Laura (Fiction)

It's not as though the world has won, I'm just giving it a head start.
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I peel my cheek off the page and squint into the light. Afternoons get sunny in this room, I forgot. In the round mirror on my desk, I search my skin for ink stains, half expecting to find my homework imprinted on my cheek. Nothing but redness, however. I get up, shake my leg, yawn. The phone rings and I answer saying yeah. “I hate when you do that,” says the cracking voice of post-nap Laura. “Do what,” I ask. “Answer the phone like that. I could be talking to anyone for five minutes.” I rub my eye with the back of my hand until it starts making smacking sounds. “Can you hear that?” I ask the receiver. “What?” “Nothing. Want to go for a walk?” “Sure.” I hang up and pick up my clothes from the floor.

She rings the doorbell with a bike between her knees, but I don’t have one so she cycles next to me, pedalling so slowly she almost loses balance a couple of times. The only time she ever cusses is at cars. When we start going uphill, she gets off and walks holding her saddle.

Our hair colour is the same, dark auburn. In school, people used to think we were related, which inevitably put us in each other’s field of attention. We ended up close and everybody said “so, they’re cousins, right?” We did presentations together and she convinced the teacher to let us have a time slot in the afternoon each time, because our hair is at its reddest in the afternoon light. Laura realises things like that. After school, we’d go to her house and pretend to work. We’d stare at the computer screen and look up beer commercials, then make fun of how happy the people depicted were, and how wholesome the setting. “So beer makes you attractive and everybody wants you?” “Yeah, it also messes with the climate, apparently. Eternal sunshine for everyone.” “It also doesn’t make you old or fat or sad.” “Seriously,” she said, “you should see my dad.”

Laura’s father is a concert violinist. In the evenings, we hear him come in from work, and Laura goes downstairs to say hi. Peaking through the railing of the stairs, I see into the dark living room where he is watching TV, the box with his violin leaning against his armchair, his slumped figure flickering in the blue light.

Laura sits on a rock, her foot rubbing against the grass. Her bike lies behind us and I keep an eye on it because she won’t. Her left knee supporting her chin, she rolls her head toward me and closes her eyes as they’re hit by the light. “I’m going to the States after this year.” “What for?” She holds a hand over her eyebrows as if the sun had just gotten brighter. “College. I want to do physics, I’m pretty sure they’re good at it. Better than here, anyway.” “Isn’t it expensive to live there?” She scratches a bug bite on her thigh, and her skin glows pink under her nail.  “Not really. I guess the most expensive thing is getting there. You can’t exactly take a train, you know.” “Aren’t you scared your plane will crash?” I ask. Laura continues picking at her bug bite and the skin around it turns red. “No”, she says.

A few years later Laura calls me and tells me her father died. I say I’m sorry though I already knew it. I ask her where she is, she’s in town, and we agree to meet. She needs someone to talk to. We meet at a café, which is odd, which we never did before, we only ever discussed cafés to make fun of people who frequent them. We hunch over cups of steaming something and poke at them with our fingers, occasionally, and Laura doesn’t talk about her father, she talks about the States instead. Her clothes have changed, she wears shirts now, not like a schoolgirl in a uniform, she wears them with ease as though she always had. The funeral was yesterday, I had a four-hour dentist appointment and my gums are still sore which is why I drink in small sips, slurping a bit, making sure I only drink when Laura’s speech falls into a pause. Her mother fainted at the funeral; Laura doesn’t tell me this, my sister did, but maybe she’s exaggerating a bit. Laura’s eyes are red and she has highlights in her hair, she looks grown up. My lower teeth scrape the polish off my thumbnail when Laura says “It was good to see you, we should keep in touch more.” I nod and we hug and then Laura has to leave, her mother needs her. She walks fast and swings around the corner, grazing the wall with her shoulder. The sun falls into my eye and I squint the corner and Laura away.

