i'm back with a vengeance... or a story
Livejournal. How are you? I'm back. For a good little while. Once I get my act together. Once I regress back into my special little, uninhibited, indifferently complacent, wonderfully simplistic self. To you, comrade, I turn.
I never really understood why I stopped writing in the first place. Anyway, I like sharing stories. I like working in metaphor. I am probably writing my autobiography when I am writing. Fiction is beautiful.
---
there's too much of you in some things
Cold night. New York in three hours. Tristan cannot wait to escape This Place.
He doesn't think that the palaces will appear anytime soon. But once he gets to New York, he can go anywhere. He will be able to live, to explore, to breathe toxic wonderful air, to party like the sun never rises... to meet amazing new people. Tristan wants to move in sinuous motions.
He watches the city move not too far away. Actually, it's quite far away -at least, so far he cannot reach it in a day. And always when he steps into it, he finds an entirely disparate dream. The lights always become dark dirty amber lamps and sticky old neon signs, which aren't enough to satisfy his long-subjugated thirst for carefree travel. He imagines the music to be the same slow ebb from dusty yellow windows: trapped in one place. A city on a treadmill.
Run, Swabia, run you fat bastard! Shape those hips and tone that abdomen! Show the world what you've got!
And Tristan laughs, tittering as he swaggers down the street a happy russet-mopped, German boy-hemian. New words and phrases pop up like rainbow-colored Mexican jumping beans in his head. It is an exquisite experience of a literary cacophony, he thinks.
What have you got, Swabia? Something for me? No fucking way. Send it to me on a plane, a bike, a bus, a telly commercial, tied to a fucking pigeon's leg -I know for a fact that I'll die before you ever reach me again.
And Tristan feels a skip in the beats of his heart. He jumps up and he yells Freedom. His stationary bike runs out of fuel. So, in turn, Tristan runs and he runs and he runs like a bastard for the hills and the oceans and the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty and the Hague -he runs.
i wish your pieces would hide away
Late night. Again. Twelve hours and counting. Isolde wants to finish the case.
She doesn't know where to look for the answers. She knows they're in the times, and that the times will sway the favor of the jury, and she knows because she feels as if it's right in front of her when she looks at it from afar. She sighs.
Henson, Tim at twelve thirty-seven. Too early. Wallace, Anastasia at twelve fifty-six. Too early. Song, Thu-Mi at twelve fifty-nine. Still too early (the assault occurred at five in the afternoon).
Something bothers her. Isolde cannot understand why she is allowing it to drive her insane. She stands up, dyed burgundy hair let down in a quick motion. It is the first time today she set the ringlets free to tumble around her shoulders like a red fog waterfall. A gust of wind and smog blows them back as she slides open the door to her balcony. Someone left a fire smoldering in the trash can below her flat.
She lights a cigarette and watches the city move beneath her, far too close -she, better than anyone, knows: the city is made for fools and dreamers.
She takes a breath and a step forward, gravitating to the teeming strings of phosphorescence over her steel cold balcony. There is ivy crawling all over the old black metal, and Isolde sets a leaf on fire. She sees the beauty but she can no longer express it in words.
So this is what you've gone and done to me, New York. Lovely, inspiring, brilliant New York. Am I here to save the lives of your people? Am I here to filter out the fucked up freaks? I've gone and done a lot of things for you, for quite a while now. What have you got for me?
What have you got?
Isolde laughs at her colorless blame. The city does not make her a satisfied woman of the the twenty-first century. But she has what makes a woman of today, the woman of today. But Isolde thinks she is still barred from something. She just doesn't know what. But she dreams her only dream these long days -that she had It once. She never remembers.
Isolde walks back inside and sits down in her chair. She sits and sits and sits for hours, purposely skipping over Mister Five o' Clock, Sebastian Shahan.
the way isolde must be is a common story
Saturday morning. It’s cold outside, today. Did you know that? Are you still sleeping?
Isolde lies staring blankly at her ceiling, a cigarette slowly burning between her index and middle fingers. There’s a window tinted robin blue by the sky above her and she’s wondering about all the things freely flying up there. She can almost taste the clouds in the smoke she breathes in as she lifts the thin white cylinder to her lips and inhales. She knows clouds are made of carbon pollution, air and pressure. So, in fact, she is breathing in clouds.
