Feathered Heart

The sun felt warm on her back, and the scent of her coffee-soaked seat (the Styrofoam cup lay wedged in the plastic pocket attached to the interior of the car door) wafted gently up to her nose. It wasn't long before she found herself in between the valley of wake and sleep. The scent of coffee swirled in front of her in blackened specks and swirls. The cheer for a home-run ran its way from the radio, into her head, and back again, and again.

The velocity of the car picked up, faster and faster. She could hear the speed. Feel the gentle hammock-like swinging of her body in the car seat. Feel the cramp in her neck, from resting her head on the window for hours.  

She ignored the pain and began to dream. Of the hazy gradient of the polluted sky, and the creamsicle fragrance of ponderosa trees. And of many warped realities. And of the unrequited adulation that she craved (as many teenage girls do) when they pass by shopping mall mirrors. 

And finally, of a feathered heart composed of lime parrotlets. Each parrotlet un-individuated and undetectable to her eye, but soft and sweet on her tongue. She plucked them off in the palm of her hand, one by one, until the heart shape disintegrated into a single parrotlet. Curled up and still in her hand. Content under the fluorescent lighting of the grocery store. 

Until it unfurled and looked up at the girl, with its sharp, loving eyes. Cocking its head, it made many other movements, and then purred. Its beak was smooth and shiny, like the exoskeleton of a stag beetle.

"I can't eat you," she said, depressed. For she thought that she'd have one more snack. "You're real."

"Love me," sang the parrotlet. "Love me. Love me. Love me.

Love me."

Ancient Alien

Art. Gilled bodies. Gray literature. Caricatures of a girl, the smell of wet paint, and the oily slick of long, black hair. These were the things my husband coveted. Dreamed about, talked about and masturbated over. The first night I witnessed his foreign consummation had happened purely on accident - happenstance. It was a Tuesday. The thermostat was set to 73 degrees. I was on my way up to the attic, a half-rolled joint tucked neatly in between my fingers.

I liked to smoke in the attic on weeknights. It quieted my sobering insomnia, and it made me feel, admittedly, a little cool. Like I was sneaking in smoke breaks again behind the barn at my work-college, and not a forty-three year old woman who worked two shifts a week at 7-11. Smoking pot cured my boredom and, like I said, it cured my insomnia. My husband and I both suffered from it. Mine was spurned from reasons existential, and his stemmed from a chemical imbalance. I know this because my husband sees things that other people don't. I say this because I question my reality in a way that is conventionally acceptable.

My husband Ben's diagnosis. Psychosis. A severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality. My response to his disorder was sympathetic but naive, due to my grief and denial. "What is reality, anyway?" I laughed nervously, as I gripped the scratched edges of my plastic seat in the psychiatrist's office. Dr. Kwan looked down at his papers, and then looked up and a little past me. Dead serious. "This disorder has a poor prognosis," he said. Tight-lipped. Dry mouthed. Professionally empathetic. "We can start him on Abilify. It's an anti-psychotic, and it may help."

"I'm sorry," he said, as he wrote Ben a prescription, and I fought back tears.

But Ben doesn't take his prescription. He says that he does but I know that he doesn't because he's an idiot who leaves his unopened pills in the desk drawers of his study. And in the medicine cabinet. And in the glove compartment of our car. And he tells me that he doesn't see it anymore. It."You worry too much. I love you," he protests.

And I know that's not true because I see it. I see it. I see it, I see it, I see it and I see her, crawling over him with her long black hair and deep black eyes and perfect breasts. I watch them for hours from the doorway of the attic, horrified and mesmerized, like I'm watching a documentary about murder-suicide. And by the time I come down from my high, she's gone and he's asleep. Sprawled out on the floor, his glasses folded perfectly besides him. The next morning, another painting done, another article printed. About life on other planets and living-dead beings and the bacteria discovered on Mars. And the only questions that ring in my mind in the afterglow of my high are these. From whose womb was she birthed? From where does she come from? Is it his workplace, or another star?

100% Pure Honey Bear

Honeycomb got no clap back. It doesn't stink, it doesn't swim, it doesn't Sodder. It leaves the mouth running juicy and dry, and the bees wax sticks to your ears and gum.

