"This Is the Way" -- Red Hot Chili Peppers

Reviewing the scribbled script of my beloved white leather journal (thanks, www.lovetojournal.com, and Jamie, of course) I found this little tibit:

In reference to this quote, "I would rather walk with God in the dark than go alone in the light":

"What kind of god would hide in the dark? Hmmm..."
[found in Google search: demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=263x42176#42182]

Well, random person who asked this question, which do you prefer? Light or dark. Is there a semi-light space (otherwise called grey) in which one can travel with others? Oh wait, that's called life. Nevermind.

So does God have a flashlight or what?

Just sayin...

"Till the World Ends" -- Britney Spears

Stardate: May 21, 2011

Captain’s Log

Today the world ends. Or at least according to some uber-religious guy who reads his Bible and buys billboard space to advertise the end of the world. I’m not convinced.

Today we have a journey ahead of us, and I’ve been up since 5 this morning. Well, I did have a little bit of a nap between 7 and 8. I just couldn’t sleep. You know, I went to the grocery yesterday and the worst part about the world ending today is that I bought all these groceries and now I won’t have a chance to eat them. We had planned on hitting Denny’s today, but I don’t know that I want my last meal to be cheese fries and weak coffee.

On the Early show they have been discussing this issue all morning. One of the stories was about capitalizing on the world ending…can you do that? Of course you can. Albrecht Durer did. He created the famous Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But this guy isn’t exactly Durer. And Durer probably didn’t really believe the world would end. But, then again, you never know. This guy can spend millions on his end-of-the-world propaganda via his radio stations and billboards, but what’s going to happen when he’s wrong. After all, Albrecht Durer, and his peers, didn’t see the world end during their lifetimes. Kind of makes you wonder, huh?

So, if you’re a believer, I wouldn’t go out and spend all your money, flip off the cop who pulls you over for a minor traffic violation, or tempt fate frogger-style by darting out into traffic. The world might not end at 6 o’clock tonight, so don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

If you’re a skeptic and a cynical shit such as I, who laughs at the apocalypse, then join me. Join me as I laugh. (My husband tells me not to laugh “because you never know.” Well, if the world ends, I will at least have enjoyed a day out with my family) My skepticism knows no end. So is that 6 PM my time? Or is that Mountain time? And what about the people on the other side of the world? It won’t be six o’clock everywhere, so is it like a cascading sort of thing, like watching the wave in a stadium? “Well, George, it’s 6 central, guess we’ll have one more hour to contemplate the afterlife.”

Yes, I mock you, end-of-the-world believers. Pray for me, for I’m too busy listening to loud music and dancing ‘til the world ends. (Oh, and a special thanks to Britney Spears for creating my Apocalyptic Soundtrack!)

"I Would Die for You" -- Garbage

Once Mom, Amy and I had the best laugh of our lives. Or so I think...it's all just perception, I suppose. Anyway,  here I was, this naive young girl, reading aloud to them, and they were just rolling with laughter. I had no idea what the book was even talking about. There were tears streaming down their faces, and they just laughed so hard at every sentence that I read! Amazing that I had this power to induce such laughter! Alas, it is all in the book. The author kept saying, in the text, that he was impotent. But I did not fully understand this concept. As it was explained to me, by Mom and Amy, that it meant that you were no longer able to do something that you could once do. So they laughed at me reading this book with my best poker face. It was hard not to laugh, but the more I read, the more they laughed. It was fun. Mom was fun.  


I remember taking a walk with Mom, drinking peppermint schnapps and rum and cokes, weaving our way down the road. We strolled down the moonlit road with my favorite people in the world at my side, the chirping crickets pausing their songs as we went along, forming a hollow tunnel through the night noise which we filled with the laughter and jostling conversations of our own. 


Is it true? Was everything so perfect? I once had a Mother. It was cool because she taught me everything that I know. But, then again, I haven't finished learning.

We once threw a prom party at our house, and in the morning while Mom cooked everyone pancakes, the phone rang. It was ____'s Mom. She wanted to know if her son was there. He was a tall brown-headed boy with glasses. Mom went to the nearest boy matching that description and shook him roughly, telling him, "Wake up, your Mom is on the phone." 


