Minute Fiction II

When Trostya and I went out to play, the church had disappeared. We didn’t know what to do. The church had been there all our lives, wrapped with vines and moss. Our parents played here as children as well, and only our grandparents could remember the days before the thin stone slates of the ceiling had fallen past repair. Now, the church was gone. Only a few of the largest stones at the bottom, scratched with scores of village names, remained.

For days we kept it secret. Had our invocations of magi and demons brought this disaster upon us? Were we somehow to blame? Trostya told me it was more my fault than his. Each day when our chores were done we searched for the stones as far as our legs would take us. The secret came out when our babushka twisted his ear, demanding to know why I was acting so guilty. She played us against each other that way.

All the adults went out to the remains of our playground. They decided the gypsies must have taken the church. Stones covered in moss turned out to be worth more than I ever imagined.

Isn’t it always the gypsies?

Years later, I am shivering in a phone booth on the other side of the world. Trostya is on the other end of the line, shouting above the tired techno of the club he bounces at in Saratov. He needs money, and I am in America, where there is money, so why don’t I send him some? I have to tell him again that it costs five times more to live here, and that I only work part time, and that I have accumulated too many loans for too many credit hours at school already. Rent is due next week. This time I cannot help him. He tells me how much money he’d be making right now if he were in America.

When he hangs up on me I press my forehead to the glass of the phone booth. I feel shame for taking the girl with pink hair in my introductory neuroscience class to coffee after class. Can I in good conscious court her when I can never take her to dinner and a movie? I should have let well enough alone. I will disappoint her.

My breath fills the glass before me with condensation. I wish for the gypsies. I want them to take away the debt, dollar by dollar, in a way the banks will never notice. I want them to take the debt that Trostya has undoubtedly accrued at the club in Saratov.

Maybe, if they are kind, they will take him too.

Struggles

This semester my body has not been very good to me. I have always had an on-again-off-again friendship with my intestine, but the past few months have swung, statistically, toward the off-again side. I am often frustrated because at times when I am in a chipper mood or want to be doing work, queasy sensations bring me down. The past 24 hours also brought me a pounding headache. I tried sleeping it off, a pair of extra-strength tylenol, water, and a long shower, with no improvement. One of the pills left over from my wisdom tooth removal seemed like the next course of action. I was reading about feminist art criticism and suddenly felt the pill kick on– so I’m now a little bit high, but still in pain.

Feminism and my Digital Film Major and skepticism. All are opening my mind and have been helping me think in new ways and I’m glad to have them. But I’m struggling, especially with the feminism, to still enjoy a lot of things in the entertainment world. I need to reconcile the feminist in me that rages at the opening titles of a Bond film with the credits being projected on womens’ undulating body parts with the video-artist who thinks it’s cool as shit and the insecure little girl who wishes she looked that hot. There’s a lot of anger and guilt that builds between those three aspects of me. The skeptical aspect of me is only in conflict with the outside world– teachers, peers. I want to be able to access all parts as I need them, but I do not want to see everything in political terms. The personal is not political. I have sympathy for the women of the 70’s, wondering if they were having “the right kind” of orgasm.

I feel like I am falling behind. My body can’t keep up, my mind is tangled.

I’m not a girl who misses much
Do do do do do do do do, oh yeah.
Why do I sometimes still look at you with the gaze of a stranger, a scientest? Because I think you’re hiding things from me. Because I don’t know what you are feeling, and I am afraid that like all the others you will find a deep well of contempt for me very soon.

a change

On November 5^th we all awoke to a changed world.

Milk puddled in the indentations we left in our beds. When we opened the morning newspaper, milk gushed from between the folds, trickling between our legs.

Feet squirming into steel-toed boots found cream in the heel. Papers seeped out of patent leather brief cases filled with milk. Lunch boxes sloshed in the hands of our children. The clear platforms of the working girls’ shoes turned opaque.

In San Francisco, the thrift stores of Haight and Ashbury swirled with dyes bleeding into the milk. At Kent the sky swept the world clean with a white benediction of high-fat cream. We rolled in it. In New Orleans the milk spread quietly like butter above the buildings, never touching a soul, and we were relieved. The milk spurted from the towers and bastions of a bridge we never built in Alaska. The rigs in the gulf shut off their pumps when all they got from the sea floor was milk. The subways in New York had to be abandoned after the last of the tunnel-dwellers streamed past our sand-bag barricades.

We huddled around the government buildings in DC, looking for answers. They were filled completely, but their doors did not pour forth the gift of milk. Legislation was impossible and the laws of physics distressingly surmounted.

We wept with fear or joy, and our tears were white.

UMB, MPG

Pet peeve. When I was between four and five feet tall I’d go to the grocery store with my father every Sunday. I enjoyed walking across the parking lot, observing the birds nesting in the letters on the side of the store. “UMB Bank”. Just like I thought the airline was literally pronounced “twah,” I believed the bank to be “uhmmb”. Imagine my concern when I learned the adult world was calling something the “United Missouri Bank Bank”.

