On the Cusp

Ever notice how that phrase sounds like what it means? On the cusp. I almost fall over until the addendum follows. On the cusp of what? I'm feeling rather now like I've been on the cusp for a long time. I'm tired of it. Where's my denouement? I want to stop hanging on the edge of the roller coaster and slide screaming over the drop.

I'm beginning to suspect that my life doesn't have one. The only problem is that's against the laws of physics. Conservation of energy, and all that. If my conservation of energy is broken, that would explain a lot. Perhaps that's why I keep trying to write this blog while carrying on a text conversation to finalize my divorce. Perhaps the inertia involved in the whole matter makes it apropos.

Yes, my divorce is finally winding up. The last paperwork is being signed and notarized today. I will take it to the Lawyer's office. Monday is the first day it may be turned in. I'm told that the Judge reviews and hopefully signs it in a week or so. The lawyer doesn't seem to think there will be any problem, so I shall be cautiously hopeful. I don't really feel like screaming over the drop, though. It doesn't feel like there's much of one. Maybe I missed the moment, or the slope was so gentle that there was no perceptible change. I'm hoping I'm in that weightless moment before the plunge~

I actually started some fiction. Got distracted again almost immediately. But here's what I coughed out. I'm just thinking I should yell, "Hairball!"

Her fingers liked to dance. Dance on the keyboard, dance on the strings, and dance in the air. She’d stop breathing before she’d stop punctuating a conversation with her hands. If her fingers really did the walking, she’d take the gold in sprinting, easy. Rob watched them traipse across the keyboard in a jig of expletives. It seems another flame war was exploding in the triple digits.

Rob stood behind her long enough to tally the total number of fucks, and went downstairs to get a drink. He still didn’t know how he had ended up with her. Day and night and dark and light… you could talk opposites all you want, and still get the same shock seeing them together. She was loud. Loud in talk, walk, and attitude. He could melt into the air and no one would notice. Gothic black with neon versus muted earthiness. Her ears were not so much pierced as laced with metal. Rob didn’t know what his parents would do if he wore any jewelry save his class ring.

But the air around her practically sizzled, she was so alive. Charisma like a black hole drawing him in. He’d stopped at the orbit point and circled in fascinated wonder, but never knew if he would come to fall in or spin out of control. He didn’t think his dad would find the same attraction.

That was the problem, wasn’t it. They’d been after him for a while to say if he was seeing anyone. His mom had visions of a genteel long engagement while the lovebirds finished degrees, and hopes of lacy pink midget dresses a year after they got out. Dad wanted to brag, pure and simple. Another fine genetic clone to take another fine company branch. Insert living example of the edge of pop culture and get…? Something of much more epic proportions than the flame war above.

But she wanted to meet them.

Somewhat Revived

I'm baaaaaaack. Eladnarra decided to revisit her 30 days, and it got me excited to work on it again too. I'm not much for regular blogging, but this sort of wandering hodgepodge of creative ideas appeals to me. So, it's time to start again~

I think I'm going to just free associate today to get going.

there's a sort of vauge irritation to waiting on your plans for someone to make up their mind. There's a road trip in the offing, and the responses are more of the, I dunno, wadda u wanna do? flavor. I don't do well with those. If I want to do nothing, I'll do nothing. If I want to do something, I want to get doing it! So I'm ready to hit the ground running~ Running, sunning, funning...

the weather's been horrifically warm for spring. That means that july will be simply gruesome. Like those stulifying days in Nanakuli, when the air was still, wet, and like a velvet blanket pressing you into the chair. We'd lie on the masonite board floor and suck up its coolness. Or at least its lack of insulating qualities. Hair spread out in an anemone on the wood around us. back of the neck releasing the heat and feeling a little dizzy and totally somulent. Shorts and light tees never helped. the velvet air just pressed heavier in their light folds.

