............................................Another Story: June 24, 2009 Another Day
June 24, 2009 was just another day in an endless string of days. Cold for June, damp and very grey, the kind of day where a person wants to stay huddled up someplace alone, quiet, and warm. Yet, it is too hard to stay huddled up, too hard to ignore the fact that as an adult there are responsibilities to contend with. With freedom comes responsibility and I love my freedom. From experience I know that sometime today the sun will poke through the clouds. This is California and this is the west coast. Until then I will need to drag myself out of bed, dress, and do what ever else I deem responsible actions.
After brushing my teeth, pulling my hair back into an assemblage that looks something like a pony tail, and dressing in a sleeveless dark blue tee shirt with dark blue shorts and a pink Hollister sweatshirt, I made my way to my laptop. It was still fairly early morning, 9:30 so no stores are open that I would like to shop at. I took time to edit a children’s story I had been meaning to finish that I wrote last summer. After finishing that I looked up at the yellow Kit Kat clock on the bedroom wall. The time was 11:45. It was strangely quiet. All I heard was the humming of my laptop. Now that I tuned into that sound it seemed to roar. I needed to get out. I grabbed my purse and slipped on my pink Havaianas, set the house alarm and closed the door and locked it.
Okay, now I needed to make a decision. Before I could take another step I noticed three fluffy yellow chicks at my feet. As I reached down to touch one they all skittered off behind a geranium. I stepped closer to look and they had vanished. As I stood there perplexed at the fact the three fluffy yellow chicks had simply vanished behind the geranium I felt my feet beginning to feel spongy. I was sinking into the concrete. This was concrete that a minute ago was solid. And it was not the sinking as would happen in wet cement. It was more of a softening of my feet and the concrete as they began to blur into each other. I immediately panicked and tried to free myself. First I tried to pull my right foot up and then my left foot up but as I pulled one up the other just sunk deeper into the concrete. I had sunk in down to my knees when I saw one of the baby chicks pecking around. The chick was not melding into the concrete. As I reached over to try to touch it, it ran swiftly across the concrete path and behind the front right tire of my 2008 blue mini cooper parked in the driveway.
“Do you need help?” A soft calm voice spoke. I turned and spotted a small person sitting in the garden next to me. They were not on the concrete path and not fusing into it feet first as I was. “It looks as though you need help.” The small person was the size of a small child, at most twenty four inches tall. They wore only a navy, wool shorts overall with silver buckles and a small pocket. A short silver chain with a miniature pocket watch hung freely from the pocket. He had shoulder length blonde hair that stuck out in short patches around his face. He held out his hand and it took only my holding on to that tiny hand to give me the momentum to pull my legs out of the concrete and onto the garden area where he was standing without pulling the small boy into the cement with me. I was relieved that it took so little effort.
So, you going out today? He asked. Still stunned about what had just occurred, I did not answer her directly. “I mean, if you are going out I could go too.” I suppose you are wondering who I am. Let me introduce myself. My name is Lyca."
“I think that I will take a few minutes to decide.” I told Lyca. I was still getting my land legs and was a little shaky.
“Have you seen my little chicks? He asked. “They are special. And you can’t just let baby chicks run around in a neighborhood like this, not that it’s a bad neighborhood. It is just that they are special. This really seems to be a very nice neighborhood. Have you lived here very long?”
As I was sitting comfortably in among the red geraniums and not taking a chance to set foot on the cement again, I felt ready to respond to Lyca. “I have lived here for many years and it has been a quiet neighborhood. I really don’t know much about chickens.”
“That’s okay, I have to leave now.” stated Lyca as she spoke, one fluffy yellow baby chick poked its head out from behind the front tire of my car. Lyca jumped up and ran after the little yellow chick.
The problem of the cement was becoming more apparent, so I carefully stepped out of the cement and tiptoed across the garden attempting to not trample the red geraniums. I stood on the short grass next to the driveway to try to see where Lyca went and to see if she captured her fluffy chicks. I could not see to the opposite side of the car and I didn’t want to step onto the cement driveway. I heard some chicks cheeping loudly and then silence. Looking around to find a way to move off of the grass and around to the opposite side of the car I realized that I was surrounded by the creepy soft cement. The driveway ended where the cement sidewalk started. I thought at first that I could have jumped from the grass over the sidewalk and onto the asphalt road but I could not get to the car. And what would I do in the road? So, I looked around and saw that I could step back into the flower garden from the grass and very carefully stretch and step from the garden area over the cement path. Then, go over the threshold and into the house. If I could only unlock and open the door. The only way that could be done is by me standing on that cement. It would be impossible to unlock and open that door from the garden. I continued to look for a way out of my cement trap. There was a rock walkway that led to the backyard gate. I could walk there where I wouldn't need to step on that concrete. I would be able to get to the backyard but there was a cement patio between the rock path and the sliding back door and I would never be able to get across that and into the house without walking on that slimy melting cement. I decided to go around to the backyard and see what could be done.
