A possible response to Mr. Redman's Sore Eyes

It’s a sunny day for Dublin, and I think everyone knows it.  It’s the sort of day that is great for biking; a mix of warm sun and cool breeze as you whip past the parked cars.  I’ve got a smirk on my face, I don’t really care.  There are cars parked on my left and cars cruising past on my right.  I’m left alone in my narrow corridor between the two, smirking like an idiot, enjoying the mix of warm and cool.

I should focus on my presentation.  Mike and Tim were talking about some ‘cans in the park’ as we were leaving the module seminar.  I lingered beside them, idly touching the couch in the hallway, wondering if I’d be invited.  I have to work on my presentation anyways.  It’s worth 30%, I would like to do well.  I’ll have plenty of time to drink beer in the sun later, once I’m finished.  Besides, I should also call my Mom.

I stop at a red light.  Another cyclist pulls up behind me.  I am perched with one foot on a pedal, the other on the sidewalk; one foot beside a driver with her window down, the other beside an elderly man in a coat waiting to cross.  Behind me is the cyclist, in front are cars, driving by.  I watch the face, the face, the face, as each car slides past.  Happy, angry, singing, they continue on and I continue to watch.  It seems people are so predictable, so easy to read.  Sure I don’t know their names or birthdays or favourite cars or minor things like that, but so much that is essential to a person is sitting right there, in the face, for all to see.

The light is green and I’m back to pedalling and the smirk is back on my face.  It’s fun, trying to stay within the invisible corridor between parked and moving cars.  I feel like I’m playing some sort of game, some sort of sport.  There are plenty of other cyclists around also playing, and I’m sure that even the passing cars are playing their own version of the game, trying to not hit me or the cars in the lane of oncoming traffic.  Ha, I guess we’re all having fun today.  I try to see who else is smirking.

I get home, but I can’t concentrate tonight.  I decide to go for a walk.  Temple Bar is pretty close and there are always so many people, I decide to check it out.  I’m suddenly in a crowd of people, all walking somewhere different.  I’ve forgotten Mike and Tim, well no I guess I haven’t, but it certainly doesn’t bother me anymore.  I’m feeling pretty good, just walking around within this crowd.  I’m not thinking about much, just walking.  It’s kinda cool living in a big city, never being far from a large crowd of people.  I’m surrounded by faces, by voices and bodies, and now that’s all I am too.  No one is thinking of what makes them unique here, what makes them special, and therefore vulnerable – we are our common elements.  I’m a stranger within strangers and I feel invincible. 

I go home; I need to call my Mom.  I sometimes wonder if she’s the only one I know, her and Dad.  I want to know how he is.  She’s crying when I call, I think I start crying as well.  It’s terminal; I tell her I’ll call her back.  I want to call a friend, but I don’t know who.  It can’t be a guy, or at least not a straight one, that wouldn’t work.  But who?  I imagine the call, maybe to Sara or Jenna.  I tell them what has happened, the past 3 months of phone calls with my Mom and sometimes, when I’m lucky, to him in the hospital.  How bullshit the whole thing is, how I wish I hadn’t left for Dublin.  But I can’t.  I don’t want to involve them, I don’t want anyone to know.  As soon as they do I become a victim.  And I certainly can’t talk to my Mom right now.  I’m crying, so I shower.

I find myself back in Temple Bar.  The strangers, they’re all so nice to me.  No one bothers me, but I’m not sure - it’s not the same.  I look around; I seem to be the only one alone in the crowd.  Everyone else is a man and a woman, or a woman with her friend, or a child with his parents.  Of course, everyone has family, friends – unique histories.  They are all here doing something, living, breathing, thinking thoughts behind their faces.

All these people remind me of when Dad and I used to walk in Ottawa’s Chinatown.  But that will never happen again, it’s out of our reach forever.  I realize no one else here is probably thinking thoughts like I am.  How could they be - everyone is so happy.  I walk, it’s cold and I put my hood up.  I look into a restaurant, first at the people and then at my reflection in the glass.  I can see myself in all of them, the me of Chinatown.  They’re all so fucking happy.  When I turn to my own reflection, I see, even in the faint image, that I’m crying.  Someone bumps into me, talking to the man beside them; they don’t even notice I exist.  I should go home, but I can’t.  I don’t want to be alone, so I sit down, gazing at the legs as they pass by.