On better days we'd go out and play in the fields. Soy beans. Cotton. Pumpkin. Illima. Pikake. and best of all, asparagus. Little lacy patches of asparagus all around the yard. all of them tender young shoots. Like a green easter egg hunt. We'd cart bags full of tiny spears back to the kitchen that they'd boil up. and sneak edamame while it was cooking. much less traumatic than the pig carcass in the back of the station wagon...

Chibiland

I've started drawing chibis. I have a feeling that it's going to be like crack~ impossible to stop and soon consuming life. WHY ARE THEY SO DANG CUTE????

Ahem. Well. On other fronts, the Domesticated Other is going to Europe this next week. I'm a little jealous, but I'm having fun where I'm at. Some friends of mine will probably move to Finland in a few years, and I'll help them and go to Europe at the same time. :)

There's a frivolous offer batted about in the IRC about a cottage and a party, but who knows! I'm feeling like a whole lot is possible for me.

~

There was a whole lot of nothing going on. Jen looked at the laundry and the sink. They sneered at her, so she decided to take a walk. Not that they wouldn't sneer again when she got back. She was just hoping that she'd muster the oomph to growl in return. Sometimes her whole life bullied her. She'd catered to the whims of her work, her family, her apartment for a good long time. Maybe she was just tired, but now even her hobbies bossed her around. Half way down the sidewalk she couldn't remember if she had locked the door or not.

Jen turned and looked. The forest green mouth to her home bared its teeth. She spun about and kept walking. It was almost a wish that someone would walk in and steal it all. Her sofa, her computer, her dirty dishes. Not much chance of that, but she could hope. She stopped again and felt her hair. Had she brushed it? She closed her eyes and pieced the morning together behind her eyelids. Woke up. Bathroom. Teeth. Deodorant, meds. Then a scrounge for mostly clean jeans and a t-shirt. Damn, must have missed it. Jan peered at her reflection in the picture window of a house.

It didn't look too bad. She ran her fingers through it to take care of the bit that stuck up. Since she couldn't see the back, she'd pretend that others couldn't either. Her shuffling feet took her to the park. The grass was crunchy where a sprinkler head was capped. The dry stalks poked her feet over the flip flops.

For once, the park was empty. You could see where others had been, but they were all gone now. A half empty soda left on the bench swarmed with bees. Jen sat gingerly on the other side. Normally bees scared her. She'd never been stung, but her brother was allergic. Maybe she was actually like him in that. You never knew. Today she just looked at their furry jostles for sugar.

She felt her brain sit down too. It was so nice not to think. Her tired thoughts circled her bed at nights; her desk during the day. For today, there was nothing but the warm sun, blue sky, and lazy bumbles. Jan felt her chin nodding. Why jerk awake? A slow steady slouch into snoozing. Her half closed eyes watched yellow and black explore her knee. Perhaps, she thought, this is what it is to be depressed.

Inundated

I'm inundated with stuff. It's amazing. What was previously a roomy, quiet apartment is now peacekeeping zone. The detritus of my offsprings' explosive entry after summer break is breathtaking, and I'm knee deep.

~

Pitter patting paws on my cat. She lights on my knee and blerts her mild disapproval of my shorts. She knows that clawing my leg instead of jeans will make the house noisy. I tell her it's too hot and boot her off. A few seconds later I feel her brush the back of my calf. I sneak a glance. She catches my eye anyway and bites my toe, just for kicks.

Nice.

Such are the pleasures of being supervised by felines. The true mystery of it all is that I named my daughter something that contracts down to Cat. And she's growing tall. I have the feeling she's going to be taller than me. That's not exactly a difficult feat, but I dread the look of tigerish disdain from both below and above.

It's already begun, of sorts. Consider our morning routine. The alarm goes off and I take a shower. Cat and cat both ignore the noise, being selectively deaf to things not personally desirable. I stand in the wet. This is the most peaceful time of the day, to be prolonged whenever possible. For the moment the water turns off, a small black shadow flits on the other side of the shower doors. She has not noticed her state of inkiness against the creamy floor. When I slide things open and step out for my towel, she slips slyly behind and bides her time. Once the towel wraps and there are no drips, she attacks!

