LJ Idol 27 - Home Game - Noumenon
comedychick encouraged me to check out LJ Idol. I had seen people posting things for it, but had no idea what it was about. I was intrigued when she explained it to me, and checked it out. I liked the idea of the home game. (I am often too.. insecure to compete.) I had an idea for the latest prompt, noumenon, and so I decided to go ahead and write it. I... may or may not post it to the green room.
Suuuper tired right now. Should've gone to bed hours ago. But this insisted on being written first.
The room fit my expectations, as though she knew all of my preconceived notions and adjusted accordingly. But no-my preconceptions are the same as everyone’s, handed to us by the media, and whether she is ashamed to have the gauzy, colorful cloth hanging from the walls and the occult symbols of ancient religions she may know nothing about, or whether she is proud, as she looks, a proud, haughty woman, I cannot know. There are too many things to observe that I hardly take in the details. Is that the eye of Horus or a celtic knot? There are candles burning-no, incense-still no, just a Glade plug-in, I can see it behind the table now.
I am ill at ease. My fingers tap along my thighs rapidly to a rhythm I don’t know. She is the picture of serenity, her movements languid and graceful. She has a mysterious smile but not very friendly eyes. Not unfriendly either, just… too seeing. My skin prickles as though her gaze actually touches me, like thousands of centipedes tracing over my flesh and learning all the scars, the imperfections. There is something exotic about her. It enhances her value as a fortune-teller.
She begins to speak. Asks me what I want to know. I am distracted by the noise of the television in the next room. Her husband is watching reruns of Roseanne and every so often canned laughter prompts the audience to giggle along, letting them know “this part is funny.” She asks me again.
“What is it you want to know?”
There is a question in my throat, but I can’t ask it. It’s too personal. This woman, with her flowing clothes and bangled wrists, she has no right to hear me ask it. I cast my eyes about the room and see, among a pile of books on dream symbols and tealeaf reading, a guide on tantric sex. I shift my gaze, embarrassed, but it has spurred an idea.
“Will I find love?” I ask rapidly, and then blush at how mundane the question sounds, how trivial. I blunder on, “I mean, am I going to meet my husband? Any time soon?”
That mysterious smile curved slightly into something like real humor, and she turned to the low table before us in order to pick up the deck of Tarot cards. She has me cut the deck, imbue the cards with my energy (though I’m not entirely sure what she means, I do my best), and then place them on the table in a complicated pattern.
I barely hear her as she flips them over and explains the symbols. I’m sure she is merely droning out what she thinks I want to hear. I will meet him within the year, he will have an accent, and musical ability. Everything a girl wants to hear, I am sure she is telling me now, yet I do not listen. Perhaps she is giving me this rehearsed speech because she knows I don’t actually care. I do not look at her with the earnest, dopey eyes of a girl desperate to fall in love. I do not look at her at all.
I look at the cards. I tell myself a different story. I use them to answer the question I am not brave enough to voice.
The Hermit. A humpbacked man with a long black beard and a scowl, perched on a rock, alone and forsaken. This is who I have become.
The Star. A lone woman gestures to the night sky, where a single star shines brighter than the rest. This is what I wish on, with no other recourse than to believe again in childhood fantasies.
The Eight of Wands. Wooden sticks arranged symmetrically, four on each side. The number of months I have waited without word.
Four of Coins. Large, golden discs, no one pays with this kind of money anymore. But I have paid, paid more than money.
I cannot look at the last card, the one of the skeleton, without wanting to scream or cry or beat my fist against something.
She finishes her soliloquy on my inevitable romance. I am sure she wants me to smile, to thank her, to seem thrilled that I will have such a man to look forward to. I turn to her with tears in my eyes instead.
She puts her hands on my forehead. They are soft and cool. She kisses my brow-I think it is quite possibly the loveliest thing anyone has ever done-and she tells me to forget the cards. They are a hoax, she says, a fraud, a toy she uses for those who come in and want to be told the exact description of their future husband. I am relieved, somehow, to know that I can now see this room for what it truly is: gaudy and absurd, just a façade.
We stand up and go into the next room. Her husband doesn’t look up from the television. He is content with beer and chips and laughter cues. She slides the bangles from her wrists, shrugs off the flowing robe she was wearing over a t-shirt and threadbare cotton pants. She looks less exotic, now, not much like a gypsy and more like an average middle-aged woman with brown hair and too much eyeliner. Not breathtaking. Indeed, rather plain.
Into the kitchen, and she starts making hot cocoa. Adds three marshmallows to it without asking me, and I almost say out loud, in amazement, that I always take my cocoa with three marshmallows, before I realize that she knows, and that the pretence has been dropped now. She holds my hand. Rubs my wrist comfortingly.
