sweet sheep sleep in sheets

I want the deepest pit of blankets. Down comforters in silk. I want the largest dose of sleeping pills. I want to be rocked and soothed till my eye lids are so heavy, so heavy, so heavy I drift, I am gone. 

I want to wake to a life with meaning.

That sinking stomach feeling.

Hyperbolized fiction. A modern day sci-fi. Warm, hot, burning, melting to that static sound.

If you suddenly went deaf in New York City you would hear that static sound.

Of course, I know you wouldn’t hear anything. But the static sound is a feeling. Sounds like static – no ringing – you are so unsure of the difference you strain your ears for a little more. Please let me distinguish the two. Like your hands under cold water after playing in the snow. Burning freezing? No difference. Till suddenly you realize neither – just pressure – the static sound. 

Separation. My deepest desire. 

I don’t want to see or hear these people anymore. I don’t want their chit chat chatter. And I don’t want to fake smile-pretend I am okay-giggle about your joke about someone I don’t know – about what it is all about. Nothing. 

When I say separation I mean death.

Not murder.

Not suicide.

Simply non existence. A sweet non existing peace. Like wax crayons over a fire. Melting, melting until no more. Just sweet sweet peace.

Flicker

This sort of walking on sticks and leaves. Stumbling and it’s not dark but it’s blurry. And you don’t stop running your fingers over things. And you don’t backspace – and you don’t erase. crunch crackles. It’s familiar and foreign the terrain is a splendid word. And it looks like you are trapped in the frame of a photograph and it looks like your on the verge of becoming a movie. Star in the distance.

The Therapist and the Glue

“I’m just curious – when did you first know you were crazy.”

“Well, it occured to me while looking for the glue. I simply could not find it. So at first, I thought it was just sleep deprivation. But then I got a brilliant idea. I should call the glue! To see where it would ring.

- That’s when I knew I was crazy. After all how could anyone see a ring? But then I realized things were worse than I had thought – because the problem wasn’t even as conventional as not being able to see a ring. What slipped my mind was that I might not even know the glue’s phone number. How could I have forgotten that detail?

So you see that’s when I knew.”

Kaleidoscope (How Good it Sounds)

 I wonder if everyone has forgotten how good it sounds.

Breaking glass

Egg shells crackling

Ice plop in the water

Ice crszk and fracture

Ice sizzzzle on a fryin’ pan

How good it sounds to hear words colliding like colors in a kaleidoscope.

To write with one purpose of sounds breaking over each other.

Eggplant, republic, strawberry, clique, click, click, picture perfect.

How plop, crszk, sizzzzzle good it sounds.

Interruption by interjuections itegrating interchangeable interpretations.

All the Americans laugh at the word wagamama.

All the Japanese cringe at the word trickle.

A slew of sounds that should not follow each other.

How good it sounds with no purposely, properly, pretense, or pretending.

Just pointless penetration of pronunciation.

                               Now, insert your favorite word here _____.

A War for Everyone

In the end they got to him. Chewed him up, broke his spirit, he never looked the same. I didn’t leave him because of the way he looked, if that’s what you were thinking. He left me; he couldn’t remember who I was after they got to him.

I was born before the war. 1986 these American citizens hadn’t heard a thing about Al Qaida. It was a time of Madonna, perms, side pony tales and much other of the liking. The economy was on the rise and I was being purchased through a third party known as Catholic Charities Adoption Agency. As a result I got a lot of questions as a kid.

“Do you hate your real parents for leaving you?”

“Do you tell your parents they aren’t your real family?” and so on.

I guess my life was some sort of fiction to them.

For some reason adoption gets an interesting wrap. Most children feel that in order to be a real family you need to be blood related. Most adults, although they learn appropriate lingo to discuss adoption, feel the exact same way. Each year families spend countless amounts of money on In Vitro fertilization and other assisted reproductive technology in order to insure that they will be raising their “own” children. Any price is worth the avoidance of adoption it seems. In the meanwhile, children are growing up in foster homes and orphanages world wide.

I never understood why people thought it was so strange I was bought. After all, people are bought everyday for some reason or other. By the time I was an adult Rupert Murdoch owned most of the world. He spent his time buying up companies and people. But nobody questioned him. Nobody cared.

