conversations with dead people

conversations wi†h dead peopLe

宇 • 雨

conversations with dead people

马宇倩

carolyn m

a

the people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this you keep them alive.

for Mom and Dad, 姥姥姥爷who taught me unconditional love.

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Prelude ..........................//3

......................//26

.................//22

............//40

.......................//52

Interlude

point de vue

Night time calls

Postlude

:conten†s

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Miles to go.Little miss muffet counting down from 7-3-0.

On a rainy day

I think I am Brett Ashley until emerging sunshine shatters my simpering composure unless…unless of course the sun remains elusive until nightfall and that’s another thing.

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Prelude

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†here’s a certain kind of sorrow shared by those who left home early in their years, those who can call no one place home, and those who long for the place of their childhood. We long for imageries that are still fresh in our minds and child’s eye but no longer exist in this time di-mension, sceneries we readily recall and regularly revisit in our dreams.

There was a period of my life between the ages of 10 and 15 when I was possessed by an intense longing to be back to the place I grew up. Nearly every night I dreamt of revisiting the old familiar stationary store and eating the food I used to eat on the way home from school. And almost every morning I would wake up immensely disappointed at the realization of reality. It’s a kind of longing that carries on as we age. It reappears at moments of happiness and sorrow, and it accompanies us (as I assume) for as long as we live.

This may be where I live, now. There will be many versions of this in the years to come. But that place that I call home, there is but one, singular, and singularly unattainaable.

†

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“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be, you know?”

“Yes. I know.”

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658 is the code indicating an itinerant.

Once upon a time there were two girls. When the girls were 10 their father died and on that day, their mother wrote separate things on two pieces of paper and made the girls each draw one, and after, the girls would go separate ways according to what the piece of paper said.

One would continue her education. And the other would travel the world.

The girl that traveled the world met many people.

qu’est ce que c’est passe?

Quoi de Neuf?

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The alarm clock hardly ever wakes me anymore. The usual noise of the lawn mower at precisely 9:30 am each Saturday morning intrudes into my unsteady dream and presents itself as an unidentifiable buzz. I sleep in ‘til 1 pm. The unmade bed covers crumple as I toss my wet towel on top, along with bits and pieces of last night that I struggle not to remember because the thought of them pinches at my insides a little and screws up my breathing.

When I roll down the window of my Corolla the sun has already set, the edges of the sky still tinged with remnants of the blushing daylight. The wind slaps at my face a little too harshly, but my fingers don’t move down to that little button on the door, because to do so the air inside will get thick and my head will start to throb from the insulation. I focus on the goose bumps rising on my arms and check the rearview mirror for cops.

The nights are repetitive. If waiting occurs, I lean my back against the coffee bar, my legs dangle from an overstretched stool, preparing for my patience to wane as each unfamiliar face passes by the window and the ticking of an imaginary clock carries on perpetually.

A girl next to me buries her face into a laptop. Hair dyed black, jeans torn, and eyeliner smeared, her face as she snaps at the clink of my knocked over coffee mug prompts me of an unraveling familiarity. The

@ seven†een

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corners of her lips migrate toward her eyes at some elusive comical source. Her pupils are the size of black olives.

The waiting would always end with my patience out of sight, my sur-roundings unfamiliar.But my comfort and ease are alarming.I go to unrecognizable places. I see unfamiliar faces.I talk to scattered people with unsteady gazes who reek of forgotten dreams. And before long I am stepping back into the shower. The warm water is as refreshing as a night of unsatisfying rest when it hits my skin, washing away lingering fatigue. My towel is within reach when I am done with my habitual rinse, lather, and repeat.