In Mom's recollection, which was so amusing to hear, the boy just looked puzzled. He looked at her, looked at the phone, laid it down and went back to sleep. Or tried to anyway. Mom kept insisting that he talk to his Mother. 


Days later my sister and I were sitting at our friend's house and he tells us this story. Of course, being his friends, we knew that his Mother was dead. We were shocked, but thought that it was hilarious. He proceeded to tell us, in vivid comical detail, that our Mother had, unknowingly, insisted that he talk to his dead Mother on the phone, and that he kept refusing most politely until, finally she understood that this was not the son sought by the caller. At hearing this tale, we all shook with laughter until we cried, even he, who was trying to get a kick out of his dead Mother. 


But that was Mom, forever putting her foot in her mouth (that trait which she so graciously bestowed on me), and trying to have a laugh about it instead of fretting. Losing your Mother, or any parent, for that matter, changes you indelibly. You still see the way you saw before she died, you hear the way you did then, but there's this hole--somewhere you can never really identify-most of the time it's possible to ignore it, but it is lurking there, this empty feeling.

The emptiness, it is the space in my dreams, that swallows the joys of my life like a black hole. The black hole takes me through a wormhole, Darkoesque where I end in a place where my Mother exists. I know it cannot be, but I still dream. And when I dream, even if I cannot remember every little detail, I live in this place where life is different. Sometimes I can see her, sometimes I think that I can hear her speaking during the scenes of the dream. But it is forever fleeting, this contact. She's there somewhere beyond the body and I just cannot reach her.

In my dreams, different doesn't always mean good...

"Otherside" -- Red Hot Chili Peppers

Because Mother's Day is coming up this weekend, and my Mom is dead, I'm recycling a story that I wrote for my Creative Nonfiction class. Enjoy:

My Mother hardly ever wore lipstick. On my first day of Day Care she smeared on my favorite shade of Estee Lauder crimson—a gift from Dad, no doubt—and kissed a sticky note. “When you feel sad, just take this out and know that I love you and miss you so much,” she said, putting the note in my pocket, and hugging me tight. I didn’t want her to go, she didn’t really want to leave me, but she had to.

Mom and Dad worked out of the office in our house, and since I was the youngest, not yet old enough to go to school, Mom was my only playmate until three-thirty in the afternoon. After a few weeks without my siblings to play with, I made up a new game. I dragged my mother away from her paper work, out into the yard, and instructed her on the rules of my new game.

“I stand over here with the ball. When I throw it, you go get it and bring it back to me,” I told her. Hence the title, “run and go fetch it.” After a few days and a few rounds of our new game, she enrolled me at Day Care over in town. Although I know she loved me very much, I had become too much to handle while she tried to get her paper work done every day.

Armed with my lipstick-kissed note, I faced a new crowd. At daycare there were lots of other kids to play with, and although Mom wasn’t there I had fun—until nap time. In the darkened classroom, laying on the red and blue vinyl mat, the other children squirming and settling into quiet slumbers around me, I took my tissue out and pressed my lips to the dark outline of my Mother’s kiss.

Soon we had a routine. After Dad woke the other kids and got them off to school, he’d wake Mom up. Everyday Mom would come in and sing a song to wake me. Smiling she would sing in her sweet voice:

“Little bird with a yellow bill

  Hopped up on my window sill

  Cocked his tiny head and said

  You

  Are

  a Sleepyhead.

  Flapped his wings and away he flew

  Singing ‘You’ll be late for Day Care School!’”

One morning as we were combing our hair and brushing our teeth, we heard a chirp echo in the small tiled bathroom. Pulling back the shower curtain we found a tiny baby tree frog hopping around the bathtub. We decided to take him to day care for show and tell. Mom scooped him into a mason jar and screwed on the lid.

At day care school, after everyone had had a chance to press their little faces up against the glass to see the small green frog as my mother held the jar, we put on our coats and trotted single-file down the sidewalk. We freed the tiny frog in the neighbor’s tree-filled yard and turned to go back inside.

While we had been liberating the frog my mother had gotten into the car and was driving away. I saw the red taillights of the white Chevrolet as it turned the corner and disappeared. I felt in the pocket of my coat of my jacket for my note and wondered when she’d be back.