The Mermaid

The color of my childhood is nearly always blue. Sort of like a Royal Blue, but darker, not as rich, and more antiquated. It gently enfolds everything, like a warm woolen blanket that is a little bit scratchy, coloring the atmosphere of my memories. Brown is also very much apart of my past, as well as other washed out or neutral colors. I'm not sure if my past really was these colors, or if it's just the distortion of the dust that coats them my mind. But regardless, this blue permeates through my childhood. It's not at all a gloomy kind of thing... nostalgic, yes, and perhaps dreary and sleepy like a rainy day, but warm, like when you can see the white light of a cloudy day seeping through the fibers of your sheets on an early morning, but you sigh and let yourself drift off to sleep again because you know you have no obligations for the day.

I find myself seeing these colors more often as I grow older. I wonder if it's because I'm becoming more aware of the amount of time that has passed. I remember realizing how glorious it was as a child, and telling myself that I would never forget the wonderful memories and experiences I'd had. But still, it's hard to recall them all, and sometimes I find myself discovering old memories buried deep in my subconscious like an amnesiac's epiphany. And now, I find myself inexplicable drawn to those colors of old, seeking to reconstruct my past in an attempt to regain something of myself. When I go to sleep at night, I close my eyes and the darkness envelopes me. I think of that blue, a veil over my eyes, and it turns into water, an ocean.

I am a mermaid in that ocean with long hair-- I've always loved long hair-- and a magical boy comes to me in a boat everyday. I love him deeply, and he loves me too. He is completely absorbed by everything that is me. He asks me questions everyday about what I think, feel, dream, and I love his devotion and I love his beautiful heart. I want nothing more than to care for him for eternity. In the morning I wonder if I'll ever have someone like that. It doesn't matter that I am with someone at the time, whom I love or don't, this boy is someone different. I fearfully wonder if he's just a figment of my imagination that will never exist, a proverbial "dream boy." But I don't think he is. Everyone I've ever loved is in him. He is a beautiful amalgamation of them all. And so, it doesn't matter who I'm with, who I will be with, what happens ultimately. Because everyone will always be there, with me always, in him, my love, You.

You

By now, you’re probably wondering who “You” are. Are you? The truth is, I don’t really know myself, exactly. And how could I? I’m not You. Only You are. I’ve speculated that You are someone, or many even, of the ones I stayed behind for. I’m not really sure. I just know that I am here because of You. Even though I’m not entirely sure that I can identify You, at least in this life, or the next. But whoever You are, You know who You are, and I just hope that someday You’ll get to read this.