She forcefully elevates from her recumbent position when she hears the immaculate sheets shuffling beside her. Naked and embarrassedly afraid, she grabs the shiny emerald kimono she’d thrown on the chilly marble floor last night. She taps her cigarette on a black ashtray and opens the door to the balcony. She breathes and is not comforted by the filthy air that seeps beneath her robe. She’s against the metal of the sliding door’s frame but she knows it’s easier to have it be next to her.
“Good morning to you too,” Isolde hears. She responds with a flick of her cigarette. She hears more rustling, but she sees he remains in the bed. Only now he sits and faces her back. “You know, it’s funny, Isolde. I always want to hear your voice after I wake up. The one time you actually stick around for morning and I’m still greeted with nothing. Is it me or is this something you’re trying to deny?”
Isolde cannot help but smile with the faintest shadow of disdain. She feels the city’s soul enter her, forty-three degrees of icy haze handing her over incompletely to the twenty-first century.
Isolde turns around with a bright grin. “Good morning, Bastian. I hope you don’t mind the ashes on the floor. But I assume it’s perfectly fine because this is just a fancy hotel room,” She saunters with a false grace to a table littered with clothing.
“You’re a strange one, Sebastian. You orchestrated these circumstances. I’m fine with the way things are. I don’t see why you would compromise it with such an unnecessarily critical observation of a nonexistent issue.” Isolde has put on most of her clothing by now. She is no longer uncomfortable but aggravated. She thinks herself stupid for having stayed the morning after.
“Would you stop talking like a lawyer for a minute here?” Sebastian gets up and, frightened by his exposure, puts on a black bathrobe. He hurries to Isolde’s side to stop her from leaving. But Isolde stops him a few feet away with her eyes. “What unnecessarily critical observation? All I said was that I wanted you to stay and talk for a while. It works well before the sex comes, and then you just disappear.”
“Listen, Sebastian, I’m not your fucking friend. We fool, we fuck, we leave –that’s how it is and that’s the only way it can be. You came to that yourself. I agreed. I don’t stay the morning after because I have things to do, people to save. So don’t tell me you expect me to stay. Eight hours from now, do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to indict you for the murder of Selena Parker, the twenty-five year old woman you raped and slaughtered due to an angry drunken fucking stupor. This was and always will be nothing. We, especially, are nothing.” Isolde tries to leave but Sebastian still blocks the way. She looks at him as if he is a wall she cannot climb over.
“How the hell did you suddenly become such a fucked up whore?” Sebastian says with a tight voice. There are words in his throat that refuse to follow the sentences the longer he cannot look into Isolde’s eyes.
Fifteen years I’ve known you, Isolde, and you become the kind of person I said I would be. And I probably would be the same person, if I hadn’t been so stupid. I killed her the day after the night I had asked you to stay. But you didn’t stay. And that made all the difference. Do you remember when I told you my ideas about this life? You never liked the idea of the life I wanted. Please don’t change on me. I want to be the fucked up one. What happened to your dreams? Who took them? What replaced them? I’d give it back. I’d give it back. I’d give it back for the look in your eyes when I...
“You know what? Go fuck yourself. Good fucking morning, Sebastian.” Isolde leaves without a regret or tear. She cannot be bothered any longer. Dreams are replaced. Isolde knows. She has seen it before. These things happen all the time.
She knows.
Sebastian sits on the bed. The sheets are strewn about. The smell of lilac remains blended with soap and smoke. He shakes his head and laughs. He finally believes that human behavior is an uncontrollable nature when it is put through foreign, incomprehensible emotions. He understands, because he does not know this feeling. And it has created an idiot in him.
As the words spill from his lips, he becomes amused at his stupidity. But it doesn’t erase the veracity of the pounding in his head, or the rushing of his blood, or the sharp constrictions in his chest that are magnified by the wintry colors of the room. And her smell. Isolde’s smell of lilac wine.
“...when I dream of the morning you stay after.”
tristan sees in shapeless dreams of others
Saturday night. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know anyone. The city lights look like blurs of living cigarettes. Am I dreaming? Am I asleep? I’m imagining faces and times. I don’t know –who’s going to tell me?
Tristan lays his head next to the sand colored frame of the airplane window. He can the see the decals on the side, and the fireflies below him. He stares at them for a long time, sometimes tracing them with his finger. He points at a long line of lights and thinks: one of those lights is mine. He understands that it will take time to find it –to truly find it –because he knows the streak is made up of many angry cars. He understands that there are two lights per car. He knows one cannot exist without the other. He falls in love with the symbiosis he sees in the lights.
