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Feb 21, 2024: 8:04 PM
For example i was taking night courses years ago and one was psychcology and it wasn't that good. but one thing stuck with me and it was the idea that memory is like a strand of pearls and the mind organizes those pearls on the basis of an internal logic. So one thought leads to a series of superficially unrelated memories thatt are connected by the brain as being ' the same". For you that is.
Lot of spelling errors in that whoops
Yes intuitive.
Worry less and move on to step two
Then will come three and maybe four
You will get there. You just need to begin your next move
Worry less about getting it wrong.maybe you will but it will help you see the way to something better
I like your new style and the more personal seems to work well
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crumbsroom wrote:
For example i was taking night courses years ago and one was psychcology and it wasn't that good. but one thing stuck with me and it was the idea that memory is like a strand of pearls and the mind organizes those pearls on the basis of an internal logic. So one thought leads to a series of superficially unrelated memories thatt are connected by the brain as being ' the same". For you that is.
There are some helpful habits to develop which improve this construction of a more context-dependent memory, which ideally would minimize such "superficially unrelated" associations and improve more relevant associations. It's generally considered more efficient for recall than "rote" memorization. For example, using flash cards to memorize things like dates, names and other designations tends to isolate the subjects from their related context, rendering them arbitrary, loose pearls so to speak. This is why so many adults have difficulty in retaining memories from their education which was based on tests designed to focus on identifying isolated facts rather than understanding contextual narratives. Since the brain will create associations regardless, the associations from more common "learning" techniques in schools tend to be negative associations around the stress and resentment of having to learn rather than more useful associations toward the subjects themselves.
Jeopardy isn't very educational for this reason. Although the clues are frequently designed to necessitate a contextual memory in order to figure them out, the show is not ideal as a means of learning or retaining memories of the answers due to the show's random and dissociated nature. At best, one could take some notes on the answers for subjects one isn't familiar with for further reading, but due to the show's speed, most people are not going to retain these answers for long if they don't already have some kind of context of the subject to plug them into.
Of course I don't really understand the context of what exactly that post is supposed to be about, but I tend to associate a void with an invitation.
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Jinnistan wrote:
Of course I don't really understand the context of what exactly that post is supposed to be about, but I tend to associate a void with an invitation.
It's an unresponded to facebook message, from someone who wanted to talk to me about my writing, probably had some other things to say that might have helped, but that it appears I never responded to.
I thought when taken out of context, it also sounded eerily like the unravelling of my mind staring at over 400 pages of this shit. The kind of things I keep muttering to myself when no one is looking. So I took it as my own.
At least now, I've given it some kind of response.
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As for the notion of 'stringing these pearls together' and the best way its done is a bit of a tightrope. I'm resistant to grounding much of it in anything that can be completely understood. I think I would describe the approach I've been taking on most of these as to adopt a perspective that is more like peeking through a keyhole than fully observing what is happening. Removing these things from an established context is what allows them to float like almost alien hieroglyphics from what is essentially, for the most part, recollections of a mostly ordinary life. I like turning the pointless into something that feels almost mythic, not because it is useful or has a message to impart, but simply due to how unknowable it feels and how it just keeps growing larger and larger for indeterminate reasons. More and more impenetrable with every step I take closer to it.
But there is also a enormous caveat with this, of course. You can only get away with this for so long. Which is why my ultimate aim is to nest these more fragmented bits inside of more traditionally observed 'stories'. The hope is that this will still keep everything fairly fragmented, with these more traditionally written narratives acting as just enough rope for those unfamiliar with what I'm talking about (ie. nearly everyone outside of my small circle of family members and friends).