Written by Ben Bousada

Sore Eyes

By the author: "Loneliness-in-a-crowd.  Depression-at-the-beach.  These are very real scenarios to many of us, but we struggle with the “why” of it all.  Why are we sadder and more isolated when we’re surrounded by happy vibrant people?   How do the sights and sounds of families enjoying life affect others who are coping with loneliness and loss?  My 1100-word story, “Sore Eyes”, does not attempt to solve this psychological riddle, but merely to put a face and a voice to loneliness – the kind of loneliness that often comes from personal or family illness, and the devastating loss of normalcy entailed thereby.  Las Vegas is a perfect setting for dramatizing the contrasts that make loneliness such a palpable thing."

It was he tip-toeing on tiles that felt wet, gray.  In the men’s room mirror a dripping steamy blur.  That’s all he was.  He blinked to blink away the chlorine burn.  If only he could blink back something good: like his  erstwhile hairline.  The lonely remnants of which were plastered, left-right.  By his last plunge.

It was he walking out.  The sun still did its nosedive at him.  Pop music stung him with high decibel force.  The former had beckoned him poolside, hadn’t it.  Book in hand.  The latter had rudely spoiled his reading.  He sat on the white aluminum and vinyl lounge chair where his jogging shoes, t-shirt, sunglasses and Steinbeck had pined for his return. 

The chair was long enough, against his back the plastic straps pliable enough.  The shade was tolerable.  He could look up, and did.  At two monoliths.  Only picturing them at night.  Outlined in blue neon.  When the desert is just starting its cool-down.  When each little tinted room chooses whether to be a soft yellow haven or a black mystery. 

He a Vegas vanguard?  A casinophile?  Not in this card deck, partner.  But.  Those glassy rectangles rising above the pounding madness.  Like rival stairways to heaven.  They get him meditating on things.  Like people, and how their lives go.

Go, you see, into little rooms.  Into a corner.  To live life in.  And be safe.  Which contradicts itself.  Life is never safe.  It’s a good bet there are regrets and fears stuffed into every last room up there, like junk mail into a wall of P.O. boxes.

“Can I gettu any-tin to drink?” 

A small gold cross dangled over his unprepared bluish eyes.  He turned them upwards toward two pools of melted copper.  He did not let them stray.  Even though something peripheral told him that a smooth arcing brownness was inches away, and little gauzy loincloths not very much farther.

His mouth smiled, not his eyes, as he said no thank you, and speculated what a nice Filipino girl like her was doing in a place like this.

What he felt, actually, was that his chest was ready to cave in.  He only stared out over the sprawling pool.  And tried to keep his thoughts afloat.  A tattoo-covered body builder was wrapping his little girl in a plush hotel towel.  He sat her on a lounge chair, with her Barbie doll and Little Mermaid sunglasses.  Two other guys, maybe his buddies, were playing at tossing ice cubes into a plastic cup.  The cup still had its wedge of lime in place.

A tall deep-tanned blond stood up.  She was alone, and he wondered.  She pulled a Kobe Bryant jersey over her bikini and walked away.  She walked all the way out of the pool area, dropping her towel in the big hamper.

A guy suddenly burst out of the four-foot water, gasping for breath.  He choked with laughter.  “Barry White!” he yelled.  Another guy wading nearby thudded himself in the head with the heel of his hand.  “Barry White, that’s it!  Thanks, Dude!  That would have bothered me all day.”

For some reason, this didn’t connect with his funny bone.  Or any bone.  He just let out a soft snort.  And tugged at some vague mental thread so thin that it broke.  His mind couldn’t backtrack to where it had been.  But he did not belong in this place.

Until a fresh voice poured upon him.  And said, with decisive energy, “Hi.  Would you mind if I borrow part of your shade?”

“No.  Help yourself.”

She dragged a lounge chair out of the sun and alongside his.  “Can you believe they charge fifty dollars for a half day for a cabana?”  She looked too young to have any interest in such things.

“Charging for shade.  Only in Las Vegas.”

“And what if it turns cloudy?  Do you get your money back?”

This ray of satire warmed him.  “Good question,” he replied, with crumpled brow.  “They should at least prorate you for partly cloudy.”

“Ha.  I agree.”

He had not expected to be so near anyone as to smell sweet coconut.  He took some extra breaths in.

“How’s the water?” she asked.  Eyeing him.

“Oh – ”  For some reason he had to look down at his bony legs for an answer.  “A little cold at first but, you’ll get used to it.”  His mind was drowning in cornmeal mush. 