I was born during the war. 1986 The Chadian-Libyan-conflict. It had been going on since the 1970s not that anyone knew. It passed under the radar like much of African affairs. The bombs we dropped in Somalia two summers ago were mentioned on page 10 in the newspaper. We were supposed to be at war with Iraq – and we were dropping bombs in Africa. All a matter of a page-ten issue. Who cared.

It was hard to care on a daily basis. When I did not care – I felt dead. And when I did care – I was swept into the political undercurrent – I was being killed. The summer of the Somalian bombings I became engulfed in newspapers, history books, and on-line news websites. I don’t seem to be able to do things lightly. I’m either in a draught or a flood; so I can see why most people remained apathetic. I am not even sure you can categorize their minds as in a state of apathy; it was a state of absence.

I met a boy that year who was as crazy about politics as I was. Discussions of countries and policies filled our dinner plates. He was studying Arabic and I was studying Japanese. A mess of symbols no one understood – not even ourselves some days. And the symbols got me down. The implications of Kevin J. Martin’s decisions became burdening my head and all that Scooter Libby mess. Slowly and slowly I became worn. I wanted to get out of the political water. I was drowning in it. And the boy – he could see me wearing away. As it wore away my political passion we split. I vowed off newspapers for a while after that. Not because the boy, but because I stopped living.

I was born after the war. 1986 Vietnam was long over. A slew of promises never to get mixed up like that again. Promises?! Who were we kidding. Look at the record: Over 100s of wars recorded before the year 1000, over 550 between 1000 – 1899, and over 250 from 1900 to present. That’s more than 2 wars per year every year since 1900. War was always on the rise. A steadily increasing graph; if human existence could be expanded until infinity it would probably resemble a log curve. It was never a matter of learning not to get mixed up in wars or even certain types of wars. We learned instead that wars were profitable and even the communist were capitalizing on them.

The dearth of natural resources was probably the reason we kept having wars. But not for the reason most people think. Because war was possibly the one thing we could produce as humans that we wouldn’t run out of. It seems to me humans like control. We build cities and governments to create the illusion of structure . We make language so we can catorgize things – define what is real. War – just another structure to define reality. Who cares.

College Nights of Mayhem

How to Survive Without a Meal Plan.

I, like most college students, enjoy the sweet delights my weekends bring, but unlike most of my peers my first choice is never a party or trip to the bars. I currently attend the University of Massachusetts, which has always held a rank in “Biggest Party Schools in the United States”. And honestly, when you are out in the Middle-of-Nowhere-Massachusetts what can you do? However, as my freshman year came to an end so did most of my partying. I was bored of it and desired something more exciting which was how I got started on what I call adventuring.

A typical weekend would start out with a bus ride. The PVTA (Pioneer Valley Transit Authority) is one of the greatest parts of Western Mass in my opinion; free public transportation generally running until 2 am. Usually I would hop on a bus and pull the string when I felt it was time to get off. I always carried a backpack equipped with a camera, flashlight, snacks, pocketknife, and chalk. Sometimes you could hear me jingle as I walked or ran from trouble.

This particular weekend’s adventure began as I pulled the bus’s string landing myself in Southwest (the party spot on campus). I was meeting up with an adventure buddy, Crazy Mary. Her claim to fame was leaving copies of plays she wrote in mail boxes and bathroom stalls, hoping to be discovered one day. Our first stop together, as always, was to obtain food.

I have been living at UMass without a meal plan for 2 years now. So, let me be the first to tell you that NO ONE gives college the credit it deserves when it comes to free food. I can tell you a million ways to get free food – and not all of them involve dumpster diving. There are about 3 events minimum each night that you can go to and get some ice cream, pizza, or wings. It may not be the healthiest selection (or that for a vegan) but it does get the minimalist by. The Southwest dining hall (or as we call it the DC) was first on our list. It had just been renovated and we were dying to try the fine cuisine. As I mentioned, I do not have a meal plan and either does Mary, so our plan was to look as “Southwest” as possible and stroll right into the DC. We put on some lip gloss, got a little rowdy and walked up to the meal card swiper.

“What happens if we don’t have a meal plan and just walk right in?” Mary says in the sexiest voice possible.

