Monday, November 16, 2009

Awkward Beginning

"Hello Ms. Alverrez."
"You again."
"I've seen you around."
"You've 'seen me around'? Of course you have, you stop here every week with packages for other addresses."
"I wanted to see you. To talk to you."
"About what side of the street 1273 is on? Or the finer points of whether apartment twenty-four in some other building could be apartment twenty-four in this building?"
"There is so much to say, I didn't know where to begin..."
She had built up steam. "So you started with my neighbors? What gave you the right..."
With seemingly oblivious credulity he changes topic, "the Clausen's are really more personable than you made them out."
"Personable? Did I show you the note they left on my door?"
"The one where they argue their copulation noises are legitimate as they are actually reproducing? Yes."
"Under the covenant of God!" Ms. Alverrez quotes, emphasizing with by making quotation marks in the air.
"I can HEAR you." Comes a shrill whine from down the hall.
"Shit." She looks at Delivery Boy, assesses, and with a frown. "Get inside."
The apartment is both tastefully decorated and well lived in, somewhere between art with utility and a found object. Delivery Boy hasn't moved far after closing the door while his hostess has delved to deep recesses like a turtle.
"Oh, is this the food processor Ms. Yang returned?"
"The Chinese lady downstairs? Yeah, that's the one."
"Room eighteen. I like delivering to her, Chinese stamps are so beautiful. I'm really thinking I want to learn the language."
"So, is Ms. Yang going to teach you hanzi between telling you what I wore yesterday and how we would make a nice couple?" The sarcasm in Ms. Alverrez's voice when she said her neighbor's name was so biting it took some of the shine on the oil painting nearby with it. Delivery Boy's face was flush, red from the virtual slapping.
"I was just looking for a way to approach you, you're just so beautiful. I guess I got it all worked up in my head." His sweet, its-OK-you-ran-over-my-dog-I'll-get-another, smile stopped her dismissive body language.
"I'm here now, let's go. What have you worked up?"
Delivery Boy was carrying a package, no surprise there, but now he had one addressed to her. The senders name was "Bob Yelsing?"
"Bob, Rob, Robert, call me whatever you like."
"How about 'Stalker'?" She realized she was speaking a little too late.
"As you wish." Bob looked at the floor, smiling. "Please, open it."
Ms. Alverrez hated surprises, especially presents. How was one to act? And this guy, although sweet and cute, was totally in her space. Her private little sanctuary from the world and here an uninvited guest. (If such a thing wasn't a complete tautology, wouldn't uninvited intruder be more appropriate?)
"Oh, here you are." She looks up from the veritable Trojan Horse to see Bob holding a box cutter. Gasping, she stumbles backwards as the package seemingly bounces after her following its descent.
Laughing after realizing there was nothing or noone behind him, Bob puts the cutter on a table. "I didn't tape it for transit, it should be easy to undo it by hand."
She smiled at her own uneasy and dove into the present. Although still fearing to find lingerie, if either one of them was going to embarrass themselves anymore today she just wanted to get it over.
Peering from behind packing paper was Ms. Yang holding a package, a quarter of its surface covered in ornate Chinese stamps. Unsure as to what she had found she pushed away more paper and there was Ms. Clausen with package in hand scurrying away from the camera's lens as three of her children peered out from behind her large pregnant form.
"These are my neighbors." Her voice plaintive, but meek compared to earlier.
"Well, eight of them. And in the middle is space for you." It was a picture frame with a collage of candid shots of her neighbors, each after receiving a package from the same Delivery Boy. "I know it is a bit cheesy, but..."
"I would say more creepy, something a stalker would do. You know I'm going to call you that from now on, Stalker?"
Bob's throat had become tight, he wanted to verify that she meant to see him again, but nothing came out.
"Here, let's exchange numbers. Let me know if you want to do something later in the week. And please, call me Sam."
"Dinner," was all he could muster.
"Yeah, cool. Just not here, in public. Don't come by my place again or I'm moving out of your delivery zone."

© Michael Mosher 2009

Complicit

Pariah, caitiff, monster, all of these and more could only begin to describe it and you included. Yes, you who stand witness watching from without, these words are on you, as well. The toil of your hands the work of your will, it is the byproduct of your efforts we look upon with pity and fear.

