Hush- a bye

I never understood those mothers that treat their babies like they’re animals. They coo in ridiculously high voices and twirl they fingers in front of the baby’s face. Isn’t it simple courtesy to your baby to treat him human?

I don’t talk to him like I heard my mother talk to my sister those years ago, when I was an angry teenager with jagged hair and Mom kept wanting a new baby to have another chance. I sit him on my lap and I play with his cloudy curls and listen to him laugh and I talk to him ceaselessly, because I want him to grow up understanding his Mommy and why she cries at night and why she spits blood even when she tries to hide it, and why she holds him all the time.

“You know what that old woman who lives next door told me when she saw my belly? Oh yes, my belly. That was you, baby. You were in my belly. That’s what happens with babies and mommies. You were in my belly for a while because this is a scary, scary world, and you just had to get used to it because mommies can prepare you for everything. And then you come out and you know what to do because mommy already told you about how scary the world is. No, I was lying. Mommies can’t prepare you for everything. Some mommies just don’t want to, but Baby, I promise to teach you everything I know, even though it is very little. I promise not to lie anymore, alright? Because lying is a trademark of the world, and the more we lie, the more we resemble each other, and being like everyone else isn’t very good, is it? Oh, I never told you what Miss White Hair told me when she first saw you in my belly. She has these very blue eyes, baby. Maybe you can see her soon, and then you can tell me how blue they are. They’re so blue they’re almost invisible, and I bet you she saw through my belly and saw you sleeping inside and she knew what a good baby you will be. She told me, ‘Honey don’t worry. Babies are beautiful because they aren’t really people yet. For a while, all you will smell when you kiss your baby is milk and innocent sleep, and when he looks at you with his grey eyes he will only show you trust, and when he holds your hand it’ll be to make you happy, not to break your fingers with his anger. Love him, Honey, because he is too young to understand.’ Funny, she seemed to say it as though you would stop loving me when you grew up.”

Some things are very unfair, don’t you see? And some things are ironic, so ironic they become sickeningly painful. I still smell his scent on my pillow every time I put my head down, and I miss him, his warmth and the way we would lie in the bathtub together, looking at the cracked tiles on the ceiling like every little hole and splinter was a star. But he left, understand? And he never said a word. He didn’t take anything either, because I have checked the house too many hundreds of times and nothing was missing but him, and that was more than enough. I still remember him though. Why? I can’t throw out the pillow where the scent of his hair still lingers, and yet he left the house without a photograph. Ironic, isn’t it?

“This? This is my hand. This is my right hand, and you are holding it maybe because it has a pretty green ring on the one, two, third finger. Well, it isn’t really green. It’s chartreuse, maybe. Or viridian, or verdigris. So many names, right? Did you know that Eskimos have thirty two ways to say snow in their language? Or how Jews have even more funny ways to say jerk? I think I know some of them, because turns out Miss White Hair knows Yiddish. See how old she is? And the older you are, the wiser you are. Schmuck. Now there’s a funny one. Schmendrik. Putz. Schlepper. Hahaha, you’re laughing too? I knew you would find it funny. So when you grow up, instead of being mean and cursing at someone you don’t like, just call them a schmuck, and no one will argue. Anyway. Why can’t we have so many words for something? Imagine. We ran out of the creativity to create words so we have to reuse them to describe such different things and only cover it up with the excuse of ‘spelling’. And the Eskimos have the imagination to create thirty two names for snow! I feel ashamed. Do you feel ashamed? Maybe you can create new words. I used to do that when I was younger. I made up my own language but nobody understood me. Will you share your language with me? Please do. Mommy wants to know it.”

Sometimes, when I feel very ill, I am afraid for him. What will happen to him if I am gone? Really, I’m not afraid of dying, but what will happen to him if I disappear? I don’t want him to be taken care of by a mean Mommy who does not hold him all the time and stays by his crib at night to watch his dreams and chase away the nightmares with her breath. What if his new Mommy doesn’t like patting giggling bellies or smoothing little feet? And what if he forgets me? The scariest part about death is that people forget. They might promise to forever remember you, and of course, they do some of the time when something reminds them of you. But there are those little moments when something funny happens, or something beautiful, like a sunset, or a baby first learns how to walk, and people just have to forget. Then what happens to your soul?