The Southern Incarnate

Here I am, a dirty little girl, sitting in the sunny dusty South, completely detached from the entire world, seeing my entire life, or lives, rather, from a perfectly objective outsider's view that would make an Indian ascetic envious. Sunlight enters the dreary living room of our gray old house, sweating in the sweltering heat of a Georgian summer. My mother serves me slices of orange and lemonade, but I just go on sitting there, staring at the old knick knacks on the shelves of our living room.
A small, dusty China doll stands, looking out across at me with beautifully painted eyes and brilliant red lips on a faded porcelain face. Her elegant robes are richly embroidered with lacquered threads on faux silk, in gaudy colors that aren't even phased by the layer of dust that coats them. She has a kind of faded glory, reminiscent of the distant foreign empire she came from, once bright and wonderful, but now only a far away memory trapped inside a cheap souvenir in a dilapidated dirty Southern home. I wonder how this China doll, no doubt a cheap gift designed especially for tourists, came from such a faraway land to my little Southern living room. She feels so out of place, and yet so representative of the slow, decaying decadent glory of the Southern empire.
The image fades, and I'm no longer in the childhood of my future life but an ambivalent adolescent. My heart pounds when I think of You. I'm sure You were in my past life. Or perhaps in my current life is a more appropriate way to put it. Maybe we've known each other for our entire series of lives. Only now do I realize it though. Because I see my future life ahead of me, by the time I am actually incarnated, my life already seems old to me, like I am following a familiar path. Only when I see You do I go blank. It feels strange. I am like a bodhisattva who has attained enlightenment, transcending worlds within her mind, understanding and being one with all of the souls in the universe, all while in the body of a young girl in a small town in Georgia. I wish I could understand it all. I see my mother, a completely different soul, perhaps one I may have known in past lives, buying the China doll as a novelty, and placing it in our home. I am born, and she is my mother, but at the same time she is simply a friend, a fellow soul on its journey to Paradise, seeing me as her little daughter, though I am really just another soul, like her, whom she cares for and fosters for the time being. I don't mean to suggest that she or I don't have any love for each other, but it is the love of kindred souls who seek to help each other, going well beyond the ephemeral and superficial relationship boundaries of “mother” and “daughter.”
I run out the front door in a flurry around noon to meet You at the record store in town that you work at. Sometimes I ride my father's bicycle, but it is so old and rickety that I only take it on the hottest of days, when seconds out in the sun can make a huge difference in your hydration levels. I prefer to walk though, and take in the air, which is hardly fresh, but at least less stifling than the air inside my old house. I meet You outside the store, where You have an armful of golden old records whose scratchy old tunes are sure to have me straining my ears to pierce the static mottling their ancient melodies. You smile as I nervously smooth my hair and wipe the sweat from the back of my neck. We drive in Your dad's old Chevy to a friends' house, where You have band practice in the garage. Your old second-hand guitars and amps impress everyone despite their ancient crude models.
The sound of your music rings out clear in the Southern afternoon. Sitting so close, on a stack of old cardboard boxes near one of the amps, I prop my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands and gaze dreamily into the sunny yard, my eyes temporarily blinded by the contrast of the burning sunlight and the darkness of the garage. The echoing ring of noise permeates through every cell of my brain. I wonder if the millions of neurons are all vibrating with the harmonies emanating from your guitar. I close my eyes, and everything seems gray, as if I am floating in space. Again I detach myself, and I float about, supported by the density of my own thoughts, as a bead of sweat slowly rolls down my temple.

Whoever You Are, You Know Who You Are

Who are you, my love? From what far corner of the sky did you come to me? You floated into my arms on the wings of a warm summer sunset and licked my wounds clean until I felt nothing but content. But it still pains me to think of whence you came. I know I knew you, at some point... but who? Who are you? A dear friend, an old lover, a fleeting acquaintance... or perhaps an amalgamation of all the loves and beauties I've ever experienced in my lives? Perhaps you are just that-- an Adonis, an angel, crafted from the many souls who have touched me and shaped my own, crafted just for me by the hands of God. I wish I knew... I want to cry into your arms and tell you how thankful I am.

You have no idea, though. You just sit there cradling me on the front porch of your run-down Southern home, in our equally run-down Southern town, watching the stars shyly lift their shining heads as the sun dips below the horizon. The trees make a silhouette that casts us in gray shadow. Tears stream down my face but you are completely unaware of the state I'm in.

The Baptismal

I was baptized in a swimming pool in the backyard of a backwater hick town neighborhood home on a summer afternoon. The church congregation my parents belonged to had been organizing the event for weeks, a way to mass-baptize all the kids at once to rid them early on of any sin that may come their way, and instill in them a sense of duty towards their religion. I stood in a long line of dirty children with barbeque sauce stained mouths and fingers in an old oversized t-shirt, and looked up to the sky and wondered if there was a God, and whether or not I truly was delivering myself into his powerful grasp forever by submerging myself in a kidney shaped skyblue painted concrete hole of chlorinated water.

The line slowly dwindled, and my time came. I stepped down into the pool—uncannily cold and uninviting given the situation and environment. As my feet touched the pool bottom, I slowly turned to face the congregation that stood before me watching. If I decided to suddenly refuse, everyone would be there. Not that it had been my decision in the first place. I was much too young for my opinion or desire to ever be considered. Then again, even I didn't know what I thought, let alone wanted. The preacher was reciting a scripture but he was not really talking to me so much as to everyone else, to God. Even as he suddenly turned to address me, he still was not talking to me. But I heard his words anyways, asking if I accepted God.