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Sometimes she laughs and says: es ist nicht so, als ob die Welt gewonnen hätte. Ich gebe ihr nur etwas Vorsprung. When she laughs, her hair jumps as if woken from a deep slumber. It is never clear whether she laughs with or at something. When asked, she replies I laugh against things, and leans back on her chair.

New Dream in Town

Upon visiting “the capital of capitalism”, I must have caught some sort of virus, or maybe a new dream-production-team, because the programme offered to me for my personal nightly entertainment this summer has been weirder than usual. In the past, my dream-catalogue has consisted of biblical references, Beckettian minimalism as staged by Robert Wilson, Lynchean distortion and decadence, Film Noir dialogues in smokey alleyways (black-and-white scenery to match), classic horror chases and psychological thriller, and even the occasional sitcom’esque comedy spun directly from the thread of experiences had the very same day. But, as I said, I must’ve caught something funny on my trip because, during the past month, my nightly rapid-eye-movement picture show has added a new genre to its repertoire: musicals. I used to have dreams, of many varieties, now I have musicals. Not exclusively, of course, no producer would be so bad at their own job as to offer products of only one genre, and they know my need for diversity, but the amount of musical numbers that have been cropping up in my dreams all of a sudden is close to alarming, especially considering this is a totally new species of dreams for me. In fact, they didn’t just develop over time, with a little Sprechgesang ditty here and there to test the waters; dreams in the musical format have just suddenly shot out of the ground fully formed, fully harmonised, fully cast, and fully scripted, a complete set for the month of August (and apparently stretching into September, notorious entertainment-low of the year) with all its limbs, vocal cords and catchy beats. The stuff of nightmares. Except it’s musicals we’re talking about, and their happiness is even catchier than any virus that might have befallen me on the plane ride back from America. Even their sad, serious, thought-provoking moments are lined with happiness. This might be my Disney-ridden childhood catching up with me, which, if we’re talking musicals, is the only explanation that remotely makes sense, seeing as I only like one “grown-up” musical and vaguely tolerate two others. All I know is, a while ago, I was woken up during three chords of a very sugary upbeat song about a more or less rural teenage boy (my unchallengeable assumption, made based on the fact that cornfields kept popping up, and that they had access to a completely unprotected graveyard earlier on in the dream) and his right to be gay, complete with flashbacks demonstrating the object of said boy’s affections wearing a kilt (thanks, Adam…) to school and generally looking dreamy, whilst the teenage boy’s best female friend sang to him in the middle of a dirt road about how there are so many more important parts to him than whom he happens to fall in love with. It was very peachy and all-audiences – not what I’m used to from my dreams. And, if my producers can be influenced by the written word, I hope the next time they expose me to musical numbers of this nature, they will make sure the general atmosphere tends more towards that of, say, Chicago, with jazz-infused tunes and crooked, lying characters. Either way, I am now going to get me some industrial strength coffee to wash this dream into the sewers of my subconscious along with other, non-recurring dreams. G’day.