“I promised not to lie, right? Well, baby, I didn’t want you at first. Please, please don’t hate me and understand me first. I was afraid. I was scared that I would not be a good mother, and of course, there were the selfish reasons. What will happen to my freedom? Haha, yes I am laughing now because I can’t believe I actually thought of something as stupid as that. Oh, stupid? That’s a not very nice word, honey, but you must as well know. It’s almost the same as schmuck. Yes, I was a schmuck once. I’m sorry. You know what made me think? One day, I was looking in the bathroom mirror and I was looking at my eyes, and I watched my pupils dance as I told myself truths and lies. That’s what pupils do, honey. They grow big and small if you lie to yourself. So, I told myself. ‘I don’t want a baby’. And they grew huuuuge! Yes, baby, laugh, they grew so big that my eyes turned black, and then they shrank and disappeared. That’s how I knew that I really wanted you.”

So much coughing. I try not to cough around him, but sometimes my throat just rips and pieces of my lungs fall out. He is such a good baby, so quiet, but I can tell he is afraid. I don’t want him to be afraid of me, but the meanness is ripping out my throat. I hold him and I let him watch me cry and he just holds my hair with his little hand, and I think about how much I love him.

“You like my hair, baby? I always put conditioner in it, to make it soft, and pretty. Like yours! Yes, just like yours. Oh, these on my cheek? These are called tears, baby. Tears come out when you cry. You cry when you’re sad. Or in your case, when you’re hungry, or sleepy, or nervous, or your pants are wet. Don’t worry. You’ll learn to talk soon. Oh, here comes another tear. Here, catch it! Don’t let it run away, or your wishes won’t come true. Why am I crying? I’m afraid, honey. But don’t worry about it. Things will get better. I promise. Oh, baby. I wish someone would have told me when I was like you that things will get better. But close your eyes, yes, sleep. I promise, things will get better.”

They took me into a screaming white truck with a metal bed and plastic sheets. I screamed for my baby, but they took him away, and promised that they would give him back. But promises are never kept. I coughed and I screamed until I coughed more than I screamed, and I knew that Miss White Hair had called them to take me away, because our walls were so thin and she heard me cough every time I sang to him or drank my tea or showered. I’m not mad at her. But I want it to end.

Hey, baby. Yes, I’m here. Don’t be afraid. Oh, no, don’t cry. Don’t be like me and spend your life crying. That never works, really. Smile, baby. Don’t be a schmuck like me. Yes, yes laugh! Always say that word and laugh, because that is what people really are and that is what your Mommy was. So, don’t cry alright? I promise it will get better, everything will be alright. My beautiful baby, you will touch my face again with your pretty little hands, and you will never feel my tears again, I promise. I just have to get better, and things will be okay. But for now, just keep smiling. Alright? Smile, smile, smile. I will always be here, and sometime soon we will talk again and I will tell you

Lay the bent to the bonnie broom

They lived with their mother by the North Sea Shore; Keir, named so for the raven hair that trailed to her waist, and Atle, her golden haired sister. They lived a peaceful life of only women by the bank of the lapping waves and singing fish; braiding each other’s hair before sleep and sharing a single bed, the jewelry of coral and shell on their thin wrists, and the veils of sea flowers sewn on their delicate dresses.