The crystalline structure, the gray matter of the inner workings and house of the soul. Perfect in its complexity? Possibly, but this specimen is not perfect in execution. Like a hairline crack in the thinnest, pure alabaster porcelain, the ends of this dendrite fray and dissipate in all directions. The glass's shattering frozen in time. The neural pulse dissipated, clear deduction made ambiguous and the source of your crime so clear. Ambiguity, is this not the root of all our pain? Scintillating colors of dawn, the font of all beauty is the herald of wanderlust madness.

(c) Michael Mosher 2009

Monday, November 02, 2009

Near the End

"Is it inevitable that two, two nutters like us, would drive each other away? That we, I mean people with, well, like us, you know, extremists. I'm talking complete bat shit crazy here. Is it pointless to try?"
Mister smiled and looked away, the bare bulb in the kitchen turning Eileen into a painful eclipse. "With a long enough time line is it certain that two people with a penchant for the melodramatic will drive each other away? Think of the lives of such people as strings, through time their extremes make the peaks and troughs of waves," he made sweeping gestures. "Most of the time when these two strings intersect they have a neutral product, but things get interesting when at least one of them is at an extreme. If only one is at either a trough or peak then the extremist encourages the other, pulling it further out, simultaneously the extremist is moderated, proportionately."
Samantha nodded, maybe a smile even manifested on her silhouette. "And when both of us are bonkers?"
"On those rare occasions that both strings are at an extreme they amplify each other making many mighty ripples in their wake. But, on equally rare occasions, the strings will be at opposite extremes. In which case they cancel each other, no ripples, nothing."

© Michael Mosher 2009

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Passion Lamented - Adventures of Mister Mister

Mister Mister found himself before his front door, without recalling the journey. It was amazing he found anything anymore, seemingly all of the pleasurable details were gone, or interrupted. An hour ago he should have received a text message from Betty notifying him of tomorrow's itinerary, but not today. It wasn't that he need such a reminder, he wrote the itinerary, but it was something they had teased each other about and in its absence he realized how much it meant.
Putting the sack on the counter and motioning to heat water for tea he faltered. There would only be need for half as much water this time. Hell he didn't even get sushi this time. How could he eat those crunchy rolls with the almonds, or enjoy the site of a vegetable tempura tower without his dinner guest.
If it was all Baudelaire, Kerouac, and Ginsberg for her then why didn't she follow through? "Why was the cry of my heart not the Siren's song which to herald your decent? Secret, forbidden love, painful for those we lived with, but undeniable all the same. This is your dream, life lived, without reflection, without consideration, just lived, recklessly. But you flinched." To punctuate his point Mister slammed the kettle on the range, at which Peaches looked up from the tiled floor. After setting the heat high he turned away from the cat's disapproving gaze. Crossing the room with arms a flail Mister's thoughts turned to those nuances that might lead to the answering of his own question.
Denied, rejected, but is it her dream or you? The way she leaned against you, the unrepeatable words whispered, stares silently traveling seemingly miles across the Void.
When Betty was hired on as an unpaid one-woman public relations and think tank Mister had hoped to harness even better ideas more frequently by having an observant and patient sounding board. Now it wasn't her silence he valued, but the image of her piercing eyes which he feared to never witness again. It was both this fear, and the teakettle, that he now tried to out shout.
"Why should I have not thought you reciprocated? The mist you surround your true heart in obscures a great crevasse. Doubting your intentions, plausible deniability, you would have it no other way."
"Maybe this furtive living is a path that can only sow a broken dream. For if you were to embrace the moment, let passion be, then your desire would manifest. Such a solid structure, dark and jagged, would be undeniable, even through thick fog. If this is true then you are not alone, my dear. You would share a destiny with the great Enkidu, a wild man of pre-civilization from Sumerian legend. He ran with the beasts, never settled, never sedentary. A cold chill slowed the flow of his blood and the beat of his heart when his loins were warmed by a woman, and isn't this your story as well, my Sappho?"
"Enkidu would go on many adventures with Gilgamesh, King of Ur. Ultimately he would die at the hands of the Lion of Heaven after upsetting the gods. Your tale has not been completed, yet, but I can't help but feel you missed a great chance to upset the gods. Oh Goddess of the big blue eyes let us cause epic trouble! Empty the hospitals and call in the riot police, we are hitting the streets. Lay waste to all those who would put labels on the magic and snuff out the light. Drink merry, cry out loud and sleep in the pale dawn light. Cover yourself in the hot blood of the kill, my Enkidu, live freely and deeply."

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