Snitch-snatch and Oddments
Recovering from the near-death experience of abominable hunger-nausea that is quickly becoming de rigueur for the hangovers I don't manage to sleep through, I thought to myself, "My, but I haven't posted a dilly-damn thing on this here livejournal in a while." So, while sipping on the sweet salvation of tomato soup, listening to original Broadway cast of "Jekyll & Hyde," I've sought out a few more blurbs from the daily Moleskine to post here. One from every month in which the days have all been completed. Thanks to Alicia and Cat for narrowing some of the what from which month should go here.
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January 4th:
The road to Savannah is lined with Gentlemen's Clubs and big tracts of nothing. Occasionally, you might glimpse some great, dirty beast on the side of the road with its head shorn off, looking mythically unidentifiable as you hurry past, your speedometer needle anxiously dancing toward ninety. But that's about it. Everything else you see is the expansive wasteland we call nature. Empty fields. Empty forests. They reach on, impenetrable, for miles at a time. It's hypnotizing, and the road is hypnotizing, a constant repeating tableau of sex, death, and the great outdoors.
February 3rd:
On special occasions, someone may put a gun to your head and force you to smoke. Maybe it's a shotgun. Maybe they want you to smoke a hookah pipe on a paisley-print couch, with no jacket on, on top of some $20 a night Moroccan hotel at around eleven p.m. These are considered special circumstances, in which the first step to potential addiction is no longer considered voluntary.
Shiver, friend, it's forty degrees cold, and all your choices were decided for you a long time ago. Just go along with it, and see where they've decided for it to take you.
March 22nd:
Time travelers are like ghosts from the future, with unfinished business to end before its beginning.
I wonder if they already know how their adventures will end; do they, the moment they decide to travel back, know what they have to do before they have and because they have already done it? When you meddle in time, you seem to lose your concrete place in continuity. Does it bother a person?
The time traveler, Serro, said flatly that he didn't know. I think he just didn't want to tell me, and hoped I would drop the subject.
April 2nd:
The back of his suit was damp; from the drizzling rain or from his own sweat, it was impossible to tell. All that mattered was that he could dance. He could dance surprisingly well, especially considering his immensely negative aptitude for everything else involving rhythm. Like singing. Or music. In those, he was atrocious. Not even lovably atrocious; just damn bad. But he could dance.
"You didn't know I could dance," he said in a growl, anticipating her thoughts. "Well, wonder, what else don't you know?"
May 16th:
"I believe in love in forced circumstances and chance encounters. There's a chemistry you know upon first meeting. Such fate, so sudden, so inevitable," said Tullus, gazing out upon the open fields. He let his hands rest, idle, upon the stone before him, feeling at one with the bridge.
"Ambassador Lemrant," said Eirelandais, turning toward him, "I don't think this is an appropriate time for philosophy. Every day the Western House finds a new way to threaten us with war."
"My dear friend, there is rarely an inappropriate time to talk about love."
June 14th:
The stars were my favorite to contemplate. The whole night sky was a window for viewing the cosmic past, the twinkling lights shining from a billion years long gone. And it was strange to know that only the future would be able to see us here; our contemporaries out in space looking to our star would see only its primordial light. What if there are others out there, but we're all trapped in time and space? Masked by the speed of light, separated in the same moment, we could look directly at each other and only see what once was.
July 11th:
Clink went the neck of the bottle to the glass. Hazel had no finesse when it came to pouring wine, and she always sought that source-to-destination contact as a guarantee of where the wine was going. It was also the unofficial signal for real conversation to begin.
"Given that I can barely remember the past, I tend to leave it behind me," she said, handing me a glass nearly full to the brim with wine. Like I said, no finesse. "It's an...uncanny feeling, when I'm forced to dredge up facts from the realm of forgetting."
August 6th:
The orange moon rose up over the ocean, its face a knowing smirk. I'd never been to this planet before.
As a measure of hospitality, they served the local brew. It was in thick, screw top bottles designed, I think, to rip all the flesh off the palm of your hand before it would agree to open. After a few moments of struggling, I wrapped the bottom of my coat around the metal top and got my bottle open with my palms miraculously intact.