Could I have really said no? It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. But it didn’t feel right. The preacher pinched my nose hard and all I saw were his large nose with horn-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge as dirty sea green pool water engulfed me. All I could think about was the filthy miasma consisting of the grime that covered the bodies of the children who had been baptized before me dispersing and polluting the water that I now stood dripping in.

The potluck reception resumed afterwards—old stained thrift store Tupperware filled with greasy half cold picnic foods that would leave a caked crust that not even scalding hot water could soak off completely. The delicate skins of old wrinkled corn kernels were stuck between the teeth of the parishioners, cheap beer on their breath. I put my half eaten corn dog down onto the Dixie paper plate and sank to the ground and melted into the concrete dappled with crushed June Bugs.

Other People's Heads

Sometimes I wonder what you think. I wonder what a lot of people think. What they feel and how they see things. I want to get inside of their heads. I worry that I'm the only one who thinks this way... the only one who reads into these things. I worry too much about everything, I suppose. My super ego is off da hook.

I saw a man at this Catholic cemetery on my way home from work one afternoon. The sunlight was very orange, and I was stopped at a red right. I don't know how or by what power it was that compelled me, but I witnessed this man at the cemetery through the wrought iron gates, praying beside a grave. It felt so intimate, such a quiet moment; I turned off my stereo so as not to disturb the peace of the moment. I wonder if anyone else was privy to this moment, and how many people in the world ever witness something like that, something solemn and foreign, yet so familiar to them. I won't say I felt some sort of connection to this man or anything, but I did feel connected at the moment, as if we had had some kind of interaction. I was filled with a sense of awe for a few moments.

I've recently discovered that falling in love is a hobby of mine. I've always known that I felt deeply for other people... not in some lame humanitarian way, more like... I feel like I would want to know everyone, in at least some way. Love, hate, pain, fondness... something. And I regret not having the time to know everyone. There's just something fascinating about learning and loving a person. That's why I love You so much, now. You are all of that, everything that I love about life.

Pure Hell

Thumbing through the finest, cheapest phone line cords at Staples, a glimpse of a red blur from the tail of my eye snapped me out of the trance-like daze I had been in. The blur had merely been the once vibrant crimson shirt of a Staples employee, faded from being worn for too many mind-numbing hours. Shuffling down the aisle, I moved out into the open, away from the solitude of the arcaic phone accessories, and towards the brightly colored children's stationary and office supplies. I attempted to amuse myself with the cute pencil boxes and marker sets with matching scissors and glue sticks, but I couldn't even find the heart to think of a lame excuse to buy anything else.

I told myself that if an employee asks me if I am looking for anything, I will reply no, I'm just milling about, trying to waste as much time as possible so that I won't have to remember living through it. Slowly, I made my way to the front counter. A cashier and someone whom I took to be a manager were standing there, and they suddenly smiled at me in a way that seemed to suggest they were very nervous of being caught not doing so. They asked if I was alright, and I was taken aback, until two seconds later, I realized they couldn't possibly be referring to my mental health.

They directed me to the only open register, where an older Latina woman proceeded to check me out. I barely remembered the encounter, save for a few small details, such as the total of my purchase, $8.07, and having to press firmly on the touch pad in order to input my PIN. I exited, and again, the blinding sunlight greeted my eyes the way a horrid smell or unpleasant sensation or any other stimulus might attack your senses. It was hot, but I refused to take off my sweater, knowing full well that the office that loomed ahead of me shining would render me freezing within minutes.

I longed to go to my car for lunch, but today it consisted of a plate of donuts and a bagel that I had stolen from the lunch room, and the prospect of receiving suspicious and disdainful looks from the receptionists was not desirable to me at all. I shared the elevator with a casually dressed Latino-looking man until the 4th floor. After retrieving my bottle of Arizona Green Iced Tea with Ginseng and Honey, the only thing that was still good and pure left in the world, I returned to my office, not at all looking forward to the interview that I found out I was to conduct in less than half an hour.

