Untitled Piece

Have you ever looked out at the world and wondered if your life would make an interesting movie that people would actually want to see? Sometimes I find myself peering through the cracks of my eyelids as if each pupil were a unique camera lens, capturing images of my life – evidence of my existence and growth. I don't know...I just think about things like that sometimes. Is that so wrong? It's like that quote from that one Shakespeare play, “All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players.” Who am I? Well...I've always wanted to be a caterpillar. They get to eat all they want and get nice and plump (something that no respectable modern day woman would ever dream of doing), Then, I could form myself into a chrysalis and close myself off from the world. The most beautiful and awe-inspiring thing in the world, I think, is a caterpillar's ability to transform. For a few painful weeks, the caterpillar wriggles and writhes in excruciating pain until one day, it emerges free – and with wings to carry it away from its previously claustrophobic existence! Free. Sometimes I think only caterpillars know the real meaning of that word (or butterflies, I should say). People seem to throw around the word freedom as if it were a baseball. By people I mean conservative political pundits, but, it's not their fault. They aren't butterflies. I wish they were...then they could fly away.
This is what happens when I am alone with my thoughts.

I saw my therapist yesterday. I think we were supposed to focus on something like my self-esteem issues or my problems with dealing with stress. For some reason I started to blurt out this story about last Thursday where I got into this surreal fight with my dad which involved me pushing him and him throwing water and a metal glass at my face. It didn't end well...I think. So my therapist (her name is Theresa by the way) decided to spend the entire session working on anger management. Oh joy! She had always been pretty normal, you know...listening to me, sympathizing with me, and giving me words of encouragement. Here, she started to get a bit weird. She broke anger down into 4 stages, which was simple enough to understand. Stage one was being irritated. It's that feeling where you're writing a research paper you have already procrastinated on and everything is going just peachy and all of a sudden, BAM! White screen! And the screen just stops everything like a kid who got tagged in freeze tag. Yup...that is irritation. The next stage is frustration. That feels like when you're screen has frozen right in the middle of a research paper you have already procrastinated on and then, coincidentally, your printer has also broken. That's when your face starts contorting into some trippy dispositions. Stage three is anger. I think what my therapist meant by this is...like when you're writing that research paper that you have already procrastinated on, the screen freezes, your printer doesn't work, and then your computer just goes ahead and dies on you. Crashes! BOOM! Just like that, without even one word of goodbye! Then you're running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to find some way to prevent your heart from exploding out of your butt and then comes stage four: being mad. Ok I didn't know what Theresa was going on about. What was the difference between anger and being mad? She kind of put it to me this way: say you're working on a research paper and you're already procrastinating on it when your screen freezes. Then all of a sudden you realize that your printer is broken, you haven't saved anything, your computer implodes, and then a bright light enters from the right corner of your eye and you start to feel stars. The next time you open your eyes, you're lying in a hospital bed with no health insurance, twelve broken bones, a failed grade, a dead computer, and no social life at least for the next few months – as you are confined to your uncomfortable hospital bed. Pretty bad, huh? No...none of these things ( thank the Lord) have happened to me...yet; but, I just wanted to illustrate to you that I was kind of getting up to the stage four level at the end of this fight my dad and I had.
The oddest thing about it all was that I had no clue why I was so angry, I mean...we were just yelling about the stupid laundry. It was kind of like an out of body experience where a part of myself was just watching me get angrier and angrier to the point of actually becoming violent. It was all bad. So after learning the four stages of anger, Theresa started to go into this unconventional, perhaps experimental therapy. She kept trying to get me to associate different images or colors with the different levels of anger. Mind you, I am really breaking this down for you. She was being really confusing. These images or colors are supposed to act as signals, so when you see them, you know which stage of anger you're in and that you need to start calming down. I figured out that when I start to get from stage two of irritation to stage three of anger I cannot, for the life of me, tolerate a mess. If I see a pile of dirty laundry on the bathroom floor, I will go off. It' me against the laundry, one on one and I tackle it, I wrestle it, I pin it to the floor until it's weeping for its mother! That laundry didn't stand a chance. Gosh what is it with me and laundry? Then there's the unmade bed. I will make the hell out of that bed until it is so perfect, Queen Elizabeth herself could have made babies in it! Do I feel better when I clean? Perhaps. I REALLY feel better when I play the drums though. There's something about beating the living daylights out of something with a stick that is so beautiful – I'm talking about the music here. I really don't want to seem like a violent person. I'm actually a pacifier. I haven't been giving you a good impression of myself have I?

