092908

facts writing fiction
the ending is a cop-out

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Everything has just been building up. It’s too much, too much. My mind is racing racing racing and there’s nothing I can do to slow down I’m past the end and I just keep running running running. It’s too built up, too too built up and I can’t sleep, no time for sleep, I can’t relax, there’s no time for that, and I just want to rest but there is just no. Time. To. Stop. I can’t stop.

The first thing on my endless to-do list. I don’t understand why I volunteer to be involved with everything, be a part of everything, help goddamn everyone. I have to make cookies for my mom’s friends tonight but there’s So. Much. Nonstop. Maybe if I get this first thing, this one thing, done maybe the rest will come together on its own and I can stop. Relax. Stop. Relax. Calm down. Stop. I could stop.

The oven clicks at three-fifty.

It feels like everything has come onto me at once. School sports work family friends school sports work friends school work work school family friends work school family. And that’s just the beginning.

Whisking the flour, baking soda, and salt together ensures even leavening. This means that the cookie will rise correctly, that it won’t be lumpy and misshapen. The flour is the base for the cookie’s construction.

Sometimes I don’t think I can even do it anymore. I don’t even get a chance to breathe, some nights. Every Tuesday. Thursday. Wednesday. Sunday. Saturday. Friday. I take one breath Monday night and delve into the week again, never stopping resting sleeping breaking.

Cream the softened butter with the sugars. The creaming, all that mashing and mixing with my trusty rubber spatula, causes the sugar crystals to form air pockets, to make a softer cookie. The fats stop the gluten in the flour from forming. The sugar will melt and spread out the cookie.

I sometimes wonder if there’s a way to stop the madness, the chaos, the disgusting calendar on the wall, drowning in red pen.

If the butter is too soft, if it’s a liquid, the cookies won’t come out right.

If the butter is too hard, the creaming process won’t work out well.

If I don’t have time to breathe, my mind won’t work out well.

If I don’t have time to think, my life won’t work out well.

Add the eggs to the fats and the sugars. The yolks work to emulsify the finished dough for even texture. The whites’ proteins coagulate and contribute to the cookie’s structure.

Structure. I’ve got too much structure. I need less flour in my life.

A dash of vanilla for flavor.

I need more flavor in my life. While it adds a pleasant vanilla taste, vanilla extract itself is ninety-some percent alcohol; it has a terribly foul flavor and doesn’t taste good on its own.

Fold one third of the flour mixture at a time into the sugar mixture. Folding keeps the air in the dough. The egg and the gluten further protect the air pockets, for a fluffier cookie. If you stir the dough too much, the pockets will burst and the dough will become tough. The finished cookie will expose the mistake.

Am I stirring my dough too much?

All my work will be for nothing.

Stir in the chocolate chips. American cookies need to be bursting with carbohydrates, cholesterol, high fructose corn syrup, and chocolaty morsels in every bite.

I need more time to enjoy those morsels, those chocolaty morsels. I don’t think my cookies are even made with love; there’s just no time for love. Flavor and love are not totally interchangeable.

Put the dough onto greased pans in teaspoon-sized balls. Bake for ten to twelve minutes.

Ten to twelve minutes to rest stop relax break. Break. Break. I can’t break. But I can stop. It’s possible to stop, because now there’s nothing to do to the cookies. For ten whole minutes. Ten to twelve long minutes to stop. I’ve stopped and nothing bad has happened. I’m just sitting here, I’m resting, and the walls aren’t crumbling around me. There’s a slim chance I’m beginning to relax, but my mind doesn’t know where to genuinely start when it comes to that. Resting, stopping they come first.

If I can’t breathe,

If I can’t think,

I’m not truly functioning.

Maybe I need to please myself before I try to make everyone else happy.

Maybe it’s not really up to me to make everyone else happy.

Maybe everyone else makes him or herself happy first and I don’t even realize it.

Maybe I should

Cut

Down.

Cool

Down.

Cool down.

Cool down.

Cool down.

The cookies are coming out of the oven.

They need to

Cool down.

I have to wait for them to cool before I can write them off. Declare them finished. It feels so unusual to have time to think relax stop.

Have I broken?

No, the cookies aren’t cool yet.

All my activities responsibilities, they’re not for me. They’re all for someone else.

Like these cookies.

I need to quit. This isn’t for me. It’s tearing me apart.

School work friends family sports.

I hate sports. My mom said I needed scholarships. My dad said he’d be proud.

Take one batch out, put another batch in.

My sister was such a good student. I don’t want to let anyone down.

The oven is still radiating heat.

I hate my job. My friends work and my parents always complained about how they started working when they were years younger than I was.

I can’t take the heat, but I can’t get out of the kitchen.

No.

I’m starting over. I’m getting out of the kitchen.

The cookies are wrapped and ready to go.

My priorities are wrapped up and ready to go. I’ve got new priorities, ones where my wants and needs and concerns are important, too. I will do things for myself now.

Less hours at an easier job.

I can sleep.

One sport that I actually enjoy.

I can breathe.

Spending time with my friends and family when I want to.

I can stop.

I can run and jump and play and relax.

No more shit I can’t take I can’t handle I can’t stand. First thing tomorrow, I’m dropping out of all the superfluous, exhausting activities that I’ve grown to hate. I’ll tie up any loose ends, finishing up my remaining commitments. After that, I’m through.

I quit.

I break.

I’m done.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

093008

when I was with the beardy redhead

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One two three four. Two two three four. Three two three four.

Your heart doesn’t skip a beat.