Today a radio personality enthused about cars with “25, 30, 35 MPGS! MPGS you wouldn’t believe!” You know, the minivan I drove in highschool ran at 36 MPGS. Miles Per GallonS. Two gallons, to be precise.

Anyhow. Drummer continues to be the most wonderful creature. I can’t imagine being without him. And I picked out classes for next semester.

Plans.

I think it’s important to have a plan. I know that my parents are planning for their old age– not only in terms of money, but in case their judgement becomes shaky. This is on my mind because of my mother’s parents.

A few weeks ago, my grandmother napped all day. My grandfather was not concerned. She was in a diabetic coma, and it was pure luck that she woke up the next day. Their three daughters only found out two days later. Since then, she had continued to slip under every few days, despite a hospital’s best efforts. They didn’t plan for this, or make any efforts to organize or gauge their financial status. They didn’t tour assisted care facilities in their 70’s, so in their 80’s it falls to my mother and her sisters. I went to see my grandfather last week, while his wife was admitted to the hospital. I asked if he’d been thinking of what the future held. He said they would stay put until they couldn’t keep the farm up any more. But they already weren’t, and didn’t seem to realize it. A woman from their church did their cleaning. My aunt did their mowing. They spent six hours each day preparing and cleaning up after two meals. The house and surrounding trailers and storage sheds were rotting, the house teeming with molds inside the insulation. The pipes were paper-thin with age.

The three daughters convinced their parents to move. By now most of the important items have been transferred to an assisted care facility. They will have activities, their car, and a place to garden. They will be close to a hospital and meal prep will consist of getting to the cafeteria at an appointed time.

My mother has been here, five hours from home, for over a week. When she called last night she seemed on the edge of a breakdown. I want to take care of her, but midterms are coming and I feel guilty for being unable to drop everything. She has worked as an accountant and a tax preparer, and has become the sister in charge of the finances. Shoe-boxes of papers, no organization, some dated in the 1950’s. Papers as old as my mother.

Planning is important.

Really?

I still have hope for the world because of Craigslist’s Missed Connection and Free sections. Craigslist came into my life a bit less than a year ago, and has brought me:

- dates, good and bad, which became fodder for a documentary

- subjects to interview for the documentary

- Drummer

- an apartment and roommate which do not suck

- various furniture

- fodder for other art endeavors

- a 250GB USB2.0 external hard drive

- knowledge that a fainting goat can be obtained for $40, and that some males believe declaring their need for a BJ entitles them to one.

For anyone who does not think Freud is total crap, I would recommend the book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, by Carol Clover. My own enjoyment is hampered by the provisional statement in the first sentence, but it is still fascinating.

I have devised a simple system for shooting first-person POV anaglyphic 3D video. If you have access to power tools, the whole rig is very affordable.

I turn 21 on October 8th, and have no classes until two the next day. Excellent.

drop of/f the world

School started last Monday. I am getting my mind kicked back into shape, though it is not a pleasant process. I feel high-strung, nervous, and grouchish. I am putting two pieces in a 6-person show for the 13th. This is short notice. One piece is not complete. I do not know when I will find time.

Drummer has a new job. It was getting very dire there for a bit before he got severance pay from the last. This new one starts tomorrow. I think he is excited.

Blah. Political hypocrasy is rampant, that’s all I’ll say on that front.

workteeth

The work I’m currently doing is often frustrating. I shoot and edit for a wee start-up of dubious organization. I see myself bailing sometime during the coming semester and finding an internship for the spring– although for the moment it’s enough to cover rent, touch Final Cut Pro, and work with friends.

The company is going to fail because our project manager is leaving for a prestigious grad school. Everything will dissolve into chaos and the boss– who knows little of our day-to-day workings– will micro-manage us ineptly. Today the project manager was caring for his sick daughter and working from home. He gave me instructions for the day’s tasks by phone. An hour later the boss said we had enough of the type of clip I was creating. This is blatantly untrue, as 30-50 of those unique clips are needed for every project, and any excess clips I created could be applied to the next. He had never even seen any kind of catalog of the number of clips already created, so his statement was mind-bogglingly ignorant.

Also there was a used q-tip in the restroom that stuck to the bottom of my foot. Retch-worthy!

There are still upsides to the job. I work with friends, I’m within biking distance of my apartment, and there is a kitchen (not clean) downstairs. Also, on Friday I had my wisdom teeth (all 3) removed, and all concerned have been very kind. I didn’t go in at all yesterday and only half a day today. The pills to kill the pain make me nauseous, and it’s hard to endure without them.

Drummer is a prize boy. He took a half-day yesterday to take care of me. Both times I’ve woken because the pain-killers wore off he comforted me until the new pills let me sleep. In a few hours I’ll be hugging him again– and enjoying marinated artichoke hearts he’s bringing!

home-maker

A certain emo-rock kid has taken up sewing baby clothes in prep for his upcoming baby. Am I the only one who actually finds this kind of kitsch gender-role bending adorable?