tea and misery?

{photo by anna morosini}

The Past has started to shine with such a bright haze it is painful to look upon. These Autumn and Almost-Winter months have brought a haunting nostalgia upon me. More than anything, I want to go to my grandparent's house. But it was sold a year and a half ago, and while I am happy that its occupants are still with us and close by, I still mourn the house that was a second home. (It's because we're nearing the holiday season, I think. Holidays, autumn leaves, winter coats, certain books - all these things seem to make me want to go to my grandparent's. And perhaps to be a child again. I'm going to stop before I start crying.)

Since I've last updated I got my hair cut (finally) to about shoulder-length; I finished the 18th and last (sigh) series of Byker Grove; and I (somehow) got work twice a week cleaning someone's house. Huzzah for earning money for something I enjoy doing, which also involves minimum interaction with people!

I've been well and content, for the most part. Now that I am not obsessively trying to finish Byker Grove, I will (hopefully) be devoting more time to writing. I've not felt like writing the past couple months, but I feel more open to it these days. November I shall hopefully be working on my 1960s story and another story which I've never mentioned before.

Ugh, I am freezing cold today. I'm already wondering how I'll make it through the winter. All I want to do is hide under the covers and eat, which is bad. Really bad. I'm seeing a long winter full of tea and misery ahead. :P


Would anyone care to come hibernate with me?

-EDIT-

I don't know if anyone else cares, but Jenica does and that's all that matters. So here are two pictures of my hair, as it looks today. It's grown a bit since I got it cut, and it's not this curly every day.

The first picture is just my hair hanging loose, but in the second picture I pulled back the less-curly front part to display the glorious curls that live under them. :P Okay, so it really doesn't look that much different. I don't think my hair photographs well. (Also, the bathroom lights really bring out my highlights in the first one...)

...but once a year.

I had a lovely Christmas and am sad it's over. The world looks a bleaker place without bright lights continually promising cheery respite from real life.

But...

Something happened a few days before Christmas that, while is most likely for the eventual (and even present) best, has caused much sorrow between myself and my mother.
Ever since it happened I've had trouble getting my brain to focus and get things done. I am really not sure why. Perhaps because the air is full of disrupted dust from memories that I had let settle in a dark corner a while ago.

Not to be histrionic, but I don't really want to talk about it. I don't really want to talk about anything, really.

I'm not uninspired, just terribly unsettled. So I'm writing snippets of stories, eating entirely too many sweet things, falling in love with Nina Nastasia's album, Dogs [a Christmas present from Younger Brother #1], and waiting to see what will happen next.

(The aforementioned Nina Nastasia album with a penguin puppet Younger Brother #2 gave to me since I have quite a thing for penguins. He joked that he regretted getting it for me since I was having waaay to much fun with it Christmas morning. I haven't decided what to name her yet... I know it must be a her since the rest of the penguins in my collection are boys.)


This is not much of a post, but I haven't posted for almost 3 weeks which is uncharacteristic of me. I wanted to let you know I am still here, as alive as I ever was.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. ♥



{'Dear Rose' by Nina Nastasia - the opening track of Dogs. Hmm, I'm noticing a trend of me putting music at the ends of my posts these days. What can I say? Music is good.}

A sudden barrage.

As I drove, scents and sounds flew in the open windows. With them, they carried keys. Keys to open the bureaus and chests where my memories sleep, folded and tucked away. Suddenly, the lids of these safeholds were thrust open, causing memories to scatter all over the streets behind and beside me. The air became foggy with remembrances. Memory after memory sped through my mind. Memories of houses belonging to great-aunts and uncles; of the rows of shops in Chincoteague; of playing with Lily on summer twilights; of gravel driveways leading to exciting places.
Numbly I sat and my hands automatically kept up their cradle-rocking motion on the steering wheel. I felt blind, a blanket of reminisces over my head, a Janis Ian song playing on a loop in my mind. {Lover, am I coming home again?} In turning every corner, new memories would spill out. The most random of remembrances: that time of Sunday wandering with my brothers and father; countless dinners out when the grandparents were in town; exploring a green expanse of grass with my sister.
As I neared home, they quieted down. They've dissipated by the time I've pulled into the driveway. My father who sat next to me was unaffected; he felt, heard, saw nothing. But it was all I could do not to stumble up the porch steps; weary, yet wishing the memories would come back in all their intensity. But everything was locked up again... except for one sole memory lingering centerstage. It was a new one, with a polished sheen and beguiling gleam in its eye. Twas the memory of this car ride and the not unwelcome evocation of feelings and experiences I’d nearly forgotten. I hung the shiny new memory where I could see it, not willing to put it away just yet. I wanted to ponder it for a while longer...




