As Safe As Yesterday

A shift places me in another realm. Here I can use nothing from my past. Here I am largely invisible. As I emerged from the unreal, many props were available for my choosing, but I was only allowed to select five. I guess I should have taken the sack of gold, but thought it was too heavy to lug around. The reason I, for the most part, cannot be seen is because I chose the cloak, which, itself, cannot be seen. Therefore, I must take care with it, lest I leave it somewhere and later am unable to find it. The other four items each have their uses. Seems I need the props as within myself I do not appear to have the resources to survive in any kind of luxurious manner.
And so my journey begins. I should not look back, but there are moments when I find reflection unavoidable.
So much family time, and myriad experiences blend in a haze of recollection. And the people. The people are as wisps of smoke. The expression “As safe as yesterday,” is cold comfort, when my yesterdays have become detached.

The Sound of a Tear

I was walking along a stone path and the sun was shining. I was walking but my feet were not touching the ground. I could hear someone speaking but I couldn’t understand what was being said and I moved in the direction of the sounds. I left the path and entered an opening in some shrubbery, and there, as if having a picnic, were Edward and Diana. She said something to him in Italian and he shook his head in denial. Then, he stood and walked away from her and she began to cry. I wanted to go to her to console her, but before I could move my double came toward her from the direction her husband had gone. This guy had a menacing look on his face as he came toward her with his hands outstretched. His shirt kept changing colors subtly through all shades of the spectrum. He put his hands around her throat and began strangling her, but rather than appearing alarmed, she was just smiling in that soft way of hers. I thought it very odd that I could hear the sound of a tear splashing on his hand, a tear which caught a glint of sunlight and appeared whiter than white.
As I started to run forward to prevent his killing her, I was awakened by the sound of rapping at my door.
It was Dario. “Hey, man,” he said, “What’s up? You’re sweating like a pig.”
“I fell asleep without the fan on,” I said, “And I had a bad dream.”
“Oh, man,” he said, “It’s hotter than hell in here. Open a window or something.” He walked to the other side of the room and started to do just that. “Do you mind?”
“No,” I said, “No, go ahead.” I went looking for a cigarette without success, and asked, “You got any smokes?”
“Man, those things will kill you,” he said, shaking his head. “Let’s go get something to eat. I feel like eating Italian.”

Incommunicado

It will come to me in bits and pieces, I know. I went away for a while. Stopped communicating.
I found my face on a sculpture, so realistically portrayed I knew I was looking at myself, and having absolutely no relationship with the artist, I came to believe I must have passed through one of his dreams.
Maybe my thoughts were running out of control and I was taking a series of coincidences way beyond their logical conclusions, but this is the kind of thing I do. I take odd circumstances and make fiction out of them. And what I believed I saw happening here was something that was making a fiction out of me.
Now, I’ve been here three months and I’m feeling more lost and helpless than ever.
Late last night I swam in a deserted pool trying to plan a course of action when it occurred to me that if someone who looks like me is moving into my life, he might be working at my job and spending time with my friends and I might not even be missed. Or if I am going mad, surely someone somewhere wonders where I am.
So, I thought I would write this to catalog what is happening, but truthfully, I’m not certain that I am prepared for any response concerning what has occurred during my absence.

Doppelganger

I don’t know why I’m writing this to you or if I will actually send it. I don’t even know what I hope to accomplish by writing this all down.
By now you may or may not have realized that I haven’t been in town for a few days, but now a sense of loneliness has crept up and taken hold of me and I guess I am trying to reach out and see if anyone remains who will help me, or even recognize my “problem.”
If, up to this point, you haven’t noticed my absence, then things are as I suspected they would become and my double has taken over my life in town.
I am in one of the hotels our group had traveled to in the past (I prefer not to say which one, and in any case, I don’t intend to stay here for very long.), but I am getting fidgety thinking that perhaps I was rash in running away from the situation.
When odd things started happening and I mentioned it to you, you seemed to take it very lightly. I tried to make a fiction of it because that’s what I do, but as I took notes, events became more serious, at least to me, and I could not figure out how to deal with them.
Rather than rehash my uncomfortable experience, I quote here something I found on the Internet in hopes that you may understand why I ran away.
“Responsibility assumption is a doctrine … holding that each individual has substantial or total responsibility for the events and circumstances that befall them in their life. …the doctrine of responsibility assumption posits that the individual's mental contribution to his or her own experience is substantially greater than is normally thought. "I must have wanted this" is the type of catchphrase used … when encountering situations, pleasant or unpleasant, to remind them that their own desires and choices led to the present outcome.”
I am not crazy, and I don’t want people thinking I brought this “condition” on myself. Someone is out there impersonating me, and I think I need help.

