Circular Motion

by Ripple Reddwoord

  #

  switch(future) {

  case self_det: _CS+=0x0090; break;

  case pre_det: _DS+=0x0132; break;

  default: _CS=_DS;

  }

  #

  I had my eyes closed and her arms moved down my waist. I felt the skin through her clothes and her body through her skin. My tongue entered her mouth. I extended in and pressed against her. Her lips closed in around me; I pressed against her tongue and we contracted in opposite directions. My hand reached down to her skirt and slid it higher.

  #

  #

  “Hello.” (time--;)

  “I like your shirt.” I was wearing this metallic shirt that was black on the inside but turned red as you got farther away.

  “Thanks.” It was that girl I saw after Lot.

  #

  I don’t know where I am anymore. “Have you ever seen static?”

  “What do you mean?” I think I was the second voice but things are blurry at certain times in your life. “Like TV?”

  “No, like pure static, like you open your eyes you the shapes don’t fit any of your paradigms.” But a third voice…

  “…”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  #

  I’m not sure exactly what happened next but later I was on a roof staring at the sky. The roof was slanted downwards made of asphalt shingle and there was a girl sitting next to me. It was night but the sky was like summer. Blue and comfortable.

  “I wanna fly,” she said. She was curled up with her hands wrapped around her knees and her eyes staring out across the other rooftops.

  “What?” I didn’t register what she said the first time. I was looking at the roof. The roof had these rocks placed in a pattern I couldn’t recognize. It reminded me of this time I climbed a mountain and there were these huts on the way up that had stones on top so the wind wouldn’t blow their roofs off.

  “I wanna fly.” Actually there were a lot of stars out. Like we were in New Mexico or a planetarium or something. She looked up and I think it was Pisces.

  I had a T-shirt on and I looked down at my arm and could see the veins. “Why?”

  I was thinking about that Doors movie where Morrison was on the rooftop with that Catholic girl except I didn’t have any poetry to read her. The Catholic property is irrelevant. Sloppy coding.

  She was humming a tune. I think it went something like ‘Dat-dat-datta-dat-dat-da’. Her hair hung long over her head and she looked at me and her entire face lit up. “Flying is fun.”

  This one time a friend of mine went with me to a party. In the kitchen there was a keg and a stove. My friend was drunk and he turned on the stove and put this rag on fire. I watched the fire crawl over the fabric.

  Maybe I said that out loud and I should put quotes around it.

  From one of the windows under us I heard hip-hop. I think the party was still going on. The music was completely wrong. Asynchronous reset. I miss… what do I miss?

  “HEY, I’M TALKING TO YOU!” It was that girl next to me. I think she was drunk. “I’M FUCKING DRUNK!”

  She sat with one leg stretched out and one bent Indian style. Her arms kept her propped up and she was looking at me expecting me to say something. “Sorry.”

  The girl slid down the rooftop and looked over the edge. “I’m gonna fly.”

  “Oh.” She sat there and I could see her head bob back and forth. I think she wanted me to stop her so I moved farther down the roof.

  “Hey you.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me towards her. “Come here.”

  Stop. “Stop it.”

  She hummed ‘Dat-dat-datta-dat-dat-da’ again and then stopped. She was curled up with her head against her knees and started rocking back and forth. I think she might have been crying. I put my arm around her and she was very soft and small and frail. She started humming but quietly now. “Dat-dat-datta-dat-dat-da”

  “Don’t,” I said. I didn’t want her to get hurt. “Stay here with me.”

  “What’s wrong with me?”

  I remember trying to concentrate on what she was saying but failing. I was stable and couldn’t listen very well like I was watching Kurasawa’s “Dreams” on caffeine and kept wanting to fast-forward.

  “You know all those damn sci-fi movies. Where the freak loner kid that’s half-mental has these hidden special powers that end up saving the world. Shouldn’t I have some special gift, something that only I can do as well?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I already told you how I feel about things like this. Or at least I will try to tell you sometime in the future. We sat together on the roof under stars and a crescent moon.