So this is what has been on my mind lately. I've been reading this book called Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks. It's a collection of stories about people who have been affected by music in a unique way be it with amusia where a symphony sounds like banging pots and pans or heightened musical senses. I began reading the book for a research paper I was writing on how music neurologically affects you and I chanced upon this story about a strong, 42 year old orthopedic surgeon. He gets trapped in this epic storm and finds the need to make a call to his mother. Now I'm thinking, is this really necessary? Is calling your mother really that important? But, I guess my mother and I have a really terrible relationship so I'm not one to ask these questions. So he goes into the phone booth, and as he picks up the phone, a bolt of lightning hits him! BANG! He gets this strange out-of-body experience where he kind of sees himself as if he's another person looking in at his body. While this is going on, his life starts flashing before his eyes and he feels as if he's moving backwards and forwards at the same time. Pretty trippy, huh? The most interesting thing about this story is not the fact that he survived and was so healthy that he was able to do surgery a few weeks later – it's that he immediately started to become obsessed with the piano stylings of classical composer Frederic Chopin. He was consumed with music and started playing Chopin as if he had been doing it his entire life! This was a man who had hardly any knowledge of music prior to getting struck by lightning. What a remarkable story! So what's the moral here and why has this story consumed me so much? Well...it's not just because I'm a musician. It's because I am in love with the fact that this man had something so horrifying and disastrous strike him (literally) – yet, something spectacular and magnificent emerged from it. Then I realized – this is I want my life to be. Lightning has struck me and it's time for me to embrace the music of Chopin and rock the piano, never looking back.

The Metaphor of Food

In the midst of it all he stared with those wondrous, gleaming eyes taking in the whole world, sight, smell, taste, and all. The stove was a shining palace of splendor due to the fact that anything could come from it. The possibilities running through his head, through his spine...it made all the trouble of thinking worth it. He flipped through the book, feeling the pages turn swiftly against the dry skin of his phalanges and he knew then and there the potential of this new world he was to embark upon.

Standing before the refrigerator, he saw that all those disparate elements could somehow come together to form something magnificently concrete. The unreal into the real. The untruth into the truth...

He stared at all the different bottles with all their fantastic shapes, aromas, flavors, and colors. Each spice, sauce and condiment contained its own delicious zing of flavor and would leave a long awaited impression on the buds of his tongue. The prospect of so much pleasure was so enticing that he couldn't possibly wait another moment. He reached for a few of the more exotic looking bottles and arranged them on the smooth granite counter. He then opened the cupboard doors into an entirely different universe of baked heaven. The breads looked back with doughy goodness. He couldn't wait to sink his teeth into the crispiness of the crust and bask in the glory of the supple inside and the encompassing warmth. He gently placed the delicate pleasure into the confines of the scorching oven and proceeded to wait the painstaking few minutes until it was ready. His eyes never strayed from the oven. He didn't want a single thing to be wrong with his meal. Everything should be in order, he thought, no more mistakes, this sandwich will be beautiful perfection. He desperately needed one thing to be right in his life. He wasn't about to mess this up. His happiness depended on it.

When the bread was just about right, he let it sit in the heat for awhile and started to assemble the fresh ingredients. He grabbed the tomatoes and checked them, finding that they were perfectly firm but also just soft enough. He sliced and watched as the seeds and innards oozed out of the soft flesh of crimson. He then found the fresh leafy greens and crunched them in his masculine hands. The feeling and sound was incredibly satisfying. He just wanted to keep crunching and crunching, but alas, he could only eat so much. After chopping bell peppers and going through the assiduous process of dicing those accursed onions which made fresh hot tears stream down his face, getting caught in his beard, he threw them onto the prepared pan and watched as they sizzled in the garlicky olive oil. The scent of all the elements coming together was like a beautiful symphony harmonizing after the discord of a raucous tune up. Yes, it was a mellifluous chorus of rich and dulcet sound. The sputter and pop of oil against pan and the sound of steam rising contributed to the music. He then watched the mushrooms shrink and it reminded him of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. When everything was done and the smell was satisfying enough, he took the bread from the toaster and placed the two slices on a plate. He carefully assembled all the ingredients like an artist at work. The bread was his canvas and the paint was hummus and cream cheese. His knife moved along the porous pieces like a brush against canvas and the burst of color from the vegetables were reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock. He tenderly put the two pieces of delight together and carved it down the middle. This was it, the big moment. This was the instant that would change everything that day. His expectations were great and as he took the first bite and felt it all coalesce in his mouth, it did not disappoint. It was all worth it.