People say she's crazy,
But they don't ask why.
People think she's tired,
When they see her eyes.
He smiles, knowing that.
“Hey mister,” Tristan hears dimly. He turns his head slightly and sees a little fair-haired boy, no more than six, with pink cherub cheeks and eyes that are grey and blue and turn green when he’s sad. The child’s mother is sleeping peacefully in the seat beside him. Tristan looks at him as if he is old and wise. The child grins broadly and Tristan sees home. “Why are you making circles on the window, huh?”
Tristan scratches his head. He strains to figure out what the little boy is mouthing. He forgets for a minute that songs are pouring into his ear; real songs, and not ones he’s just dreaming up. The child becomes impatient and his features change quickly, but are no less intriguing for Tristan to observe.
Now she's just a stranger,
Biding her own time.
Faces wouldn't change her,
Even when they tried.
Tristan pulls an earphone out from one ear because the child pouts. His finger falls from the window and the child huffs. For a long time, both of them stare –one confused, one irate. The child becomes excited at the contest, but Tristan’s eyes tire. He closes them but they flutter open because the child speaks loudly. “Hey! You didn’t answer my question! You’re mean!”
The child huffs and puffs, but Tristan continues to admire him. With a smile, an apologetic nod of his head, and a noticeable accent he says, “I am sorry. There was music in my head and I couldn’t hear you.”
The child crosses his pudgy baby fat arms. “You’re weird, mister. Why’d you keep pointing outside? Do you gots a friend out there or something?”
Tristan’s lips lift up into a smile. “I think so. I was trying to find my friend. But I don’t think I will, not yet, anyway.”
“Why not? Is your friend not gonna be there when you get home?” The little boy puts his chubby arms on the small table before him and intently watches for Tristan’s answer.
Tristan scratches his head. “Maybe,” He mumbles somberly. He looks out the window. “I’m afraid I won’t be home in time to catch my friend,”
He feels the hollowness of Reality dawn upon the butterflies in his dream-coated stomach. Times like these cause the Extremes of Emotion to occur within the microcosm of Tristan. The Dreams, they fight for a common goal –but Reality forces them to stray from the path. The little inches away cause tornadoes of Delirium within Tristan. He sighs, imagines his butterflies’ departure into the lights underneath, only to be replaced by a cold-blooded Worry.
Tristan looks back to the child, who is very displeased with Tristan’s answer.
“That’s stupid,” the young boy says. “’Course they’ll be there, ‘cause they’re your friends. That’s what friends are s’posed to do. And if they’re really good friends, they’ll throw you a party at your house! A surprise one!” The boy smiles gleefully, approving his invented story. “And then you’ll have lots of fun! Because you’ll be home with your friends and stuff.”
Tristan begins to laugh softly. Then, his laughter grows. He remembers the warm feeling of Friendship. He remembers the kind of Dreams that they bring. He turns back to the window, searching for his light with his finger again. He forgets for a moment that he is no longer stationary and that these lights are not his. But he searches because he dreams of the warmth. He traces lights because they kindle his determination for life.
“Hey mister,” Tristan hears the child say. He does not turn to answer, and the child does not attempt to draw his attention away.
“Can you say hi to your flying friend for me, too? I like saying hi to people. I like new friends. Can you ask if I can be friends too?”
Tristan smiles and nods without turning to look at the child again. “My friend says that you should ask yourself. All you have to do is say hello to a bright light in the sky and if it twinkles three times in a row it means ‘Hi, I will be your friend.’”
The child’s eyes shine like diamond mines of curiosity. “Well, how I do know which one is your friend?”
“My friend,” –Tristan beams dreamily –“is the most beautiful light in the sky.”
Though he knows that the child is not satisfied with the answer, Tristan returns to his world of music and transient, chromatic thoughts. He surrenders to the power of the erratic lust for Dreams.
The soft hello-ing of the child is enough to send him to a good few minutes of sleep.
All of the love and laughter
That she holds inside…
I know the secret she's after.
It got left behind.
Even sadder stars will shine.
Isolde hardly pays attention to the jury. Instead she is holding on to the pack of cigarettes in her pocket for dear life. She is trying to convince herself that the jury is calling the wrong person guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty they are saying, some hundred worlds away –he is guilty for having met her. That is all.
She stands up and gives a curt nod to the judge, her friend of six years, and proceeds to leave the court without a glance to Sebastian Shahan. She remembers something about spending a lifetime trying to be what he wanted and finally becoming it, then forgets it as she takes out a cigarette.