“Umm….,” he was a shaky freshmen at best, “I guess you would just walk in and not have a meal plan?”
And so we did – we walked in without a meal plan. We filled our bellies and left the food area smiling at our new freshman friend. As we turned the corner to leave I spotted our next journey. Quickly running down the basement stairs, my backpack created a catchy beat. The mother ship arrived! With no meal plan dumpster diving has become more than a hobby; it is a way a life. A dumpster in the basement of a dining hall was more than an ordinary dumpster, it was a gold mine. Mary and I climbed inside to see more muffins than either of us could eat. I unzipped the backpack and filled her up to the top. Now we were ready for anything.
I suggested going by the campus center because there are usually events going on in the hotel above it. Mary agreed, maybe she could hand out some plays to people. When we got to the campus center it was another jackpot. “Wedding Reception on the 11th floor” said the sign posted by the elevator.

“11th floor?” I asked.

“Of course, we mustn’t be late for our evening engagement,” Mary took that saying, “the world is a stage” quite literally. Sometimes without knowing it, I walked in on performances. I think that had been one of those times.

Plays and all, Mary was worth it. A good adventure buddy is hard to find. Most people question the wrong things in life, “You can’t do that! We’ll get in trouble! People don’t do those things.” The average person really does think that way. I always wish I could tell them, “Life doesn’t have any rules!” and have them understand what I meant. It is true – in case you are wondering – life doesn’t have any rules. There are so many ways to eat for free, so many things to explore, and if you are Crazy Mary – you know there are so many free plays to watch. Just pull up a seat at the bus stop or ride the elevator for an hour and you’ve got a show. (Actually riding the elevator for an hour is a great activity at our school. The library is 28 stories high – and only the strangest individuals spend their Friday evenings there.)

“Ding!” Our own elevator hit the 11th floor. As soon as we walked out of the doors a more than friendly individual stumbled over to us.

“Hey – don’t I remember you?”

“Do you?” I asked.

“Yeah you know Uncle Jimmy, right?”

“Um….”

“Course you do! It’s his wedding! C’mon let me introduce you to the boys! C’mon!” He grabbed my elbow and dragged me to the dance floor. “What’s wrong with you? You two don’t even got any beer!” Instantly, courtesy of our new friend, Mary and I were holding cold bottles of Bud Light. Feeling a little guilty I slipped two muffins out of my bag and left them on the ice where the beers had once chilled.

“Um Mary – want to down these and have one quick dance before ‘the boys’ get here?” Luckily she was way ahead of me – this was one play we did not get tickets to see. One, two, three seconds, that beer was gone. I may not go to those frat parties anymore – but I can still drink like I do. Mary and I jittered across the dance floor and headed toward the elevators.

“Um, do you work here?” an usher inquired looking at our attire. I had on a stained T-shirt with jeans and Mary was in shorts covered in paint. A minor detail we had ignored until now.

“Actually we’re cousins of Jimmy – we just changed out of those stuffy dresses,” Mary said while patting the backpack. I got to hand it to her, she was a natural. “If you’ll excuse us,” she said and stepped in the elevator before he could say another word.

After that Mary promised to take me to the newest construction site; she knew they were my favorite places to explore on campus. UMass, for those who do not know, is currently (maybe permanently) under construction. It has been since I got here and will be when I leave. The university is undergoing a 10 year construction project called “New Dirt.” The details of the program I’ve never known – but the important part was that there was always a construction site to go into at night and explore. We picked a site nearby and climbed the fence to get in.

“I think I see a cop car! Run!” Mary and I headed for the port-o-potties. There was a long line of them for the workers I supposed. We sat in stalls next to each other and listened to cars drive by, hoping not to hear any breaks. After a few minutes, I started feeling dizzy from the smell. I knocked on the wall and waited for Mary’s response.

“Let’s get out – this is gross,” she said.