It was a stormy night the day the young man came to their home. The sky turned black with a quiet anger and bled streaks of white lightning that split the clouds and screaming waves as they crashed into sharpened rocks and coral and thrashed against unlucky rafts and floating nets. His name was Abner; a silently tall man with hair the color of shadows and ocean eyes. The girls were charmed by him and he by them, but there was something about the glance he gifted upon Atle, and Keir saw it and burned with a jealousy she never before had for her sister. He wooed the both of them as his stay extended; courted Kair with golden jewels and intricate delicacies from the land he ventured far from, until she sparkled like the diamonds on the bracelets themselves. But with Atle, he was subtler. He twisted sea flowers into ribbons that he braided into her sandy hair and admired her soft hands and blue eyes. He did give her one gift; a simple golden bracelet with words carved thinly on the sides in a secret language, which he slipped like a proposal onto her little wrist. That was the day the sky burned red with the bleeding sun and Keir watched them both with a silent rage, as the waves washed quietly on the shore and sighed at her anger.
~~~

“Sister, will you come with me?” Keir gently took her sister’s hand and led her through the door. “Let us stand together on the dock and watch the sailors as they set out to sea.” She smiled at Atle and the other girl nodded and gathered her skirts, and together they pranced along the sand filmed rocks to the mossy dock and stood side by side as the warm wind shifted their hair like gentle hands and cupped their chins with unseen fingers.

It was a moment of silence, that time of day in which everything stilled so that even a second lasted like an hour, and one is filled with a feeling of peace. A wave of thought clouded Keir’s darkly beautiful face, and in the instant that time slowed, she felt her arms break like dried clay from her thin sides and stretch like elastic toward her sister, frozen in that moment of stilled time, and give her a light push.

The silence shattered as the bright haired girl uttered a cry of surprise and fell into the dancing waves below the wooden boards of the dock, but not before she turned round and took her dark sister’s hand with her own, as she fell. Keir shook her off, and as her sister crashed into the waves she felt the golden bracelet slip into her cruel hands. Time came rushing back to make up for the moments it lost as it slept, and Keir watched her sister gasp and flail beneath the strong arms of the waves, her flowery dress weighing her down as it ate the water greedily and trapped her legs as they ran with no footing.
“Sister!” Atle cried. “Keir, let me live!” She coughed at the water and slapped the waves with her weak hands. “Reach to me your hand! I swear, all I have I will give!”

At this Keir smiled. “It is your Abner I will have and more. But thou shalt never come ashore.” She tried to turn away but could not. Atle sank below the waves as they engulfed her and then arose again, like a bird searching for its food below the water. Keir waited until her sister lost the fight and floated like a swan atop the calming waves, her dark blonde hair fanned out in the water and her skirts opened like a multicolored lily. Only then she left, but with something tugging at her heart.

~~~
Keir came home without her sister and sobbed out her treacherous tale to her mother and the anxious Abner; of Atle slipping on the foamy moss of the wooden boards and falling into the murky depths below, and he ran to search for her, not leaving the shore for days, searching under the thick rays of the golden sun and mourning under the silent shadows of the gray moon. On the fifth day, the sea took pity on the child it helped kill and gently pushed her bones to the shore, where they washed up on the sandy banks of the other side of the town. Two gypsy boys had been walking along the strand of running water, and saw Atle’s bones as they came ashore. They slid down the muddy bank and watched the smooth bones as they sparkled under the sand, and the golden hair that shone like the sun. They made a harp of her elegantly curved ribcage, and wove several locks of her yellow hair round the thin bones, creating an instrument that could melt a heart of any stone, and turn a bird to ice with jealousy. On that day, the grieving Abner proposed to Keir with the golden bracelet Atle had cherished, and they were to be married the next day. The gypsy boys were invited to play their harp at the wedding; as it had become famous overnight in its rarity and the delicate notes it sang under their dark fingers.

The minstrels came to the hall in which the ceremony was held and when called for, stood at the front and placed the harp on a slab of stone. But before they even began to play, the golden strings shimmered like a ghost and let out a doleful sound, that brought sorrow into every heart that heard. The first string sang as the assembly watched; “Oh, sister, why have you treated me so?” And the dark haired bride leapt from her chair with a cry of terror she hid behind her hand. The second string, louder, echoed round the room, “I promised to give you all I owned, Sister, why did you not save me?” Keir backed against the wall and tore her dress with her hands as she moaned, “no, no...” Abner fell to his knees beside the harp and their mother, oh their poor mother, gasped as she heard her dead daughters voice escape from the shining strings of the little harp. The third and final string rang the loudest as the people assembled wondered aloud at the scene before them, “And now you will beg me to save you from the darkness of the dancing waves, and surely now your tears will flow.”

Keir ripped herself from the wall and ran to the dock at the edge of the shore and jumped into the waves and drowned as they pulled her down. The gypsy boys stared in wonder at their little harp, but once again before they moved to touch the instrument, it shimmered as three more strands of hair wrapped themselves round the smooth bones; three gleaming strands black as a raven’s feather.

Oldoldold

Birthday today. I don't feel any different but I hear you're supposed to feel older.
-little dance-

Same eyes

One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.

