hug_machine

When I was thirteen years old, I fell in love forever.

His name was Gerald, which is funny now but back then it seemed very sophisticated and demure for a thirteen year old boy, and I was far more concerned with being demure and sophisticated at thirteen than I am at twenty six. He was a sweet boy with eyes like the hue of freshly tilled soil and hair like all the winds over the harvest fields, it I may quote the relevant diary. Which seems to indicate that his eyes were dirt black and his hair was invisible and made your car all dusty. Um! Actually, he was a very nice farm boy with dark eyes and white-blond hair with a little streak of Kool-Aid dyed pink, because even nice farm boys have their rebellious sides.

Gerald drew pictures and looked at the stars. I did what Gerald did.

When he brought out his telescope, I oriented the star maps and waited my turn to look at the moon, which was really the only cool thing you could see from his cheapo scope anyway; the only thing his telescope did for the stars was let you see more tiny little white points of light. And tiny white points of light were nothing compared to the luminous silver-violet magic of the full moon.

When he drew, I drew with him, each in our own little notebooks (his had a picture of a skateboard with day-glo fractals on the cover, mine had a picture of a baby harp seal in outer space). He drew elaborate spaceships, laser cannons and aliens. I drew pictures of my cat, mostly.

One day, I passed my notebook to Gerald to show him my drawing of how my cat sometimes slept (on her back, with her paws flopped over her chest) because I thought it was really cute. He immediately started to page through my notebook, stopping for a few minutes when he got to a page that had words instead of pictures. He started laughing. I was kind of mad, but I didn't say anything. Then he said, "Cat, we should make a comic or something. You write and I draw." He didn't really say it like a question at all; he didn't really ask, but I didn't mind because of course I wanted to make a comic with the boy with hair like all the winds over the harvest fields.

So we did. It was something about time traveling killer whales and pirates teaming up to stop Christopher Columbus from discovering America. I don't know why they wanted to stop Christopher Columbus, it was never explained in the comic and I don't think either of us really knew.

When I was thirteen years old, I fell in love forever.

We broke up a few months later, and we barely acknowledged each other for the entire rest of our school years. He moved across the country to go to a college in Washington and I haven't talked to him since.

I still have the comic, but I haven't looked at it since we broke up.

I imagine it covered with ashes for a millennium. Archeologists will find it someday, dig it up like Pompeii and marvel at the tokens of that weird space between my girlhood and womanhood --Lisa Frank cosmetic bags and candy flavored Lip Smackers, Seventeen and Sassy magazines that I never really liked. Like earthenware pots or the remnants of an ancient irrigation system. Like a message from yesterday.

But when those archeologists come, and the anthropologists and historians behind them, I hope they don't forget. The girl with the room full of unicorn posters and an extensive scratch and sniff sticker collection didn't make that comic about killer whales and pirates.

She made it with the boy she fell in love with forever, who plastered his walls with posters of Cameros, Cindy Crawford and the solar system.

And she made it with the boy she fell in love with forever because she was too shy to say she thought she had a better idea --one that didn't have anything to do with stupid Christopher Columbus. And she was too shy to say she had a better idea because she'd learned to be a polite girl. And she'd learned to be a polite girl because that was how ladies behaved, day after day after century. Just as Gerald learned to love spaceships because his dad was an amateur science fiction writer and it was okay to like spaceships if you're a boy.

For better or worse, there is a comic in a box in my closet that I will probably never look at again.

For better or worse, I will love Gerald forever.

Because he, as every single person I've ever spoken with or commented to or emailed or even waved to on the street, are a part of me. Because I am not me, I am an inseparable whole of my experience, just as you are of yours.

Earthenware pots and silly comics are infinitely greater than the artifact you can hold in your hands. Should I ever dig up a Pompeii myself, I will try to remember that.



This post brought to you by therealljidol and the letters P and Q.

The Whine of the Phoenix

Let me tell you this: immortality ain't all it's cracked up to be. Trust me. I'd trade a few thousand years and a couple of ancient scarabs that'd make the director of Smithsonian wet their knickers just for a few days with opposable thumbs.

Take the lock on my cage for example. A half-witted baby chimpanzee could figure it out. Turn the latch like so just a hair to the left, then twist that doohicky to the right, slide open the thingabob, and bam. Freedom, baby!

But no. Ra, in all of his infinite, heliotropic wisdom, figured I wouldn't need a way to finagle my way out of a hole-in-the-wall, not-particularly-legal exotic pet shop. So I'm stuck here with a bunch of twittering cockatiels until another cooing old lady pokes her finger at me and says "I think I saw this one on Wild Kingdom."