Now in retrospect, it would have been much easier on my brain to have started with these more clearly defined anecdotes, then pepper in the more abstract ones, but that's obviously not what happened. Which has led to this mountain of completely unchronological asides, with dozens of subplots and all sorts of vaguely alluded to side characters running beneath each of them concurrently. Basically, more than enough to work with, but too much to know where to begin (which is basically the opposite of most of the problems I've ever had with completing things to any satisfactory degree)
There is, obviously, a lot of work ahead of me, especially since my OCD like personality has an innate need to stitch up all (most) of these unrelated pieces together like some fully functioning Frankensteins monster. Make sure all of its delicate and complicated nerve endings are all properly soldered together, which is probably at this point close to impossible (even if I have a very vague notion of how to do it nagging me in the back of my head). Or maybe there are other options. Maybe I can start removing even more of its malfunctioning internal organs and just accept what it essentially almost is at this point, a collection of poems (not stories at all)...Or I can break them all into a collection of small stories, by linking handfuls of them together, forming small little compact narrative out of them, and not worrying about the overall big picture (tempting, but I think ultimately unsatisfying). Or I can find a completely new way to present these (or at least the ones that work) as their own thing and not worry about collecting them together at all, find a different kind of medium to try and use them in (something akin to street poetry, which I have done before, or spoken word, which I've also done but am not so sure would want to make a habit of).
Unfortunately, the only person who was not only aware of nearly every person and thing I was writing about, and understood what my literary influences were, and also had the time to sit and wade through all of this shit, is now dead, so...I guess I can't count on her anymore to bail me out of this one.
Whatever though. It's not like I'm really doing it for the end result anyways. It's a nagging concern, to some degree, but its mostly about doing it, and seeing what bullshit I can come up with every couple of days. Not letting the concern of the dogs that don't work out discourage me from the ones I think do.
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JOY
Joy was a travel agent, but she mostly kept herself to windows in her house. At work, wearing a navy blue pant-suit that didn’t look like it had been anywhere but beneath fluorescent lights and behind Formica tables. But once at home, always in her African print silk pajamas and sucking on straws stuck into coconut shell drinks.
Her customers would most likely be thinking more along the lines of train trips across Europe, or maybe a hike up Machu Pichu, but Joy was most comfortable when extolling the virtues of sitting in her kitchen. The comforts of being so close to the refrigerator. The importance of keeping so near the front door. How, once seated, she only need pull back the curtains and put her mouth to the window screen if she wanted to talk with all the locals. All these neighbourhood kids who were always coming around, looking for her son.
“Lovely kids, those townhouse kids. Definitely part of the appeal”
Or, for those who were more leisurely inclined, she might mention the equally worthy destination to be found just up the stairs. A bed she promised there was never any reason to get out of. Conveniently located beneath a sunward facing window, it overlooked an unobstructed view of the front door that was all one would ever need to see who was down there always knocking. Could stay in bed and stick your head out and just tell them to let themselves in. Then roll back over and fall right to sleep.
Surrounded by overturned coconut shells.
“Now that’s a vacation....and did I mention affordable?”. She slid some pamphlets across the table towards them. “You really can’t beat it. I tell you, quite honestly, I’d never leave if I didn’t have to”
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crumbsroom wrote:
As for the notion of 'stringing these pearls together' and the best way its done is a bit of a tightrope. I'm resistant to grounding much of it in anything that can be completely understood. I think I would describe the approach I've been taking on most of these as to adopt a perspective that is more like peeking through a keyhole than fully observing what is happening. Removing these things from an established context is what allows them to float like almost alien hieroglyphics from what is essentially, for the most part, recollections of a mostly ordinary life. I like turning the pointless into something that feels almost mythic, not because it is useful or has a message to impart, but simply due to how unknowable it feels and how it just keeps growing larger and larger for indeterminate reasons. More and more impenetrable with every step I take closer to it.
Ah, right. So instead of a more practical use of recall (using associations to stregthen memories. which is really only helpful when applied in the moment), you're talking about a more artistic application, ala Proust's madeleines, where the associations are less tangible thoughts, rather than material touchstones, and tend to be more subliminal or subconscious, usually associated with a tangential thought in that moment, which for whatever reason the brain decided to repress, impregnating the "superficially unrelated" memory with mysterious significance. (Excuse the Freud-splaining. This is more for my benefit than yours.)
crumbsroom wrote:
a collection of poems (not stories at all)...
I think vignettes are more accurate, and there's nothng wrong with a vignette collection as an appropriate literary medium.
crumbsroom wrote:
Or I can find a completely new way to present these (or at least the ones that work) as their own thing and not worry about collecting them together at all, find a different kind of medium to try and use them in (something akin to street poetry, which I have done before, or spoken word, which I've also done but am not so sure would want to make a habit of).