Sensations

Sensations

Sensations lift into the air.

They're soft and travel

through the night.

They circle as if without a care,

and never shudder in their fright.

It happens just so...

as the oceans ebb and flow,

the air is sweet, serene

and longs forever to be clean.

The strings that hold this life together,

tatter in this horrid weather.

They dare not make a sound,

for fear that they'd

be found

...and all would near the end

of what they knew.

Shattered spirits flow among

the morning dew.

It happens just so...

as the air will never grow,

the ground is rough to heal,

and hates to always feel

the sensations...

ripping through a

steady plane,

a tear does terror their terrain.

I Live in America

I Live in America

A blade of grass pricks the

feet of those that wander

through the downtrodden era

of heightened alert.

As life is put on hold,

they make their way to the

fields to celebrate as if

a higher power commands them

to do so.

"Never Again,"

They say to themselves as they

glance disdainfully at their

empty plates.

They are ashamed.

They wake on sticky Saturday

afternoons with a fear in

their belly and a feast in

their minds.

Though they detest the

frustrations accompanied with

their wants, they give in,

as a pack of ravaging wolves

give in to the kind smell of

raw flesh.

"Never Again,"

They plead to themselves, but

the corporations disagree as they

shove slush lavishly decorated

slowly transforming into a

hibernating mass of sweat-soaked

flesh, staining any hopes of a

further consolation prize.

And, they accept their demise.

Heartbeat to a Metrinom

Heartbeat to a Metrinom

Held Steady is the beat of a heart

until its maker is propelled into

a fit of five-fingered fury that

thrusts the earth into a bountiful

sunrise.

Yes, it echoes into the night...

The sounds.

The joy of laughter is put on

hold while the nature of panic

and the art of despair

hold hands in a quiet chorus.

It's soft, like the warmth

of ten sweetened spring days.

A haze of dust and blurry fury

enters and the previously

made steady beat is elevated

to a level beyond that exposed

by the republican era in charge

during terrorist attacks.

Hark the bells of change

because as the skin wrinkles to

its own sodden pleasure, the

heart carries its damages within

its hollow chambers.

It exits when it feels that

it has had quite enough and

it would prefer a quiet life

away from the city.

Then it is all gone.

The steady beat perturbed, it saddles

itself to a lone horse, complaining

that it took too long to get

to retirement and it

stops.

The Light in the Sky

The Light in the Sky

A leg ache...is compared to a broken stained glass.

It's dirty...the light.

It seeps in slow and eager

to burn. It shows itself

scathingly, as if it wished to hide.

But it's not fooling anyone when

it tries to leave.

it crawls slowly with the

intent to hurt.

causing pain is its' only ammunition

as it sits and screams

figuratively as the night

grows closer. The light grows

dim as life nears its end

and death rears its putrid face

towards the sky.

An endless dream is shattered

into a dark and dreary nightmare

full of tales of a haunting

nature.

"Don't cry." warns the hoot of

the sorrowful owl.

He makes his way to the

branches, all the while calculating

a swift escape from the

jaws of the fearsome fanged

horror that waits for

the light to turn in its

grave and make a new

home for the birds in the

atmosphere.

The Prologue of the new story I'm writing...

Prologue









The man saw the snow fall in copious amounts to the building piles of fresh blinding white. He heard the howling wind echo and ricochet off the icy glass windows. He felt the slow creeping chill of a damp and soggy cold make its way through the bare bottom soles of his hardened feet. Oh, it was a bitter cold…the most vile and foul cold that the wretched winter had to offer. And worst of all, this man was not wearing any socks. Indeed, one would think this was a foolish decision. Well, it wasn’t his choice. No…this man had his socks taken from him. His rancorous ex-wife stole his socks and he demanded satisfaction, but he knew he would never get it. She was more than a thousand miles away and certainly cackling at the very thought of this moment. It was a moment that left this particular man in utter despair and pure loathing of his miserable excuse for an existence. It was a moment where this desperate man, with his difficult nature, would go to the ends of the earth to fulfill his needs. It was a moment when this truly sorry man perilously needed a thick and fresh pair of warm woolen socks.