September 2nd:
There is a certain kind of eye contact, struck just so, like a match, that is much more significant than any long and longing gaze. The eyes meet for that brief moment in momentum, a spark, and then continue on. It's not the kind of thing other people would notice, but behind those two sets of eyes is now the knowledge that each of them was wanting to look at the other. Wanting to catch the eye, but knowing better and letting it go. There is some eye contact that shouldn't be made.
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January 4th:
The road to Savannah is lined with Gentlemen's Clubs and big tracts of nothing. Occasionally, you might glimpse some great, dirty beast on the side of the road with its head shorn off, looking mythically unidentifiable as you hurry past, your speedometer needle anxiously dancing toward ninety. But that's about it. Everything else you see is the expansive wasteland we call nature. Empty fields. Empty forests. They reach on, impenetrable, for miles at a time. It's hypnotizing, and the road is hypnotizing, a constant repeating tableau of sex, death, and the great outdoors.
February 3rd:
On special occasions, someone may put a gun to your head and force you to smoke. Maybe it's a shotgun. Maybe they want you to smoke a hookah pipe on a paisley-print couch, with no jacket on, on top of some $20 a night Moroccan hotel at around eleven p.m. These are considered special circumstances, in which the first step to potential addiction is no longer considered voluntary.
Shiver, friend, it's forty degrees cold, and all your choices were decided for you a long time ago. Just go along with it, and see where they've decided for it to take you.
March 22nd:
Time travelers are like ghosts from the future, with unfinished business to end before its beginning.
I wonder if they already know how their adventures will end; do they, the moment they decide to travel back, know what they have to do before they have and because they have already done it? When you meddle in time, you seem to lose your concrete place in continuity. Does it bother a person?
The time traveler, Serro, said flatly that he didn't know. I think he just didn't want to tell me, and hoped I would drop the subject.
April 2nd:
The back of his suit was damp; from the drizzling rain or from his own sweat, it was impossible to tell. All that mattered was that he could dance. He could dance surprisingly well, especially considering his immensely negative aptitude for everything else involving rhythm. Like singing. Or music. In those, he was atrocious. Not even lovably atrocious; just damn bad. But he could dance.
"You didn't know I could dance," he said in a growl, anticipating her thoughts. "Well, wonder, what else don't you know?"
May 16th:
"I believe in love in forced circumstances and chance encounters. There's a chemistry you know upon first meeting. Such fate, so sudden, so inevitable," said Tullus, gazing out upon the open fields. He let his hands rest, idle, upon the stone before him, feeling at one with the bridge.
"Ambassador Lemrant," said Eirelandais, turning toward him, "I don't think this is an appropriate time for philosophy. Every day the Western House finds a new way to threaten us with war."
"My dear friend, there is rarely an inappropriate time to talk about love."
June 14th:
The stars were my favorite to contemplate. The whole night sky was a window for viewing the cosmic past, the twinkling lights shining from a billion years long gone. And it was strange to know that only the future would be able to see us here; our contemporaries out in space looking to our star would see only its primordial light. What if there are others out there, but we're all trapped in time and space? Masked by the speed of light, separated in the same moment, we could look directly at each other and only see what once was.
July 11th:
Clink went the neck of the bottle to the glass. Hazel had no finesse when it came to pouring wine, and she always sought that source-to-destination contact as a guarantee of where the wine was going. It was also the unofficial signal for real conversation to begin.
"Given that I can barely remember the past, I tend to leave it behind me," she said, handing me a glass nearly full to the brim with wine. Like I said, no finesse. "It's an...uncanny feeling, when I'm forced to dredge up facts from the realm of forgetting."
August 6th:
The orange moon rose up over the ocean, its face a knowing smirk. I'd never been to this planet before.
As a measure of hospitality, they served the local brew. It was in thick, screw top bottles designed, I think, to rip all the flesh off the palm of your hand before it would agree to open. After a few moments of struggling, I wrapped the bottom of my coat around the metal top and got my bottle open with my palms miraculously intact.
September 2nd:
There is a certain kind of eye contact, struck just so, like a match, that is much more significant than any long and longing gaze. The eyes meet for that brief moment in momentum, a spark, and then continue on. It's not the kind of thing other people would notice, but behind those two sets of eyes is now the knowledge that each of them was wanting to look at the other. Wanting to catch the eye, but knowing better and letting it go. There is some eye contact that shouldn't be made.