After he says that, the power goes out. The fire
is dying down, so I pile the wood back up higher
than ever, and Allie laughs as she uses the bellows,
causing red coals to produce oranges and yellows.
The flame returns quickly. The darkness disperses.
Rain drums steadily, and suddenly Gram curses.
She thinks she left her clothes drying on the line.
Sam reminds her: I brought ’em in earlier. It’s fine.
The wind blows harder. Close by—a loud crack!
Bowser starts to go hide; I get him to come back.
Allie wants us to put on a play or fake TV show,
but Gram isn’t in the mood for that. She says: No.
Why don’t we tell stories? Not terrible ones, Sam.
I say: Can you tell us about the olden days, Gram?
Allie & Sam & me: one little boy & two little girls
who aren’t so little anymore. Outside: wind whirls,
rain pounds, thunder booms. Inside: safe and dry,
we listen to our grandmother convey days gone by.
When your grandpa was alive, he’d get lightning
inside sometimes. Ball lightning; it was frightening.
I’d catch him up there in the attic during a storm.
He’d open a window an’ it’d jump in. It was warm.
I could feel the heat climbing up the stairs before
I saw it. Little blob or clump light. I’d try to ignore
it but once he even put it to his mouth, gave it a kiss.
I asked him why, and he said he just couldn’t resist
the silver light. Weirdest thing I ever saw in my life.
Eeriest part—he said it was sent from his first wife,
who died before your dad was born. She drowned,
all alone, boating on up there to that…compound.
Sunflower Lodge. It burnt down the same summer.
Afterwards they said she was seeing a drugrunner.
But she wasn’t. An’ your grandpa wasn’t neither.
They came here t’get away from all those cheaters
an’ mafioso who took the business over in the city.
And then Sophia died, so he wallowed in self-pity.
Then I met him. But ya heard all that b’fore, right?
You kids want spookier stuff on this kind of a night.
Know how lightning up the lake goes like a arcade,
joltin’ between the clouds? Some say it’s manmade.
All I know is that it didn’t always do that. It started
after a couple strange customers finally departed
from your grandpa’s inn. They checked in together,
called themselves agents, asked about the weather
and the Lodge up the lake. This was the same year
when Sophia died. Some said the guys were queer,
but they were FBI. They stayed in the same room
and never slept that I knew. I brought them food
because all the other help were too grief-stricken
over the drowning. I saw the two men had written
a ton of reports. That’s all they did most days,
stay in their room and type reports, a serious gaze
on their faces. At night they’d go out separately.
An’ no one’d see ’em come back, but incredibly
they’d be in their room again in time for breakfast.
I don’t know where they’d go. We were impressed
but didn’t understand what they were investigatin’.
Some said there was a threat of a bomb detonatin’
the town dam. Now, to go back to the 18th century,
that’s like the way they made the lake originally.
They dynamited a river to fill a valley with water.
And some said it doubled as a Indian slaughter.
I don’t know if natives were even in the land still.
But did you know they say rushing water can kill
vampires? That’s what an old man named Pierre
used to tell us kids. He had a peg-leg and cut hair.
He lived down the end of the road, in a lil shack.
My cousins stole his leg once. He wanted it back
but they wouldn’t tell him where they had hid it.
So Pierre said, ‘It’s on the flagpole. Go git it.’
Well they didn’t hide it there, but sure enough
they found it perched on the pole, like it was stuck
that way, balanced. Never bothered the barber
again did any of the kids. And he didn’t harbor
a grudge neither. He told us stories from the War
and said what the forest was like in days before
white folks. Peaceful but savage. He told us ’bout
how the valley was real haunted. He had no doubt
that the river was blown to scare away the spirits.
The lake wasn’t the goal. That’s how he’d hear it
when he was young, and that’s how we heard it
from him. ‘Spirit vampires’ is how he’d word it.
I never forgot that. And I know Sophia used to say
‘I’m visiting the mermaids’ when she went away
up the lake to go to that Lodge. I know it’s crazy
an’ I don’t know who started it—memory’s hazy
—but it was said ‘Sophie’s mermaids have fangs’.
At first I thought, 'Oh, bootleggers or drug gangs;
“fangs” are their weapons.’ Then I started leaning
eventually on a weirder, more nefarious meaning.
‘Like teachin’ a vampire to swim!’ Pierre’d say
sometimes when somethin’ was in a difficult way,
but not impossible. Well, Pierre disappeared a day
before the FBI men left. They went on a foggy morn,
first we had since Sophie died. There was a horn,
which was the fire alarm then. I could have sworn
the two men honked their fancy car horn goodbye
right at the same time. It was the Sunflower Lodge
burnin’ down. Way up on an island, it was gone
by the time the firefighters got there in their boats.