“Isolde!” She hears as she stops beneath the doorway. She doesn’t bother to turn around. She has just dealt with the remnants of Sebastian for two hours and thirty six minutes. She wants no more. But a single piece, a miniscule invisible red hook, keeps her immobile. “Just so you know, no hard feelings. Okay, Isolde?”
Isolde smiles and exits the courthouse.
She’s sitting alone, somewhere. Actually, she’s in Bar 89, on Mercer Street –you know, the one with the glass door bathrooms where you drop a latch and –almost as if God’s watching over your privacy –it becomes miraculously opaque.
You can tell she’s feeling more than shitty. There’s something about her eyes that’s not quite right, even though they look perfectly fine. Maybe it’s their shape or maybe it’s the hint of eye makeup –they just don’t look natural. From anywhere you stand, you see, she always looks like she’s crying.
There are at least five tall glasses beside her. They look full with the swanky straws and fruits still on the edges. She’s a bit childish when she’s stirring because she’s constantly just playing with the drink. Her face turns vulnerable every five minutes or so; hardly anyone is paying enough attention to notice. It’s obvious to the trained eye that she’s trying to recollect something she’s missed. She’s not sure what it is, but what it’s become is a reel of memories. Some play once and are erased again. Some keep coming back again and again, whether she wants to think of them or not. In order to keep her feelings in check, she’s got to down another glass. She’s had an Absolut Fabulous, which encouraged her to order an Absolut Enough. After those, she’d ordered a Between the Sheets, followed by a Bleeding Heart, then A Little Piece of Hell, and ended the story with a Jaded Dreams. She started this current memory with a drink called Loneliness, but she’s already gulped down the last of it. She can’t remember what’s supposed to come next.
A passionate rock song is playing overhead, but the feeling is dulled down enough so people may express their own to each other. But she’s not very interested in anything but what to drown in next. She’s not even thinking of how to get home. She might just take a cab and pick up her car tomorrow. She doesn’t care.
She’s not actually sure of the feeling she’s having. Seems like the only plausible way to try and combat it is drink. She thinks for a second, she could have just gone to the gym. She could have run it off. She could have sat at home, watching reruns on the television. She could have worked on her next case.
Instead, she’s drunk at a snobby bar with great bathrooms.
She’s full of hatred. She remembers that she once wanted it like this. The Old Isolde saw herself as a woman who knew every way to escape. She had been full of dreams of overcoming petty issues –especially ones that were hers. She’d imagined once that she would be able to forget in a matter of hours. She remembers that she’d once wanted to be able to just disappear for a while.
They always find someone else once you’re gone. Everybody’s always happy in the end. Except for the one who disappeared. She just becomes one fucked up freak who continues to regret and hate, and does it to herself over and over again. Why? Because that’s the way she thinks it should be, for a while. Although, a while can sometimes take forever.
“As the earth swung, this Golden Hum
seemed to wash over me.
As the bells ringed, I heard you sing
and you called me out to sea.
See, I woke up frail and perfect;
see, I woke up tired and worn.
As the old man stands to judge us all,
I believe I am reborn.
You said,
“How did you know?”
Fine living makes you slow.
“How could you know I was the one?
And how could you see
Impossibility?”
As far as I know I am your sun.”
Isolde sits inside a cab, waiting for the bits of misery to fall away like old paint to reveal the wall that remains standing. Though it is darker and less appealing, it is still standing.
She leaves the money in the back and fails to catch the pitying glance of the cabbie. She waits, lightheaded, for the elevator. She boards and leans weakly against the walls. She reaches her floor, and takes seven minutes to find the right key. She goes inside and sits by the phone. She waits, trying to remember the phone number. She calls Shelly Brent, her partner and superior, who answers with a strict voice.
“What is it?”
“I need a couple days.”
“That’s not advisable, Isolde.”
“…Okay.”
“I need you to get started on the Torrance case. Detective Harrison will meet you at the scene tomorrow, eight o’ clock. You’d better be there.”
“Good night.”
“Good night, Isolde. Get some sleep. You sound like shit. I don’t know what it was you had with that Shahan guy, but it’s over. You need to get over it. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you need to understand… it never goes away, Isolde.”
“Yeah,” Isolde says as she puts the phone back into the receiver. She takes out a cigarette and lights it. She takes a long drag and holds the smoke inside her for a while. After one minute and twenty-six seconds she gradually exhales it. “Yes it does.”
