Missing Home

Story-A-Day, Day One

The Friday after my final paycheck fails to be deposited into my account I call the law firm and learn from the disembodied voice of HR that it's being withheld. I feel the accusation of embezzlement shouldn't be taken so personally, even more so because I have behaved, but how can the truth of one's self not be taken personally?

The truth is I have behaved. The weeks leading up to my resignation, payments received by clients were followed by carefully written receipts; those made in cash were counted and recounted for accuracy, stored in the safe deposit box in the office of the founding attorney, a man whose handshake I've found to be crushing.

I find cash to be a dirty business, new bills especially tricky to handle, the texture of stiff fingerprints, and that part becomes an indecipherable language. I wash my hands after each handling.

My mom's mind worked in associations, so she talked without really saying anything or getting anywhere. She talked to strangers, to anyone really, until she felt satisfied, but I don't think that's the right word. When I behaved badly she would threaten to leave, drive away and never come back, then I would be alone with my stepdad, and then where would I be, she would ask.

She was true to her word, and the road did take her. I think of how her mind worked then, what associations were made with that pain.

My stepdad forgot cash in the pockets of his work pants stained in motor oil, left crumbled at the foot of the full bed. The bed became his own shortly after my mom, when I began to stain my own pants. Early in the morning I would creep in to steal, my bare chest close against the carpeted floor, as my stepdad shifted in sleep.

I guess some things people don't forget, and its weight presses down. When I got off the phone with HR my mind worked in associations. My stepdad never really forgot his cash. In my bedroom back in the home that no longer exists, I would have licked the rug burns on my chest if I could.

Otra vez el Santo

In my not so daring quest to become more familiar with contemporary Latin American literature, I came across the late Rafael Ramirez Heredia's collection of stories Otra vez el Santo. Today I finally finished it, and I'm a fan. Throughout the collection, characters/narrators show an inability to discern between the past and present, reality and fantasy. In the title story, the narrator, a young teen on vacation with friends, is determined to see el Santo, a Mexican wrestler/movie star, and is convinced a girl showing romantic interest in him is part of el Santo’s superhero entourage. In another story, the narrator is unsure what to call the young wife of his godfather/adoptive father, should he call her step-mother or godmother? This becomes especially confusing to him when she (step-mother/godmother) begins to dance nude in front of him.

Memory is the prominent motif in Heredia’s collection. Narrators hang on to memory as they try to negotiate the actual world, and the present. In hanging on to memory, these narrators remain children, in one way or another; their immaturities may lead them to disaster, but also, through their immaturities, by lingering in moments of the past, they survive. Here’s a wonderful paragraph (which I poorly translated into English) in the closing story that I think illustrates this:

"My age of eleven years only serves to accept that little children are the ones with the obligation to remember, adults seem to be tied to other preoccupations, their visions are not centered on the color of the breeze or the scent of the sky, those big for their age don't enjoy counting the seagulls nor do they give any importance to the looks of girls, and someone, the youngest, me, must be the voice of memory which invades when I feel the cold breeze through air conditioners, and the pines which will fill the empty mood that stays with me before the winter becomes longer, so aggressive and vast."

Work

I think I am ready to write about my job. Here's the translation I'm going to use:

"In this little town there aren’t many telephone poles; everyone uses a cellular phone. Only at night are we able to find a signal. "

The Rest of You

My roommate leaves her bedroom wearing large sunglasses and a Dolly Parton wig, blonde ringlets bouncing on her way to the restroom. In the hallway we stop for small talk, and she explains that this, pointing at her head, is for Chatroulette. I’ll let them see me, she says, playing with a plastic curl from her wig, but I won’t let them hear my voice.

The girl at the liquor store forgets to add me on the e-mailing list for wine tasting. She reminds me of this each time, and each time she makes it a point to take my email address again and again. Each time she offers a compliment. Tonight it’s my jeans. They are jeans, she asks, stocking merchandise. Yes, I say.

On the walk home I look up at an apartment building I pass everyday and find the disembodied head of the Virgin staring out a dark window from the third floor, the head so large it can fill an entire living room. It’s both terrifying and amazing, blank stone eyes the shape of sole fish in the night. I begin to wonder about the rest of her, if the rest of her is also in pieces—if her hands can be found lying somewhere in a garden, or maybe in another apartment, another living room, the open palms used as a fainting bed.

This is what I think of the internet. Sometimes we catch one another watching the other, moving through public and private rooms—pieces of us seen and then gone. And each time we’re different because of it.

C.S.

In a meeting, a former professor of mine explained to me in a very special way what an idiot savant was. In this same meeting he asked me if I ever read. Please keep in mind this was a meeting to discuss my work in his fiction workshop. This professor, whom I defeated in a dart game (I wasn't even wearing glasses), now has a chapbook coming out and I recommend you get your hands on it. I haven't even read it and i recommend it, that's how sure I am about it. Because Chad Simpson is wonderful and a talent. Order your copy here: http://origamizoo.wordpress.com/order/

Tattoo Ideas

I really want a tattoo of Edward Gorey's Donald, and Donald's mother. Get it? A good friend of mine (whom shall remain nameless due to google alert attacks) sent me a copy of Gorey's Donald Has a Difficulty. In it there is a wonderful image of Donald's mother removing a splinter and the line, "he opened the box he might keep the splinter safely." I want it.