We never found out why. Your grandpa found notes
left over by the agents in the room. Crumpled up
in the waste bin. They were illegible. Uncle Gus
even called Washington, but no one said they knew
anything about those agents. The Hoodoo To-do
we called that summer. Grandpa was still grieving
the loss of his first wife. He thought about leaving
but I convinced him to stay.
You know that story already.
The rain’s let up some but thunder pounds steadily.
After her odd tale, Gram looks at us pleasantly.
Bowser had fallen asleep as the story was ending.
Weirdness creeps out Allie, but she is pretending
otherwise. She’ll have great trouble sleeping later.
Sam, gleam in his eye, says: Hey Sis, do us a favor
and tell us the strange things that happened to you.
Shrugging my shoulders quizzically, lying, I knew
he’d want me to talk about this, but I aim to hide it.
Whenever I’m confused by something, I deny it
ever happening. That’s how I deal with a mystery.
I say it simply doesn’t exist. It’s not in my history.
Especially this one. Don’t want to worry my Gram.
Don’t want her to know I am tainted and damned.
Of all her grandkids, I’m her favorite of the seven.
She should die thinking we’ll reunite in heaven.
My first friend at school was a girl named Suzy.
Her family was religious, which was alien to me.
One day in the sandbox Suzy said:
Satan’s real.
If you write 666 on a paper and bury it; it’s a deal,
your soul’s lost. It is too true. My grandma told me.
Smirking, I wrote 999 on a scrap, showed it boldly
to my scandalized friend, and covered it with sand.
Well, I dug & dug—couldn’t find that scrap again.
Suzy was afraid for me. I told her: I should be fine
—I didn’t write six-six-six, I wrote nine-nine-nine!
Suzy was skeptical, and finally I was scared too.
We never mentioned it again; nothing we could do.
We drifted apart as friends, slowly and naturally.
I thought of how to break the deal, imaginatively,
to no avail. How can I ever know my soul’s secure?
Just try not believing in souls. That’s how I endure.
Allie’s actually sleeping soundly, and so’s Sam.
Lying awake, considering a future without a plan,
I decide some mysteries are better left unsolved.
I don’t need to know all. Letting go, I’m absolved.
Home seems like a theme town or living museum.
School seems like a TV show, play, or coliseum.
Home is a tame wilderness where nothing changes.
And school is a zoo where we’re free in our cages.
Home’s less real to me because it’s more natural.
Talk of ‘going out into the real world’ (so factual)
means finding a way to fit myself into a computer
network, rent a new pad, and become a commuter.
But that’s what I’ve gotta do, and what I wanna do.
At home I’m myself… I wanna be someone new.
My future’s not a dystopia—as long as you’re in it!
That’s what the Valentine said. But I dismissed it
and dismissed the sender from my life and bed.
I don’t want to be obsessed over. I wanted a friend.
My parents once told me of a guy called Dillon
who they grew up with. He proved to be a villain
but people loved him due to his singing voice,
which could silence a barroom. A girl called Joyce
wasn’t impressed. But she’s who Dillon wanted.
He followed her west, hopeful, but it was obvious
that nothing would come of it, and nothing did.
Finally she put a bounty on him. He went and hid
with my parents, and lived in a tent on their land.
One morning they found him naked on the sand,
murmuring that he had Lucifer trapped in his head.
He went into fever dreams and by sunset was dead.
And he had a voice as great as the grand canyon,
but never would’ve made a good life companion.
As strange as the stories were tonight, my dreams
are worse: My sorority coerces me into a scheme.
Shipped out, working in a salt and chocolate mine
for an internship, turning into a donkey, doing fine,
learning to lie all the time, to myself in particular.
I win ‘most likely to suck-seed for extracurricular
activity’. Making fun of me, they make me Queen
of Pleasure Island. I’d much rather just be clean.
Ugh.
Then I wake up and remember that I do learn a lot
of real stuff in college. I love learning; I just forgot.
Our old Greek teacher told us of this word akrasia.
He said it meant a fruitless endeavor or bad idea
that brings no lasting effects. But just this evening
I looked it up and got a slightly different meaning:
The dictionary said akrasia meant willfully wrong
action, a sin committed with ill intention all along.
I like our professor’s definition better. It’s broader,
and the way it fits everyday non-events is stronger.
When you forget something once-so-important,
—that’s akrasia. Many loves, true but inordinate,
become ruins, castles abandoned before fully built,
—those’re akrasia. Failed dreams bring deep guilt.
But it’s not an akrasia if you can find some good
in whatever happened (or didn’t), get it understood,
recollect the sparks that first brightened an old trial
(lost), and relight the spirit anew, with more style,
content, and fuel. If certain history seems a waste,
learn that happiness exists there, if only misplaced.