We went around back to climb up the machinery and into a window. I loved this part because I always wanted to go rock climbing – but found it too expensive to ever actually do it. This was my alternative.
Once we got in Mary was at her old tricks. She loved to dress up in the construction hats and safety goggles the workers left behind. Pointing to different piles of saw dust she screamed, “do I pay you to sit? Get back to work!” I, on the other hand, loved the whole building: the rickety stairs that were half built, the steel beams I carefully walked across – my own tightrope, and the windows that you could sit in and watch the cars roll by on North Pleasant St. “Eating on the job again!” I could hear Mary shout. I looked behind me and saw her filling an empty Dunkin Donuts box with the rest of our treasured muffins.
Oh no, this time I knew I wasn’t imagining it. A cop car spotted my dangling legs hanging out the window and pulled into the lot. I jumped back in the building and yelled for the foreman, “Mary! We’re busted! Let’s get out!” Mary and I jumped out the back window and shimmied down the equipment. I held some words under my breath for the time being. There was another cop car now parked in the back. Someone must have called us in.

“I have an idea” I whispered to Mary. “Let’s go out by the woods.” She nodded in agreement and we crawled towards the back right wooded area (soon to be torn down I’m sure – but thankfully not yet). We could hear a car door open and close then a flashlight scoured the building. Mumbled words on a walkie-talkie motivated me to get out – fast!

We finally made it, bag clanking and all, and scurried to the closest bus stop. Mary would take a bus to the Fine Arts Center where she always parked her bike and I would ride one down toward Northeast, the residential area I resided. All in all it was a typical weekend. Despite the fact we are in the Middle-of-Nowhere-Massachusetts, the pleasures of UMass are abundant and await anyone with a sense of adventure and screen play in hand. For those less daring, who are looking for a good bar and party scene, yes we have that too.

When the Roof Caved in

It never rained, but the ceiling leaked and the roof caved in; the landlord seemed to think it was okay.

She brought me a mop as a “generous gift”. So I mopped the floor.

It still wasn’t raining, but I returned home to find my entire apartment covered in 2 inches of water. The landlord brought me some buckets.

So with the buckets and mop it took the 2 of us 2 hours to clean the mess. The next day one room was covered in mold.

I don’t like to seem ungrateful – but I had to tell the landlord that it was starting to mold and smell. For this, she opened my balcony door, waved out the air and said, “that’s better!” And she really did think so – she wasn’t trying to be mean. She was just delusional of appropriate living conditions.

I stayed in the smelly, moldy, wet apartment for two more weeks. At least my roommates, the cockroaches, kept me company.

Ladies First

“Oh wait, in America it’s ladies first, isn’t it?”

I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a standard segue. But I heard it repeated often, by different Japanese men, with no connections to each other.

Before I could reply -

- “You know in Japan, we don’t have the idea of ladies first. Perhaps we’re a bit backwards.”

Was the usual follow up. Sometimes it was the concluding remark. A statement to mark our countries as different. A statement perhaps trying to seem humble. A statement to pave the way for our future interactions. I was never sure.

In Japan, everything has two outcomes in my opinion. Jankenpon or dinner parties. Dinner parties for those on friendly terms. Jankenpon for every dispute. Jankenpon is the Japanese version of rock, paper, scissors – but it seems to hold more weight. For instance, you will see two adult males doing Janken’ to see who talks to the women across the room. If there is only one dessert left two children will Janken’ to see who gets it. I honestly think that is the Japanese were to go to war on their own terms it would be a battle – soldier to soldier of Janken’. At the end of the battle who ever had lost the least would be the winner. Each army would shake hands and maybe even ask for a rematch the following week.

But back to the dinner parties. I was at one, and on my third Orion beer when I heard someone pass an appetizer over to me and say, “Oh wait, in America it’s ladies first, isn’t it?”

Followed by the standard, “You know in Japan, we don’t have the idea of ladies first. Perhaps we’re a bit backwards.”

But while finishing my third beer and beginning my first glass of awamori for the night, I would not let that be the closing statement.

“I don’t think it is any better in the States.”

“Oh, why is that?”

“Well, it seems that after years of men saying things like, ‘let me carry that – it’s too heavy for you’, ‘ladies first’, and ‘I’ll drive – you can rest’ they start to shape our thoughts as a culture. Even if they are said genuinely by men to be nice – the words turn sour against us as time goes on. Each statement seems to say, ‘you (woman) are delicate – I (man) am not. I will help you.’ And after enough time – both men and women seem to believe that she is delicate. Men soon think of women as glass, that can easy break. So they put the glass on a shelf. Out of harms way – but still easy enough to look at. And that becomes what the men and women think is best. As girls grow up they learn not to scream – not to play in dirt not to do anything that might break themselves. There comes a point where we have all been trained to act these ways – men and women – and this is the only way either of us can understand how to relate to each other.