Phantom Limbs

Jetlag sort of creates a temporal phantom limb. After two days of complete sleep-deprivation, (we decided that not going to bed before our 6a.m. flight would increase the chance of actually managing to sleep on the plane rides – it wasn't the smartest thing we've ever come up with, to put it mildly) I fell into bed, eyes burning, brain laying hallucinations with the speed of a doped-up chicken with the mission of repopulating its entire species by itself, at 19h and slept like a very flat, wheezing rock. My nose was blocked due to the various assaults the plane rides and lack of sleep performed on my sinuses, and so, when I woke up at 4a.m., my mouth tasted like wet dog. I tossed and turned for an hour and sniffled my way into a superficial drowse, brought about more by the stubborn desire to sleep rather than actual tiredness; when I couldn't manage to pierce the membrane of wake, I finally jerked some activity back into my heavy limbs and got up. First order of business: find some acrylic paint to make one of the small cardboard boxes I have lying around look pretty. Yes, I have my priorities. When the paint was nowhere to be found, I gave up and brushed my teeth instead, which seemed to satisfy my desire to rub a tacky substance onto something with a brush.... – Well, I digress from the original point of this post: jetlag and phantom limbs. It is quite simply explained: when I woke up at 4a.m., the feeling sitting on my chest, keeping me from falling back asleep, was exactly that of waking up around 8 or 9p.m. after a late afternoon nap one knows one shouldn't have had but couldn't help but indulge in. It's not a feeling I usually get when I wake up in the middle of the night; sure, periods of insomnia abound in the realm of my sleep schedule, but the feeling I had very much relied on the notion that the sleep I'd just achieved was not real sleep, that it was a nap to practice for the actual sleep I was to have right now, but that I'd spoiled like one spoils one's appetite by eating candy before a meal (I do it anyway). Bored with my waking state and with a wiggly mind making up for the lethargy within my body, I decided to rein in my thoughts and focus on something easily controllable: numbers. So I counted back the hours and found that it was indeed 20:30 back in Washington, and that I had indeed just slept through the more sinful of nap times (rather than the more socially acceptable time bracket of 2-4p.m.).
Now, all there is to do is to wait for the phantom limb, that still imposes upon me the illusion I am sauntering about in the Pacific Northwest, to slowly fade away and reattach my mind to both the time zone and the climactic misfortune that is Great Britain.

Meanwhile, I will look forward to the discomfort I will feel at around noon, when my mind will be convinced it is 4a.m, Washington time, and scold me for not being in bed at that hour. 

Leaving America

After 6 weeks, I'm leaving. Vacation's over, there's things to do in England and Luxembourg, and, over the past 3 years, my life has, without consulting me, developed the unspoken rule that I don't get to be exposed to sunlight for more than a couple of months a year. My emotional climate isn't thrilled by this at all. Either way, I'm leaving America and I already know I will miss it. Not unconditionally, but still. So bye, America, with your overuse of the AC and your endless refills of sodas, your ridiculously varied array of climates, your iconic accents that just kind of melt into each other in everyday people's speech; bye you strange country with stunning sights and rambling, below-the-belt politicians, you emblem of the free market in which even churches advertise their services. It was good walking, driving, and experiencing through you. 

Advice

Edit: This was meant to be posted earlier this week, but it just never seemed to happen. Either way, have some sleep-deprived rambling.