As I approached the back of the house I realized that I really was not in a rush and had no place that I was required to go to. I made my way across the grass to my hammock in the backyard, climbed in and relaxed. I fell asleep and was dreaming about tiny fluffy yellow chicks. There were millions of them all around me, on me, some sitting on my face. Some were floating by in the air, not flying as baby chicks have not yet developed their feathers for flying just fluffy down. Some were floating upside down bobbing in various directions. They didn’t seem the least bit affected by their unnatural state of current existence.
It must have been around 4:00 in the afternoon when I was awakened by something pecking at my nose. Unfortunately the startled abrupt shake of my head to release the unwanted nuisance, sent a baby chick hurdling through space. Lucky for the chick it landed on the grass and was not injured. I watched it straighten itself up and skitter off happily cheeping away. Before I was able to register what was happening that chick had completely disappeared. Then I remembered my predicament. I would like to get into my house now but what would I do about the melting cement. It occurred to me that if I move quickly enough the sponge-like merging of my feet would not have time to begin. This time I was mindful.
My plan was to have the key at the ready in my hand, move fast across the cement, quickly unlock the door and run in. I walked back to the front of the house. I was very careful not to step directly on that cement. Everything looked normal. To help protect my feet from touching the cement directly, at the last minute I took off my pink Hollister sweatshirt and placed it on the cement exactly where I was going to step.
My plan worked perfectly and I was quickly in my house safe from any other mishaps with that cement. I was starving and made myself a nice dinner of Udon noodles with vegetables and a diet soda. Around 9:00 I crawled into my bed and turned on the TV. Nothing of interest was on the T.V. that impressed me so I turned it off and immediately fell asleep. The cement problem was not on my mind at that point. I was in the house safely away from that cement.
Now my dreams again were of fluffy yellow baby chicks. They were all sitting in rows, one was cheeping. There they sat. Then after a few minutes one was blown away by a wind then the next and the next until all were floating weightless in the air as they did in my last dream. This time they all floated pell-mell in all directions, oblivious to their awkward positions in space that were not abiding by the strict rules of basic physics. at this point I began to float along with them. Some would brush up against me with their soft downy yellow feathers. None were cheeping. There was an eerie silence. The chicks began to change colors much like those LED light up pens that change color through the color spectrum from yellow to yellow orange to orange to red orange to red to red violet to violet to blue violet to blue to blue green to green to yellow green and back to yellow. I felt my body join them in their fruitless floating. My orientation in space as with the chicks seemed to me somehow normal. As I drifted on my side or upside down I had no feeling that gravity existed or that I belonged in any specific orientation in space. I felt just as comfortable upside down or sideways as what would be considered right side up.
When I woke up I looked at the red Kit Kat clock on the wall and saw that it was 7:00 in the morning. An overwhelming sense of responsibility hit me. It was June 25th and I had not completed any of my chores or run any of my errands that I had originally set out to do. I was still wearing the clothes that I had on the day before.
I made my way out of bed, changed clothes, ate a chocolate cupcake that was in the refrigerator and opened a diet soda. Checking my list of to do items refreshed my memory of what I had set out to do the day before that included, picking up dry cleaning, renew my passport, check the latest casting calls for extras in San Diego, not that I have ever been an extra but I felt it was an interesting way to stay busy and make a few dollars over the summer break. I sat down at my desk. There were no fluffy baby chickens in sight.
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2007
Black rabbit stop.
Turn around and twirl.
Jump upside down and see,
A lifetime passed.
............
Just She
Poem 2005
I look
I see
But it is not me.
I am just a tiny imp-like child with wiry limbs.
I say to me, “You’re not so old.”
Self says to me, "Look and see”
And a silly grin
A glint in my eye
So where am I?
Perhaps behind that shriveled face that stares at me from that place
Beyond the looking glass.
That face
So wrinkled and tired
As if I were washed and not ironed
So scrunched up.
In need,
Perhaps a nip or tuck.
I myself, my true identity.
That small child longing to be
Accepted as just she.
............
July 20, 2010 - Psychedelic pause- Welcome purple haze- Sunny summer daze