(This strange incident happened to me yesterday. I almost feel like I imagined it all, it was so out of the blue. It always amazes me how short the line connecting memories to scents and sounds (&c.) is. Such as, whenever I hear the sound of a large/long zipper being zipped, bam! I'm miles away, camping and lying in a tent listening to a member of the family opening the zippered door. Or I'll smell something and find myself cast years into the past. The mind and our five senses are wondrous things. Do you, dear readers, have any sound/smell associations?)

And in the moonlight your hands were cold.

{Though both can stand alone, I thought I'd mention that this story is a sequel to a piece I wrote a while ago called "this is our house". When I first started writing this story, I didn't realize it was a sequel-of-sorts. But eventually I became aware of the fact that I was writing from the perspective of the same narrator, even though the two pieces of writing have two very different feels and little in common. Funnily enough, I wrote this story around its first sentence [and title]. The sentence was a random phrase I picked for the name of a playlist and I liked it so much that, after ruminating for quite a while, birthed a story from it.}



And in the moonlight your hands were cold.
Nothing felt so fragile and so strong as the bond of our hands.
I saw a familiar crowd of fears and dreams reflected in your dark, dark eyes. I couldn’t stop staring into these windows and looking at your midnight-coloured soul.
Your hold on my hands spoke of life, yet I look over your shoulder and know you’ve had ghosts too.
Still, I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. I want your cold hands to hold mine for... how long? Forever. That sounds about right.

The tower of silence stacked above our heads was toppled by footsteps walking down the stony path.
(hearts quickening, cheeks warming, sudden inches between us)


Now I make my way back to the house which continues to stand in hunched, withered obstinacy.
Ducking through the hallways where the ghosts meet, I find my thoughts have stayed with you though I’ve walked away.
I open the door to the library where the silt of wraith-words lingers on every surface. I whisper to the books, soothing them as I run my fingers lightly over their spines; searching, searching.
I locate the book I seek and smile: tonight it is not merely a book, it is a message. A message for you, a reply to your question.

There is a murmuring near the fireplace. I don’t even look over. Tis the ghosts. They have not lessened since your arrival but I forget about them more frequently.
I found a lonely, little ghost wandering in my room last week; it had a familiar face. What could I do but offer my bed? We shared our sleep that night. A phantom makes a quiet bedfellow at least.
I never minded their presence, like dusty cobwebs haunting the corner of every room. But now, you have sparked a flame in me, a desire to no longer sit holding the tattered quilt of what once was in my lap.


With timid footsteps and a yearning heart, I leave the book outside your door. I kiss its dilapidated, burgundy cover once, twice. Soft and staccato like eyelashes fluttering. (Even I am not quite sure why I did this. Sometimes doing silly, pointless things feels necessary.)

Later, I lie on my bed, wide awake and listen to the nocturnal medley of my family...
A cough.
A sleepy snort.
The creaking of a rocking chair.

At last, your tread on the stairs! Your feet walking the floor above me, your footsteps pattering up my spine.

Then, the quiet midnight void.

My eyes won’t close. They want to stare into the dark and think of cold hands and warm, dark eyes that promise “Life can breathe anew.”

I worry that you didn’t find my message. Or perhaps you didn’t understand the response the book was conveying. I chew over these sticky doubts for a while, wishing I could spit them out.

But! I hear quiet movement from upstairs, steps that come nearer.

You?

A family member?

A ghost?

There’s a knock on my door. My heartbeat pounds at a speed it’s never reached before. I leap from my bed and open the door to reveal your tall, reassuring form. You almost look surprised for a moment, then you smile. I smile back; there is no need to speak.

I grab my suitcase which lies near the door and step out into the hall. Your cold hand joins my warm one and together we walk; down the hall, past the ghosts. Down the stairs, past the dull eyes of family portraits. We walk out of the house, I softly stomp my feet on the threshold to shake the house’s bony grip off my ankles.

