Lucid Waking

Archive for December, 2007

Best of the Blog 2007

Despite a low turnout, the winners of this year’s best of the blog are:

Fantasy: Sweet home Chicago
Realistic Fiction: Before
Fantasy: What are you waiting for?

Winners were chosen based on positive comments, good language, or a skill that was demonstrated that was not in the others. For those of you who want to catch up on 2007, there is a page with all of the posts for the year in a link at the bottom. Voting for 2008 will start as soon as possible. Thank you all for reading and though there were very little votes, your support is much appreciated. Thank you for reading and see you all next year!

The Best of 2007

        Every year, I write an ending letter on December 31 in which I reflect over what has happened over the past year. This is more because of common tradition than anything else because I do not read the news, I do not remember what has happened over the past 365 days, and I could not possibly cover all of the things that might or might not be of importance that I wish to recall. Last year, I talked about the future for 2007 and brushed upon general goals I had hoped for that year. Unfortunately, none of them were fulfilled, but I’m keeping my hopes up.
        This year, I wanted to do something different, but was unsure of how to go about it. Sure good things happened, bad things happened, but nothing spectacular happened and if I was going to reflect upon the year, that’s what I would talk about. Making goals are difficult, though the ones for Lucid Waking I can keep, but ones that really count (such as those towards world peace) are going to be hard to do on my own (especially with a war going on that I had noting to do with). So I leave this year’s review up to you. Whatever things you’re happy for or happy about…share them. Whatever things you hoped went better, work to change them or prevent them. Or if you want the news, take this survey and see how much you know. I didn’t do so well, but you might fare better.
        This year, I want everyone, including myself, to focus on the good, hold out, and keep it up. Giving up only when you forget and then getting back right on track when you remember. Call someone up and talk for a little while. Let them know you’re still thinking about them. Give a couple gifts, even if they’re just hugs or hellos, live it up for a day. Give a little, care a little, respect more than ever. Help someone. Think about others. Breathe.

        Happy New Year to all, you have a fresh start. Keep standing tall and live through your heart. Best wishes.

Fish

Silver.
Brown.
Copper.
Gray.
The wind blows the snow
Off of the ice
In whirlwinds
Of crystalline
White.

Underneath the water is warm
Warmer than the air above
And darts of silver,
Brown, copper, gray
Are eating the plants
At the bottom of the sea.
Looking up at the sky
They find the sheet of ice
That has them trapped
In the world of water.

I am trapped inside my house.
And I look at the water
From a window pane with snow.
The flowers are gone:
Dried up fragile sticks
Cracked from the weight of frozen water.

The fish and I can no longer look
At the sun streaming,
Or at the clouds above.
Now its just opaque white
Glass that they could touch.
Opaque white that I can touch
Right outside my window.

Blood

        Mauve turned into the driveway of the Adler Sanitarium quickly enough and after slamming on her brakes to make an obvious squeak, she threw open her door, got out, and slammed it shut. The man she wanted to see conveniently waited for her on the steps depriving her of the pleasure of going in and finding him herself.
         “What is the meaning of this?” she screamed. “Is there some sort of personal gain you hope by committing my brother?”
         “Not at all, Miss May. We only hope to ensure the public’s safety from a mentally instable individ—”
         “Oh, don’t ‘Miss May’ me! You’re putting him on bull pucky charges and you know it. If you had any sense at all…in fact, the crazies are more sane than you sometimes!”
         “Miss May, please. Do not let this get personal—”
         “How much more personal do you expect this to get—taking my brother! It started out personal! Or maybe it wasn’t maybe it was about business after all…what did she give you? Riches, land, all the virgins you could want?!”
         “You know as well as I that’s a myth.”
         “Bull pucky, you’d milk that one out for all it’s worth.”
         “Mrs. Alcott did not call in, this time.”
         “She’s complained about everything else about my family. You’ve only started caring since you’ve asked to marry me! How much did she offer? $100? $1000?”
         “Please.”
        Maude pursed her lips. “Fine, let’s go inside and you can explain.”
        She followed the doctor into the building and through the marble lobby to his office near the back. He held the door for her as she sat down in a red velvet chair in front of the desk. The room was painted black with a crystal chandelier being the only source of light in the entire room. Cherry wood furniture adorned the office with various pictures of castles in Europe.
        “Your brother came to one of our doctors last night asking to be diagnosed.”
         “Everybody has that stupid disease. Who does he think we are? Living?”
         “Well, shouldn’t that be a give-away that something was wrong? It’s common, but he thought it serious to be locked up. Honestly, we did what he asked first and tested him for hierophobia and hagiophobia and even alliumphobia, but he tested negative for all of them. Well, he was in the orange for alliumphobia, but he had to be in the red zone for us to lock him up. He wouldn’t harm others when confronted with garlic.”
         “So fear of holy things, saints, priests, and…garlic?”
         “He asked. It was interesting how he seemed to want to find something wrong with him. We ran a couple more sanity tests, but the real discovery was his anemia.”
         “What?!”
         “Yes, he tested positive for anemia. So we did the one test he was afraid of and, unfortunately, tested positive.”
         “You wouldn’t dare.”
         “I wasn’t there, Miss May. I was only told this morning. I’m sorry but your brother is severely hemophobic.”
         “Afraid of blood but…how’s he eating?”
         “He’s not. We have to give it to him in the meat in his diet. We had to lock him up for his safety, not ours. I’m sorry, Maude, but I didn’t have much of a choice.”
         “I-I-I-I…”
         “Don’t think about it now. I have to check on a few more patients, but I’ll come back and then we can talk about paperwork. Don’t take it too hard on yourself, it isn’t your fault.”
         “But…a vampire who’s afraid of blood…what would dad say?”