I think there's a thematic consistency that will overcome whatever lack of explicit connectivity between these pieces.
crumbsroom wrote:
Whatever though. It's not like I'm really doing it for the end result anyways. It's a nagging concern, to some degree, but its mostly about doing it, and seeing what bullshit I can come up with every couple of days. Not letting the concern of the dogs that don't work out discourage me from the ones I think do.
Like most art, the work is the most important thing. Keep chiseling.
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JAMES THE SKINHEAD
He once told his brother
That not even a dwarf would date him.
But unfortunately,
Eventually,
One would.
Now, fifteen years later he was lonelier than he had ever been.
Even though
He was never alone
She was always there in the corner.
And he could always see her,
If he only looked over his shoulder,
Dancing for some Tik Tok thing
In an Insane Clown Posse shirt that was too big for her.
But no need to look
Who cares?
It didn’t matter
She would show him the video later anyways
Play it again and again and again
And all he could tell her was
Over and over
‘great great great’
Until she left him alone
Went back to her corner
Started dancing again
She didn't really love him
No one did.
Something had to change.
And so he had an idea
He could be someone different.
He would now become James
Because why not
Any name his mother didn’t give him would do.
And James was going to be a skinhead.
And so he started dressing like one
Shaved his hair off
Suspenders
Doc Martens
Taking pictures of himself making signs
Skinhead signs
So skinny
Cancer probably in his brain
Drinking beer alone on the couch
“But not a racist skinhead”, he kept explaining
Clarifying
He just wanted to beat the fuck out of Nazi’s
He just had to do something.
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Jinnistan wrote:
you're talking about a more artistic application, ala Proust's madeleines
Probably less madeleines than canned riced pudding, and probably less Proust than bathroom graffiti, but yeah, sort of.
where the associations are less tangible thoughts, rather than material touchstones, and tend to be more subliminal or subconscious, usually associated with a tangential thought in that moment, which for whatever reason the brain decided to repress, impregnating the "superficially unrelated" memory with mysterious significance. (Excuse the Freud-splaining. This is more for my benefit than yours.)
It's just a process of writing, with as little of a filter as possible, and then seeing what that the last thing I've written leads me to write. Capturing a years-long train of thought, for better and worse. Ultimately, there has to be some connective tissue there, as little as any of it might be intended, and as little of it that might make it onto the page.
Of course, like anyone else, that tyranny of narrative I rail against still tempts. I am constantly threading through ideas and moments and images and already have plans of addressing in later segments....things that do actually have resolutions, or at the very least, punchlines....
But this has only lead to the problem where, no matter which way things eventually get rearranged, certain 'pay-offs' will be salvaged, while others will inevitably be wiped out. And that's where the paralysis steps in. Which makes me start wondering how much better off I would probably be just throwing all of these up into the air and just seeing which way they land...hope for the best.
I think vignettes are more accurate, and there's nothng wrong with a vignette collection as an appropriate literary medium.
Because I feel calling them 'stories' is giving anyone who asks the wrong impression, I recently got myself saddled with talking to one of my work supervisors about what I'm doing and, with no better word to used, called it 'poetry'. To which has now had the unexpected hazard of this supervisor trying to get me to read and comment on the poetry he has been writing in secret these last few years.
This is why choosing the correct words is always important.
I think there's a thematic consistency that will overcome whatever lack of explicit connectivity between these pieces.
This is always the hope. Or that at least 80 percent of them can somewhat stand on their own, even if it will be completely baffling to most what all of this shit has to do when bound up in Russian literature proportions.
Like most art, the work is the most important thing.
Probably why I've been obsessing over artists like Mark E Smith or Fassbinder these last few years. Just trying to find evidence of those whose primary function as an artist is to 'work'. To just keep creating, no matter the results, good bad or fair. Try and keep mining that personal essence for whatever skunk oils I can get out of it. As long as it keeps dripping.
Keep chiseling.
If I had any choice in this matter, I would have stopped at least a year ago.
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SLEIGHT O HAND (god style)
Everyone was too busy looking at the old lady with the balloons. Hovering above this ghost of a woman and announcing this as her 98th birthday. Everyone taking their turn to take a picture with her. Like she was some old building no one bothered to visit anymore, but that they were sad to learn was about to be torn down. Kept asking if she wanted a piece of cake. None of them sure she’d even been listening when she refused.
