebook. Page 7:
"More and more they seem to fade. Faces you don't see anymore. Like something seen in the periphery of a dream. The memory and the idea of it are vivid but it's difficult to stitch together a clear image.
It's like your brain realizes it doesn't need the information as much since you haven't used it in a while and moves it to some deeper place of storage, one that doesn't need upkeep. Eventually that original space gets filled with more recent and recurring things.
When you spend enough time seeing and thinking about a person it becomes ingrained. your brain keeps them alive, a part of you. There is a readily accessible likeness of a person you know. you can see them anytime. But with time the image fades. Less thought reaches it to keep it alive. There are no new experiences to reinforce the old ones.
Time keeps passing. We meet new people, learn new things; but however prominent they are in your thoughts they always fade to make way for new ones.
If the times and faces are fading then what about the importance we attach to them? Does it really stay unchanged when the memories fade away? Is it realistic or necessary to try to hold on to it?
God , I don't know where I'm going here. I think I'm just drunk. I need to go to bed."
He closed the book and stared back out the window. He has recently taken to writing in a journal as much as possible. Even when there was nothing to say he would just write about his surroundings. Anything that made it's way through any of his senses would pour out onto paper as it was experienced.
It seemed to give him a sense of fluidity, like everything flowed through him rather than pouring in and getting stuck. It was a newer - and less destructive than usual - way of chasing those moments of clarity that came every so often. That state of transient appreciation where everything is coming and going and you are part of it all. Free of attachments. Nothing gained, nothing lost.
A few blocks ahead was the bus stop in front of the grocery store. He put his notebook away, checked the seat to make sure he didn't leave anything behind, and pulled the string that signals the bus driver to pull up to the next stop.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In the checkout line of a grocery store on 17th avenue an old woman stands impatiently clutching a bottle of Popov Vodka. She is third in line. A blonde woman in her early twenties parks her cart behind the old woman. Her two or three year old daughter sits facing her, laughing and banging a lollipop on the cart's handlebar.
The old woman makes the mistake of looking back and accidentally makes eye contact with the young mother.
"Isn't she Beautiful?"
The old woman looks down at the child, who just dropped her candy on the floor and seems to be in a state of shock, seconds from a meltdown. Mom notices this and pulls another sucker from her breast pocket before the child can even process the loss.
"Yes," she considers ignoring her entirely but something wouldn't let her, "yes. she's darling."
She then realizes that she has accepted an invitation to a conversation that will last the remainder of her wait in line.
The old woman's face begins to express a sort of fascinated contempt as this stranger begins rattling on as if they were old friends. Her eye contact and enthusiasm are intrusive and she finds herself drawing her attention to the rack of candy next to the register in retreat.
"Next!" shouts the man at the register to no one in particular.
A kid steps forward and places a bottle of water and two notebooks on the counter.
The old woman glances down at a drink cooler across from the candy display and then back at the bottle of vodka in her arm and - as if to make it seem like the alcohol isn't the only reason she is in line - reaches in to the cooler for a water. This seems to make no difference to the woman behind her, still caught up in a mostly one sided conversation.
"I don't know what it is about today but something just feels right about it. I found a lucky penny this morning. Maybe that's it. I bet you walk outside and find one too. There really are good things everywhere, you just don't see them if you aren't open to it, you know?"
"Pennies, huh?" the old woman inches closer to the checkout counter while the man behind it hands the kid his bag.
"That'll be 7.99."
The kid looks as if he forgot this part of the transaction was coming and, with a little effort, pulls out a wrinkled ten dollar bill and places it on the counter. He gets his change and thanks the cashier but pauses before leaving to look back at the women behind him. He had been listening to their conversation and was reluctant to leave before it was over.
He steps outside and is momentarily blinded by the sunlight. Squinting, he lifts his right hand to shield his eyes and realizes he is still holding his change: two dollar bills and one copper coin.
He takes a look out across the parking lot, actually taking in his surroundings. Cars lined up in neat rows. people pushing carts full of groceries. All of them with their own thoughts and lives completely separate from each other, yet interconnected, crossing paths and making decisions that change the outcomes of countless others without ever knowing it.
Back inside the old woman turns away from the register with her bottle shaped brown paper bag to make her way towards the exit.
The kid bends down and places the single coin on the sidewalk in front of the store's automatic doors before walking to the nearest bench to sit.
A few seconds later the old woman stops in the same spot to let her eyes adjust to the brightness. She looks at the ground to see a small shiny coin in front of her. She picks it up and holds it in her hand to examine it, tilting her open palm in different directions to see the glare of the sunlight on it's surface.
From his seat on the bench the kid sees the woman smile slightly. She laughs to herself quietly and shakes her head as she puts the penny in her pocket and begins walking back to her car.
He watches her disappear into the parking lot before pulling out one of his new notebooks. He locates a pen in his back pocket and begins to write.
She placed the bottle back on the table beside the keys to the rusted station wagon out front, picked up a newly emptied rock glass and headed to the kitchen.
The woman fished a nearly empty bottle of vodka out of the freezer and turned it upside down into the glass. It was barely enough to stifle the taste of the pill.
On the couch again she scanned the table in front of her. Her eyes honed in on the prescription bottle once more and she leaned forward with complete certainty, but her outstretched arm was frozen in a moment of unconscious deliberation.
For some reason beyond her she instead picked up the car keys that hadn't been touched for days.
