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- Jun 5, 2023
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I am going to start this off by sharing something I wrote that is very intimate to me and re-reading this now reflects those memories in a way I want to share with others. Let's share some creative writing here, all formats are welcome. I love literature. Writing has been very therapeutic for me during some of the hardest times of my life.
Walking en masse to food alongside everyone else with only that hungry purpose in mind. Back and forth. There is a sidewalk just for us. There are no uniform lines or orderly direction. Only suggestive patterns. This is chow movement. Some walk to leave only to turn around to go again with a different face. The food is bland to suit regulations for the availability to serve almost all needs, especially the very few. It is served hot, or tepid, with one packet of salt and pepper accompanied by a utensil deemed inadequate by certain standards. Sometimes there are pieces of onion, but usually not. They have another purpose. We must walk just right down the concrete path. No one ever runs, while many stop, and others slow to an insatiable crawl. Whistles are blown by men not eating, not walking, different men, at those who walk incorrectly. The klaxons are blown by observers with linear eyesight paid to blow whistles. There are no puffs of visible white smoke to warn of danger, or to signal the end of a shift, these whistles share a purpose as in a game where some can only hope for good calls.
In between chow calls one does whatever is available according to their limiting ethics. Many tattoo the hunger away with things like their own name imprinted on their neck or of names of past lovers who they hope are faithful to the extent that doesn't require blunt awareness. The one receiving the art is usually somewhere else in a paradox of distance and locality. Memories that offer a glimpse of better times go in and out of focus, it is frustratingly hard to hold onto them. It is very difficult to tattoo an already existing memory that will reflect true in the mirror; an exact map to such a defined, distinct, collapsing memory does not truly exist. Several attempts are mandatory. The tools are not the best, but they work, or it is believed by some, with their one color, void of sterility or relief. Once the makeshift gun is held and “loaded” it is an unspoken agreement of what is to be done; more anxious for the gun than talk, there is little talk.
Wherever there is time there are willing participants for exchanges of something. Always there is the noise. One must block it out if not also to have a tattoo. The lookout men are funny types. Poised in conspicuous ways: looking, listening, for them. Eyes and ears for others with nothing left of their own. Their noises are funny. A noise of a siren from an American police car right before the lights hit you, a warning sound used by both sides, is the most common signal. This infamous alarm will forever alert the senses into a hyper awareness that very quickly decides on a flight or fight scenario, especially for those all too familiar with sirens. Even though the noise is artificial it is enough to command a surreal sobriety, along with the memories. The tattoo gun stops. They all look at nude magazines nonchalantly as the officer does the rounds. Because looking at nude women is normal, accepted as our standard behavior, anything else is suspicious. They look and look at the glossy pages with blind eyes, flipping back and forth, holding them at various angles to give the appearance of seeing more, pausing accordingly, exchanging magazines and little else. It is all very calm and casual. No one is overly excited, this time. Everything resumes once again. Resuming to familiarity, comfortable bittersweet familiarity.
Some eat and eat until the eating tires them. Eating and sleeping at close to equal amounts of time. Insulin, or some other drug that is needed, is given to facilitate various ways of passing time. Here the reasons on both sides are perfunctory statistical. It is more obvious here, with limited vision more is apparent, the vision of the world less convoluted. Even here there is more.
Chow is loud, fast, and random. Sunglasses and earplugs are common and indifferently effective. Stealing is normal, sometimes with a different face. Bread, sustenance, of all kinds is stolen and given to the birds: wrens, black birds, haunting seagulls, and evident to all but them. The smaller birds sing, the seagulls bark. Bark for more, bark for smaller, safer, swallowable pieces, bark to fight, bark for being away from their seas, always barking. Only in the winter do the barkers come, away from water, like loud stalking snow that does nothing to cool the body. As opposed to the heartening wrens who like to gracefully hop instead of walk, and lovingly talk as in a purposeful opera. The only food seen on the chow designated walkway is stolen. They all fight for it. Before it hits the ground, before it is reappropriated. They each know when it's their time. Everything is stolen. Even the secure items are stolen. A locked and bolted refrigerator door can be lifted off its hinges and reattached without any adrenaline. Calm and normal as the locked door before and after its tampering. All is stolen. It is normal. Even onions are stolen. Everything that is stolen tastes better than its counterpart, especially if nonexistent.
There is a go-to man for everything. Onions sell for one to two dollars worth of whatever, particularly other food items that are not stolen. They sell to people who would otherwise never buy an onion were they not stolen. They sell to people who have never cooked anything to do with onions. They sell to be easily added to something of independent substance. All one has to do is cut it anyway they can and add it, then they have used the agent in some way, some form. They sell better than meat, cheese, and even wine. There are never enough onions. The smell of them is always there. It finds you like an intelligent, inversely alluring game of hide-n-seek. One smells, looks, and sees nothing of onions, only wavering people. When we leave we will not buy onions. Some will, but not in the same way. Hunting for more tattoos and onions; without tears we are cut. I do not need any part of onions for tears, only a hope of them. A very real, living hope.