“No, no, of course not, I’m good, no, no, no, I’m good, I’m good”
Even Cathy was looking in her direction. Waiting her turn to take a picture with her old mother, even though she hardly saw the rush. At this point it was clear the old bag would outlive her. Would outlive all of them.
"Mom! You want some cake! It’s not lousy like it was last time! Mom! Hellllooooooo!??! Hellloooooo?”
Eventually, Cathy got her turn like everyone else and smiled for their last photograph together. Her mother, of course, not smiling at all or even looking at the camera. Just appearing confused and staring off into the distance, as if she saw something approaching no one else did. Something that was making her unbearably sad. A paper plate of chocolate cake untouched in her lap.
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SLEEPOVERS
If you were somehow still at the townhouse once it was nighttime, dark enough that everyone knew it must be past their curfew, it was best to keep yourself from being found. Might go up into the trees. Hang from the branches and call yourself ninjas and look into people’s windows. Or you could steal some dad’s car keys and sit in the underground parking garage. Pretend you were secret agents and look through glove compartments. Maybe honk the horn.
As long as you were out of sight, you should be fine.
But sometimes there would be spotlights in the sky. Weaving back and forth across the stars. Beaming bright from down in some used car lot, but beckoning us to them anyways. Getting us down from the trees. Up from the underground garage. Out into the courtyard to dance in the summer air. Drawing a midnight audience. All the parents looking for kids who hadn’t come home yet. Watching their children kick their sneakers high into the air, like Rockettes. Swinging imaginary canes. Wearing imaginary top hats. Singing like Frank Sinatra.
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Rampop II wrote:
Powerful entry.
Thankfully everything is sad. Makes writing powerfully much easier.
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RUMOURS ARE YOUR MOTHER IS OLD NOW
Sandra couldn’t possibly be turning 65. They still remembered her as the sixteen-year-old girl with the baby who Norma let stay at the house. In the room next to Andrea who was still being assigned homework and doing her best not to hear the boy screaming through the walls.
“Has it really been that long?”
They could only wonder what she looked like now, even though they had seen all sorts of pictures of her over the years and could have probably guessed even if they hadn’t. Mostly the same, only fatter. Just like everyone her age who wasn’t getting skinnier and dying. Just like some of them at the dinner table may have been doing at that very moment, even as they did their best to stuff their faces with turkey and gravy and Yorkshire pudding in hopes of living forever.
“She couldn’t even read, you know”, Andrea said, supplying some much needed facts to the conversation. “Completely illiterate”
“I think that’s what you call Bruce’s type”, Cathy laughed.
Andrea looked at this boy who had once been a baby to see if he knew this interesting detail about his mother. Squinted and waited for him to say something but only got a shrug in response. “Well, thankfully you had us to help you out of that sad situation. Remember how I used to read you Henry V in my bed. You remember that? Reading you Shakespeare until you fell asleep in my arms. I was such a good Auntie. Remember?”
To help him along, she put down her wine glass, raised her arm up and quoted something from MacBeth.
“Remember that? Remember??”
But he only shook his head. The boy seemed to remember nothing of this time.
They, on the other hand, could remember it all quite clearly. Mostly, how the girl was always fighting with Norma. Fighting and working herself up into hysterics about all sorts of things you don’t normally fight about. Getting to the point she was always storming out of the house, even when it was storming. But never getting any further than the garage, where they all had memories of finding her standing in the dark, sulking next to Dave’s car, cradling a screaming baby in her arms. Hiding out in there all the time. Breath coming out of their mouths in plumes when it was winter. Looking terrified of the thunder when it was summertime and raining. Sometimes, on lucky days, sitting in the backseat of the car if Dave had left it unlocked. Keeping warm. Trying not to get hit by lightning as they waited in the garage for another day to end.
“I remember being absolutely floored when I heard she got her license”
“How did she even pass the written exam?”
“Helllooo! Did I say, completely illiterate!”
They asked if she'd ever gotten married. They said how they could remember something like that happening but that was so long ago too.
“I vaguely remember some guy in a dirty horseracing jacket. Tinted sunglasses. Kind of a dork”
“Randy”, he confirmed.