Glancing at the clock, which was ten minutes behind, I took a bite of a stale donut and wondered how my life ended up on this depraving track.

The First Day of Summer

Oh, where to begin, where to begin? It was a balmy summer night, one that had followed an exceedingly hot day. Not that the days before this one weren't exceedingly hot, but this day was epic. It was the first day of Summer, and it wasn't enough that the season had already began to show about a week before; today was scorchingly hot, as if to further rub into our faces that the bad could always get worse. This was the day I discovered the godsend of a damp washcloth. Despite much swimming done earlier that day, I sweltered and melted in the stifling heat. Any coolness was mild and disappointingly brief. The night, though cooler, was barely less relentless. A small circle of friends convened, and night swimming was agreed to be in order. I had to scramble home to fetch my bathing suit again.

For a time, things were okay as the Junebug infested pool water cooled our burning skins and left us speechless as we floated like life buoys waiting for liquor to arrive. I floated alone, out of the loop of boring conversation about topics and people I didn't know about, a billion different thoughts flowing into and occupying my mind. I began to quickly see the lack of prospects for the night. Everyone else was content to babble on about some mindless subject, Corona Lite in hand, but I couldn't have been farther away from it all. The kind of depression you contract from an initially exciting-sounding night gone flat all too quickly is definitely one of the worst. Eventually the pool lost its interest, and the amount of people leaving the water correlated with the amount of liquor consumed. I sat on the edge of the pool wrapped in a towel like an Indian squaw, dipping my feet into the lukewarm water. Was it my imagination, or was there something watching me?

There was indeed. I was embarassed and anxious. It felt like nothing would ever make things right again. Sitting apart on a dusty old lawnchair, he left presently. He invited me to leave with him, slightly coyly, but I remained resolute. But the night dragged on depressingly. I couldn't stand watching everyone drone on and on, as thought their lives were so mundane and devoid of purpose. I looked up into the night and wondered where the love of my life was.

He text messaged me and I crept out of the house silently. We met down the street on some old steps. How I loved those steps! They looked out onto the cul-de-sac with a beautiful skyline consisting of old ratty houses and telephone lines criss-crossed with palm trees. It was awkward at first, but we managed to talk at last. He mentioned the new friends he had made, the open-mic nights, the weird indie-goth kids who wouldn't drink beer, but instead nurse a personal bottle of wine throughout the night. How he was going to a friend's tomorrow to learn how to record on a 4-track. Eventually the topic shifted to philosophy, and I yawned inwardly at his valiant but rather pretentious pursuit of lofty concepts. Ugh, how I hated those self righteous soliloquies, as if he were the only one in the world who could think beyond anyone else, and that he was a martyr for it. Only Schopenhauer's paradoxical claim that anyone who reads anything and takes it for fact without interpreting and developing their own ideas is a thief piqued my interest near the end.

Faint strains of chords being strummed on an acoustic guitar could be heard. Above, a street lamp tangled with a telephone pole bathed everything in a faded orange glow when it wasn't flickering. My ass hurt from sitting on the concrete steps dappled with dirt and mottled with indentations like the pocked skin of a middle aged man who survived an adolescence full of acne. The hardness reminded me of the decrepit metal folding chair I was using at my desk at my parent's house for the summer, and that I had been using for the past week since my return home. We turned our heads up the street in the direction of the main thoroughfair of our little town when the headlights of cars would flash into the far right tails of our eyes.

I asked about his future. He smiled weakly and outlined his plans for school and work. I was only half listening-- I'm not sure if I had asked out of curiousity or politeness. Neither of us could beat around the bush. He asked about the other. And I told him about the other. But I didn't have much to say that I felt would be relevant outside of my life 94 miles north, similar to the way Kantian paradigms can never be compared to each other even if they may contain many of the same components as another.