What to do…

She: What should I do?
He: Nothing
She: Well I suppose.
He:
She: But that requires just as much energy as if I do something.
He: Except doing nothing does not require you to choose something to do.
She: Well, I suppose.
He:
She: But then I have to decided not to do something, which takes just as much energy
He: Yes, but—
She: And it’s another choice I have to make, so if I decide not to do anything it will take just as much energy as choosing what to do.
He: Well, (damn it!) what are you going to do?
She: Nothing.

Running

        i was running for my life and panting all the way. but there’s something that kicks in where even though your logical mind knows that you can’t run this fast or this long, you look down and there you are and you check your watch and you’ve been going for ten minutes.
        no, i’ve never really been that smart, but i pride myself in not being stupid. i know who to talk to and who to leave alone and why. i might not be able to tell you how i know if some guy is going to gyp you off, but i get the gut feeling and can tell you when. smarts is different for different people.
        the city is a really noisy place. there’s the police sirens far behind me and the jazz from Rittzy’s and the honking horns and the megaphone from the protesting in the park. and the church bells right about…now. people are talking and for the outside cafes, the clinking of glasses and plates and silverware. some guy’s radio is booming that vibrating bass that makes your eardrums hurt and the crinkle of plastic bags. there’s the crying of pigeons and sea gulls and someone else is firing off a gun.
        no matter how many people there are, no one wants to stop you and say “in here!”. i’m surprised but my logical mind is saying that’s stupid and i knew no one would do that to me.
        yeah, i’m a girl. tall. short hair. blue eyes. i have a jacket and jeans, mittens, and a hat. i look like a boy. but this guy knew i was a girl. that’s why i’m running. to get away from him. the protestors in the park are too busy protesting to notice me. the guy isn’t stupid. he didn’t fire off the gun again. they’re talking about some sort of union and they want higher wages. maybe that would help people be nicer to others and help them. maybe people aren’t paying attention because i’m just going through clouds of bird and lots of kids go through and scare the birds and they think i’m doing that too, which means that i don’t matter and can be ignored. my lungs hurt a lot. its funny how even though you have that little thing inside you managing how fast you run, it still can’t stop that pain in your legs and lungs and inside your nose.
        i’m lucky that the girl at the bar called the police. else i would just be running and since i’m not going as fast as i started, he would catch up to me eventually. and then i don’t know what i would do. but as it is, i can hear the sirens getting closer. i don’t know what he’s doing, but the car’s stopped. and that’s good. i hope they take him away from me. i’ll never go to that bar again. Ever.

a piece of coal

        I carried it in my pocket as I went down towards the subway to go to my grandmother’s house for Hanukkah. It was a little piece of coal some classmate thought would be funny to give me for Christmas. And though I’m Jewish, I understand fully well what he was trying to say. It didn’t add to his case to get me to go out with him, but I’m sure he didn’t think of that in advance. He’s a guy.
        I found the perfect person on my walk. She was huddled between two kissing buildings in a large black jacket. Her hair was full of leaves and she smelled like a litter box. If you don’t have a cat at home, you might be lucky in this regard. She also clutched at her bulging belly as she slept, upright in the alley. But what made her perfect was that she was sitting in front of a large dumpster somehow wedged between the two tall buildings.
        I shook her awake and she looked at me with disdain.
        “Whatta you wan’?” she said as she shivered.
        I handed her a box of matches and the piece of coal. “I know its not much, but Merry Christmas.”
        “What the hell do you want me to do with this?”
        I took some papers out of the dumpster and put the coal on top. I lit a match and watched the thing go up in flame before settling back down. “Merry Christmas,” I said again.
        She blinked at me. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”