-------------------------------------------------------
The traffic on I-5 looked beautiful and uniform, like blood through a vein. Exits branched off like capillaries slowing the vehicles as they pressed towards their destinations. Sometimes it's chaotic, horrifying. All these metal caskets hurtling through space, inches from disaster. Today was different somehow.
Through the frame of the bus window he shifted focus from one vehicle to another while his hand - seemingly independent of his body - took notes on the experience of seeing without the usual vertigo.
His hand came to a stop mid-sentence and he flipped back to one of the first pages in his small moleskin notebook. Page 7:
"More and more they seem to fade. Faces you don't see anymore. Like something seen in the periphery of a dream. The memory and the idea of it are vivid but it's difficult to stitch together a clear image.
It's like your brain realizes it doesn't need the information as much since you haven't used it in a while and moves it to some deeper place of storage, one that doesn't need upkeep. Eventually that original space gets filled with more recent and recurring things.
When you spend enough time seeing and thinking about a person it becomes ingrained. your brain keeps them alive, a part of you. There is a readily accessible likeness of a person you know. you can see them anytime. But with time the image fades. Less thought reaches it to keep it alive. There are no new experiences to reinforce the old ones.
Time keeps passing. We meet new people, learn new things; but however prominent they are in your thoughts they always fade to make way for new ones.
If the times and faces are fading then what about the importance we attach to them? Does it really stay unchanged when the memories fade away? Is it realistic or necessary to try to hold on to it?
God , I don't know where I'm going here. I think I'm just drunk. I need to go to bed."
He closed the book and stared back out the window. He has recently taken to writing in a journal as much as possible. Even when there was nothing to say he would just write about his surroundings. Anything that made it's way through any of his senses would pour out onto paper as it was experienced.
It seemed to give him a sense of fluidity, like everything flowed through him rather than pouring in and getting stuck. It was a newer - and less destructive than usual - way of chasing those moments of clarity that came every so often. That state of transient appreciation where everything is coming and going and you are part of it all. Free of attachments. Nothing gained, nothing lost.
A few blocks ahead was the bus stop in front of the grocery store. He put his notebook away, checked the seat to make sure he didn't leave anything behind, and pulled the string that signals the bus driver to pull up to the next stop.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In the checkout line of a grocery store on 17th avenue an old woman stands impatiently clutching a bottle of Popov Vodka. She is third in line. A blonde woman in her early twenties parks her cart behind the old woman. Her two or three year old daughter sits facing her, laughing and banging a lollipop on the cart's handlebar.
The old woman makes the mistake of looking back and accidentally makes eye contact with the young mother.
"Isn't she Beautiful?"
The old woman looks down at the child, who just dropped her candy on the floor and seems to be in a state of shock, seconds from a meltdown. Mom notices this and pulls another sucker from her breast pocket before the child can even process the loss.
"Yes," she considers ignoring her entirely but something wouldn't let her, "yes. she's darling."
She then realizes that she has accepted an invitation to a conversation that will last the remainder of her wait in line.
The old woman's face begins to express a sort of fascinated contempt as this stranger begins rattling on as if they were old friends. Her eye contact and enthusiasm are intrusive and she finds herself drawing her attention to the rack of candy next to the register in retreat.
"Next!" shouts the man at the register to no one in particular.
A kid steps forward and places a bottle of water and two notebooks on the counter.
The old woman glances down at a drink cooler across from the candy display and then back at the bottle of vodka in her arm and - as if to make it seem like the alcohol isn't the only reason she is in line - reaches in to the cooler for a water. This seems to make no difference to the woman behind her, still caught up in a mostly one sided conversation.
"I don't know what it is about today but something just feels right about it. I found a lucky penny this morning. Maybe that's it. I bet you walk outside and find one too. There really are good things everywhere, you just don't see them if you aren't open to it, you know?"
"Pennies, huh?" the old woman inches closer to the checkout counter while the man behind it hands the kid his bag.
"That'll be 7.99."
The kid looks as if he forgot this part of the transaction was coming and, with a little effort, pulls out a wrinkled ten dollar bill and places it on the counter. He gets his change and thanks the cashier but pauses before leaving to look back at the women behind him. He had been listening to their conversation and was reluctant to leave before it was over.
He steps outside and is momentarily blinded by the sunlight. Squinting, he lifts his right hand to shield his eyes and realizes he is still holding his change: two dollar bills and one copper coin.
He takes a look out across the parking lot, actually taking in his surroundings. Cars lined up in neat rows. people pushing carts full of groceries. All of them with their own thoughts and lives completely separate from each other, yet interconnected, crossing paths and making decisions that change the outcomes of countless others without ever knowing it.
Back inside the old woman turns away from the register with her bottle shaped brown paper bag to make her way towards the exit.
The kid bends down and places the single coin on the sidewalk in front of the store's automatic doors before walking to the nearest bench to sit.
A few seconds later the old woman stops in the same spot to let her eyes adjust to the brightness. She looks at the ground to see a small shiny coin in front of her. She picks it up and holds it in her hand to examine it, tilting her open palm in different directions to see the glare of the sunlight on it's surface.
From his seat on the bench the kid sees the woman smile slightly. She laughs to herself quietly and shakes her head as she puts the penny in her pocket and begins walking back to her car.
He watches her disappear into the parking lot before pulling out one of his new notebooks. He locates a pen in his back pocket and begins to write.