"Tell me something, my friend. You ever dance with the devil by the pale moonlight?" - The Joker, "Batman" (1989)

"Man is born crying. When he has cried enough, he dies." - Kyoami, "Ran" (1985)

"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend." - Red, "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994)

"I met Death today. We are playing chess." - Antonius Block, "The Seventh Seal" (1957)


Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again. -Antoine de saint-exupery "The Little Prince"

Sometimes, I guess there's just not enough rocks. - Forrest Gump, "Forrest Gump" (1994)

The question is not whether I've treated you rudely but whether you've ever heard me treat anyone else better. - Professor Henry Higgins, "My Fair Lady" (1964)

She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes." - Norman Bates, "Psycho" (1960)

"At my signal, unleash Hell." - Maximus, "Gladiator" (2000)

I was of the opinion that the past is past, and like all that is not now it should remain buried along the side of our memories. -Alex "Everything is Illuminated"

That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it's because you're truly a wise man.

"I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same." - Guido Anselmi, "8 1/2" (1963)

"Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father: prepare to die." - Inigo Montoya, "The Princess Bride" (1987)

"Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice." - Madeleine Elster, "Vertigo" (1958)

A story like mine should never be told. For my world is as forbidden as it is fragile. Without its mysteries it cannot survive. -Sayuri "Memoirs of a Geisha"

If I ever had to choose between my country and my friend, I hope I would be brave enough to choose my friend.

“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because people do evil, but because people sit by and let them.” -Albert Einstein

But what's real? You can't find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best. -Marilyn Manson

Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper. -Sayuri "Memoirs of a Geisha"

I met Death today. We played chess.

At the temple, there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read Loss, only feel it.

Children aren't supposed to die.

“Miss.”
She pulls at my sleeve with her baby hands. She is little, with blue December eyes and an old- lady frown. “Miss.”
“Yes?”
“Are angels real?”
I can’t answer. I wrap my arms around me and let the smell of the church envelope my face. I breathe in the dancing candles and the sorrow of the trembling figures shrouded in black. The priest’s soft fingers as they caress dusty pages, the dirty red carpet as the little girl stomps with her lively boot like a pony.
She is persistent.
“What do they look like?”
I shrug. The little boys standing by the doors in their cream silk robes emit a sudden wave of thin sound. Their shoulders shrug with mine as they breathe in simultaneously and let the song tumble out. I avoid her question, so I think.

A solis ortus cardine

Adusque terrae limitem

Christum canamus Principem,

Natum Maria Virgine.

Latin. They’re singing in Latin.
The little girl sighs and slumps down to the floor, leaning against a polished stone bench.
“Why do they make the carpets red?” Her hands curl like an eagle’s and I watch her silently. “I get blue, or green, but why red?”

Deum de Deo,

lumen de lumine,

Parturit virgo mater,

Deum verum, genitum, non factum.

“She was my sister.” She gazes at the procession and I bite my lip.

“How come angels forget?” I twist my fingers nervously and hide my eyes behind my hair. Surely I must reprimand her. Tell her she is wrong, angels never forget. After all, she is so small. Only a baby.

But she is an adult now. Pain already stains her little face like a coffee splash on a puppy. And how can I tell her she is wrong, how can I contradict her, when the coffin is so, so small?

असतो मा सद्गमय

I've been an athiest practically all my life and suddenly becoming religious is a little.. scary.
My best friend taught me about the prayers and chants. I've only memorized the Meditation On Lord Shiva; and trust me, learning a new language so unlike the languages I have grown up around is like putting a sparrow in nest of cranes. Trust me, it's dizzying.

It's beautiful though, I think.

Shaantam padmaasanastham shashadharamakutam panchavaktram trinetram,Shoolam vajram cha khadgam parashumabhayadam dakshinaange vahantam;Naagam paasham cha ghantaam damaruka sahitam chaankusham vaamabhaage,Naanaalankaara deeptam sphatika maninibham paarvateesham namaami.

I never figured out what it is about religion that has so many people at its feet, and what it is about people that makes them believe that their god or gods are (is?) the god(s). I have to say, it's a trying philosophy. I've never allowed myself to dedicate myself to anyone or anything, and here I am, bowing in front of a brass statue on my mantle.

The gods work in wondrous ways, I hear.