Ode to Tea

When I feel like I have just been
Hit by a four ton truck,
I fill a pot with water
And pull out my ceramic cup.

I take down all the tea bags
From their spot up on the shelf
And pick out the one flavor
That will help me above all else.

There’s peppermint for stomach problems,
People stress, and moods
Or if I’m too tired to stay awake
Because there’s just too much to do.

Chai is my favorite kind.
I drink it if I’m sad
Or need that little extra love
That I don’t feel I have.

If I just want something
To get me from A to B,
I pack a little strawberry
Before I go to leave.

Lemon and lemon balm
Are two different types of teas
But they calm me down immensely
So that I can go to sleep.

With one lump of sugar
And a good quantity of milk,
I love my steaming hot delight,
A counselor in a cup.

Without this British delicacy
I would be a different me.
Thank goodness for this discovery!
Thank you, God, for tea!

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, mvt. 1 by Philip Glass

        Snow. It drifted lazily from the sky slowing the passage of time indefinitely. The sun remained cold in the white sky and melted none of the thick, wet flakes. Detective Peter Sean arrived at the end of the storm in front of the DuPage Estate. The front way was salted and shoveled, but was concealed by blue and white police cars parked in front. A mass of people was being held back at the door; those in back were craning their necks over others in the front. Peter maneuvered through the crowd and bowed when he got to the door.
         “Come right in, Detective.” One of them moved aside for him.
         The front parlor was filled with loitering policemen who merely showed him towards the staircase before continuing their conversation over coffee, which the maid had prepared. He followed the clicks of cameras’ flashbulbs and crinkle of plastic bags to the study where the Lieutenant of police was stationed with a crew of seven or more scientists and investigators.
         “What happened?” Peter asked.
         The Lieutenant turned to look at him. “A homicide set to look like a suicide. You know.”
         “Quite.”
         The Lieutenant of police was a woman about a head taller than Peter. Her red-brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail out of her face and she was wearing a man’s uniform; too baggy around the shoulders and tight around the bust and hips. She had her arms crossed against her chest, resting her weight on her back foot and biting her lip as she oversaw the work.
         “She was hanging from the chandelier, when the whole thing went down. The crash woke up the house and that’s about when they called the police. Everyone in house confirms the victim as Mme Chantal DuPage, lady of the house.”
         “So what did you find to think it was a homicide?”
         “She has no rope burns around her neck and the doctors that came by said her neck wasn’t broken and her windpipe intact. They said there was no way she would have died from the rope, she wasn’t up there long enough.”
         “Even so, it would have shattered her windpipe.”
         The Lieutenant shrugged. “I just report. You figure it out. And get this: there are no other marks on her body. She wasn’t stabbed or shot. The only thing we found was a couple of bruises.”
         “No one left the house?”
         “Of course not,” she said. “What kind of a system do you think I run? I’m not sloppy!”
         “I’m sorry to have doubted you, Lieutenant.”
         “Are you going to run another questioning?”
         “Depends on what you found?”
         “Nothing really. Everyone had a motive.”
        The servants were all in the house. That was confirmed by M. DuPage. Dinner that night went according to plan: the lord and lady of the house were entertaining several guests including the wealthy Leponts and their son Samuel. The table was set with blue linen with white napkins with the good silver ware and blue china dishes. Several times, their cherished cook had to bustle people out of the kitchen so that she could finish her work with no distractions. Banisters were dusted twice and the candles lit moments before the guests had arrived. While the occasion was mostly to impress the Leponts so that they consented to marry their son to Elise DuPage, the only daughter of the DuPage family, the other guests there talked about politics and gossip that was going around the “common people.” The marriage would mean the well being of their daughter, who otherwise, would end up working in a factory or in the poor house. In an effort to save their family name, the DuPage family was using the influences they could.