  She whispered at me. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  She was shaking now. “It’s ok.”

  I put my arm around her and when I touched her I final calmed down enough to feel. Emotion I mean. I wasn’t on some Prozac induced utopian state. I was real. It was lonely in there. It is lonely in here. I remember that. I remember holder and thinking it didn’t matter what she said or did cuz I knew she was an angel and it is lonely in here.

  Don’t forget ME. I felt her say. I heard birds chirping from the behind us and music from below but couldn’t hear her talk. I felt it. Maybe cuz our heads were next to each other and the words just jumped through the air like speech. I didn’t think birds were supposed to chirp at night. Then she whispered out load, “Let’s fly.”

  She moved and I withdrew away from her. She stretched her arms up and her chest flattened and she expanded. She jumped up and reached out her hand for mine. Then I saw her smile in light projected by a streetlamp through the strands of her hair and the shadows they made. “Ok, let’s go.”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me up and we stepped to the edge of the roof. When she smiled she was crazy but there was a promise made between us like gravity. After that I didn’t look at her or the ground or anything. I was thinking of how I’d get as a manic depressive kid. Like I’d slit my wrists with my neurons firing violently or just sit and stare at clouds all day with them not firing at all. I was thinking about how I used to think the way she was thinking. Now I don’t do that. I’ve died a little bit. Flat-lined. That’s probably just another generic thought but at least it was a thought. I was grateful to her for putting it into my head.

  I guess it was all kinda silly but that’s what I was thinking anyway.

  We jumped off. I mean she jumped off and I fell off with her. I couldn’t see but her but she held me as we fell. I think maybe she was scared, her fingernails in my palm. We twisted in the air and her head hit the sidewalk and mine hit her chest. Then it was quiet. I turned to look at her face. With my ear on her all I could hear was my own breathing. It would stop for a while and then I would notice it and it would start again. All I could hear was my own breathing.

  When I got up I was alone and stood over her. She didn’t move so I nudged her with my foot. She still didn’t move. She didn’t move and above us the streetlamp began to flicker. Maybe sputter is the right word. The middle would go dark and the bottom yellow and the top white. But there wouldn’t be any light.

  She was dead.

  I felt sick. Like instead of feeling sad and crying my heart was dead and my stomach had taken over the emotion vector. There was a dark pool of liquid on the pavement that reflected the lamp. I bent over and held my stomach and closed my eyes. I could only feel pain in my stomach. I wished there was more but that was it. She was on the ground with her white shirt and black blood and blue pavement and she was dead. I remembered when I was younger I used to fall in love with them all the time. Now my stomach just hurts to remind my atrophied self what it once felt like.

  I haven’t seen the sunrise in years. It’s hard to write about love when you’re not in love.

  I thought about Mustardseed and tried not to think about the girl and the pain went away for a little bit. I remembered something I wrote in high school:

  I lay on puffy pink clouds that roll o
n throughout time over a sea as vast as the knowledge of my soul that I loved her and as the waves lapped gently, gently, caressing my feet cool beneath the surface, I threw my head back and raised my arms making snow angles in the dream stuff that collides with the sky whose stars are the only witness to the execution of our marriage.

  I know the passage is meaningless but at least it was a passage. At least in high school I didn’t have to rely on my stomach to express myself. Then I crouched with my head between my knees. I think maybe I dozed off for a bit. I saw this time-lapse picture of Mustardseed in my head kinda like when they show stuff growing in Bio class. She was aging till there was only dust. But there was this halo around her that kept growing till it was infinite. Even after I couldn’t see the dust anymore. Something was still there and it was golden and it was warm.

  Then there was discontinuity which makes me think I might have been dreaming and I saw this room full of powder that made me sneeze and jolt out of it and make my stomach hurt again.

  I was back kneeling on the ground outside the frat house with a dead body next to me. There wasn’t any more music playing but I could hear voices from inside the house. I looked up and the sky didn’t seem as dark as before.

