sesquipedalien

I heeded Immortally Uninspired and glanced through an interesting website called 55 Words. The author is pretty good at writing these short little slips of creativity…

Of course, being the experimenter I am, I thought I’d give it a twist too. Is it any good?:

The Other Side

“Look Mommy! There’s two of me!” she pulled the mother’s arm, pointing in earnest, her second doing the same.

“Yes! There are!” the mother smiled down.

“Is she three too Mommy?” her fingers subconsciously held up in count.

“Yes, just like you.” the mother confirmed, amused.

“If I die Mommy, will you pull her out?”

I could call it a selfish inquisitiveness. And maybe it is.

I wore them as a child. Plenty of times. But I never did appreciate them. Of course I had my favorites. A red one with a white dove’s beak almost touching the hem, a light blue polka dot one with lace frills, a purple one with delicately puffed sleeves and silver linings… but wearing these would require proper shoes, and proper shoes meant toes upon toes, which then ended the day with raw skin and blisters. My no’s were insistent.

When I learned to say yes again, I realized that the no’s of my childhood were suddenly being thrown back at me, as mercilessly as my little feet then stomping the tiled floors.

There they were: rows upon rows of them. I let my mother smoothly maneuver past me into the bedroom aisle, her fingers gingerly examining bed sheets and pillows. I tell her I am going. She nods absently, her eyes glaring away the price on the tag… well, she tried to.

I find myself sifting through them. Blacks, peaches, greens, blues, all of them titivated with a twist of fashion. I stop at the browns, the tips of my fingers savoring the silk-like material slipping against them. I slide it out from the millions, look back to see that my mother is not watching and, like the fox tricking the hounds, I am hiding behind a closed door, trying my best not to feel too shameful for having adorned my egoistic interest.

It is beautiful.

The answer is no. I don’t have to ask.

But the thrill! A two minute exchange is perhaps nothing in the mind of time. But for a girl in a forbidden dress…

I am out the moment my mother looks up. My hands are empty. My want is empty. My search is empty.

My curiosity?

Quenched.

To sit down and analyze it, throwing the words in and chewing it up for the definitions has driven my mind in eddies of confusion:

Love. Life.

What is there to love without living? What is living when it has no goal? What is a goal but an end? What is an end but a start? What is a start but something new? What is new that will never become old?

Why is life a circle?

Why am I supposed to love it?

I have a tendency to forget how to love living. I don’t know even if I can deem it as a “how to.” Life has almost become an obligation. As has the love of it.

Then I watch people struggling for it: The patients in the hospitals, the hungry children in beggars garb, the overworked girls in China… need I finish the list? But in earnest, do they truly love life? Do they ~want~ to live, or do they live for the sake of living, because they have no other goal but to live?

For some it’s simple: “Be happy!”

For me, it’s an inner horror: “But why?”

If everyday was like a Swiss sunset, or the waves sliding the sand beneath my feet, or a rain storm with a silver of moonlight peeking out, or a smile on the faces of my parents, I know the worth of it all would sink down to a nil.

Living life richly is quite different from living life fully.

And neither of these is quite like living and loving it.

So here I sit, wondering: Which of these gloves fit? And if they don’t, must I mend them so they do?

Or do I not wear one at all?

I bow down to my father, my head touching his feet, my hands then coming up to my head, ears, eyes, heart.

“Bye dad.”

“Bye.”

I do the same to my mother.

Then I plant a kiss on her cheek.

“Bye mother.”

“Bye.” her voice layering the air with surprise.

Do not tell me that never have you hesitated to show affection for someone.

Do not tell me either, that you have never blurted out the words “I hate you” in its emphasis at that given moment.

The chemistry of human reactions. The energy used to make a product, in the human case, good, is uphill. It takes work, among other things. The breaking down of the product is easy, maybe even spontaeous… and why not?

The slide, so smooth.

Too ~good~ to climb.

Why are you nodding your head?

I was looking for the perfect one. It was the end of a summer, my play shoes worn, the toes daring to poke out of the slip-on canvases. Further, I pushed myself. Further towards the chain of mountains. I wanted the best one. A petal one. I was in a field of dandelions. I remember seeing yellow marks on my soles. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow.

White!

I had a green dress on, one my mother had made for my sister and I. Matching ones with black lace trimming the hem and collar. I plucked my white jewel from that sunshiny mess and ran back to the boulder in the center of it all. Perching myself towards the purplely rises of land, I folded my feet underneath me, not caring of the dress nor my knees, scraping the scared surface. I wish I could recall what it smelled like, being there, but I don’t.

I was on my rock, in the middle of my golden sea, a white flower in my hand. I wondered whether I should let down my hair. But then where would I put the clips? No the hair would stay. Besides, I had to pretend it was red anyway, so I could imagine it was out too.

The flower.

I rid it of a petal.

“I love him.”

Another.

“I love him not.”

Another.

“I love him.”

Two more. I stopped, wondering what to do.

I took them both off.

“I love him not.”

There. Done! I had done exactly as she had done. I didn’t know what she meant when she did it. I didn’t know why she did it. But I liked the way she did it. So I did it too.

It surprises me though, that even back them, as a six or seven year old, the “right” was so firm.

Right was two petals instead of one.

Right was the “not.”

Right was pretending.

Then jumping off.

And forgetting.

I am on my stool. My own stool, in a corner. My phone. Yes, that too, mine own. And the list. The list I call.

My voice has become a secondhand nature. It comes, it goes. It’s the same.

But these voices!

My ear listens to them. Listens to some of the most feeble tones rasp into the phone on the other side. A woman suppressing her cough. A man whispering so lightly. Someone who had just been awaken by my call. An elderly lady telling me to please wait so that she could turn off the TV so that she could hear me. I repeated each line over and over again, her voice loud… did she know how loud she was? It’s the tired ones that pull me the most… those words laden with ill fatigue, consenting to the medicine refill. I said medicine? Make that too, a list. Seven or so per name. Sometimes 14 per last name… married.

To think too, that I sit there, on my high seat, feet barely touching the ground, talking to business men, flourishing local politicians, managers, humans of worthy names. Their voices like mine. Kind, professional, even. To think, that I know more than a stranger should know of them…

And then the shift ends. I should forget, shouldn’t I? Who are they? Who are they but voices?

And who am I?

Who am I but a voice?