Another short story chapter from a writing project. Leave critques please. That is why I do this blog. This was the first chapter I wrote for this project, it needs help.
“For it would surely be ridiculous to wish wine well; if one wishes anything for it, it is that it may keep, so that one may have it oneself.”
-Aristotle
021 Raisin Bran and Vanilla Yogurt
There is something restful about an old house. Something somnolent that exists in the space between raw tangibility and pure thought. In particular, something that doesn't occur in my apartment or in those newly built homes down by my parents house. What I mean by this poetic interpretation, is that old homes don’t need to pretend to be something that it is not. They are simply what they were built to be. KB homes and apartments try to emulate the coziness of historical dwellings.
Perhaps it’s the filtered light of photosynthesis with its incident angles of light bounding from one aged brick surface to another. It’s a soft, slightly leafy green light - at least to my indifferent color confused eyes - quietly flooding an old home on a sleepy sunday morning. Somnolent light for a somnolent morning.
A small coed collection of friends and I had stayed overnight in Dallas to participate in an event called the Warrior Dash. The dash really is a 5k race where participants clad in exaggerated costumes endure an obstacle course of moats, ropes, mud and flames. When muddied participants cross that finish line, clothing and viking headgear sopping, they are rewarded with beer and turkey legs. It’s really an all-American fixture of our society, if you didn’t know.
The group of eager warriors, a quintet including myself, spent the evening before the race with a friend of one of the warriors. It was her house, built in Highland Park during the roaring 20’s, that was being flooded with that leafy photosynthesized light.
We had drove in the night before the dash. Tired, I hadn’t slept more than three hours in the past thirty-six, I managed to be social and participate in conversations as they were born and as they died. However, by the end of the night, I had successfully took four naps in various locations in the Highland Park area while the group wined and dined on the eve of the dash. I awoke at critical points of the evening to add frivolous commentary on group discussions and activities.
“The answer is forty-two,”
“Okay...why forty-two, Jake?”
“It’s the ultimate answer to life, the universe and…everything.”
Yes, frivolous indeed.
After giggling ourselves to sleep as if we were thirteen, we drifted into a slumber on a couch bed and air mattress in the home’s living room. I don’t remember having a single thought on my mind as I laid there, just the overwhelming feeling of rest.
• • •
By morning, warrior Holly and warrior Katie’s air mattress deflated under their slumbering bodies to just half of its air capacity. This made it hard to see the girls at first glance from my difficult perspective over warrior Grayson’s thick body laying next to me. Since I am the smallest of the three guys of the group, I had to sleep in the middle. We were all submerged in a sea of rest, good as it could be.
Rest. I was long distant from that idea, that mindset, and that action.
The morning began with soft stirring, everyone wondering about with their personal waking duties and routines. Breakfast was lethargically being prepared as I jotted down some notes about the leafy light, or whatever color it really was.
Jameson quietly hovered over the window, scientifically observing a pair of acrobatic squirrels in a constant caper in the yard.
caper 1|ˈkāpər|
verb
skip or dance about in a lively or playful way: children were capering about the room.
noun
1 a playful skipping movement : she did a little caper.
2 informal an activity or escapade, typically one that is illicit or ridiculous.
• an amusing or far-fetched story, esp. one presented on film or stage : a cop caper about intergalactic drug dealers.
“That is a fat squirrel.” Warrior Jameson made his first observation. His reports continued, only to offer breaks in the silence. However, a soft hush was welcomed that morning.
Jameson aimlessly wanders away from the window. I replace him, standing motionless except for my shifting eyes. Observation: People socialize with their eyes, conversing with what’s caught in their line of sight.
I am avoiding the fat squirrel. I do not want to have a conversation with him on this early morning. He proves only to be a distraction from the glorious bounding light. My gaze is wanting to speak with the refracting light and the bricks that the light is incidentally bombarding. I assume the squirrel is a he because he is fat. Sitcoms like the Honeymooners and the Flintstones have scientifically proven that the male, in a healthy American marriage, is always the fat one. Sexist American media, I think to myself. And additionally, what kinds of colors does the plumb squirrel see?
By this time, I realize that the plump squirrel has, in fact, distracted me.
The music fits the mood. I started a Billie Holiday playlist on the iPod playing throughout the house. It started on “Crazy He Calls Me” and ended on “Them There Eyes” with “Sophisticated Lady” elegantly strutting her graceful self somewhere in between.
Breakfast wasn’t much more than orange juice, Raisin Bran, and vanilla yogurt. A feast for a college student like myself that has been keeping a strict diet of peanut butter and Ritz crackers every morning. This is not a complaint, mind you. I love peanut butter. Jameson once bought me a over-sized commercial container of PeterPan peanut butter as a gift. Look up peanut butter in the thesaurus and you’ll find ‘best gift’ and ‘you rocked my pants off for giving this as a gift’.
As the quintet ate, crunching flakes of corn loudly but acceptably, I couldn’t stop thinking about the awkwardness of the circumstance.
We fractured cast of individuals; one about to graduate, one moving for an internship, one still in school, one considering traveling for a job, and one who just doesn’t know. We were all together but separated, unable from ever being truly bounded together. We were eating Raisin Bran at the very same table, but we were all distinctly somewhere else. Distinctly not ‘the very same’.
When the future is unsettled, individuals withdrawal their commitment from one another. Commitment and community are coupled. They are engaged in a dance together, like a bride and bridegroom twirling on their wedding reception’s glossy dance floor. Betrothed together with promises to never forsake one another. Waltzing to Sinatra.
Blaeeck.
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Continued tomorrow in Part Two.
