note: I recently entered the following piece into a creative competition. If you enjoy it, I would really love if you’d take the time for register and vote. I’m putting a lot into this one. Thank you.
Stalling Winds
In the streets of lower Manhattan, protesters gathered. Righteous women taking the names of mace-blind men, promising to tell their story, asking the present officers to loosen his bracelets, please, they are too tight. Red camera light on. Nearly three years before the same people had suddenly woken up, to clatter into the street, down their apartment steps, drinks still in hand, hands on shoulders, A National Laughter echoing into the streets. Every door opening into a sea, echoing the movement and joy of some kind of victory. It was insane, of course it was, that was the point. All of it. It was beautiful. It was a huge, huge victory. Late in 2008, things hit a groove. And then again in 2009, when the honeymoon was finally over, and there was something to be said about some time apart.
We have our own lives, it isn’t just drinks and locales and great sex every day, and everybody needs some space. Am I right? I am. I am right. About that at least. I mean sure we all proposed some things we regret. Often moved without thinking, got caught up in easy positions to flee to. But we weren’t paying attention to bigger movements, we couldn’t stare everything in the face at once. Arguments brewed in the background, and the celebration continued.
Every hour is full of catastrophes, these days, you have to find moments between catastrophes that make each one easier to hit. The ideal picture of this formation is actually a single rag suspended in zero G’s. Able to simply adhere itself to foreign missiles of any kind, or ripple in response to a small blow, defusing the velocity into harmless tussles. Whereas two rags creates density and a mutual attraction-and-grip quality (as of yet with no substantiated source). The unit of two becomes impractical and illogical, as individual velocity is going to be dependent on local damage, the likelihood of either sustaining a hurricane and not being dynamically destroyed in the initial moments of withdrawal, where all individual entwinement becomes the multiplier of destruction, applied to the force of the disastrous movement. Spinning rags in space. Ideal picture notwithstanding, images during ‘9 ‘10 and ‘11 were concocted the way a drunkard imagines his success laying further into his glass. A sailor imagining a bit of luck.
Justified in something small and petty, somebody always wants to find their way a little bit higher. Victories with sneers, shouts. Comments meant to be heard. Victories of finance, with numbers that definitely do add up in my favor, for my plan. Pleading to memory, bragging rights. Letting the story that everyone would like to tell themselves circulate, today. Beyond that, come on, we have to be civil. Or smart. Or maybe just distant. Scowls. But I wanted away from all of that thinking, I didn’t need it. We had won a long time ago, it was important to remember that. It was like yesterday. All of that drinking, and shouting. In righteous indignation. Wasn’t that great? We had won.
Figures placing punches on a pillow stadium, black in a room with no lights, with the blind recording numbers, reporting loud noises, brief formal statements preceded by long, dark silences thicker than sweat. Bleary eyes in dark bedrooms watched the web coverage. Headlines. iReporters.
It flitted by, like wings in the night of a dream - those three autumns. Some took comfort in old prejudices, certainties of right. Normalcy. Something solid, old, with history that you could hold on to. Some preferred to let the wind reign over their troubles. Tremors in the earth shook solid men hard, their hands running wooden over a broken fault line. Some people hid away their hopes in order to fight their fears, with their eyes woolen and peeking through winter mittens with solace. Some still and clear as ice. With blankness. Silence from yourself. Whiteness that’s larger than God. And like that quiet room you were never born in to, suddenly feelings return from nothingness. Everywhere lights turn on, temples are pressed on desks with coffee stains, exhausted but more alive than ever. The moon genuinely screaming through window panes, forcing Jack Nicholson smiles as the gut of every last human being is dreaming, just waiting to tumble like a picked lock. Stairways begin to be used more frequently and host more conversation than the last three years spiraling downwards ever provided. A mother is carrying her toddler from the Van and taking her into her arms, a young man says “hi” first to the child, asks if it’s bedtime. Lit from behind and creating a halo that you find on spider webs, the mother coos and they say goodnight.
Vote for the Peej.