Find honey comb in nature or over a loud speaker. Sometimes it gets on the floor and makes pine needles and napkins stick together. Or you can find it in a bathroom, running out of a paper towel dispenser. Put some in your purse and keep some in your car. You never know when you'll need to blow your tears and snot into some honey, honey.

Find honey at your high school reunion and local expensive city. Marvel at the buildings and see how their shadows formulate into patterns of black and gray honeycomb. Watch for lines in the podium and seek the sweetness in the man who speaks. Lying in your bedroom, promising honey.

On pain and sobriety

I am the kind of person who is apt to appreciate the most base parts of life. Often, the only things needed to make my day are a nice cup of tea, some beautiful flowers, and some quality time alone or with my loved ones in the sunshine. Other times, however, I can get into a funk where I look at the world around me and think, "is that all there is?" (is that all there is? If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing...)

I now understand that those thoughts come from a well of sensory overload and material indulgence. It's hard to be grateful for things you've never been denied access to. I think of prisoners in solitary confinement who spend years without shampoo or a magazine to read, and try to imagine what it would be like -- to look at such a colorful collage of words and images after looking at nothing but gray cell walls and your own hands and feet for far too long.

So in order to keep appreciating the smaller pleasures in life, I must practice restraint. Chasity. I do this almost automatically through my work as a forester. I come to the woods to harness my animus in my animal state. I eat plain meals and defecate in dirt holes. I banish my cell phone to the front pocket of my backpack to read and write and meditate and hike. Sometimes I stare at my tent wall and (try) to think of nothing.

Inevitably, the cravings come. For food, beer, white wine and rum. Good company. The sweet scent of a cherry clove cigarette. A hug and a kiss from the one I love. On day four [of work], a hot shower. A warm bed. Menial electronic entertainment (Instagram, The Kardashians, and the like...)

Other times, the cravings don't come at all, because I feel energized and totally immersed in my work. I find my flow, and like the great, white river it thrashes and roars with powerful, creative energy. On these hitches, I almost feel disappointed when the weekend comes. Can't I stay in the woods, drinking in the clean, sweet air, and the crisp, cold mountain water? Must I face jaded people in crowded grocery stores, stand under harsh fluorescent lighting, and be nauseated by the putrid scent of chemical perfumes? (yes, yes I do...)

As a teenager, I would hurt myself in order to feel something. I think I also did so in order to prove to myself that I was alive. The very act of self-harming was an overindulgence into the wild, hungry animal creature that lives in the pit of my stomach -- a toxic version of my starved animus, who was the shadow of who he was, before I honored him and made the necessary sacrifices to set him free.

But although I haven't cut myself in years, the inner urge to carry out masochistic practices has not evaded me. I channel it now through the pain of ten mile uphill hikes, rock climbing, and hours upon hours of strength training. And eating spicy foods, and getting Brazilian waxes, tattoos and piercings.

I know a boy who harvested stinging nettle until his bare hands were shaking. And as he told me how he did so, he smiled up until he leaned in to kiss me.

Fissure

It’s easy to find cock in West Virginia, Reno thought. In the summer, at least—when the telephone poles dressed themselves in kudzu, and the smell of chicken shit permeated the air. Now it was winter and he and Cindy were stripping the last of their farmed flock of their feathers and skin.

This winter they had resorted to hunting geese, for the quality and quantity of the meat as well as the rewards it reaped far surpassed anything he and Cindy had ever eaten, slept on, or had been able to buy. The bounty of this year’s harvest had been reaped of its reward, and was going towards Reno’s missing metal legs.

As of now, he stood on two, perpendicular metal chopsticks that were as elegant and useless as a pair of stilettos, and which sunk into the earth with the thawing of the spring snow.

1.

The lake that surrounded Reno and Cindy’s farm was of much curiosity to the couple and to their surrounding neighbors. It was only a few minutes walk from the most outwardly placed geese coop from their home, and the trail that led to it was surrounded by old barbed wire fences that were leftover from a naval base that had previously occupied the land. During the summers, the lake emanated a placid green, and in the harshest winters, it froze over and transformed into an ice-skating rink.