-2012
“A Small Onion'd Window”
Walking en masse to food alongside everyone else with only that hungry purpose in mind. Back and forth. There is a sidewalk just for us. There are no uniform lines or orderly direction. Only suggestive patterns. This is chow movement. Some walk to leave only to turn around to go again with a different face. The food is bland to suit regulations for the availability to serve almost all needs, especially the very few. It is served hot, or tepid, with one packet of salt and pepper accompanied by a utensil deemed inadequate by certain standards. Sometimes there are pieces of onion, but usually not. They have another purpose. We must walk just right down the concrete path. No one ever runs, while many stop, and others slow to an insatiable crawl. Whistles are blown by men not eating, not walking, different men, at those who walk incorrectly. The klaxons are blown by observers with linear eyesight paid to blow whistles. There are no puffs of visible white smoke to warn of danger, or to signal the end of a shift, these whistles share a purpose as in a game where some can only hope for good calls.
In between chow calls one does whatever is available according to their limiting ethics. Many tattoo the hunger away with things like their own name imprinted on their neck or of names of past lovers who they hope are faithful to the extent that doesn't require blunt awareness. The one receiving the art is usually somewhere else in a paradox of distance and locality. Memories that offer a glimpse of better times go in and out of focus, it is frustratingly hard to hold onto them. It is very difficult to tattoo an already existing memory that will reflect true in the mirror; an exact map to such a defined, distinct, collapsing memory does not truly exist. Several attempts are mandatory. The tools are not the best, but they work, or it is believed by some, with their one color, void of sterility or relief. Once the makeshift gun is held and “loaded” it is an unspoken agreement of what is to be done; more anxious for the gun than talk, there is little talk.
Wherever there is time there are willing participants for exchanges of something. Always there is the noise. One must block it out if not also to have a tattoo. The lookout men are funny types. Poised in conspicuous ways: looking, listening, for them. Eyes and ears for others with nothing left of their own. Their noises are funny. A noise of a siren from an American police car right before the lights hit you, a warning sound used by both sides, is the most common signal. This infamous alarm will forever alert the senses into a hyper awareness that very quickly decides on a flight or fight scenario, especially for those all too familiar with sirens. Even though the noise is artificial it is enough to command a surreal sobriety, along with the memories. The tattoo gun stops. They all look at nude magazines nonchalantly as the officer does the rounds. Because looking at nude women is normal, accepted as our standard behavior, anything else is suspicious. They look and look at the glossy pages with blind eyes, flipping back and forth, holding them at various angles to give the appearance of seeing more, pausing accordingly, exchanging magazines and little else. It is all very calm and casual. No one is overly excited, this time. Everything resumes once again. Resuming to familiarity, comfortable bittersweet familiarity.
Some eat and eat until the eating tires them. Eating and sleeping at close to equal amounts of time. Insulin, or some other drug that is needed, is given to facilitate various ways of passing time. Here the reasons on both sides are perfunctory statistical. It is more obvious here, with limited vision more is apparent, the vision of the world less convoluted. Even here there is more.
Chow is loud, fast, and random. Sunglasses and earplugs are common and indifferently effective. Stealing is normal, sometimes with a different face. Bread, sustenance, of all kinds is stolen and given to the birds: wrens, black birds, haunting seagulls, and evident to all but them. The smaller birds sing, the seagulls bark. Bark for more, bark for smaller, safer, swallowable pieces, bark to fight, bark for being away from their seas, always barking. Only in the winter do the barkers come, away from water, like loud stalking snow that does nothing to cool the body. As opposed to the heartening wrens who like to gracefully hop instead of walk, and lovingly talk as in a purposeful opera. The only food seen on the chow designated walkway is stolen. They all fight for it. Before it hits the ground, before it is reappropriated. They each know when it's their time. Everything is stolen. Even the secure items are stolen. A locked and bolted refrigerator door can be lifted off its hinges and reattached without any adrenaline. Calm and normal as the locked door before and after its tampering. All is stolen. It is normal. Even onions are stolen. Everything that is stolen tastes better than its counterpart, especially if nonexistent.
There is a go-to man for everything. Onions sell for one to two dollars worth of whatever, particularly other food items that are not stolen. They sell to people who would otherwise never buy an onion were they not stolen. They sell to people who have never cooked anything to do with onions. They sell to be easily added to something of independent substance. All one has to do is cut it anyway they can and add it, then they have used the agent in some way, some form. They sell better than meat, cheese, and even wine. There are never enough onions. The smell of them is always there. It finds you like an intelligent, inversely alluring game of hide-n-seek. One smells, looks, and sees nothing of onions, only wavering people. When we leave we will not buy onions. Some will, but not in the same way. Hunting for more tattoos and onions; without tears we are cut. I do not need any part of onions for tears, only a hope of them. A very real, living hope.
-2012
