Numbers

I have decided to work on a collection of character sketches in the form of monologue as a way to get some of these fragments out of my head here is one of hopefully many to come.

– Cheers

Monologue for a Woman  – A woman sits on a dingy white couch in the middle of her sun-dried lawn, littered with belongings for sale. She looks at a small jewelry music box that plays a twinkling song in her hands before closing it.

My daddy gave me this box. He used to say, “Only the prettiest of things belong in a box with such sweet music”. He used to say a lot of things…Oh nothing particularly poetic or smart just things. Things that would make you laugh till your sides ached or things that made you think, daddy was always good with things. Like that white book there, right there by your foot, he gave me that book and said “Baby Girl when it comes down to it all you got is memories and pictures and it’s best to keep them all in one place.”

It’s a wedding album never been used still in plastic. two dollars. Or what about that box of toys over there? Have any kids? One toy for every apology my daddy ever gave me. A Barbie for a black eye, a dolly for a bruise. See that pair of roller skates I got those for nasty fall down the stairs in that house behind me, there’s a gouge in the drywall to prove it. The skates are ten dollars. Do you need something for your wife? There’s a nice box of china dishes my momma left behind 10 cents a piece. You see we didn’t need them after my she left there was no one to cook for. Or how about that bassist still in the box 25 dollars, my aunt sent that to me a few months back see no one told her I didn’t need it any more.

You see mister I know what kind of man you are, you are one of those who wear tan dockers to tuck in your polo shirts on the weekend. You are a man who puts on suits with power ties every weekday. You sit in your high-rise office in perfect manufactured 75 degree air crunching numbers and pushing paper from one side of your desk to the other. You sit there don’t you? Every morning at 9am drinking your from your designer ergonomic coffee mug making sure all those numbers fit into neat little columns. But what you men conveniently forget is all those little numbers mean something. Like the number 6 – the number of families that got foreclosed on, on this street. Or how about 7 – the number of people who are unemployed on this block, or 293579 the address of Mr and Mrs Lopez 2 diabetics who can’t afford their prescriptions so they only refill every other month. But as long as those numbers fit in the little columns and balance to zero you are doing your job.

And you wake up early every Sunday docker clad, to sift through yards like this full of things hoping to find some gem antique on a table full of tchotchkes to put in your home and brag how you got it for a steal. But I don’t think my authentic NBA collectible glasses from Chevron will appraise for that much better keep looking.

I know what you see, I have seen you drive by before. You see a poor girl sitting in her yard full of things and you stop your hybrid car and do your bit of philanthropy by taking my things for the change in your cup holder. But see Mister these things these are the last, next Sunday you wont see me out here. My number came up. 3 the number of days I have to move out of the only home I have ever known. 3 three days to say good-bye to a lifetime. 3 days to get rid of the things my mamma left. 3 days to sell all of the things my daddy gave me. Except for this box, memories and pictures that’s all I got left and this memory isn’t for sale.

Iced Coffee and Susan Tedeschi

So after many weeks of a stagnant summer and a few marathons of TV shows – thank you Netflix I have decided to be proactive and get out of the funk that has become my post collegiate life. To say that I have been unproductive is a severe understatement, I think my productivity falls somewhere between sloth like behavior and outright narcolepsy. At first I blamed it on the exhaustion of running at full speed towards a brick wall that was my last semester at school. But after two months of extreme potato couching and a self-esteem hit from school dictating that I spend money that I don’t have to fulfill a requirement that I thought I finished – Thank you state school bureaucracy – I have decided to maintain my writing prowess however sad it is by utilizing this blog once again. So I find my self at a Starbucks that looks like the other three  of four Starbucks in this small town at my lap top again. I have updated my Facebook status and checked my phone at least a dozen times before actually sitting down to write this, having a clear head is key. I have an old favorite playing by Susan Tedeschiand as she wails on her bluesy electric guitar singing about an earth shattering heartbreak I sit staring at the blinking cursor that says “be brilliant” with every blink of its expectant impatience.  I am fulfilling the old

cliché that writers have of sitting at coffee shop being all brooding and introspective in a room full of strangers that don’t know their brilliance waiting for the words to come and yet they don’t. So I hit repeat on the song and sip my iced coffee, though I may not have written my next best play, I take solace in knowing that today I chose to leave the red seductive glow of Netflix and got out of my funk…for now.