I don’t even look back.

his absent presence

It is my regrettable habit to come here and remember.
Every morning before mother wakes up, wanting my company and her breakfast, I come to this field that lies a short distance from the house I fear I'll live in forever. There is nothing outstanding-looking about this field. One needs to have past memories to see the extraordinariness of such an ordinary place. The field's plethora of clover holds no lucky four-leafs that anyone has ever found, but rather memories in soothing, green abundance. The sharpest eye on earth couldn't spot the two entwined souls that once lay in the clover; they're only a remembrance now.
Even the lone tree in the upper right corner of the field holds no man-made scars, outward crude initials on its bark; the backs that together leaned against its trunk left no imprint.
There are birds, ever present, though not always noticed. Sometimes I hear echoes of past conversations as if the birds were parrots and mynas instead of robins and wrens.
"Many don't come back." I hear him say.
He said it so many times and my mind repeated it back. Sometimes I think it was just a lesson I memorized to mindlessly drone in reply to those who asked what my knowledge amounted to. Yet at the same time, I did know it and feel it and taste it. It felt like a punch, tasted like blood in my mouth.
Still, it did not prepare me for this outcome. I expected black or white... not this disconcerting grey.

Every time I go to see him echoes from the field follow.
"I will love you forever."
I look into his eyes and search for that forever in their blue blankness. Nothing is there.
"It is okay to move on when... if I am gone." His voice in my mind says.
I look down at his pale hand I grasp. "Why didn't we ever define the word 'gone'?" I ask, though he never notices or responds. "Your body is here, but your mind has folded into itself as if it never existed. If I should lay my head upon your chest your heartbeat would pound underneath my searching ear. Does your heart still function in ways besides its task of pumping blood?
I prepared myself to love you without an arm or a leg; I don’t know what to do with someone who has lost everything except their outward appendages. I was ready to love whatever havoc guns and army life would wreak on you. Without second thought, I would have stayed by your side always, stopped the nights from tearing you apart with unseen claws.
You were mine, that was enough. Now I don't know who you belong to. You're lost in a land they tell me you will never return from."
Whether I cry these things aloud or just think them makes no difference; he doesn't hear either way.


Somehow my remembering of the past and how we once were always turns into an inventory of my present. I must go in soon and get mother her breakfast. My skirt is damp from the dew-stained clover. Mother will look at my soggy skirts disapprovingly, as she does every day. Perhaps she knows the field is where I keep my memories and each morning I sit among them as they roam around me. She thinks I need to move on, she and her friends plot together and introduce me to men deemed suitable who are all wrong. (They aren't him.)
She doesn't understand. For now I must, I must keep coming here. But I feel... and am more than reluctant to admit that there may come a time when I won't come anymore; I will have moved on and will want to forget. Though I admit this, it still frightens me; I don't want to become someone who wants to forget.
I almost get up to leave, but I decide to surrender. I lie down in the clover and stare into the blank sky. I shut my eyes and let the memories close in on me. Mother's breakfast will have to wait.


(This story was inspired by a character in the Maisie Dobbs mysteries by Jacqueline Winspear. A character "...whose terrible injuries in the Great War had rendered him incapacitated in body and mind." [from the third book in the series "Pardonable Lies".])

{Painting is 'Girl in Field' by Eric Hu.}

this is our house.

On the mouldering façade of the house, the once intricate tracings of ivy have grown into a thick fur.
But even those resilient green tendrils have begun to wither away...

This is our house.
This is where we make a semblance of life.
This is where the atmosphere integrates decaying, whispered confidences with a shivering solitude.
This is where gravestones grow overnight, quietly and effortlessly like ghoulish mushrooms.

We might as well deliberately cultivate weeds in our garden since all that grows there is a poisonous regret that chokes anything else that tries to develop.
{Vindictive thorn pricks with no rose to alleviate the sting.}

The sun shines everywhere but never seems to penetrate the haze we linger in.
All we see of the sunbeams are the shadowed bruises that trail behind them.
{For all our inner fog we might as well live in darkness.}

Ghosts inhabit these walls, to be sure.
We live in a wary submission to the company of these in a phantasmal beings.
{Often I wonder which will crumble first, this house or this family.
And if we were gone... would the ghosts cease to be?}

This is our house.
We live here because we must.
We live here because we cannot forget.

{Picture found here.}