“And didn’t you say something about them living in a condemned house?”
“They aren’t together anymore. I don’t think. It’s only him living there now”
Because they press for details, he tells them something about how the bathtub there is black with newspaper ink. Since she left, that’s where he spends all his time, reading the sports section. Still not using soap. Coming out, looking even grimier than when he went in. Tattooed with all the hockey trade rumours that have bled into his skin.
“So is this guy going to be at this birthday party”
“I think so”
“Some family you’ve got there”
Again, he shrugs.
“And you’re sure she’s really turning 65? Is that even possible?”
“Why are you so surprised? Aren’t you 65?”
“That’s beside the point”
“Well, it sounds like it’s going to be some party”, Cathy laughs.
He tells them he’s not sure who’s going to be there. How she just called out of the blue and said it was going to be at some restaurant she thinks is nice. That she’d pay for all the food, but not the drinks. How she wanted everyone to be there, even his brother.
“Wait! You have a brother?”
He shrugs. Says he guesses so but he probably won’t be there anyways. He doesn’t talk to his mother anymore. How he is living under a bridge or out in the woods and how he can only be reached when he goes to the library to use a computer. “So he probably won’t be coming anyways. Probably will get angry if I even ask him about it”
Suddenly, after a long time of staying quiet and staring out the window, Norma speaks up for the first time since this conversation began. “Do you ever see your mother, David”. She had been sitting quietly all of this time but is now looking at her grandson with her soft, blank eyes. Her tiny hands resting on the knees of her tiny pants. Looking very sad as she tells him how lonely she probably is. That she had a very hard life. How no one should ever forget their mother. That she must be getting old too.
He looks at his grandmother and tries not to shrug. “Her birthday is coming up soon and she called to tell me she’s having a party, so, ya, I’ve talked to her recently”, he explains. “But I don’t talk to her very much, no”. He then quickly changes the subject before the whole conversation goes right back to the beginning. It’s time to talk about something else.
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COLD HANDS, HOT LASAGNE
1: A Mission
I met a new girl and I’m spending the day there. Woke up in that tiny bedroom. Plates and bowls of dried macaroni and cheese on top of plates and bowls of dried macaroni and cheese. Surrounded by so many torn-off, unwashed socks we could feel them underneath the covers with us. They are everywhere. In cereal bowls and tangled with electrical cords. Stuck with food from days before I was ever here.
It’s hot and bright in this room. A sunroof in the ceiling right above us and the sun right in the middle of it. Not letting us sleep any longer. Having to squint as we look up at the television, that rests high up on a dresser at the foot of the bed. Might as well be looking straight into the sun from our mattress on the floor, watching a TV show she says she thinks I’ll like but that can’t possibly penetrate my headache. Our retinas burning as we stare up at it. The sound of dried macaroni shells cracking in the heat. The two of us sweating, even though it's winter outside. Can see snow caked around the edges of the sunroof, slowly melting like us.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been in someone else's room so I should probably stay here awhile. You can grow much too used to the contours of your own body once you notice them sinking into your mattress. The shape of yourself now strangely uncomfortable when sunk into it and unable to get out. In a bed like a tomb where it’s too dark and the curtains are drawn tightly together, thick and hot from all the sunlight they are keeping from getting in. A bad kind of darkness, even when the TV is always turned on.
No such thing as sunroofs there.
No one to sweat next to.
I don’t want to go home and so volunteer to pick up dinner for the both of us. Tell her she can stay here and I’ll take care of it. Will bring back something good, even though I don’t know where I’m going. Will have to write her address on my hand if I ever want to make my way back as I wander out into the snow by myself.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” she asks from the porch, in her pajamas.
I tell her she can trust me. That I still remember how last night we saw some place advertising the best lasagne in the city just like I said I would remember it. Back when I was wild and stone drunk and trusting everything I read taped into the windows of all the closed restaurants we passed on our way stumbling back to her home. When it was long past midnight and we were desperate for anything to eat. Back when we were actually hungry. When food seemed necessary.
And so off I went. Trudging through the snow. Didn’t even ask if she wanted lasagne and only hoping it would be as good as it claimed to be. Anything good enough to get me one more night here. A place to wake up where I might find the dried remains of our lasagne tins sat on top of plates and bowls of macaroni and cheese. On top of plates and bowls of macaroni and cheese. And then, maybe, a little more sunlight to wake us up. If we were lucky.