I wanted to come home and write this all down, so we bid good night to each other, and I walked back up the street, into the orange spotlight of the street lamp, and then into the dark abyss that shrouded the northern part of the road. I stopped in at my friend's house to grab my things-- still, was there something watching? Again, probably my over active imagination. Or was it a secret regret and sorrow that I sensed, flashing ever so briefly before relapsing again into the banal banter of the crowd on that balmy summer night?

No Good Can Come of This

I derive a surprising amount of inspiration from my cynicism. This is what you get when you put a white-trash father from a ghetto hick town with a trilingual transplanted South African born Chinese mother together in a too slowly legitimizing backwater town. I listen to music in my room to bask in the daze of my history, the air so thick and humid that when you move, it feels as though your limbs are cutting through something tangible. My room is baking like a sauna because my parents are too cheap to use the thousand dollar air conditioning that we paid so dearly for years ago. Then again, prices for everything have increased, and who am I to battle peak hours?

I am not looking forward to the lunch in my honor that I am about to go to. Everyone is celebrating my graduation, but never have I been ripped so violently from my safe womb of existence, save for my birth, of course. I've experienced more within the past few weeks than I have within the past few years. Why do people celebrate this sudden abandonment of your entire world for one that seems so devoid of purpose and aim? And why the hell didn't anyone think to tell me about it? You get this kind of shit when you're about to go into high school, plenty of support and preparation for the "big school," but they really throw you out into the water when it comes time to end your 17 years of institionalized education.

And now I'm going to sit with a bunch of strangers and treat them to lunch so they can congratulate me on my great achievement, which consisted mostly of me just showing up to certain places at certain times and maybe having to write a bit. Perhaps it's just because my prefrontal cortex hasn't completely matured yet in spite of my age, but even still, with such a strange existence, how do my parents expect me to relate to my relatives? Relative is a strange word... it means close to something, and yet not the same. Most people would take the positive of it, I think, connoting closeness, though. I guess there's a pessimistic and an optimistic side to the word. I don't feel a relation to nearly anyone I meet. Perhaps I don't want to.

Coming Back Again

Just when I think I'm happy, memories of everything I left behind me come back. A letter, or a once inspiring thought that suddenly strikes me as being very selfish of myself turns everything sour. It pollutes the palette for life the way a partially rotted fruit contaminates the rest of the batch. Who am i to think that I can just turn away from everything I've ever known, and leave it for something better? Can anyone truly do that? I never ever thought I'd become one of those people who ends up leaving their home, family, and friends to start over completely, isolating anything and everything that reminds them of the past into a neatly quarantined corner of their brain to just sit, like a convict stuck in a dank prison cell while the rest of our pristine society goes on about their day, content to ignore them, disturbed when reminded of their existence.

I often wonder how I got here. I can trace the steps that lead here pretty far back. it's amazing to think how different my life could have been. There were several turning points. Some of them make perfect sense, were gradual and the result seems inevitable. Some are sudden, irrational changes of mind. But how could I even think that I could abandon everything, my roots, my relationships, just because I tired of them, wanted something else? I'd come to think of this new place as my home, and it's true, I feel more at home here than I ever did at my old house, in my familiar room, in my parents' arms. But am I still, deep down, the little girl who cried at the thought of having to one day move away from her family? Do I even have a family anymore?

I'm afraid to go back home and see all of the old haunted places I used to go to. Sometimes the memories are warm and soft, but sometimes they leave me chilled, a mixture of reupulsion and regret that I could ever have been the person that I was. Have I really changed that much? I sometimes wish I could have stayed happy there, but I wonder, would I really have been much better off there? From this perspective, it seems awfully bleak and depressing. And in the end, I think I am glad that I left. There was just too much pain and bad feeling there to be mended. Too many relationships gone sour. Even I felt sour and depleted of any warmth there, too. And I hated it! I hated feeling contempt for others and I hated myself for being contemptible in turn. I didn't want to be this person, and so I left. I guess I have lost the mutability I once had when I was in school. Even then, though, it was hard. I would stressfully have to change my entire lifestyle every few months, and it became harder to do every time. And when the time came for me to graduate, the time came when I had to choose... and I chose to leave.