Reno liked to tell the story of a wild man who had claimed the rink for his own on a heavy, black motorcycle and two handles of gin. It was the kind of story that had been passed down through at least two generations and that kept tourists coming through these dying, American towns. No one knew if the story was true or not, or if the wild man was real. If the story was true, and the wild man really had existed as a fleshly being, he had lost his way in a drunken stupor and had blinded himself to the truth of his frigid circumstances. If the story was false, well then that, Reno thought, was a damn sorry shame.

And so when Reno thought of the wild man, he also felt the weight of his metal legs--and his work grew sloppy. The mundanity of his work brought forth a lot of time to think and play inside of his head. With a shovel in hand and his music player set on shuffle, he was set to dig at the earth and think, and occasionally focus his gaze on a shiny, iridescent light that shimmered from across the lake at sunset.

“You ever wonder what the source of that light glint could be?” Reno threw the question at his wife while scraping the stubble off of his chin with a wet razor. Cindy was using a dry comb to brush out the kinks in her long, curly hair.

“I’m thinking it’s just a lighthouse, or maybe sunlight reflecting off a window. You know, window glint.”

“I’m thinking it’s something else, something more special than that”, said Reno. “It’s prettier than just window glint.” He tapped the dried hairs off of his razor, ran the sharp metal under the sink.

“Nah, nothin’ but window glint.” Cindy yanked the split ends from between her fingers and threw them in the trash. “Or reflections of trucks and boats and cop cars. Your pick.”

Reno shrugged and wiped off the hair with a towel that was sticky with lint. Cindy took her clothes off. Reno took off his shirt, and they both climbed into bed. Reno draped his arms over her breasts. He brushed his fingers over her nipples. They were cold and goose-pimpled. Cindy allowed for his hands to wander, but Reno chose not to make any advances. He kept quiet, and thought more about the wild man.

Cindy sighed. “Geese need feedin’ early tomorrow. I’m goin’ to sleep.” And then she turned over, wiggled out of her brassiere and slept.

But sleep didn’t come to Reno until much later. In the early hours of the morning, he dreamt of ice and blood and a pair of broken crampons. Looking into the bathroom mirror before breakfast, he saw that his eyes were nearly bloodshot.

2.

Reno got to work, shoveling goose down feathers and sorting them into their respected burlap bags. The work grew hot and heavy, so he took off his flannel shirt and scratched at his beard. On break he took the time to watch the geese, whose migrating patterns thickened their V’s as the weather droned on into winter.

A month passed like this, and then another one, as Reno and Cindy laughed and labored over their homestead. The fall season passed, and the months blended one into one. There was Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas, with the proper amount of booze and festivities alloted for each. On New Years Eve, Reno watched as his niece picked up a piece of brown sea glass on the shoreline of the frozen lake. She smiled as she held it up to her eye and looked at the light which had ensnared Reno’s imagination. She looked through it, then beyond it, and then threw it back onto the lake (“whip-smart girl”, he thought).



3.

Reno laid in bed, his arms folded under him and his ears muffled by a layer of blankets. Somewhere in the house, there was a repetitive clanging that was giving him a headache. He pushed off the covers, shivered off the cold. He felt for the empty space beside him. Cindy had gone off to Georgia -- said the winter was giving her heartache and making her feel blue.

The clanging grew louder still. It called him out of bed and gave him a calling for the task he felt moved to fulfill.

4.

Reno pushed himself against his bed frame to hoist himself up, felt the metal of the prosthetics dig into his groin. The pain only made him feel more excited, more in love with the lake and the legend of the wild man. He forgoed the fabled gin on his way out. He wanted to experience the great wide world while he was sober.

Reno pulled on his down jacket, found the source of the clanging (it was an open window) and locked it shut. He marched his way through the snow and took the trail that led to the lake -- it was still frozen over.

The air around him was near-silent and muffled, save for the quiet squawking of the geese from the farm. Reno looked at the frozen waters, and without any hesitation -- he stepped onto the ice, slowly at first, nervous that it would give way -- and then took a few more steps, when he felt that the ice was steadier than the earth -- and to his surprise, the ice neither fissured nor complained!