  I was thinking about how she wasn’t alive anymore and it was getting to me, like her mind must have been racing a few minutes ago and now there’s nothing. And she told me not to forget her. She was right about life sucking and all but she didn’t accept it like I do. I’m just complacent and try not to think about it. Seeing her die made me start to think I was missing something that she had understood. Something about afterlife like if you die in a holy war you go straight to heaven. The capitalist gives money in exchange for the life force of the worker and the worker isn’t really alive until they go home. And all those abortion people are always arguing how kids aren’t alive until a fortnight or a month or two months after their made. Maybe they aren’t alive until after the abortion. Maybe today was her birthday.

  I read somewhere once that electrons can’t tell which way time is moving.

  Later the next morning I found a poem on a napkin in my pocket that I think I might have written here so I’m gonna tell you it now.

  I see the sky.

  Blue and olive trees grow

  and I am.

  Fading.

  I think it was Vortexism. The poem I mean. Like Ezra.

  #

  Afterwards I started walking away from the frat house down the sidewalk towards where all the skyscrapers were in the city. I didn’t look back and just concentrated on walking in a straight line for a while. On one of the buildings there was an electric scrolling ticker sign like in Times Square that usually has bits of news but that night it was just static. I guess it was late so no one cared but it was still kinda strange cuz the static scrolled like it was text, like it was Word.

  I ended up in front of this cemetery. I went there once before to look at this huge obelisk tombstone I could see from my room. I don’t remember what the inscription said but the stone was black. (pantheon) The gate was closed but I jumped it and went inside.

  I remember this one time when I was in France I went to a cemetery. It was late at night and out in the country so there weren’t any streetlights. I remember walking around without my shirt on and seeing markers with crosses everywhere. (mon petit chouchou)

  This time I saw the obelisk but went further back to the older part of the cemetery. The grass was higher and there were worn rocks coming out of the earth that may have been old tombstones. On a hill I saw these three Greco-Roman pillars that were kinda worn down and toppled over. I climbed up to look at them and saw that there was a checkerboard on the ground. The grid was only 4 by 4 but each stone square was large enough for me to stand on. In the starlight the board looked gray and black. I had this eerie feeling; it reminded me of someplace I’ve been before but I couldn’t remember exactly where. I think maybe an old dream. Something about having me personified as a chess piece and being required to figure out which piece I was by trying to make one move. At first I thought about making one of those L-knight moves because if it succeeded I’d know for sure was a knight. But the eerie feeling was about if I really wanted to be a knight like if you check one paired particle’s spin you automatically know the other particle has the complimentary spin. I remember being taught though that the other particle’s spin doesn’t really exist until you actually measure the pair. Maybe if I tried to be a king I’d be a king. Although being a knight was the only thing I could be sure about.

  I got away from the chessboard and tried to forget the déjà-vu thing. As I walked the ground felt soft and I heard insects again and the grass was black without resolution. I came to a tree. I think it was maple but what do I know. It was also black but against a dark blue sky. I stepped up to it and felt it. The bark was rough and knotted and old. One of the main branches was snapped at its root and touched the ground. There was a light breeze and I could hear the branches creak between cricket chirps. I think it was dying.

  I laid down on the grass and listened to the creaking and chirping for a while. I just thought about nothing for a while.

  I thought about how ‘lay’ is one of the few English verbs with differing transitive and intransitive forms.

  I wondered if anything would happen to the tree after it died.

  I remembered this one time when I was a kid I went up to my mom with a butter knife when she was pregnant and put the knife up to her stomach and said I was gonna kill her. I guess I was watching a little too much TV. My mom smiled and said that if I killed her I wouldn’t have a mommy any more. That surprised me since I hadn’t thought of it so I put my knife down and hugged her.

  I remembered once giving a big Elmo doll to my sister for her birthday. Elmo is on Sesame Street. Sesame Street is on PBS. PBS is on the TV, too. I gave it to her a couple of months late but it was ok anyway. I don’t remember Elmo from my childhood though. I remember Cookie Monster. And Supergrover. I wish I was Supergrover. He had a metal helmet and a cape and could fly. I saw Elmo a couple times recently though. I remember Ernie was telling Elmo about his senses. He said ears were for hearing and it was good.