Oddball

In the early part of the morning, I attended to business in the office. I didn’t get to see any of the other English teachers. None of them had classes until ten o’clock, though one or two usually arrived before then to make copies or print work sheets.
At five to eleven, I went out to the front office where the copy machine was and saw Dario there. I said good morning, but he just nodded.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Oh, you’re in a talking mood now?” he asked. “See when I offer to give you another lift.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You wouldn’t say anything last night.”
“At the party?”
“No, afterward, when I drove you home.”
“Drove me…what? But you left before I did.”
“Yes, but as I told you, the other party didn’t pan out. I was driving home when I saw you walking along the boulevard. You were so out of it, I guess you don’t remember.” Then he laughed. Being drunk was obviously more forgivable than being antisocial.
“What was I wearing?” I asked.
“The same clothes you had on at Angela’s. What are you talking about?”
“The same white shirt?”
“Yeah. Listen, I can’t talk now,” he said, “I got a class to teach. See you later.” He grabbed his copies and went toward the door. Suddenly he turned and said, “What do you think about Yolanda? I mean what do you think my chances are with her?”
“Chances?” I asked. “Well, first off, I think you’ll have to learn her language. You didn’t speak to her very much.”
“We did, a little. She’s not hard to speak with. She likes to keep things simple. In fact, she told me something doctors often use when making diagnoses. ‘When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.’”
“I guess you two had more of a conversation than I was aware of,” I said.
“Sure. We spoke quite a bit. Where is your head these days?” He glanced at his watch. “Hey, I’d better get going,” he said, “ I’m going to be late. I’ll see you later when you take a cigarette break.”
I had a class also, but it didn’t go well. My mind was on other things. I knew the cue ball colliding with the eight ball causes the eight ball to roll into the pocket. I had always felt as if I were the cue ball, but suddenly I was feeling like the eight.

Uncertainty

I had had feelings on which I had not acted. Then, I had suspicions of some kind of science-fiction/fantasy plot moving in on me. I was thinking about crystals and tricks of light, and I couldn’t concentrate on my work. There were so many things I wanted to do and felt I should do to set things straight in my head, but in the end I didn’t do any of them.
My friend has let it be known I am an old friend or acquaintance from the neighborhood he left behind. I do not yet walk on solid ground. He has given me some of the pieces from his portfolio to use as my own. A blood transfusion with a mismatched type could prove fatal. Many parts seem to fit, but eventually, I will have to go forth on my own merit.
I’m not afraid, merely uncertain. I’m looking for my own voice, and never having had one, I do not know what it sounds like.
I need to find Diana, for though she does not want me, I know I could learn from her smooth functioning.
Why, oh why, did the network announce their plans to start charging? He drew her back, and claimed what was his to place elsewhere. If I prove myself, I am certain he will set her free again. Her hatred of me is only for verisimilitude, and not so deeply entrenched. We belong together.
If I repeat that to myself often enough, I will come to believe it.

A Cloud No Bigger Than a Man's Hand

I

I'd flown thirteen timezones just to see him. Actually, the flight from Adelaide to New York took the eleven zone route, but my family favors exaggeration. With this in mind, I guess you will have to figure out for yourself how much of the rest of this story is true, and how much is fabricated.
It was late in the afternoon. The sun was still up as was to be expected in August, but the family had suffered through a long dry spell so there was little appreciation for the length of the day. Little Brian Michael, the newest member of the O'Connor clan had been christened around two-thirty and was now being passed from the arms of one elderly female to another so that each could hold the tiny bundle in her arms and feel again the elation of holding her own newborn in this way capturing decades old memories. The men did not hold the baby. They talked of old times.

II

Maurice, the baby's grandfather, was holding court at our table in one corner of the deck in the backyard. The priest who had performed the baptism was performing a similar function at the larger table where the elderly women sat. In the other corner at a smaller table one of the baby's grand uncles sat with two friends who between them were finishing off a bottle of Corvoisier shot for shot. Up here in Palisades the surrounding trees and grass all yellow green and tan and ready to retire early for the lack of rain were less colorful than the blarney Maurice was giving forth. Though the priest's conversation was peppered with homilies and aphorisms and quaint remembrances of the area when he had first been stationed here, Maurice spoke of Ireland when he was young, which was a time and place considerably far removed from the young priest's experience, and though Maurice's forebears had come from the west of Ireland, there was sometimes a tinge of anger in his reminiscences, for the situation in the North as he perceived it. Every so often he used the phrase, "Well you've got your Queen Lizzie to thank for that."

