Lucid Waking

Archive for July, 2009

Numbered Memories (1)

        The phonograph clicked lightly over the bumps in the record as the familiar crackling static filled the rest of the space. Finally, a male voice blasted through the room where the phonograph was situated.
        “All right,” he stammered, laughing, “just try to tell me something in your life that corresponds to a certain number, descending, starting with your age.”
        “So I tell you why the number twenty is significant in my life and then…” a woman’s voice answered, also bright from laughter.
        “You go on to nineteen and so on.”
        “Ok, I think I get this. So, twenty…Well, twenty dollars was how much I got when I babysat for our neighbors two doors down. God, those kids were brats,” she laughed. “But we certainly had some memories. I think I learned all about patience watching those boys.”
        “Anyway, nineteen. That was the number on the double decker bus a girl friend and I took to get back to our hotel when we were lost in London. It ended up being the wrong bus, but we got on it because it was dark and we were convinced some creep was following us. Anyway, the bus driver was really nice and after his rounds when we were the last two left, he took us back to the hotel. We tipped him, but he didn’t have to go out of his way. He was a very nice old man who had two daughters of his own, so he understood our predicament, as he put it. That was a really fun trip, I should tell you about it sometime.
        “Eighteen, huh? Let’s see…I was eighteen when I got my first car—”
        “Try not to mention ages. That would be too easy.”
        “All right, if you insist on making it harder. …I had eighteen dolls in my collection that my grandmother had been giving me at the holidays. She died before I got any more, but I loved every one that I got.
        “Seventeen is actually an easy one. My first boyfriend was number seventeen on the football team. I don’t know why I even dated him, we had nothing in common except that he was friends with my brother. Heh—I remember sitting in the stadium freezing cold and screaming my head off listening for any word about player seventeen. At least he was a good football player, he was always pretty popular, but modest. I guess I liked that he never took full credit for a good game, even though he made most of the offensive plays. He was always so quiet.
        “Enough rambling though, I’m on sixteen. Besides being an awful time in my life—no ages, I know—sixteen was the number of brownies my favorite brownie recipe made. Fun fact.
        “Fifteen…hmm…ten and five…Fifteen was…a book I vaguely remember reading. My brother kept it on his bookshelf high up, so I couldn’t reach it, and he told me not to touch it. So naturally, when he wasn’t home, I got the step stool and pulled down the book. I don’t remember how old I was when I read it—very young—and it was not a little kid’s book. No pictures, except for a few, and a lot of naughty words and ideas. I was actually scared of it, to tell you the truth. I never told anyone I read it, except for my mom a few years later. She just smiled at that point and said I should try reading it again when I was older. I haven’t gotten around to it, but I remember vividly the feeling of horror and strange fascination.
        “God it was strange. Well, fourteen: the number of pages my first story had. At the time, I thought it was a novel, but now—huh, it’s just a piddly little number.
        “Thirteen was…um…hmm…well, besides being my lucky number not very important. Although that was the number of days—I think—that I stayed away from home when I ran away. Yes, I actually ran away from home. Most kids talk about it or if they do it, they don’t get very far. I actually left my house and took the camping equipment and just walked. I camped out in the forest preserve and kept moving around all the time so no one could find me. I last almost two weeks before one of the police officers stumbled upon my camp in the wee hours of the morning. My parents were livid and I remember getting my brother to admit that he did cry over my absence. But even though I told myself that was a triumph, it just made me feel worse about it.
        “Twelve was the number of worms we convinced Billy Patrick to eat in a dare. Hah; that’s a really disgusting memory.
        “Eleven was the number of steps leading down to my basement. And I know because I had to carry the laundry up and down without being able to see. So, I’d count the steps so that I wouldn’t trip. It was a useful number to have memorized.
        “Ten…well, ten o’clock was about the time when I found out my dad had died. My mother called me out of school for the rest of the day and took me home and told me. I was stunned at first, but once I realized he was never coming home, I cried for several days. He was always at the hospital, so the fact that I could never see him again took a long time to reach me. A lot of bad stuff happened that year. That was the year I attempted suicide, too. My poor mother.”
        She took a deep breath. “But enough about that. Nine…three by three…oh, ‘I’ is the ninth letter in the alphabet, and also the calligraphic letter that my brother has tattooed on his forearm. There are a lot of reasons why he liked the letter ‘I.’ We both got depressed often and he liked to remind himself that he was in control of his life, not fate. He always liked feeling like there was a sense of power and he felt better about things knowing he was controlling them, or at least, his reaction to them. It was also the roman numeral for one, symbolizing uniqueness, which to him, reminded him to savor the little things in life because they might be a once-in-a-lifetime moment. In tarot cards, one was the magician, symbolizing creativity and self-reliance. One also symbolized the beginning of something. Anyway, I went with him when he got it, and he was in a particularly negative mood, but he explained all of this to me and it made so much sense. He wanted it on the inside of his forearm because he wanted to see it in the off chance he ever thought of slitting his wrists and being reminded of all that power and self possibility. My brother always was my beacon of strength and intelligence.”
        Another deep breath.“Wow, I’m really getting deep. Ok…Eight. Eight was the number of leather -bound notebooks that I owned. I love the smell of leather and every year I would save enough money to get one at a craft fair. I had eight of them, unadulterated and clean before I thought I had better ways of spending my money on things I didn’t need. I think I used one as a sketchbook, but the others are all empty.
        “There’s a certain magic about an empty notebook. It’s so neat and orderly and just full of possibility. It’s hard to explain, but I’d have more of them if they didn’t take up so much space."