“be brilliant…be brilliant….be brilliant”

So sue me…

There I sat so many days ago, completely inspired “I will write an entry every day” she said with a haughty air.

I did it…OK I admit I fell into the same old habits, I used the same old excuses and here I am ending up in a verified writers block. The ultimate level of procrastination. I am the Grand Poohbah of blank page ville the crowned flashing cursor queen.

So now what… do I sit in the corner of my coffee shop spewing brilliance and scat poetry….or sit feverishly with pencils and pens stemming from my pony tail typing away jittering under the influence of caffeine….in all honestly probably neither (i like sleep). So like the twelve step program I am taking the first step to recovery…admitting I have a problem.

I am blocked …so sue me.

The Other Girl

I hear the word but it isn’t me

It must be someone else ’cause it isn’t me

Brown skin obsidian eyes and hair sure, but that’s not my label

That isn’t me.

I’m programmed to see what I want to see

I am her of which you speak but I am also me

You see the her,

The Girl sitting at the bus stop on a sticky afternoon

The Girl hanging her damp laundry out in the yard

The Girl brewing sweet cinnamon tea

Is her not me

I am plugged in

I am aware

I am one of Fred Rodgers’ colorblind soldiers

Able to see the possibility of tomorrow

Able to use the technology of to day

Able to dream, to wonder

The rainbow connection

The college graduate

The creative

The political

The astute and prolific

But all you see is her not Me

Yes we are bound, forever intertwined

But I don’t speak how you want her to speak

I don’t know the origins of the Aztecs, Toltec and Maya

The history of Chavez of Villa

The glory of La Raza, Protected by La Vigren

Because I’m not her, I’m me

The older I get the more our lines blur

I use her to get a scholarship

Or a leg up in an interview

And put her away as the artist only to find her pop up again

White washed

Cocoanut

Beaner

White-xican

I am all and none of these

I am the Daughter of a District Manager, printer, gardner

I am the Daughter of an insurance claim adjuster, housewife, hairdresser

I am the contradiction, the second generation

The assimilation product of a suburban master planned community

I am the her that you see

I am the me that I am

I am the oxymoron, contradiction in terms

Thoughts from Gate 404

I don’t know what to do

Not that anyone does in this kind of situation.  What am I going to say?

I am literally numb right now, it doesn’t seem real. I am sitting at the airport nose to nose through the glass with a giant of the skies and it still feels like I am watching all of this happen from the outside.

A heart attack on his birthday.

It’s unreal; this happens to other people not me. Not my family, not me. I cannot think beyond this moment, beyond typing keeping my hands busy because if I stop if I let myself pause and think I don’t know what will happen. My natural instinct is to keep calm and be strong but for whom.

Keep typing keep the sound of my fingers pressing the keys going and going helping to block the silence, keep typing, one letter after another. I need to keep moving. What will happen when I get there? I got the call and I moved, making reservations and fielding calls. I got home and I packed and fielded more calls. I got here and I am typing.

I am most afraid of looking my mother in the eyes. I don’t want to see anything different there I want to see the same sarcastic woman who is relentless in her nagging strength. I am afraid of the hole. That hole that people get; that far away look when you know they have gone somewhere else. Not in that room, not in that space or moment. I see it from both grand fathers I don’t want to see it in her.

What will I tell my sister who cries at the drop of a hat I can’t just buff her off and say it’s ok because I know nothing? I know nothing, and am not allowing myself to feel, because if I do I could fall apart. What happens when I have to support my mother, when I have to help her make those decisions that no one ever needs to make.

I know it won’t happen today, he is strong and he will get through this I need him to. However, one day I will have to make those decisions one day I will have to be the one and am not sure I will be ready, or really be good enough, be strong enough to make those decisions.

What the fuck do I do? Except keep typing, all I can do is keep typing, keep moving my fingers, keep thinking and keep going.

I brought my doll. My old ratty doll, for what I have no clue but I needed it even just to remind me of the smell of home. Something to keep me strong grounded anything because right now once I stop typing I don’t know what will happen.