Ahead, there was nothing but ice to cover and the faint, crocodile tooth zig-zag of the Shenandoahs, which he could barely make out underneath the blankness of the sky and the highlight of white horizon. Step by step, he sank his way into the lake ice, looking for a hint of a glimmer.  He saw none until the sunset. And by that time, he had lost sight of the shoreline.

But that didn’t matter. The light held him -- starstruck. He basked in its warmth as the sun withdrew its own. He basked in its warmth long after the northern star outshone it.

Lana

Working service stations are not always occupied. It is the dim-glow, shut-eye streetlight that stands guard through the night, highlighting the panicked nuances of roadside life: the curled lip, the clenched fist, the cocked gun. People come here on their own, sometimes. Lone occupants heed CAUTION at yellow sunrise, frost-breath and coffee breath fog-breathing the windows, dial switching with frost-fingers to melt the ice. They stop here to piss and to watch the heat rise. They are labeled cow-less and childless, and by most—wayfaring American blights. Others move in hoards, spirited and herd-like. They marvel at curdled clouds in stormy skies, and the river that runs red to their sides is an encouraging sight, a brave, American sight. These star-seeing tourists demand Lana’s time, speaking in tongues tinged with o’s and a’s and I’s. They remind her of her waning mind, of all of the dusty dollars she stored away in hopes of leaving to thrive. She reminds herself that these folks are the real dangerous kind—that these occupants carry no gun but awe, awe in what she hardly considers the sublime: the stagnant sagebrush, the desert dirt, the white icicles of lime. They huddle in circles, nagging and sneezing, warming themselves up in her space heater’s shine. But working service stations are not always occupied. She takes a break from the cash register and trudges outside, to mull at vehicle-streaks of red, yellow and light.

The Guldok

Seoul, Korea. My maternal grandfather, whose eyes mimicked the blackness and shine of stag beetles, would light a cigarette and take my brother and I out of the apartment complex he lived in. We'd walk, hand in hand in hand, into the shadowy streets of his neighborhood, where the streetlights flickered yellow, and stray cats creeped, and stopped to look at any roadway tunnel or storm drain that came across our way. "That," my grandfather would say, while taking a drag of his cigarette, "is where the guldok lives".

And because my grandfather never exactly explained what a guldok was, my brother and I would clasp our tiny hands together and shiver in pleasant fright. I imagined the guldok to be a large, worm-like creature, with beady, nocturnal eyes and a taste for small children. I especially mulled over its supposed existence on hot summer nights, while pressing myself against the cool linoleum of my bedroom floor, wondering if the guldok was making its way underground, and if it was waiting for the cool monsoon season with equal fervor.

There were other monsters, too (and unlike the guldok, these were established as urban legends and are survived mainly through preteen girls' slumber parties). Like stretched mouth*, the demon with a grotesquely wide smile. Legend has it: a few years ago, an agashi (young woman) asked a plastic surgeon to shrink her lips. While the doctor was performing the surgery, he became distracted and accidentally cut too far along the sides of her face. The doctor watched frantically as the young woman began to bleed to death, and in his panic, he haphazardly stitched up her face in order to save her.

But it was too late. The agashi passed away with a hideously stitched "smile" on her face. Nowadays, her corpse is said to stagger along the streets of Seoul at night. If you were to encounter her, she is said to ask, "do you think I'm pretty?" If you say "no," she'll devour you alive. If you say "yes," she'll widen her smile and ask, "how about now?" And if you dare reply "yes" again, she'll rip your mouth open with a knife to make it look just like hers.

And then there's Scissors**, an evil ghost who is said to stand on and take the breath of an unlucky person who chooses to sleep in the middle of a row of people. In order to prevent such an attack, one must sleep with a pair of steel scissors underneath their pillow. I know of one grown Korean woman who religiously follows this auspicious method, and proudly claims to have never been visited by Scissors, to this day.


* Originally Kuchisake-onna, a popular urban legend in Japan. The version of the story that I am retelling is the way my Korean friends would narrate it.

** I'm fairly certain that Scissors is an urban legend that is perpetuated by those who suffer from sleep paralysis.