        Chantal DuPage was very well connected to her daughter and noticed every blush and shy look Samuel and Elise shared more than anyone else present. The two had been seeing each other long before the marriage was even brought up to M. DuPage. All the previous events had brought Chantal to suggest the marriage to her husband, but she did so extremely discretely and pretended, this night, to take no precedence in the orchestration of the evening. It was a night when the two men of the households would decide for themselves if the marriage would work. None of the other guests suspected a thing and when M. DuPage and M. Lepont talked in the parlor after dinner over coffee, it was a bit of a surprise to the family, though a pleasant one. Samuel was the oldest son, but he was a bit lame from childhood illness and walked with a limp and crutches, if he walked at all. Most of the time, he was in a wheelchair and excluded from regular conversation because of his disability. M. Lepont was afraid he would have trouble marrying him off, despite the fortune connected with the eldest son, but his fears were diminished by the polite invitation of M. DuPage. Still, he wondered how desperate the DuPage family would by to ask for their only daughter to marry his son. He had tried before and failed to marry his oldest son off, it was quite a change for someone to ask and he was a bit wary.
        The conversation ended in indecision, but with high hopes. Mme DuPage went up to her bedroom after the festivities and got ready for bed before joining her husband later in the library to discuss the marriage proposal. The house was still when M. DuPage left the room and returned to the bedroom before a crash sent him back to the library to find his wife tied up in the chandelier, now on the floor.
        “Whether or not he was surprised at this is up to question,” Peter said as he paced the parlor between the household staff and guests. Everyone alive was assembled before him looking a bit nervous and ill. The room was as still as a photograph and Peter had the impression if he dropped a handkerchief on the carpet, it would make a noise.
        “Well,” he said laughing, a little, “I can say with absolute certainty that he was surprised to find his wife like that. After interviewing all of the people involved in that night and carefully matching up stories, I’ve determined who did it.”
        “Please, Detective, we don’t have all day,” the Lieutenant said softly. Even though the room was silent, he knew that he was the only one to truly hear her.
        “Well, the murderer knows how she did it, so I don’t need to recount it to you. Elise, why don’t you come along with our lovely lieutenant of police? No one here wants to hurt you in a struggle.”
Elise nodded her copper head and stepped forward. A shudder wound through the room like a breeze in winter, but Elise remained strong as she held her hands out to be tied up.
        “Why, Elise?” Samuel asked.
        Her eyes glittered with tears. “She knew, Sam. I couldn’t keep it in and I didn’t want her to tell…”
        “Knew?” M. DuPont prompted.
        Elise fixed on her hands without a word
        “Do you mind if I share?” Peter gently asked. When she didn’t answer, he continued, “I had mentioned prior that Elise and Samuel had been seeing each other. But they stopped when Elise found out she was pregnant. It was hard for her to keep in, so she told her mother, as happy as she was at the time, and her servant. Mme DuPont promptly started convincing her husband to go through with the marriage. But apparently our young murderess was scared her mother would tell her father in an effort to convince him to marry them off and poisoned her mother’s tea during desert. Mme DuPont didn’t actually touch the beverage until she was in the library talking with her husband. Once M. DuPont left, she dropped dead and Mlle DuPont, who was hiding in the closet, tied her up in the chandelier, knocked out the footstool from under her, and ran out of the room to her bedroom across the hall. There was the bang and she ran out again to join the rest of the household in the library.”
        Silence met his words as everyone stared dumbstruck at the carpeting. M. Lepont looked furious but he refused to look at M. DuPont, who had slumped down onto the nearest chair and remained looking down.
        “We’d better go,” the lieutenant said, gently leading Elise out the door. Elise gave one fleeting glance to Samuel before she left, making eye contact with no one else before the door slammed shut.
        The room remained precisely the way it was as he was giving his recap of the events the night before. The silence was deafening and the stillness of the room made him think of wax figures.
        “What’s going to happen to the baby?”
        The question came so fast and quiet, Peter lost the speaker in the suddenness of it. “We’ll take care of her. Lieutenant Payne never mistreats her prisoners.”
        Silence.
        “Well then, I’ll leave you all to your preparations for the funeral. I’m sure the trial will be next week, but you’ll have to keep in touch with the lieutenant. Well, you all must be very busy so I will leave you to your work.”
Peter tipped his hat and walked out the door closing it gently behind him as he left. The cars were gone off the driveway and the crowd had dispersed with the police. Poor girl, Peter thought as he got into his black car and drove away from the large DuPage Estate.