---
Hope you survived through the first few parts. Haha. :) Good to be back...
I never really understood why I stopped writing in the first place. Anyway, I like sharing stories. I like working in metaphor. I am probably writing my autobiography when I am writing. Fiction is beautiful.
---
there's too much of you in some things
Cold night. New York in three hours. Tristan cannot wait to escape This Place.
He doesn't think that the palaces will appear anytime soon. But once he gets to New York, he can go anywhere. He will be able to live, to explore, to breathe toxic wonderful air, to party like the sun never rises... to meet amazing new people. Tristan wants to move in sinuous motions.
He watches the city move not too far away. Actually, it's quite far away -at least, so far he cannot reach it in a day. And always when he steps into it, he finds an entirely disparate dream. The lights always become dark dirty amber lamps and sticky old neon signs, which aren't enough to satisfy his long-subjugated thirst for carefree travel. He imagines the music to be the same slow ebb from dusty yellow windows: trapped in one place. A city on a treadmill.
Run, Swabia, run you fat bastard! Shape those hips and tone that abdomen! Show the world what you've got!
And Tristan laughs, tittering as he swaggers down the street a happy russet-mopped, German boy-hemian. New words and phrases pop up like rainbow-colored Mexican jumping beans in his head. It is an exquisite experience of a literary cacophony, he thinks.
What have you got, Swabia? Something for me? No fucking way. Send it to me on a plane, a bike, a bus, a telly commercial, tied to a fucking pigeon's leg -I know for a fact that I'll die before you ever reach me again.
And Tristan feels a skip in the beats of his heart. He jumps up and he yells Freedom. His stationary bike runs out of fuel. So, in turn, Tristan runs and he runs and he runs like a bastard for the hills and the oceans and the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty and the Hague -he runs.
i wish your pieces would hide away
Late night. Again. Twelve hours and counting. Isolde wants to finish the case.
She doesn't know where to look for the answers. She knows they're in the times, and that the times will sway the favor of the jury, and she knows because she feels as if it's right in front of her when she looks at it from afar. She sighs.
Henson, Tim at twelve thirty-seven. Too early. Wallace, Anastasia at twelve fifty-six. Too early. Song, Thu-Mi at twelve fifty-nine. Still too early (the assault occurred at five in the afternoon).
Something bothers her. Isolde cannot understand why she is allowing it to drive her insane. She stands up, dyed burgundy hair let down in a quick motion. It is the first time today she set the ringlets free to tumble around her shoulders like a red fog waterfall. A gust of wind and smog blows them back as she slides open the door to her balcony. Someone left a fire smoldering in the trash can below her flat.
She lights a cigarette and watches the city move beneath her, far too close -she, better than anyone, knows: the city is made for fools and dreamers.
She takes a breath and a step forward, gravitating to the teeming strings of phosphorescence over her steel cold balcony. There is ivy crawling all over the old black metal, and Isolde sets a leaf on fire. She sees the beauty but she can no longer express it in words.
So this is what you've gone and done to me, New York. Lovely, inspiring, brilliant New York. Am I here to save the lives of your people? Am I here to filter out the fucked up freaks? I've gone and done a lot of things for you, for quite a while now. What have you got for me?
What have you got?
Isolde laughs at her colorless blame. The city does not make her a satisfied woman of the the twenty-first century. But she has what makes a woman of today, the woman of today. But Isolde thinks she is still barred from something. She just doesn't know what. But she dreams her only dream these long days -that she had It once. She never remembers.
Isolde walks back inside and sits down in her chair. She sits and sits and sits for hours, purposely skipping over Mister Five o' Clock, Sebastian Shahan.
the way isolde must be is a common story
Saturday morning. It’s cold outside, today. Did you know that? Are you still sleeping?
Isolde lies staring blankly at her ceiling, a cigarette slowly burning between her index and middle fingers. There’s a window tinted robin blue by the sky above her and she’s wondering about all the things freely flying up there. She can almost taste the clouds in the smoke she breathes in as she lifts the thin white cylinder to her lips and inhales. She knows clouds are made of carbon pollution, air and pressure. So, in fact, she is breathing in clouds.
She forcefully elevates from her recumbent position when she hears the immaculate sheets shuffling beside her. Naked and embarrassedly afraid, she grabs the shiny emerald kimono she’d thrown on the chilly marble floor last night. She taps her cigarette on a black ashtray and opens the door to the balcony. She breathes and is not comforted by the filthy air that seeps beneath her robe. She’s against the metal of the sliding door’s frame but she knows it’s easier to have it be next to her.
