found_drama

Here we are, midday on a humid August Saturday.  Restless seems to be the keyword for both of us here; perhaps everyone?  It’s a weird interstitial moment, with some things winding down while others ramp up.  The garden seems metaphor enough for that.  Some of the plants have run their course and are done for the season, having given us their last fruit while others are just now emerging with promises for the fall.  But all things on their way out deserve their due retirement and all things on their way in deserve some measure of coddling and attention.

Where to put the energy?  Where to put the effort?

I suppose some of the restlessness is due to bouts of insomnia mixed in with increasingly intense, increasingly bizarre dreams.  Meanwhile, my downtime (read: “not at work”) is spent catching up on work projects or otherwise trying to decide between one of about four writing projects (all competing for undivided attention) and the other various day-to-day chores.

currently playing: Junior Boys “Under The Sun (live)”

UPDATE: Wrote up a promo piece over on Synaptic Clog.  Definitely going to this show.  The opening acts sound pretty interesting, too.  And damn but do I love me some Clutch.

For his 18th birthday, it seems my brother has decided to have me and my dad accompany him to get pierced.  He won’t say where on his body but he does drag us along to the mall.  This mall has two-stories but it’s preposterously tall, with an obscenely large escalator going from the very low first floor to the very high second floor.  We ride the escalator up and he keeps quiet about the details.  As we approach the tattoo/piercing studio itself, I back out.  He doesn’t need me to stand by and watch.  Instead, I wander the second floor of this mall, exploring department stores and other boutiques.  After a long while, when they never emerge, I go looking for them.  However, instead of my dad and brother, I find two friends (one male, one female) in a store that seems to specialize in clocks.

These friends look panicked and stammer their way through a story about how they’re being pursued.  We slip out of the mall as quietly as we can, jumping into His truck, parked a few blocks away.  I think I smell something for a moment but I can’t be sure.  No sooner do we start the truck and begin to drive away however then She comments on the smell as well.  We turn to look and see flames leaping up from the gas tank.  He slams on the brakes and we all run for it.  At least, I thought we all made it.  I see Him running and He is gone before I can cry out to him.  Police are on the scene immediately, evaluating the flipped, burning truck.  I try to get close, to see if She made it.  One of the officers tries to push me away; he tells me that I already know what I would see and over his shoulder, I see the sheet draped over that figure and the smoke sneaking out from underneath.  He tries to calm me down, tries to get my to beg off, find some distraction.  It seems like he’s taunting me.

“Fifteen cents per ruble,” he says with up-raised eyebrows.  I swing my fist and knock him down.  I pummel him until he’s limp; his partner never notices.  And then I use the first officer as a cudgel with which to beat the other.  Even with them out of the way now, I cannot bring myself to look under that smoking sheet.

We’ve been bunkered for days (weeks?) against the plague and the roving hordes.  It’s dangerous out there but we’ve done a decent enough job of fortifying the house.  It’s not my parents’ house but everything started happening we just let ourselves in here, found the keys, and set up camp.  We’re short on provisions though and we have begun to make plans for how to re-supply.  In fact, A. has volunteered herself to go first by sneaking out in the middle of the night, leaving behind only a note to explain that we needed more food (among other things).  It’s all I can do not to self-immolate with worry.

We must distract ourselves from this apocalypse and thus we keep to a strict schedule for family meals.  Everyone helps (in some way) and we spend all day, trapped inside this house, preparing some elaborate feast.  Tonight I have gone overboard.  I had not realized it until too late.  I had my excuses.  With A. gone, I needed to fill my time as much as I could.  There was not enough of any one thing but too much of each component part.  The list could have gone on and on.

I spend all of that time in the kitchen preparing the pork, the chicken, and the lamb.  The pork and chicken go together with the same seasonings, cooking at the same temperature.  The lamb will follow.  Someone in the other room is talking about “the most pierced person in the world”.  Outside of the house, the hordes sound that much closer.  A window breaks; my dad and an uncle (R.?) rush to secure it.  For a house that is not ours, this place is filled with an awful lot of familiar items — a large red casserole dish, the dining room table, that chair in the living room.  Not everyone here is family and there seems no rhyme nor reason to how each person got here.  The secret knock at the back door just as the smoke alarm goes off.  Someone needs to let A. in before They find her; everyone calls my name but I am busy in the kitchen.  And dinner needs to get to the table.