I'm not sure exactly what has come over her.
She's wearing that blue, high-waisted dress she made herself over fifty years ago. No shoes. My tri-corner hat. Mum woke up early this morning to make blueberry pancakes, to find that Granny had gone pirate. She is hanging from the kitchen light, singing bawdy sailor songs from her youth, waving a yardstick like a cutlass.
I try to coax her down with the blueberries but she isn't having any of it.
"Surrender or Die!" she yells from the ceiling, pointing the yardstick menacingly at my face.
Obviously, the only rational way to fix the situation is to have a face-off. I run to my room and get my own sword. "All right, Gran!" I cry. "Let's get this settled! I win, you have to come down from there and have breakfast." We strike up a fierce tune of metal on wood, but for some reason, Granny's stick is doing better than my cheap Goodwill sword. What the heck? I mean, it's metal! It should be much more effective...
It turns out Granny is not actually holding a yardstick. Nor are we in the kitchen. A strong smell of salt air pours in when mum opens the window, followed by a huge gush of water. A wave knocks us over the bow and into the sea, and down, down we sink into deepening shades of grey-blue confusion...
Mum looks over at me in the growing haze and gurgles, "Whaaaat juuuusst haaaapeeenned?" I answer back, "Graaany muuust beee haaaviiing heeerrr seecooonnd chiiildhoood..." indeed, her dream-forces are strong enough to suck us both into her own imagined realm. With a force this strong in her old age, I wonder what her imagination must have been like when she was a child...
We emerge, coughing and spluttering, onto a bank of yellow grass.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Trashbag Attack!!
Laila and I are hanging out behind the music room after school, among the dumpsters.
Usually a peaceful spot to talk and hide from the wind. Kids don't bother us, teachers don't know we are there. The smell keeps most curious folk at bay. Today, however, is different. Two random and suspicious-looking hikers come walking by the school, spot us, and decide to have some fun by flashing their multipurpose switchblades at us and-- cliche as it may be-- ASKING FOR LUNCH MONEY. They think they are incredibly funny. Laila laughs too, a bit longer than should be possible with human lungs, making them uncomfortable. Then she and I turn simultaneously, and launch two trashbags from the dumpsters right onto their faces. We dash out behind, twist their wrists, take the knives, and force them to the ground, waiting for someone with a cell phone to some by, see us, and call the police.
Instead, MORE suspicious characters turn up in the parking lot. Friends of the hikers. Since we have nothing with which to tie up the two we are already holding, while Laila keeps them in a steel grip, I focus my mind on the dumpsters and bring them closer to us. I start to spin them around in a protective field, then open the tops and start flipping garbage out at random. A cry emerges from the melee. "We got one!" I shout.
After awhile I start feeling bad about the amount of garbage scattered around the school yards, so I slow the dumpsters and return them to their places. Littered around the parking lot in various stages of trash-induced hysteria are seven men. They all look like members of some sort of hiking-cult: specialized fanny packs and color-coded water bottles, tailored shorts and combat boots, tattoos of trees...
Curious as I am, we do not have time to find out more about them, as a teacher comes by, calls the local fire department, and the hikers are dragged away, their walking sticks confiscated.
We have to file a report saying why we attacked them...
I leave out the mention of garbage, since we managed to get most of it cleaned up before the law arrived.
Usually a peaceful spot to talk and hide from the wind. Kids don't bother us, teachers don't know we are there. The smell keeps most curious folk at bay. Today, however, is different. Two random and suspicious-looking hikers come walking by the school, spot us, and decide to have some fun by flashing their multipurpose switchblades at us and-- cliche as it may be-- ASKING FOR LUNCH MONEY. They think they are incredibly funny. Laila laughs too, a bit longer than should be possible with human lungs, making them uncomfortable. Then she and I turn simultaneously, and launch two trashbags from the dumpsters right onto their faces. We dash out behind, twist their wrists, take the knives, and force them to the ground, waiting for someone with a cell phone to some by, see us, and call the police.
Instead, MORE suspicious characters turn up in the parking lot. Friends of the hikers. Since we have nothing with which to tie up the two we are already holding, while Laila keeps them in a steel grip, I focus my mind on the dumpsters and bring them closer to us. I start to spin them around in a protective field, then open the tops and start flipping garbage out at random. A cry emerges from the melee. "We got one!" I shout.
After awhile I start feeling bad about the amount of garbage scattered around the school yards, so I slow the dumpsters and return them to their places. Littered around the parking lot in various stages of trash-induced hysteria are seven men. They all look like members of some sort of hiking-cult: specialized fanny packs and color-coded water bottles, tailored shorts and combat boots, tattoos of trees...
Curious as I am, we do not have time to find out more about them, as a teacher comes by, calls the local fire department, and the hikers are dragged away, their walking sticks confiscated.
We have to file a report saying why we attacked them...
I leave out the mention of garbage, since we managed to get most of it cleaned up before the law arrived.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Mind-Body Synthesis
Sometimes things don't always go as planned.
Sometimes your body doesn't follow your brain. In this particular case, I am going grocery shopping with Syca, and while she ogles over the avocados in the veggie aisle, I spiral through the air happily in an imitation of Cirque du Solei magesty, swooping down over the carts of the shoppers who by now are used to my unnecessary antics. It is my hometown, after all.
But then this guy dressed in black jumps out and starts pelting me with hula hoops. Delighted, I duck into them and start dancing with spirals moving at different speeds all over my body, grinning and showing off. The guy speaks into his radio: "Yep! She's one of the 61! Initiate phase two!" A guy from my AP Chemistry class, whom I'd always admired as a human being, comes up from the floor, and suddenly my mind is ejected into space as my body rushes forward and begins doing various unseemly things to him. Fuming, I yell at myself: "This is OBVIOUSLY a trap, you silly mound of flesh! Come back here before you get kidnapped!"
It doesn't hear me, of course, and a moment later, the boy (who is actually a robot facsimile of the original) stuns my body's neck, throws it over his shoulder, and descends through the trapdoor in the floor.
Great. Now I gotta rescue my body...but when I do, I'll be faced with the reintegration of its sensory memories. Not lookin' forward to this...
Sometimes your body doesn't follow your brain. In this particular case, I am going grocery shopping with Syca, and while she ogles over the avocados in the veggie aisle, I spiral through the air happily in an imitation of Cirque du Solei magesty, swooping down over the carts of the shoppers who by now are used to my unnecessary antics. It is my hometown, after all.
But then this guy dressed in black jumps out and starts pelting me with hula hoops. Delighted, I duck into them and start dancing with spirals moving at different speeds all over my body, grinning and showing off. The guy speaks into his radio: "Yep! She's one of the 61! Initiate phase two!" A guy from my AP Chemistry class, whom I'd always admired as a human being, comes up from the floor, and suddenly my mind is ejected into space as my body rushes forward and begins doing various unseemly things to him. Fuming, I yell at myself: "This is OBVIOUSLY a trap, you silly mound of flesh! Come back here before you get kidnapped!"
It doesn't hear me, of course, and a moment later, the boy (who is actually a robot facsimile of the original) stuns my body's neck, throws it over his shoulder, and descends through the trapdoor in the floor.
Great. Now I gotta rescue my body...but when I do, I'll be faced with the reintegration of its sensory memories. Not lookin' forward to this...
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