“Good morning to you too,” Isolde hears. She responds with a flick of her cigarette. She hears more rustling, but she sees he remains in the bed. Only now he sits and faces her back. “You know, it’s funny, Isolde. I always want to hear your voice after I wake up. The one time you actually stick around for morning and I’m still greeted with nothing. Is it me or is this something you’re trying to deny?”
Isolde cannot help but smile with the faintest shadow of disdain. She feels the city’s soul enter her, forty-three degrees of icy haze handing her over incompletely to the twenty-first century.
Isolde turns around with a bright grin. “Good morning, Bastian. I hope you don’t mind the ashes on the floor. But I assume it’s perfectly fine because this is just a fancy hotel room,” She saunters with a false grace to a table littered with clothing.
“You’re a strange one, Sebastian. You orchestrated these circumstances. I’m fine with the way things are. I don’t see why you would compromise it with such an unnecessarily critical observation of a nonexistent issue.” Isolde has put on most of her clothing by now. She is no longer uncomfortable but aggravated. She thinks herself stupid for having stayed the morning after.
“Would you stop talking like a lawyer for a minute here?” Sebastian gets up and, frightened by his exposure, puts on a black bathrobe. He hurries to Isolde’s side to stop her from leaving. But Isolde stops him a few feet away with her eyes. “What unnecessarily critical observation? All I said was that I wanted you to stay and talk for a while. It works well before the sex comes, and then you just disappear.”
“Listen, Sebastian, I’m not your fucking friend. We fool, we fuck, we leave –that’s how it is and that’s the only way it can be. You came to that yourself. I agreed. I don’t stay the morning after because I have things to do, people to save. So don’t tell me you expect me to stay. Eight hours from now, do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to indict you for the murder of Selena Parker, the twenty-five year old woman you raped and slaughtered due to an angry drunken fucking stupor. This was and always will be nothing. We, especially, are nothing.” Isolde tries to leave but Sebastian still blocks the way. She looks at him as if he is a wall she cannot climb over.
“How the hell did you suddenly become such a fucked up whore?” Sebastian says with a tight voice. There are words in his throat that refuse to follow the sentences the longer he cannot look into Isolde’s eyes.
Fifteen years I’ve known you, Isolde, and you become the kind of person I said I would be. And I probably would be the same person, if I hadn’t been so stupid. I killed her the day after the night I had asked you to stay. But you didn’t stay. And that made all the difference. Do you remember when I told you my ideas about this life? You never liked the idea of the life I wanted. Please don’t change on me. I want to be the fucked up one. What happened to your dreams? Who took them? What replaced them? I’d give it back. I’d give it back. I’d give it back for the look in your eyes when I...
“You know what? Go fuck yourself. Good fucking morning, Sebastian.” Isolde leaves without a regret or tear. She cannot be bothered any longer. Dreams are replaced. Isolde knows. She has seen it before. These things happen all the time.
She knows.
Sebastian sits on the bed. The sheets are strewn about. The smell of lilac remains blended with soap and smoke. He shakes his head and laughs. He finally believes that human behavior is an uncontrollable nature when it is put through foreign, incomprehensible emotions. He understands, because he does not know this feeling. And it has created an idiot in him.
As the words spill from his lips, he becomes amused at his stupidity. But it doesn’t erase the veracity of the pounding in his head, or the rushing of his blood, or the sharp constrictions in his chest that are magnified by the wintry colors of the room. And her smell. Isolde’s smell of lilac wine.
“...when I dream of the morning you stay after.”
tristan sees in shapeless dreams of others
Saturday night. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know anyone. The city lights look like blurs of living cigarettes. Am I dreaming? Am I asleep? I’m imagining faces and times. I don’t know –who’s going to tell me?
Tristan lays his head next to the sand colored frame of the airplane window. He can the see the decals on the side, and the fireflies below him. He stares at them for a long time, sometimes tracing them with his finger. He points at a long line of lights and thinks: one of those lights is mine. He understands that it will take time to find it –to truly find it –because he knows the streak is made up of many angry cars. He understands that there are two lights per car. He knows one cannot exist without the other. He falls in love with the symbiosis he sees in the lights.
People say she's crazy,
But they don't ask why.
People think she's tired,
When they see her eyes.
He smiles, knowing that.