With her tongue, that is. That's right. Just out of the bath, the first feeling of the day is wet sandpaper on the skin of my legs. Rubbing the creepiness away, I scuttle into the Cat lair. It's a tactical error. I step on a hair accessory that feels like lego. I trip over a teddy bear clone. I stumble to the bed, only to find my daughter bolted in the confusion.

She's in the bathroom. Locked in with my glasses, my clothes, and my peaceful moment. The cat's yellow eyes gleam down the hall. I'd better make a run for it or I'll be licked again.

Dressed for school, I can nervously tell that she'll pass me this year. This in between teen stage is the hardest. Lithe and lionish, she prowls about looking for her books. Her jeans are cutting edge; her hair's been snorted on by a rhino. But she still has that insouciant felinity when she turns and commands that meat be prepared for supper. She slinks out the door and the cat ambushes my hose.

I depart for work beating off the outraged shedder of fur. Or I would, if I didn't stand on the cusp of my porch. To them I am caught between. Then I look up and look down, meeting slitted eyes with the thought that they choose to stay.

That's Why You Should Write~

In self defense, I am learning to cook my dinner, eat, and wash my dishes before I turn on my computer at night. It's Skype. For some reason I said yes to having it in my start up. My computer rings within seconds of turning on. I suppose I should be humbled that my mere presence is necessary the very moment I'm available. But I wish to retire to the IRC channel. It scared me witless last week, but now seems like a comfortable haven.

~

"That's why you should write." Drew seems to hold this as an unavoidable destiny. For me, at least. I'm not sure what inspired this revelation, and I don't want to ask. It scares me a little. I do write. Not very often, so perhaps that doesn't count. But how often do you have to verbiate before it does? And count for what? To make my living of it? To simply dance from web to web in camaraderie? For the amusement of others?

And now I've fled from an IRC channel and the thought of story telling, coward that I am. It segues the evening into Bach and the Little Fugue. Light intricate notes fingering my spine might remind me to have one. It's always easier to gather courage in a rain of notes. They chill the hot flare of shame and patter the waves to soft ripples. The flight for fight spins as melody chases counter song in laughing footsteps.

I think it's this feeling I miss the most about Hawai'i, to the point of tears. I want to walk on the beach in the rain, and watch the ocean matte under the weeping of the sky. Bach's Little Fugue in G Minor. You would think that it was all grey. The ashes of the clouds over the slate of the sea. The vibrant green of a thousand days of rejoicing chlorophyll drooping like a wet cat and hissing. It's only when you sit and listen that it comes to you. It's a painting of the wind. A symphony of the air. The dappled dimpled water pattering in song. Your eyes close and you can almost hear the geometry of the chord. The golden mean between shore and shoal. And while you chase the patterned taps behind your eyelids, your fears dance in awe of the melancholy world and leave you behind.

Headset Madness

I'm drowning in new ways to reach out and touch someone. It's almost like that scene in Labyrinth with all of the blue hands that talk. My introverted soul is in deep shock, and the frivolous upper layers of my mind are running amok. But tonight I finally heard the voices of all these people I've been foruming with for ages, and it's nice to connect. ;>

~

Peopled out. It's what happens when the voices in your ears drown the voices in your head. Ideas jostle and tumble over your face. You close your eyes to feel them out, but there's no less resonance. Standing in a waterfall of noise. The trickles flow over your face til you're gasping for breath. Roll down your arms and soak to your skin. The words seep into every pore.

It's rush hour on the metaphorical subway and I'm packed against my friends who wear the voices of strangers. We're face to chest to back to nose in a conference call three by six inches on my screen. I sit small tiny in quiet fascination. Even together on the air, I hear us all typing to each other. There is a resonance of clicks shuttling back and forth. I wonder what we would do parked in the same computer lab? Would we continue to IRC? Would we go out to get a drink? It's rather comforting to know that others also like to sit together in silence.

Where does this subway line take us? I'll hop it to my new IRC afterlife arc...