“Ask me your question truly now,” she says. “No glamour, no masquerade. Just you and I, as if we’re old friends. Ask me what you want to know.”
I have to take a sip of the cocoa first. It braces me. And so, I ask my question.
Suuuper tired right now. Should've gone to bed hours ago. But this insisted on being written first.
The room fit my expectations, as though she knew all of my preconceived notions and adjusted accordingly. But no-my preconceptions are the same as everyone’s, handed to us by the media, and whether she is ashamed to have the gauzy, colorful cloth hanging from the walls and the occult symbols of ancient religions she may know nothing about, or whether she is proud, as she looks, a proud, haughty woman, I cannot know. There are too many things to observe that I hardly take in the details. Is that the eye of Horus or a celtic knot? There are candles burning-no, incense-still no, just a Glade plug-in, I can see it behind the table now.
I am ill at ease. My fingers tap along my thighs rapidly to a rhythm I don’t know. She is the picture of serenity, her movements languid and graceful. She has a mysterious smile but not very friendly eyes. Not unfriendly either, just… too seeing. My skin prickles as though her gaze actually touches me, like thousands of centipedes tracing over my flesh and learning all the scars, the imperfections. There is something exotic about her. It enhances her value as a fortune-teller.
She begins to speak. Asks me what I want to know. I am distracted by the noise of the television in the next room. Her husband is watching reruns of Roseanne and every so often canned laughter prompts the audience to giggle along, letting them know “this part is funny.” She asks me again.
“What is it you want to know?”
There is a question in my throat, but I can’t ask it. It’s too personal. This woman, with her flowing clothes and bangled wrists, she has no right to hear me ask it. I cast my eyes about the room and see, among a pile of books on dream symbols and tealeaf reading, a guide on tantric sex. I shift my gaze, embarrassed, but it has spurred an idea.
“Will I find love?” I ask rapidly, and then blush at how mundane the question sounds, how trivial. I blunder on, “I mean, am I going to meet my husband? Any time soon?”
That mysterious smile curved slightly into something like real humor, and she turned to the low table before us in order to pick up the deck of Tarot cards. She has me cut the deck, imbue the cards with my energy (though I’m not entirely sure what she means, I do my best), and then place them on the table in a complicated pattern.
I barely hear her as she flips them over and explains the symbols. I’m sure she is merely droning out what she thinks I want to hear. I will meet him within the year, he will have an accent, and musical ability. Everything a girl wants to hear, I am sure she is telling me now, yet I do not listen. Perhaps she is giving me this rehearsed speech because she knows I don’t actually care. I do not look at her with the earnest, dopey eyes of a girl desperate to fall in love. I do not look at her at all.
I look at the cards. I tell myself a different story. I use them to answer the question I am not brave enough to voice.
The Hermit. A humpbacked man with a long black beard and a scowl, perched on a rock, alone and forsaken. This is who I have become.
The Star. A lone woman gestures to the night sky, where a single star shines brighter than the rest. This is what I wish on, with no other recourse than to believe again in childhood fantasies.
The Eight of Wands. Wooden sticks arranged symmetrically, four on each side. The number of months I have waited without word.
Four of Coins. Large, golden discs, no one pays with this kind of money anymore. But I have paid, paid more than money.
I cannot look at the last card, the one of the skeleton, without wanting to scream or cry or beat my fist against something.
She finishes her soliloquy on my inevitable romance. I am sure she wants me to smile, to thank her, to seem thrilled that I will have such a man to look forward to. I turn to her with tears in my eyes instead.
She puts her hands on my forehead. They are soft and cool. She kisses my brow-I think it is quite possibly the loveliest thing anyone has ever done-and she tells me to forget the cards. They are a hoax, she says, a fraud, a toy she uses for those who come in and want to be told the exact description of their future husband. I am relieved, somehow, to know that I can now see this room for what it truly is: gaudy and absurd, just a façade.
We stand up and go into the next room. Her husband doesn’t look up from the television. He is content with beer and chips and laughter cues. She slides the bangles from her wrists, shrugs off the flowing robe she was wearing over a t-shirt and threadbare cotton pants. She looks less exotic, now, not much like a gypsy and more like an average middle-aged woman with brown hair and too much eyeliner. Not breathtaking. Indeed, rather plain.
Into the kitchen, and she starts making hot cocoa. Adds three marshmallows to it without asking me, and I almost say out loud, in amazement, that I always take my cocoa with three marshmallows, before I realize that she knows, and that the pretence has been dropped now. She holds my hand. Rubs my wrist comfortingly.
“Ask me your question truly now,” she says. “No glamour, no masquerade. Just you and I, as if we’re old friends. Ask me what you want to know.”
I have to take a sip of the cocoa first. It braces me. And so, I ask my question.