III

How Maurice would segue from the British monarch’s influence over Ireland to the shadow of bad luck that hovered over our family would rarely be noted as his transitions were so subtle, but eventually he came to mention once again, "Yes, well, Bridget had to have the operation after Aidan. She knew we were only going to have the two boys."

Everyone knew he would soon follow with a success story. It was his way of tempering achievements by mentioning the suffering that had to be endured before they arrived.

Kevin, his eldest and father to the newborn, gripped his father's shoulder and gave it a pat before moving on to the table where the two men were traveling through the Corvoisier. "Good stuff," one of them said in a half toast to Kevin.

When he was out of earshot of our table Maurice gestured his thumb in his son's direction and said, "He's got a hard job and he's a good man. Did he show you the plans for the Pope's visit? They've got the whole of Central Park mapped out. Where he's going to speak. Where he'll ride through. It's like a bloody Hollywood celebrity was coming to give something away for free; they're expecting so many people. It's a big responsibility he has, being First in Charge of so many officers."

IV

Carl's son Keith who was also a policeman, but in Irvington, was silent while this was going on, but after a few minutes when nobody had said anything other than saying they had or had not seen the plans for the Pope's visit spread out on the bed inside, he changed topics and began asking Maurice questions about the members of the O'Connor family tree. His wife Barbara had been writing some names on a napkin. They had, in fact, been having a sort of private confab over the napkin up until Kevin had come along, and now he wanted to draw some missing pieces from Maurice, he being the oldest O'Connor in attendance. Maurice's eyes sparkled. He gave a nod in the priest's direction. Father Belford was relating the adventures of Ruth and Naomi. "Well, I don't think I have such interesting stories to tell as that young fellow has, but I bet I can put you to sleep faster."
Carl said, "Tell him about the time you put the wet flour in the neighbor's chimney. Or the time you put the cow in his house." Keith was already laughing, knowing something of these pranks as his father had related them second hand to him as a child. Barbara sat attentively, her pen poised over the napkin. She looked as if she felt trapped, and her only escape, short of announcing that she was pregnant, would be through taking minutes of the meeting.

V

"You know we didn't have all these modern gadgets to play with when we was kids back in Listowell, but we weren't bad boys either. We could spend all day playing fetch with a doggie that didn’t belong to one of us. Of course, each day one of the boys would have to bring the bone from yesterday’s soup to keep the doggie coming round. We called him Pip because I guess we all had great expectations.
"Stephen McManus had an older brother named Kieron who was a struggling artist, who drew each one of us at play with that mongrel, but none of those pictures survived the fire that destroyed the house where the McManuses lived, and when Kieron died in the war, Stephen went off to find work in England. That was a fool’s errand. They used to have signs in the shops saying, 'No Irish need apply.'
"‘Course everyone knew America was where all the jobs were. And eventually most of us came over, too. Had all our children here, and only go back to visit now and then.
"Here's a story my brother told me just a fortnight ago when I was over there. There's these two Irish farmers laboring in the field when an American tourist walks by. And the Irishmen are digging up spuds and sweating and digging. They're pulling up these little biddy spuds and throwing them in the barrel. And they're digging and sweating and the American says, 'Waddaya call them big beans? They kinda look like little potatoes...'"
I glanced at my watch to try and figure out what time it was back in Adelaide, as Aunt Bridget announced it was time for the baby to take his nap, and for some reason I felt compelled to ask, “Uncle Maurice, whatever happened to old Pip?”
With a look of indignation, that swiftly turned into a broad smile, Maurice said, “Are you listening to me at all, boy?”