“Hey mister,” Tristan hears dimly. He turns his head slightly and sees a little fair-haired boy, no more than six, with pink cherub cheeks and eyes that are grey and blue and turn green when he’s sad. The child’s mother is sleeping peacefully in the seat beside him. Tristan looks at him as if he is old and wise. The child grins broadly and Tristan sees home. “Why are you making circles on the window, huh?”
Tristan scratches his head. He strains to figure out what the little boy is mouthing. He forgets for a minute that songs are pouring into his ear; real songs, and not ones he’s just dreaming up. The child becomes impatient and his features change quickly, but are no less intriguing for Tristan to observe.
Now she's just a stranger,
Biding her own time.
Faces wouldn't change her,
Even when they tried.
Tristan pulls an earphone out from one ear because the child pouts. His finger falls from the window and the child huffs. For a long time, both of them stare –one confused, one irate. The child becomes excited at the contest, but Tristan’s eyes tire. He closes them but they flutter open because the child speaks loudly. “Hey! You didn’t answer my question! You’re mean!”
The child huffs and puffs, but Tristan continues to admire him. With a smile, an apologetic nod of his head, and a noticeable accent he says, “I am sorry. There was music in my head and I couldn’t hear you.”
The child crosses his pudgy baby fat arms. “You’re weird, mister. Why’d you keep pointing outside? Do you gots a friend out there or something?”
Tristan’s lips lift up into a smile. “I think so. I was trying to find my friend. But I don’t think I will, not yet, anyway.”
“Why not? Is your friend not gonna be there when you get home?” The little boy puts his chubby arms on the small table before him and intently watches for Tristan’s answer.
Tristan scratches his head. “Maybe,” He mumbles somberly. He looks out the window. “I’m afraid I won’t be home in time to catch my friend,”
He feels the hollowness of Reality dawn upon the butterflies in his dream-coated stomach. Times like these cause the Extremes of Emotion to occur within the microcosm of Tristan. The Dreams, they fight for a common goal –but Reality forces them to stray from the path. The little inches away cause tornadoes of Delirium within Tristan. He sighs, imagines his butterflies’ departure into the lights underneath, only to be replaced by a cold-blooded Worry.
Tristan looks back to the child, who is very displeased with Tristan’s answer.
“That’s stupid,” the young boy says. “’Course they’ll be there, ‘cause they’re your friends. That’s what friends are s’posed to do. And if they’re really good friends, they’ll throw you a party at your house! A surprise one!” The boy smiles gleefully, approving his invented story. “And then you’ll have lots of fun! Because you’ll be home with your friends and stuff.”
Tristan begins to laugh softly. Then, his laughter grows. He remembers the warm feeling of Friendship. He remembers the kind of Dreams that they bring. He turns back to the window, searching for his light with his finger again. He forgets for a moment that he is no longer stationary and that these lights are not his. But he searches because he dreams of the warmth. He traces lights because they kindle his determination for life.
“Hey mister,” Tristan hears the child say. He does not turn to answer, and the child does not attempt to draw his attention away.
“Can you say hi to your flying friend for me, too? I like saying hi to people. I like new friends. Can you ask if I can be friends too?”
Tristan smiles and nods without turning to look at the child again. “My friend says that you should ask yourself. All you have to do is say hello to a bright light in the sky and if it twinkles three times in a row it means ‘Hi, I will be your friend.’”
The child’s eyes shine like diamond mines of curiosity. “Well, how I do know which one is your friend?”
“My friend,” –Tristan beams dreamily –“is the most beautiful light in the sky.”
Though he knows that the child is not satisfied with the answer, Tristan returns to his world of music and transient, chromatic thoughts. He surrenders to the power of the erratic lust for Dreams.
The soft hello-ing of the child is enough to send him to a good few minutes of sleep.
All of the love and laughter
That she holds inside…
I know the secret she's after.
It got left behind.
Even sadder stars will shine.
Isolde hardly pays attention to the jury. Instead she is holding on to the pack of cigarettes in her pocket for dear life. She is trying to convince herself that the jury is calling the wrong person guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty they are saying, some hundred worlds away –he is guilty for having met her. That is all.
She stands up and gives a curt nod to the judge, her friend of six years, and proceeds to leave the court without a glance to Sebastian Shahan. She remembers something about spending a lifetime trying to be what he wanted and finally becoming it, then forgets it as she takes out a cigarette.