Sure lady. You saw me on a television show. Me, the legendary avian symbol of eternal rebirth. In fact, I bet you saw me burst into flames right next to a hyena's den.

"Say, what's the lifespan of this breed?"

I've been pooping on newspapers since before you were born, darling. I've seen the assassinations of Archdukes and the great stock market crash all from under my tailfeathers. I've outlived half a dozen of you grannies.

"What a lovely birdy."

Sure, I could incinerate my current incarnation and be born anew in the ancient City of the Sun, but do you know what a headache inter-dimensional and pan-chronistic travel is these days? If someone sees you, you're liable to be hunted down by loonies and stalkers. Look at poor Yeti.

Or worse, I could be trapped by a bunch of scholars who have nothing better to do than to poke at me all day and fill up thousands of detailed scrolls on my behavior and physiology. Took centuries to live down, last time that happened. Good riddance, Library of Alexandria!

Sure, they sell the immortality thing pretty hard around here. Be a good person, live forever. But trust me, it gets old. Real old. In fact, you're practically the only being that doesn't get old. But at least the food's decent. Spray millet beats sacrificed Sphinx meat any day. And after a few millennia of adventuring with mythological heroes, it's kinda nice to just perch on a rod and peck at your own reflection for a while.

In fact, forget I ever said anything. It's cool. I'm just a pretty bird from South America, Africa or thereabouts.

Take me home and call me Polly. They'll even throw in a free bag of seed.

Like most of my posts these days, this is brought to you by therealljidol! >>;

The first thing you learn when you move to the midwest is how to drive in the winter. The roads get bad there, they tell you. Slick as an ice rink on a rainy day. There'll come a time when you need to get through it. To make that appointment, to get to work, to drop the kids off. They don't close the schools here too often.

So you learn where to buy your snow tires and you learn to change gears. You learn to carry cat litter in your car, to sprinkle under the tires when your car won't budge. And against all your better judgement, you learn to turn into the slide. Let it take you. If you try to fight it, a simple skid will put you into a spin-out. Land in the ditch, or worse. Remember the rules. And never, ever panic.

This winter's a real killer, they say. The plows can't keep up. It all just blows back onto the highway. Just moved here this summer? There's some ugly luck. Don't worry, though. The first one's always the worst one.

When they finally close the roads, you live in a glass-domed snow globe. A cute little village house nestled in drifts of frost-capped pines. The swirl of plastic snow bits, sloshed about by an angry god or maybe just a slightly bored child. Nobody's getting out for a while.

You turn on your porch lamp and the string of Christmas lights you've still not taken down. They blush like halos in the white-out conditions, the only lights for miles. You can't go anywhere. There's no cars on the roads. Only snow and the deer with their nervous, graceful step.

The only channels you can get show reruns and old movies. Clint Eastwood on one channel, earthquakes and wildfires and tsunamis on the other. Eventually, even the phone goes out. You could be the last somebody on earth. And, as far as being the last member of a dying species is concerned, this is absolutely dead boring.

You remember something you heard once, about how the earth is like the baby bear's porridge in Goldilocks: not too hot, not too cold. Just right. For life, for humans, for art and science and knowledge and breath. A tiniest click of the thermostat either way will send us all into peril. Earthquakes, wildfires, tsunamis.

"Some say the world will end in ice."

You look out the frozen windows of your snow-globe home and remember the punch-line to the joke.

"But nobody told me it would be this week."




(My fantabulous partner for this week was pixie117. You can read her post right here! And since this is a current events topic, well..XD. I live in the frozen north. This week has been in the negatives and single digits most of the week. And they really do close the roads if it gets too bad! See this article for proof!)

Note: This is a 12 panel comic, please scroll to the bottom for a panel by panel visual description! Thankie! *smile*

( free day!! )

I thought I'd try something a little different this time. Lotsa pictures, but there's a visual description at the bottom, too!


( the realer world )

Thanks or mebbe apologies go to a softer world, where I blatantly stole borrowed the beautiful format. And to Family Old Photos where I got most of the photos. Nope, the pictures aren't me, so that's even bearing false witness too, right? XD

Plus the photos are mostly from the 'unidentified' category...so if you see somebody you recognize, lemme know, I guess? X3

Last but not ever least, this entry is brought to you by therealljidol, which is filled with much awesomesauce and cream filling.