And that’s the task: to battle akrasia by redeeming
as much badness as possible, beyond the screening
& coverstories, such as school teaches me nothing
or mom detested me. A pessimist’s always bluffing.
The past hurts more when it’s denied its just due.
The future takes hold once you gather what’s true.
Mornings I wake up first and write in this journal.
I want summer eternal though the heat is infernal.
IV. ComaDoze
Are you there?
Ok guess not.
Sorry i am like ten hours late for our conversation, but i can leave you some information this way
In your last message you asked me about the coma
And having to relearn my skills
And what you called my indomitable spirit toward it all
I dont know when youll get this
But yeah ill tell you about the coma.
It was a real lesson in life
And it was a new bridge
It was actually the same thing thats been happening with everything else ive been talking about with you
A lesson believe it or not, not a tragedy
I was coming back from the islands
With my baby
Flying to san diego
Where we had a bigger studio already set up for me
Which flying with my baby was really something else
Because she hated it
And even getting ready for the trip i should have known something was wron
Wrong
But thats another story
So we left to move to the united states
I believe it was may
Yeah may 2000
Ok, I grew up as a lover of juice, especially grape juice
And it was hot in the airport so i had been chugging it
Well i have diabetes
Only i didnt know it then.
Or at least i wasnt sure, but i couldnt resist grape juice
So i go to sleep over the pacific ocean
Somewhere near hawaii
With my baby next to me
And i dont wake up
When i do wake up its a week later
and i had lost 35 pounds.
When you lose weight that quickly like that you kinda get disconnected to your muscles and your nervous system
To fastforward for a bit, it wasnt till 6 months later that my doctor gave me the ok to start lifting weights again.
I can remember lifting a light dumbbell with my right hand and doing some curls
Just like two curls, cuz thats all i could do
And all of a sudden my right hand felt like 200 pounds.
And what it was was the nerves reconnecting
So then i did the same with the left hand and thought ok now im even.
But then my top half felt heavy because my legs arent connected
Things like that kept happening till my whole body hooked itself back up again
Which took awhile
And thats not even going into how
From the very beginning
After waking up in the hospital
My brain was disconnected from my memories
It wasnt till 6 months later when i finally started to draw again that i realized just how fa
r my brain had gotten disconnected from my memories
They said it was part of the
Hang on
Encephalitis
It was a weird feeling cuz the only way i can describe it is that i could see all my skills and all my knowledge in my head
But i couldnt grab any of it,
None of it was connected to anything
And whenever i would try to grab it mentally to draw it, then i couldnt see it anymore
I could think of an arm but the bicep and tricep memories, i could see them but they wouldnt connect to ‘hey im drawing an arm so you should move over here with the pencil’
I couldnt connect what was on the page to what i was seeing in my head
Or what i was seeing in reality if i was drawing from a model
But to go back
I wake up in a hospital and for a whole two months after that i cant feed myself or even eat
Im hooked up to a iv
I never once asked my doctor what happened to bring me to that state. i didnt even have the sense that something happened or who i was really
What i asked the doctor when i woke up was ‘can i see my baby?’ and she said no. ‘so then what do i gotta do? tell me. i wanna see my baby. my babys all i remember.
Right then i was actually kinda franctic
And she tells me in this calm voice ‘tomorrow, if you can sit up, well talk about it.’ so tomorrow i sit up, and she goes ‘tomorrow if you can stand up on your own two feet.’ so the next day i stand up.
‘Ok, if you can walk around the room is the next thing
So she had me go through these paces, the tests, a million of them until most of my muscles and most my memories were reconnected
Even though everything is still real real weak, physically and mentally
Fragile
Months and months and months go by and im what they call an outpatient
They set me up in a little place there where i can draw
I still cant dress myself
Cant really do anything by myself
And im alone most of the time
But i can draw and they give me all sorts of tests
Physical and mental and i guess what youd call emotional tests to see if i can recognize emotions
Which i couldnt do very well for a while
And im lucky that some of my family could manage my funds and come visit me
But they wouldnt tell me anything
And it seemed like they were afraid of me in a sense
So one day i say to my doctor
Ok, where is my baby? how much longer?
And my doctor says ok, if you can draw her then you can see her
So right there and then i draw a sketch of my baby and show it to the doctor, and im told
You asked to see your baby. well, you can see her this way. shes there on the paper, see? this is the only way youre going to be able to see her.
Because she doesnt want to see you.
And ill tell you about that later
So for that whole year i had only thought about getting better so that i can see my baby. thats all i had thought about, and thats actually what kinda saved me.