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crumbsroom wrote:
COLD HANDS, HOT LASAGNE
Isn't that a Ry Cooder record?
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2: Procurement
The lasagna place is mostly into sabotage. For them the quality of their food is secondary. They just want to make me look bad. Have tried to stop me from getting dinner back to this new girl. Have got me struggling the whole way back. Fighting through a snowstorm and everything falling apart. Lids coming off. Bags ripping open. My cold hands steaming and bleeding lasagna. Kicking cans of pop ahead of me. Kicking them up a hill, doing my best to not let them get past me and roll away, as molten cheese erases my hands. Erases the address I wrote on them in case I got lost in the snow. Made it so maybe I’m moving forward for no reason at all. Lasagna going down the sleeve of my winter jacket. More cans falling to the sidewalk. More cans for me to kick maybe in the wrong direction. But just as determined to keep them from rolling away, even though I didn’t know where I was going, and everything was covered in snow and I wasn’t even hungry.
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3: Accomplishment
It’s always hard to tell what a new girl thinks about you, especially when you keep her waiting so long for dinner. You only went down the street but it’s almost like you got lost in time. Bring back soda cans that are rusted and dented and scratched with road salt. Lasagna with all its guts spilled out. Can only hope she doesn’t notice how you keep your hands behind your back to hide the cheese burns you’ve yet to come up with a good story to explain. Can't tell if she’s the kind of girl who will delight in the details of how all these stupid things keep getting so close to killing you. Or if she’s the kind who’s already ashamed just looking at you, standing there in your pants covered in tomato sauce. Snow dripping from your head as you look into her eyes and try to decide what story she needs to hear.
It looks like she likes to laugh.
Perfect.
“Did I tell you about how the world hates me”, you ask. “I've got proof. You ready, baby?”
You show her your burned hands, and tell her all about the nefarious plans of the lasagna people, and just like you knew she would, she starts snorting with laughter. Just like she also did last night. Just like you are going to keep making her do, for as long as you can, because you’re suddenly thinking maybe you should move in.
Because this is a good moment.
Maybe you should just go ahead and ask her right now.
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CRAP BRAIN/DADDY CHEEZ WHIZ
1
When she was pregnant, Bruce would look over at Sandra’s belly from the corner of his eye. Worry over the kind of brain she was growing in there. He had watched her fingers fumble with children’s jigsaw puzzles before and so had every reason to suspect she might not be up to the task. How could she possibly put such a complex thing together all by herself, he wondered. This fleshy thing waiting to be assembled in this darkness that was inside of her. That she was maybe working on without even knowing it as she sat in front of the small black and white television, eating raw potatoes.
And so Bruce would watch her and try not to be seen watching her. Realizing not even he knew the first thing about what made one brain good and another bad. Sometimes looking down at the floor towards her brothers who lay scattered all about the hardwood to figure out what went wrong with them. Four boys down there today and none of them speaking a language he recognized as being English. Occasionally one of them trying to stand, until they got grabbed by their hair and pulled back to the floor where it looked like they’d be staying the rest of the day. Farting and vomiting.
Bruce began to shiver.
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2
Is this what baby heads are supposed to smell like? Or has this one maybe gone bad? Bruce feels it's his duty as a father to know the difference and to know if anything is wrong, but he can’t tell just by sniffing. Keeps getting a whiff of something, and he might even like it, but worries that maybe it's a bad smell and he shouldn’t. Can only sit there breathing it in because it’s his son and Sandra handed the boy to him as soon as she noticed him drinking a beer in his rocking chair and looking out the window and not helping out. Acting as if there wasn’t a screaming child in the apartment with them at all.
“You deal with him”
Immediately, the boy went rigid in his arms. Opened his mouth wide to scream and stretched his neck long and pressed his scalp hard into his father’s nose. Kept himself between his father and his beer bottle, leaving him with nothing to do but smell his child’s head and wonder if this is what it was like for every other father.
“He smells sweet”, he tells Sandra. “Is he supposed to smell sweet?”