It is nighttime, I am sprawled on the couch, and embedded in the majority of my muscles is a taut, biting pain. I try not to move too much, as even the weight of my near weightless laptop on my thighs generates discomfort. The source of all this soreness? A few days ago (yeah, I stay sore for a long time) I climbed a mountain. Mount Si. To get up there, you walk a 4-mile (6.5km) trail until you reach a drizzly, icy summit plateau with a stunning view of a fog-veiled valley surrounded by trees. By the time you get up there, you're grateful for the cold; most of the trail is pretty steep and rocky, and by the time you're 4000ft up in the air, your feet, legs and abs are burning. And then there's the way back down. All in all, that's 4 miles of climbing, being out of breath, and pouring sweat, a sandwichy lunch on a rock 4167ft up in the air, surrounded by mist, and 4 miles descent that shifts the weight to your knees and the balls of your feet, and you can feel the latter rubbing against the soles of your shoes so much you can almost see sparks.
During said descent, my mind, which had up until then been busy dealing with the physical strain and subsequent pain via meditation and the processing of the natural splendour that was surrounding us, was ready for a more introverted type of distraction. The pain in my knees made me think about my mother, who has been an avid jogger ever since she was my age, and her advice about taking care of one's joints, especially the knees, as the natural cushioning that makes movement comfortable in one's youth tends to decrease with age, to the point where even walking isn't fun anymore. My mum's knees are fine, as far as I am aware, yet the discomfort I felt in my own knees during the 2-hour-long descent, and even afterwards as I was unwinding in the car on the ride home, made me wonder what I had possibly already damaged in my own body at only 25, and what I could have done differently had I known, a few years back, how certain things affect me now.
In an attempt to get to know more about you, I suppose, some people ask you, if you had to choose one super power, which would you choose? Or, more popularly, if you had one wish, what would it be? Some people choose invisibility, or the power to control time. If asked, I would choose to travel back in time to visit my 17-year-old self, invisibly, and for a month only. Plus, there'd be a bunch of conditions applying to this time travel, because I can't ever do anything simply: on top of being invisible (to everyone but 17-year-old me), I would have to have the ability to "change" things about myself without changing the experiences that I will end up having. Convenient, right? Basically, that would mean that the only thing I have an impact on are things like the mental and emotional perspectives (and reactions) I have to what happens to me: I do want my 17-year-old self to go ahead and have the experiences I had, but I want her to be more apt at dealing with them. Really, what this inconsistent and somewhat contradictory wish boils down to is that I want to be able to give advice to my past self, comfort her, as well as ensure that she sees, in activities she will be tempted to give up at that age, the value I clearly missed at her age. For instance, I would like to tell her to keep working out, and to stretch. At 25, I can easily blame the more consistant than occasional stiffness and cracking of bones on my sedentary student lifestyle, but I wish I didn't have to. I would tell her that what others think of her matters very little, and that, in fact, they judge her much less than she thinks they do, and that, in the end, whether they do or not shouldn't affect the worth she ascribes to herself. Or that she should not try to stuff holes in this sense of self-worth with other people; others don't make for very good band-aids, at the very best, and especially at that age, they make for fickle and undependable ones. I'd tell her that it's ok to show her legs, and that even if hers seem so much less perfect than other girl's, it doesn't matter, that although she's scared of putting herself out there, out there isn't as scary as she thinks it is, and that it won't be once she tries it.
Maybe I've just always wanted to be on both sides of the advice-machine. To be the one giving it and receiving it at the same time. Now that I've managed to sound sufficiently dirty, let me explain: being an only child who's still oblivious about how to act like a real adult (the ones you see in movies), and who's baffled as to how she's 25 already 'cause on the inside, she feels like a teenager most days, I feel that giving advice often amounts to feeling like you're throwing all the deep, painful truths it took you years to figure out into someone else's face, wrapped in unremarkable, poorly chosen words, and it just doesn't stick. Plus, why should they get to take the steps of life faster than you did, why should they get to take a shortcut when it comes to making experiences? Oh good, throw some jealousy in there, why don't you. That's your only child, right there. But all of this would be different if it was yourself (your past self, rather) you gave the advice to, right? You'd be the mature (erm), grown-up (sigh) one, the one who's gone through the crap you go to in your late teens and early twenties, and who can tell you that in the end, it's not all that bad, even though it isn't good; that you're going to cry a lot, but that cooling your swollen eyes with ice cubes before you go to bed is a good way not to wake up with a tear-encrusted, puffed-up piggyface the next day and make it totally obvious to everyone you didn't get your share of peaceful sleep. You'd tell your past self all this, and the past self would be understandably worried, and then probably call you a pansy and vow never to turn into you. Except they would. Because that's part of the contract attached to my wish: everything needs to turn out the way it is now, except I would have taken more chances, experienced more things, learned more about myself and my hidden resilience, etc. Yes, conveniently incongruous, we've been through this.
And then there'd be me, 17 years of age, on the listening side. I'd get advice from someone older, who actually knows me and knows what's good for me because they are me. Win-win. Or maybe not, we'd have to ask 37-year-old me, but I don't have access to that person yet. Not that I'd want to. That being said, this side of the advice-machine (why did I make that word combo up? Oh well, I'm tired) is as precious to me as the other one, because this is the side that gets to put the advice to use. So does my present side, but how nice does it sound to be 17 again and go through life with the advice and support from an older you? Basically, to get to do some of it over? To be younger, more energetic (except for when I was lethargic by choice – my interpretation of goth), to face a future that is now my past and get to play around in it some more.
I suppose that's what I've wanted for a while, and what triggers a lot of my regret-related anxiety (not that I need to tell the world about that, but while I'm at it...); advice is meant to make the recipient's life easier, or to soothe whatever part of them is hurting at the time. At best, it forges intimacy between two people, as well as trust. I find that the more I start listening to other people, and even looking to them for guidance, (that's the tricky part about my wish: I didn't listen to people much as a teenager – low blows that somewhat affected my self-esteem aside – ... didn't make me too popular with teachers, as you might imagine. Good thing there's no such thing as time-travel, not to visit your past self, anyway.) the more I turn to people older than me. In my mind, this makes total sense: I used to take advice, say on how to take care of my skin, hair, diet, from people my age, sometimes younger. This was due mostly to the fact that I had no idea people over 30 dabbled in things like the internet. Good thing I was wrong. I figured, who better to tell you about what to look after in your youth so it functions smoothly throughout the years and accompanies you soundly into age than people who've been through what still expects you? Though my mother doesn't share some of my views on beauty and health, I still trust her whenever she tells me to take care of my knees, my posture, my skin, and to wear sunscreen. I find that, in general, I trust women older than me more, and seek their judgment more than that of girls my age.
Climbing up and down Mount Si and feeling exhausted most of the way, until the point where my knees hurt, made me feel like I shouldn't have given up dancing, or running, and like, if such a thing were possible, I'd like to tell my past self to keep at it for our common sake. Then again, maybe this is just yet another expression of the fact that I need something to bump me into the present, and that I what I have now is the only basis for the future I will have.
What is the point of this post? I'm not sure. It's a lot of self-exposing jabber, but maybe there will be some sense to it. Really, I just wanted to talk about climbing a mountain and how it put me up to date on the status of my body. It's not awful, it's not even bad, but it's not 17 anymore, and the fact I trust a 40-year-old woman telling me what part of my bodily structure to take extra care of more than a 19-year-old girl doing the same, is simply due to the (sobering) realisation that, though I'm not a 40-year-old woman, I will very probably be one some day, whereas I will never again be 19.
Apparently, mountains, whether you're chained to the top of them with an eagle whose recurring visits serve to feed on your liver, or whether you're infinitely pushing a boulder uphill just to watch it invariably roll back down, have a way of making you reflect on your condition. Ours may be to decay, but at least we're not alone in our suffering of it; knowing that everybody goes through what you go through may not be sufficient consolation, but at least we get to ask one another how we get through it. Pretentious enough? I think so. 