  Then I got this idea. I think maybe the chessboard thing was still running though my head unconsciously and I had come up with the correct move to make.

  I took out a pack of matches from my pocket and lit one. The matches had an ace of spades on it. The match got warm all of a sudden and I dropped it. I think I was holding it to close to the flare. I lit another one and held it right and tried lighting the tree trunk with it. The flame went out. I tried it again but it still didn’t work. Then I remembered from Biology class that trees have leaves. I figured I should try them so I climbed the tree and lit some. I think they were dry and wrinkled but I wasn’t sure cuz it was dark outside. They lit up pretty well though.

  When I got the fire going I watched the leaves for a second and then jumped down and rolled a little on the grass. I looked up at the tree. The fire was spreading. The tree was alive again. The light was bright and yellow and smoky. The tree was alive again. (apple) Everything was orange and red now. The tree was burning.

  Then I started feeling the heat as if the fire was nudging me away. I could smell the burning and I thought it was enough and I should leave now. I turned around and walked down the hill. On the way the wind filtered through me as the fire sucked in oxygen and anything else the air happened to carry.

  After that I climbed the fence and got back on the street. I walked a few blocks away from the cemetery came to a main road and stuck my hand out for a cab. I didn’t want to go back to campus just yet. I probably couldn’t have slept anyway; there was too much stuff happening.

  When I got in the cab the driver started down the street without asking me where I wanted to go.

  “Do you know Yellow?” Yellow is the name of this club I used to go to.

  “Yellow? Naw, where’s it at?” He didn’t look at me when he spoke. Not even
in the rearview.

  “Uh, just turn right at the next light and go straight for a while.” I used to go clubbing a lot but lately I’ve been uncomfortable at them. Like I feel unwelcome. I think it’s an inferiority complex or something.

  The cab driver slowed down the car. “You want me to turn here, right?”

  “Ya.” What I mean by the inferiority complex is that unless people smile and say ‘hi’ I automatically think that ‘get the fuck away from me, dot-head’ is going through their heads and I just want to run away. I think it has to do with me being teased a lot as a kid.

  The radio was playing this 50’s music. Actually I’m not sure if it was 50’s but it made me think of Ella Fitzgerald. So maybe it wasn’t 50’s music. Anyway at one of the traffic lights I looked out the window and saw a moth hovering outside. There weren’t any lights in the cab so I don’t know what it was attracted to. Moths aren’t that pretty to look at. Butterflies usually are, at least from a distance. But this moth kept slamming its body against the glass and you could hear the rapping on the door. I watched, mesmerized by movement.

  When I got out of the cab I walked past the club without noticing at first. It’s in the basement of a rather ordinary looking apartment building so it’s easy to miss. But then I saw someone go in and I followed them down.

  I went to the bar first and used the rest of Pedro’s fake cash to get drunk. I’m rather weak when it comes to alcohol so it wasn’t that hard. The bartender had these blue tint sunglasses on and served me kamikazes with a rhinoceros head above his head. I would get a one and then turn my back on him and drink it and then order another. I was watching this one guy talk to another girl and smoke. He would only take a few drags from the cigarette before putting it out and lighting another. There were a bunch of full size buds in his ashtray with only the tips burned off.

  Later I remember sitting fetus style staring at an opened bottle of Evian in my hand. It was open but the plastic tamper seal still connected the cap to the bottle. There was acid jazz playing and the walls were tiled like the outside of Challenger. On a wall a projector was playing one of those black and white silent movies with no sound and pauses for text dialog. The Challenger tiles broke up the screen into fragments but I didn’t notice that at first. At first I was just reading the text. Something like ‘I admit trying to kill her but I swear I had nothing to do with the other murders.’ There was a picture of a guy in a top hat and beard and mustache.