Your stomach is smooth and soft, thick with whatever food we ate for dinner. Sad I already forgot what it was. It’s not important.

I’ve felt the hair leading down down down hundreds of times before, but my hands never grow tired of it. It matches your bushy eyebrows, and not the fire on your head, or in your pants.

100208

I wrote this a little over two years ago, but I don't remember ever writing this.

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Her eyes bulged out of her head, like she was running on amphetamines.

I envied her.

Before tonight, I never took Carly for a drive, other than for her visits to the veterinarian. Though short, the car rides in the tacky, teal and lavender crate made her nervous. I understand her fear of the car, being enclosed in a small space with bars and few openings, crashing around with every bump in the road without warning. Arriving to a small, sterile room in a building, noisy with restless canines, where giants with cold hands remove your private bits; that’s a bit unsettling, too.

This time would be different. No rocky, plastic prison, no powder blue walls meeting wall-to-wall white tiles tonight. I want her to enjoy the ride and really see her surroundings.

Being a house cat doesn’t sound like much fun in the long run. You don’t really get out much. Make that “never.”

My baby deserves to see the world she lives in.

She was completely taken aback when the car started, lurching as I shifted into D, the car’s first movements in staccato from years of abuse from my older brother. Without front claws (a result of the antiseptic facility she had grown to dread), it’s her hind claws’ responsibility to keep her upright in the passenger seat. After a few minutes, she found herself struggling less to stay upright and began to explore the interior of her mechanical bull.

At night, the streets are transformed. What was once a little sidewalk alongside a sea of little shops and little houses inhabited by little people is now made bigger, bigger than life, aglow with the light of the towering street lamps dotting the roads. In the daytime, a tree may have been mistaken for something ordinary, but in the dark of the night, it is bestialized: the wind through the branches sways them violently, like the thin arms of some rare, angry demon.

I never really thought about it before, the complete awesomeness of the roads at night, even in my own neighborhood. It was something I experienced everyday, nothing of interest or anything worth a second glance, a second thought. Not anymore. But to Carly, this was all brand new, something she had not seen before. She was making a revolutionary journey through something she had never experienced, not in her eleven long years on the inside.

It’s been a while since I’ve sought out and experienced something completely new that captivated me in this way. Maybe I haven’t had time, or maybe I’m just not interested. I can’t even begin to imagine what Carly sees and feels and smells and tastes as she jumps around the inside of the car, anxiously taking in all she can from the passenger seat, passenger floor, back seat, floor mats, and under my feet, dangerously close to the pedals.

At one point, she stops to peer out the back window, wide-eyed and animated. What was my first car ride like? There’s no way that I could have been so aware, so keyed-in on my surroundings. I envied her then, in that her age gave her more insight, more understanding in what was going on around her.

I envied her for more than that. I can’t even remember the last time I felt so exhilarated with a new experience. When was the last time my eyes bulged out of my head like I was on amphetamines? I’ve grown up feeling accustomed to everything. Even when I was very young, and I was still doing things for the first time, I was too young to appreciate the moment. As we grow older, everything is done out of habit, something we learned to do back before we can remember. We can’t remember how we learned to do this or that or what it was like the first time we did … whatever. The human brain remembers things best when an emotional connection is made, and if we can’t remember, we must not have had an emotional experience that first time, and we’ve got no chance after that. If we weren’t emotionally stimulated when we were very young, is it just human nature to be unaffected by new things?

I’ll jump on the bandwagon and blame society.

We live in the MTV generation, completely jaded and immune to any genuine feelings relating to the real world, the world beyond our television and computer screens.

Carly has never been much for television. She can’t stand it if anyone in the family spends too much time in front of the computer, processing our seemingly-important businesses, when we could be showering her, a living, breathing being, with love and attention.

I was so completely captivated by Carly’s enthusiasm that I found myself having difficult keeping my eyes on the road. Suddenly, I became more aware of the interior of my car than I had ever before. The leather seats were light and smooth to the touch. The blue, pine tree-shaped air freshener, long since lost its “new car” smell, seemed to emanate its cool fragrance once more, not that it had ever actually smelled like “new car.” Even though I had just cleaned out the car a few weeks before, tattered leaves lay scattered across and under the floor mats once again and I made a mental note to vacuum again soon.

Carly’s zealous obsession for the city outside the lightly tinted windows influenced me to roll down her window a few inches. I stopped it at halfway; I wouldn’t want her to get too curious and jump out to explore more. I just can’t risk losing the one who’s always there for me, the one who really matters to me. I’m pathetic, but I love her. She’s my outlet for affection.

Getting close to home, I turned off onto our street and the bright lights of High Street faded behind us as I drove twenty-two to a stop sign. Carly, unprepared for the slow but sudden stop, pitched forward and fell to the front edge of her seat, looking obviously annoyed.

Just like that, the captivating feeling was gone. Her interest in the car ride disappeared just as quickly as it had come.

In an attempt to persuade myself that she could still enjoy life in a way I never again could, I took her for another ride two days later. Carly acted as if that magnificent evening had never happened, but not in the way I would have liked. She was on edge and panicky for the entirety of the short ride to and from the library. Carly has never been a lap cat, so it came as surprise to have her crouched on my thigh, clutching it as if her life depended on it. With every little bounce of the car, her sharp nails bit into me angrily, which only added to the frustration of turning, as her chunky body blocked my arms from the wheel.

I wish there was some way we could better emotionally invest ourselves in new events and encounters so that they become unforgettable. The night I drove the streets with my baby girl was beautiful, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that, like everything else in my life, I’ll never be able to go through with such excitement again.

What a let down.