Insincerity

Some of us, insincerity runs through like bad blood, its ink sinking into our veins, indelible scripts that cover our skin from below, marks invisible to most but screaming out at us that this is what we are. Insincerity, for some of us, is not a choice, it is not a cluster of words spat out to confuse, diffuse, or to protect ourselves, it is a sense of who we are no matter the accuracy of what we say. Insincerity, for us that are this way, is the standart by which we judge our words, our actions, it is the inevitable backdrop of the selves we display to the outside world, it is in our bruises and our laughter, in our opinions, kisses, and passions. Some of us cannot let go of the fear, the inadequacy we brand ourselves with, we deal with it by dealing false cards, not to others but to ourselves, we pick up the fool and laugh sadly and say "this is who I am there is no escaping it", then we hold the liar to our faces and shake our head with a furrow between the brows, because, though his nose, cheeks, and eyes are nothing like ours, the mouth of the fool looks identical to ours in the way it moves, and we accept this because no-one could scrape this conviction from our mind, no-one could, because we take their compliments and criticisms of who we taught them that we are and we say "but how should they know any better, I have lied to them since we first spoke". Our friendships put up with us out of ignorance, because we have fooled them like masters, like magicians on a stage, we have stuck our fists between their open jaws, pulled out a flapping dove and said "look here, how free you are, how free to choose my friendship, how free to choose to give me love". We stick the same hand into our mouth and pull out a dripping string of lies, tissues of them, knotted together interminably, and we observe what we are convinced is not ourselves. These are not our words, they couldn't be, they are not inside me anymore, they must be wrong, corrupted, they must be false. We hold our drenched string of lies and drag it behind us through the dust while others hold our shoulders and laugh and say "I like you just the way you are".