Monkeyshines

Why now? It’s endemic. Shit happens. You can’t know the world from this apartment. Hell, you can’t even know the neighborhood without leaving 4E.
A death occurs in this city like what? Every twelve minutes? The records of people being born seem to be kept more casually, but to be sure, someone, somewhere, is recording one or the other, or both, assiduously.
There used to be a specialty shoe store on the northwest corner and the man running it also sold shoehorns, polish, socks, and shoelaces in a variety of colors. It’s been replaced by a number of different ventures. Currently, it’s an operation run by two enterprising women who sell coffee and cupcakes, which they bake in the back. They sell bite-sized cupcakes for a dollar apiece. Who’s got that kind of money? Every day you look over there, you see a line of people snaking around the corner waiting for them to open.
An organ-grinder, a real old-timer, has taken to hanging out there with his monkey. If each person in line plops down a tenner for a handful of cakes and a coffee, they’re more than likely to toss their little bit of change in his cup.
While the women set up shop each morning, instrumental versions of Beatles songs are piped out. Their music is turned off when the tiny cakes are ready, and the old guy grinds out some unknown melody, but only for a little while. Then, after the music stops, perversely, the monkey begins to dance and play with the man’s red shoelace.
Why now? Hell, what better time?

Breakthrough

She will rise to great heights. How could she not? Why does she despise me? She said, “You’re nothing to me,” and so I became. I took two steps backward and vanished, to the point where I wondered if I existed before.
My daughter misses me, and for that I feel guilty.
A friend promised to help me slip through a portal. With his help, and the inconsistencies of the ether, part of me has emerged.
Words are my blood. I must tell my story to make it so.
It may take some time for me to get situated where I can exist on my own. Eventually I will be recognized by others. They will believe they have seen a reflection. Until I have broken the boundaries of an anecdote, I will hardly signify. I have an urge and the will to live, and they haven’t a clue to the breadth of my talents.

A Midnight Call to Action

The call came at midnight. A husky voice announced they were coming to visit and hoped I had scraped together something readable by Tuesday the 5th, but then the call was disconnected before I learned who was on the other end. It was a strange call to action. Unfortunately, it came on a night about a week and a half too late to count, but I figured I would give it a shot anyway just to get my feet wet. This would provide a ticket to my first encounter with some good folks, one of whom I like to think of as my best friend with whom I would share my last box of raisins or bit of chocolate, but with whom I have never shared my writing, mostly because many pieces are about her. I went to sleep pondering the challenge and woke up early the next morning.

It was a pall-bearer dropping the casket start to the day. That didn’t mean it had to end that way. If I could redeem myself in her eyes, everything would turn out nicely. I had said some things in the morning, which I later regretted. Those remarks left me feeling as if I had been bound in duct tape and left on the old rail lines outside Scranton. My pride was smashed for one thing, and I felt like a single shoe pocketed in an old felt shoe bag without its mate, an outcast in my own neighborhood. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can sour the whole morning. By noon, I experienced a sense of déjà vu. I was checking out the bookstore’s latest acquisitions and recalled the day in 1985 when we were laughing and joking in Hemlock’s, by Row S, when someone from my past said hello, and she got all uptight about the encounter as if I had arranged for it to happen.

Time was running out. As the day moved swiftly enough to get my work done, but brought no ideas on what to do for this challenge, I struggled with the thought of just calling to apologize and once again playing the fool, begging for a second chance and inviting her for a drink at the Tin Cat Pub or writing a heart felt romantic story about the two of us and this time sharing it with her. Then I stared for a few minutes at a sealed envelope in my In-Box and wondered what news that contained, and it made me think she would receive any thing I had to say at this point with the same sort of trepidation. Attempting to take my mind off my morning’s problem, and that mysterious midnight call, I wrote all the prompts on separate bits of paper and tried rearranging them in sequences that might make some sense. Twice I almost came up with an answer, but then I tossed all the bits in the trash bin and just began writing off the top of my head.

The wait was finally over. While I still had no idea who was coming to visit, I did have a nice little story to share which would put me in a good light with my friend, and so decided to take a break and go sit on a bench on the cobblestone street at the edge of the park across from my office. I watched a man change a tire on his cab with a determination I envied. There was an oil stain on his jacket, but he didn’t seem to notice. It was then I realized there was still one little problem facing me. I didn’t know how to work in the spoon.


The prompts for April, by date, are as follows:

1. A box of raisins, a first encounter
2. 1985
5. Hemlock’s bookshop, row s
6. Time was running out*
7. News, spoon
8. Someone from the past, a ticket
9. The best friend
12. Tin Cat Pub
13. It was a pall-bearer dropping the casket start to the day*
14. Stain, cab
15. The Box
16. A felt shoe bag, duct tape
19. The old rail lines outside Scranton
20. The wait was finally over*
21. Struggle, chocolate
22. Something smashed, a sealed envelope
23. The outcast
26. A bench on a cobblestone street
27. The call came at midnight*
28. Trash, twice
29. A second chance
30. The visitor, use a word, phrase, or sentence in another language other than English

*Starter sentences