Saturday, October 29, 2016

Ninja stars and Halloween

When I was a child, I used to dress up as a ninja every year for Halloween. We didn't have enough money for an actual costume, so I just put a blanket over my face. I wanted to be like Snake Eyes, the silent ninja from G.I. Joe. I wanted to throw ninja stars around the corner of our hallway. All day I'd practice with small paper stars, taped heavily that never found their way around the corner like I wanted. Life is full of little disappointments.

One year, in fourth grade, I went with my best friend's mom to pick out a real costume. Somehow, we settled on a raccoon. I was, by fourth grade, aware that I was too old to be wearing a raccoon costume without looking like a fool. This identity, knowledge of self in relation to other selves, wasn't with me much until that year. Suddenly, I knew, acutely, that I looked foolish wearing a costume and holding out my bag and saying trick or treat to adults, who knew that I was too old to be dressed up in a hot costume.

I cut trick or treating short that night and went home with a pillow case only half full of candy, not accounting for all the crummy hard candy that some people gave out at Halloween, Jolly Ranchers and thick bazooka Joe gumballs, little plastic wrappers of disappointment. You wish, some years, maybe not often, but when you write, or in reverie that you could go back in time. and I don't mean to physically shrink myself, But rather, you wish that you could go back to a little boy standing at the edge of a hallways with a piece of folded paper in his hands, desperately, but hopefully, waiting for it to turn round the corner and make a beeline for the back door. And then you'd know, at least for that day, that you'd done something new. 

Friday, October 28, 2016

World Civilization Texts

Early in the fifth century, a king came to power who suggested that the Bible had been misread, and that rather than reviling snakes, they all should be collected and revered. This king ruled but a short time in Egypt before he was killed by a snake's bite on the heel of his left foot.

In roughly 400 B.C. a poet came to power and built a city based on aesthetics and beauty. Some say he was the basis or reason that poets were left out of Plato's perfect Polis. The city was made entirely of porphyry, and every staircase was adorned with Pegasus or Griffins and door handles were elaborate mouths of lions. Everyone in the city spent their time making the city more beautiful, each person, forgetting their duty to one another, as everyone sought to make even the slightest object, a shelf, a hand towel, the most beautiful iteration that the world had ever seen. As you might imagine, such a city could never last, and the city was sacked by marauding Vikings and the ruler burned at the stake.


Long before human beings had arisen from the seas, struggled onto land, climbed into and out of the trees, a prophet arose in the sea. He was a mollusk and was prone to long periods of silence, which his followers often mistook for devotion. This prophet foretold of a day when the mollusks would cease hanging onto the walls of rocks, and they would walk on two feet and play baseball and sometimes smoke a cigarette behind the 7-11 on their sixteenth birthday. He too was eventually burned at the stake, but years later, and in a city far away from here.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Hello from across the room

I made you a paper airplane when we were in second grade. I wrote, "I love you," in the middle of the white page, using a yellow crayon. Back then the only shade of yellow we had was just that, yellow. I made the airplane using all the skill I could muster, but I was never any good with my hands or fine motor skills, so I botched the job. It was the first, or so it seems, though it must already have been the thousandth, of jobs I'd botch in my lifetime. But that's a story for another day.

I'd been in love with you for at least a week, maybe even two. It's hard to remember because time goes like the wings of a hummingbird when you're in love. Once, I'd seen you on the playground playing four square and your face was flushed with exertion. It was a Tuesday, and perhaps that's the day that I fell in love. Though it could have been a Wednesday. I lose track of these sorts of things. 

I made the airplane that afternoon during recess, and I looked at you from across the room. You were looking at your pencil, forming perfect o's with the kind of care that characterized all of your work. Who couldn't love such a diligent worker? The plane's wings were uneven, but I thought or knew that it would soar across the room, past the blackboard and over the wooden desks to land perfectly on your desk. 

I couldn't imagine, truth be told, a life where the plane didn't soar across that space and unite the two of us in love. I waited until the teacher had turned back towards the board. She was showing us the letter q, making certain that we formed the tail with a slight mark out to the right. All of her attention was focused, laser-like on the board. I remember her dark helmet of hair, rigidly cut off at the shoulders. And then I threw it.

The plane flew across the room like a thousand ships sailing across the seas. And then the shoddy job I'd done on the wings came into play and the plane spiraled, falling like a mallard from Duck Hunt towards the ground, where it alighted right on the desk of another girl, who's name I barely knew. She hesitated for a moment, looking shyly at me, her cheeks turning scarlet and then she opened the letter.

Sometimes things don't work out quite as you planned. And sometimes they do. She and I have been together now these forty years, all because of those faulty wings, that doomed flight.