Nodding, lightly tossing off her flip-flops and throwing down a copy of Sparknotes: Hamlet, she sat back.  He saw her adjusting her shiny white shoulders.  He saw her eyes flutter closed.  Her mouth turn peaceful.  Then his own eyes shifted and went limp.

Two pocket-sized gray and black birdies hopped about.  In purple bougainvillea.  Which scaled the stone wall above her head.  The desert wind had picked up.  The lanky palm trees around the pool all got weak-kneed and wavered.  Watercolor clouds streaked the northwest horizon.  Over beige foothills.

A hissing sound nearby.  Distracted him.  A dripping, shivering teenager.  Spraying his younger brother with sunblock.  Not caring about the fumes.  Which blew at a young couple, eating burgers and fries.  Who were equally oblivious.

“Mike – ” sailed a voice from behind.  More familiar than the wind. 

“Hi -”  Her voice was a splash of cool water, and he blinked.  Something dank and heavy lifted off his chest.  It evaporated.  He sat up straight. 

“Do you want to stay longer?”

“No,” he waved off the idea.  “I’m ready to go.”

“I wanted it so much to play one of those penny machines, you know, but they were all taken and the people wouldn’t get up.  They were really winning and they were such fun machines –“

“Lots of bells and whistles, huh?”  It was he standing up and seeing her.  Putting on his shoes.  Sensing the caress of a mirage that doesn’t blur.  Or fade away.

“Yah, and tonight I really want to go early and get one of those machines.”

“OK, my darling.”  The wry look on his face was surrogate for an underlying peace.  “So if it’s midnight and I haven’t seen you for five hours, I’ll know that you’re winning millions of dollars on the penny machines.”

“Yah,” she cooed with a little girl voice, and gave him a soft hug.  He curved one arm around her in a gentle hold, careful not to press the scar tissue that once had been her breasts.  He was whole again.

Written by Chuck Redman

Untitled

We have polka dot skin: parasols vainly stop sunspots from blooming on plastic dolls. Life feeds on death and vice versa. Through apple husk halls do the parasites crawl, while we tear down their walls with our teeth. And biochemical mechanics convert them to cancer.

written by Andrew Brobyn

A Life of Dreams

I had a dream. I was walking through open fields, sunshine and flowers colouring rounded hills. The total sum of life at this point equalled balanced perfection.

The open fields slowly gave way to bigger hills, shrubs, ever thicker trees with hanging vines and hidden thorns that scratched and opened cuts for a host of flying and crawling insects to feed on blood.

I thought I saw a shadow following me. It was difficult to see through the undergrowth and leaves what it was. I sensed it getting closer and growing more hostile the closer it got. There were now several and all were gaining on me. They were tireless in their concentrated pursuit.

I tried to move faster through this jungle to get away. The faster I moved the more cuts and bruises I caused myself. The faster I moved the more effort it took. I realized how exhausted I had become.

I must have fallen back into a deep sleep. I don’t know for how long for there was no time. There was no light and no sound. Is the perfect void nothing? If so, then can there be a perfect void?

I re-awakened from the deep darkness to find myself in a pool of warm water. It took a few seconds to figure out that the up must be where there was a bright light. My lungs were about to explode when I was pushed out and reached the surface. Clearing the mineral rich salty fluid from my eyes, I find I am back surrounded by similar flowering rolling hills where I started. Funny I had never noticed this pool before.

Written by Wellness Committee

Sickness

My mind, my sight, who am i?

my dreams my life, who am i?

are you experienced? Are you delirious?

My eyes, my eye, who am i?

are you mysterious?

Are you curious, furious?

Are you serious?

I am imperious…

who am i?

You woke up this morning,

found yourself sucking on your thumb,

afraid this place aint like the place you’re from,

it looks the same, feels the same,

same old sky with the same old rain

but there’s something different in the sun,

there’s something in the way you run,

there’s something strange about the pain,

there’s something here, this is no fun.

schizotypically stable,

the schizotypal angel,

releasing symphonies both demonically harmonic

and socially disabled.

intrinsically intricate, meticulously deliberate and intimate,

prolificly poetic, ambivalent with ethics...too hectic...

reflective detective, respectably impressive,

aggressively recessive he's resentfully regressing

and attempting to prevent what it was the hell bent voices said.

the people in his head. the monsters in his bed.

you'll wish that you were dead.


Written by Andrew Brobyn