BUT, I don’t think being on the shelf is such a position of honor. I feel bored there. I feel trapped. It’s more like they put us high up in a glass cabinet – which has become our cage. So for myself, I try not to let people put me on the shelf. I hold the door for myself. I refuse ladies first. I carry my own books, bags, and boxes.”

“So are you now equal?”

“No. It’s complicated. Since I do these things – over time men do not view me as a woman. Just today” – I look over at the male Americans whom I spent a lot of time with in Japan. “When they were talking about girls – they said, ‘oh you don’t count’ to me. As if one who does not take the place in the cabinet can not be a women. They have eyes that only see two things: a glass in a cabinet – and man. I can’t quite say that I feel it is equal.”

There wasn’t much response after that. Two more rounds of awamori and my story was forgotten. We moved on to discussions of whether or not the Hougan language would die out and how Spam became a permanent part of the Okinawan’s diet. All the while I wondered if I was still a woman in their eyes – or I had spoken to freely.

The Ex-Red-Light District

I was 21 when I could start speaking Japanese well enough to hold a conversation. Of course, most of the conversation was about the weather – but that’s what was expected anyway. It wasn’t until I was 22 that I went to Japan.

I had no Internet connection when I was in Japan, so the streets of Urasoe became my new treatment for insomnia.

Up and down lights flickered. The ex-red-light district still was covered in Pachinko Parlors and “snack” shops. “1Yen! 1Yen! Minna-san Champion!” signs advertised cheap gambling. Covered in the sweat of the Island I walked until my heart was content and my feet were sore.

It was different than in the States. I was never honked at once by a driver and I didn’t feel like I should be carrying a knife when I went out walking. Despite the fact that it was one of the poorest districts in Okinawa at the time I never worried about crime. All there was to worry about, really, was the noise of the bosozoku. The bosozoku were motorcycle gangs – mostly known for removing their motorcycle mufflers and being reckless on the road. But to me – they became my bedtime lullaby every night. The humming of the bikes racing up and down route 58. My apartment gently shook as they zoomed passed. A mother rocking and infant to sleep.

The biggest crime Urasoe held was commited by poverty and the victims were the children who attended Nakanishi Elementary School. Children at the school I taught received a free school lunch every day. For most, it was their only meal. English class began with the formalities “Good morning! How are you” each day. And everyday the responses were the same. “Hungry”, replied the frail looking 2nd grader, Daiki. “Hungry,” answered Kia, my favorite 6th grader to talk to. “Hungry,” they often said in unison. Never happy. Never excited. Always hungry is how I remember them.

I learned most about the kids in class by their questions for me.

“Good morning! How are you?”

“Hungry!”

“Today I am sad” (Sad was a new word for the 1st graders) Looks of confusion around the room. I put on a sad face and instantly they screamed “SABISHII!” One boy stoud up.

“Ryoushin wa rikkon shita kara?” (because your parents are divorced?)

Instances like this often happened. When I would express sadness children would immediately think of divorced parents – or ask if my parents didn’t love me. These were the thoughts in their heads. I expected them to worry about tests or homework – but they never mentioned them.

Aya was 8. She would come in and tell dirty jokes to the other 3rd graders. She would ask all the male teachers if they liked breasts. She would run and play tag. Aya’s mom worked at a snack shop. Some people called them hostess bars. They were little bars with blacked out windows where men ordered drinks and waitresses would serve them shirtless and sit next to them. They weren’t considered prostitution – just business. Aya’s mom was never home to make her dinner. For Aya and her mom – it wasn’t neglect or cruelty – it was just business. And so many others had similar stories.

Still, I liked Urasoe. The people were real and the nights were dreams. Swimming through the thick air they called, “mushiatsui”. Wet heat. Watching a symphony of lights as night falls. The apartments’ lights flicker off and on – Pachinko Parlors light up with flashing symbols, and the street lights click – click- click on! Listening to the music of the bosozoku.