“Isolde!” She hears as she stops beneath the doorway. She doesn’t bother to turn around. She has just dealt with the remnants of Sebastian for two hours and thirty six minutes. She wants no more. But a single piece, a miniscule invisible red hook, keeps her immobile. “Just so you know, no hard feelings. Okay, Isolde?”
Isolde smiles and exits the courthouse.
She’s sitting alone, somewhere. Actually, she’s in Bar 89, on Mercer Street –you know, the one with the glass door bathrooms where you drop a latch and –almost as if God’s watching over your privacy –it becomes miraculously opaque.
You can tell she’s feeling more than shitty. There’s something about her eyes that’s not quite right, even though they look perfectly fine. Maybe it’s their shape or maybe it’s the hint of eye makeup –they just don’t look natural. From anywhere you stand, you see, she always looks like she’s crying.
There are at least five tall glasses beside her. They look full with the swanky straws and fruits still on the edges. She’s a bit childish when she’s stirring because she’s constantly just playing with the drink. Her face turns vulnerable every five minutes or so; hardly anyone is paying enough attention to notice. It’s obvious to the trained eye that she’s trying to recollect something she’s missed. She’s not sure what it is, but what it’s become is a reel of memories. Some play once and are erased again. Some keep coming back again and again, whether she wants to think of them or not. In order to keep her feelings in check, she’s got to down another glass. She’s had an Absolut Fabulous, which encouraged her to order an Absolut Enough. After those, she’d ordered a Between the Sheets, followed by a Bleeding Heart, then A Little Piece of Hell, and ended the story with a Jaded Dreams. She started this current memory with a drink called Loneliness, but she’s already gulped down the last of it. She can’t remember what’s supposed to come next.
A passionate rock song is playing overhead, but the feeling is dulled down enough so people may express their own to each other. But she’s not very interested in anything but what to drown in next. She’s not even thinking of how to get home. She might just take a cab and pick up her car tomorrow. She doesn’t care.
She’s not actually sure of the feeling she’s having. Seems like the only plausible way to try and combat it is drink. She thinks for a second, she could have just gone to the gym. She could have run it off. She could have sat at home, watching reruns on the television. She could have worked on her next case.
Instead, she’s drunk at a snobby bar with great bathrooms.
She’s full of hatred. She remembers that she once wanted it like this. The Old Isolde saw herself as a woman who knew every way to escape. She had been full of dreams of overcoming petty issues –especially ones that were hers. She’d imagined once that she would be able to forget in a matter of hours. She remembers that she’d once wanted to be able to just disappear for a while.
They always find someone else once you’re gone. Everybody’s always happy in the end. Except for the one who disappeared. She just becomes one fucked up freak who continues to regret and hate, and does it to herself over and over again. Why? Because that’s the way she thinks it should be, for a while. Although, a while can sometimes take forever.
“As the earth swung, this Golden Hum
seemed to wash over me.
As the bells ringed, I heard you sing
and you called me out to sea.
See, I woke up frail and perfect;
see, I woke up tired and worn.
As the old man stands to judge us all,
I believe I am reborn.
You said,
“How did you know?”
Fine living makes you slow.
“How could you know I was the one?
And how could you see
Impossibility?”
As far as I know I am your sun.”
Isolde sits inside a cab, waiting for the bits of misery to fall away like old paint to reveal the wall that remains standing. Though it is darker and less appealing, it is still standing.
She leaves the money in the back and fails to catch the pitying glance of the cabbie. She waits, lightheaded, for the elevator. She boards and leans weakly against the walls. She reaches her floor, and takes seven minutes to find the right key. She goes inside and sits by the phone. She waits, trying to remember the phone number. She calls Shelly Brent, her partner and superior, who answers with a strict voice.
“What is it?”
“I need a couple days.”
“That’s not advisable, Isolde.”
“…Okay.”
“I need you to get started on the Torrance case. Detective Harrison will meet you at the scene tomorrow, eight o’ clock. You’d better be there.”
“Good night.”
“Good night, Isolde. Get some sleep. You sound like shit. I don’t know what it was you had with that Shahan guy, but it’s over. You need to get over it. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you need to understand… it never goes away, Isolde.”
“Yeah,” Isolde says as she puts the phone back into the receiver. She takes out a cigarette and lights it. She takes a long drag and holds the smoke inside her for a while. After one minute and twenty-six seconds she gradually exhales it. “Yes it does.”
---
Hope you survived through the first few parts. Haha. :) Good to be back...
bored