Author’s Note on post 331: I’m glad I got this up before midnight because it is technically still July. Sorry that I haven’t gotten more posted, but I will put up the second part tomorrow. I thought it best only to give you a 1.5 page chunk at a time. Not much else to say about it.

A Lot Going On with Nothing to Show

Just thought I’d share a little of what’s going on. I haven’t been neglecting my blog, but a lot’s happening both artistically and not, so here’s the scoop:

1. I have a total of 5 story ideas floating around in my head. While I’d love to start writing all of them, I’ve forced myself to plan my stories out first before writing, so that I don’t get stuck and end up with a lot of loose ends. This means that I have spent less time writing and more time planning, so I don’t have anything to publish as I am busy mapping out these ideas.
2. I might be turning House of Animalia into a graphic novel so on top of planning it, I will be creating a script and working on character designs. It probably will never get on the web as I won’t publish it until I’m finished with the whole thing to prevent having to go back and redraw the beginning or not having pages done on time for a bi- or tri- weekly deadline. But, I’m brewing over that as well.
3. Since I’ve been trying to promote print buying (even in this recession) I’ve been working on taking new picture of my paintings so that you get a high quality print. Which leads to…
4. DeviantArt is having a print sale, so there probably isn’t a better time to buy prints. Email me and let me know what you want, browse what I have, and please buy something. I’m going to be a poor college student soon and it’s always good to have something colorful on your walls that pretty much no one else will have.
5. Yes, I’m going to college which is draining in more ways than one. I’m trying to take advantage of the diminishing time I’ll have with my family as well as shopping, working, and generally having a fantastic summer. Unfortunately, everything I mentioned in this list takes time, and so does spontaneous trips getting me prepped to live elsewhere.
6. However, I’m in the process of writing a prose story, but it takes a while and I’m hoping to finish it before I publish it. My goal is to get it up before the end of July.

Quite. Well, then, I’m off to keep working and editing and sewing and drawing and whatever else it is that I need to be doing. I’ve been quite a busy body this summer, even though I don’t have much to show for it.

Pieces

If you stop and think about it
All the voices in your head,
Which you thought you had to silence,
Are already dead.

They’ve submissively had to listen
To that dictator you call “me”
While you try to figure out life
And who you want to be.

Where you think that you have demons
And many pieces of the “you,”
You really have indecision
In figuring out what to do.

While you believe your life is fractals
It is really not at all.
But while “oneness” might be comforting,
It’s only you if you fall.

__________________________________________________________

Author’s Note on post 330: I haven’t written in a while and I hope this is self-explanitory.

Preshow Prep

So, I finished something else. It took me longer than I anticipated, but now that I look at it, only a little more than a month. I’m posting it so that I know that I finished it today (since I usually date my paintings and this one I forgot to jot down the date on the back). Fun fact: this is my 60th piece of artwork I put up in the gallery since its fruition.

Larger size/more information –> click on picture

Info on prints –> click here

Dear Aunt Jane

Dear Aunt Jane,
        This time I’m writing you from Boston. The trip from Richmond was uneventful, but the landscape was very pretty. The train was relaxing. Bobby says hello, though he doesn’t have enough patience to sit down and write to you himself. He’s very good at keeping himself busy and, thankfully, keeping out of trouble. We’re doing well by the sea. Mother has written expecting the house to be finished in August, so we will be able to come back to Chicago one more time before we permanently live in Vermont.
        Bobby and I are staying with a sister of a friend of Mother’s: Laura Alberts. She’s been very kind in letting us stay in her house; in return I help her mend clothes and wash dishes while Bobby does a few chores around the house to help out her eldest son. They are very nice people and they’ve already adopted us as part of the family. Just to demonstrate how kind the Alberts are: just this past Wednesday, a strange man knocked at the door of the house and said he was passing through and asked if we had a room to spare so that he could stay the night. Mr. Alberts wasted no time in asking his wife to set up a room and since no room was available, his eldest volunteered his and he slept in the parlor. It was all done without fuss and the stranger turned out to be very kind. Mrs. Alberts quickly gave him food and place to eat without so much as a sigh of discontent. He rode a horse (how quaint!) and even his animal was given excellent treatment. I admit, I had qualms about the whole affair, but it turned out for the best and I feel better for it. I wish every family in America was like the Alberts, but I suppose that would make more families pray to criminals. However if I were a criminal and took advantage of such a family, I would be rapt with guilt and never want to follow crime again.
        Today, we spent the morning at the parade and then we brought baskets with baked goods to the shelter downtown. Later today we will go down to the coast to see the fireworks and we are going to visit a cousin of theirs for supper. I’m very excited, but Bobby is more preoccupied in finding frogs in the backyard than Fourth of July festivities. Their youngest son found one and is keeping it for a pet, so Bobby is determined to get one for himself. Luckily he has enough clothes that he can change into clean ones when he gets dirty, although it constantly seems like I am doing laundry.
        I hope you had a wonderful Independence Day, as it will be long past when you get this letter, and know that I am thinking of you and we are on our way back as soon as possible!

        Sincerely, your niece,
            Coralie Dyer

Author’s Note on Post 329: More writing practice and some vintage wording. I tried thinking about what America meant to me, although, frankly, I’m not a huge fan of this country. Alas, I missed Canada Day. Regardless, Happy Independence Day! (p.s. No rain!)

Botanic Garden Pictures (Part 4)

This is the last of them:

Larger size/more information –> click on photo

Info on prints –> click here

Botanic Garden Pictures (Part 3)

Larger size/more information –> click on photo

Info on prints –> click here