“He smells like a stupid fucking screaming brat son-of-yours is what he smells like”
She tells him to start rocking him and see if he can get him to fall asleep and Bruce complies. The old, wooden chair makes a creaking sound as he and his son move back and forth, back and forth, and something in him slowly relaxes as he tells himself it’s a good smell after all. It's calming him, even if the child is still screaming and he can't help wondering if maybe something is wrong and he should be doing more.
“Shush shush shush”, he coos, only now beginning to grow comfortable holding his son as another easier to identify smell fills the air. “Oh-oh, that one’s a mommy smell”, he says with a sudden and strange calmness, handing the still screaming child to Sandra, who seems not to want him back. Acts like she doesn’t know what has just happened or what she must now do, before grabbing their son and storming from the room with him dangling from her arms.
“You can't possibly be mad” he yells out in the now empty room. “Are you actually pretending you didn’t smell that? Are you fucking serious?”
Taking a few quick sips from his bottle of beer, Bruce now realizes Sandra isn’t up to any of this either. He knows he isn't very good, but she’s even worse. Much too young and too troubled for whatever it is they’ve gotten themselves into, just like everyone said she would be. So it's going to be up to him, and him alone, to pay attention. Keep the boy safe.
It was time to become a father.
Start worrying again.
Get back to thinking maybe their baby’s head smelled funny after all.
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3
The child began speaking earlier than expected, so that was good, but Bruce still found it much too easy to outsmart the boy. Would tell him the wrong names for things and see if he would repeat them back. Or make him believe he was saying words wrong, when it was clear he was saying them right. And so before long, whatever the boy said soon became indecipherable. At least, that is, whenever he was willing to dare talk in the first place.
He blamed Sandra for the child’s apparent language troubles and it soon got him worrying over how much more of his mother might reveal itself to be laying dormant inside their son. If maybe there were other family characteristics he’d now have to start checking for, like if his eyes had begun to cross, or if his brand new hairline was already receding, or if some of his fingers might start falling off, or he’d begun to eat toilet paper. The kind of things he expected would soon manifest if he was correct in worrying that the child’s maternal side was somehow beating out whatever it was of him that he’d put into the boy.
He somehow always suspected that there would be a kind of primordial strength in Sandra’s terrible genealogy. And, somehow, an equally terrible weakness in his own. He didn’t know why, just knew it, and now he could only watch his son to see which one of them inevitably won.
“Why is he calling the fucking cat a fucking kettle?”, he’d sometimes scream at her. “Is this because of you? Is this your fault? Has he got that shit brain of yours in his head?”
One day at the park, his son got a look in his eye that reminded Bruce of the way Sandra’s sometimes looked when she wasn’t paying attention to him. Dreamily staring into the distance as he watched the approach of a man on a bicycle, selling frozen treats out of a refrigerated box that he laboriously peddled towards them, Bruce was already annoyed as the child began pulling on his pant leg.
“Dicky-Dee”, the boy said, excited, trying to get his father's attention.
Bruce asked his son to repeat himself as he checked for his wallet. Said he didn’t understand what he was saying as his fingers poked around hopelessly in his pants. Then started in on the pockets in his jacket.
“Dicky-Dee”, he said again and pointed. “Dicky-Dee!”
Bruce began to laugh. “Oh, you mean him. No, no, no. That’s a Dicky-Dee. Can you say Dicky-Dee?"
“Dicky-Dee. Dicky-Dee"
“Try again. Dickeeee-Deee. Not Dicky-Dee. Dickeeee-Deee"
“Dicky-Dee. Dicky-Dee. Dickeeee-Deee", the boy cried out one final time as the man on the bike briefly looked towards the two of them, not sure if he should stop. Then, when the father motioned for him to keep going, he continued peddling past them, huffing and puffing and sweating until he soon was far away.
“That's right, Dicky-Dee”, Bruce said, patting the child on the head. “But you’re gonna have to be quicker than that next time if you want to get any ice cream outta me”
He told him it was time they left the park, and as he led his son home, he didn’t speak another word to the boy. Only occasionally peeking over his shoulder to see if he was still somewhere back there, but mostly muttering to himself about how his wallet better be at home.
Then something about Sandra, and her crap brain, and how it was all her fault that everything in his life seemed to be getting so stupid.