1 It’s not about the way it tastes, it’s all about the way it feels.

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Steve Friedman ------------- on falling in love, forever, with the scent of a woman

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Gigantic, impossible blobs of color, purple and yellow, red and green,

splotching and dripping and filling up the starry sky. Fresh-cut grass and the

scent of gasoline from the pump behind the camp kitchen. Sweaty palms -

mine and hers, the summer camp director’s daughter —and we kiss, not know-

ing that 17-year-olds looking up at the aurora borealis should keep looking,

should hold tight to the vision, because we’ll never see it again.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge

what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” I submit that he had the wrong

organ. Looks matter. What you say is important. Actions count most, at least

to any reasonable man. But for summoning memories, for transporting us to

distant times, for evoking and stirring feelings that we didn’t know were still

there, there is scent.

There is only scent. “----------------------------

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Have you ever thought about waking up in the morning to realizethat we’re still seventeen?

That al the memories have been merely a dream and when you open your eyes what’s in front is

a blackboard and Ms. Norris from AP Literature...

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point de vue

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The only unconditional love you will ever know will be your parents, and in my fortunate case, also my grandparents.Treasure them, respect them, and show them you care.

Because one day you will face the world without them.

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Among the men and women, the multitude, I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs, Acknowledging none else—not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am; Some are baffled—but that one is not—that one knows me.

Ah, lover and perfect equal!I meant that you should discover me so, by faint indirections; And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the like in you.”

Walt Whitman, Among the Multitude

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Interlude

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◎一个人以为刻骨铭心的记忆，别人早已忘记了。时间会证明究竟有多少人在意你。不要为回忆昨天而错过今天。

我们没有太多的故事，不用说的那么难忘。

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Last night I dreamed that I was eating dinner with mom, when her phone rang, and the voice on the other end told her that the girl sitting at her dinner table isn’t her real daughter, but a beast in human form that’s pretending to be me.

Actually…

This wasn’t a dream. The phone really rang, as we sat at the dinner table. And for some reason, while she talked, the above scenario ran through my head. And the room shook little bit, barely noticeable. And I thought for a moment that I wasn’t real.

I always thought that if I try hard enough, and I still can’t see things (that aren’t supposed to be there), then I’m still safe, and nothing unexpected will come.

I think that if I try hard enough, lately, my vision blurs a bit and feels as if some kind of shift took place.

I think about the line between your reality and mine. My reality and my, reality.

Reality and fantasy. If reality could still be something else if I thought hard enough.

wan†

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But what if I stayed still, so very still, stiller than the air I breathe and the atmosphere moves without me, could I see something else, entirely?

Is there still hope?

… ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... †his moment in time, I imagine all that pain harnessing us all together into a giant lump of soap bubble rising with the premature heat wave higher higher higher till we burst into a million pieces of indistinct frag-ments each one revealing purple and blue bruises and I may know nothing (accordingtoyou) but of this much I’m sure:

When things break, the jagged pieces draw blood.

But remember to be happy, even if happiness is arbitrary, fictitious, unreachable or lost in the fathomage of our imaginations. But remember we want to be happy.

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A Morpho butterfly may

be one of over 80 species

of the genus Morpho. They

are neotropical butterflies found mostly in South

America as well as Mexico

and Central America.

Morphos range in wingspan from the 7.5

cm (3 inch) M. rhodopteron to the impos-ing 20 cm (8

inch) Sunset Morpho, M.

hecuba.

The name Morpho, meaning

changed or modified, is

also an epithet of Aphrodite and Venus.

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you may not believe itbut there are peoplewho go through life withvery littlefriction of distress.they dress well, sleep well.they are contented withtheir familylife.they are undisturbedand often feelvery good.and when they dieit is an easy death, usually in theirsleep.you may not believeitbut such people doexist.

but i am not one ofthem.oh no, I am not one of them,I am not even nearto beingone ofthem.but theyare there

and I amhere.——— The Aliens, Charles Bukowski

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Well, everyone’s sad.

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night time calls

Can you keep a secret?

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I’m trying to organize aprison break. I’m looking for, like, an accomplice. We have to first get out of this bar, then the hotel, then the city, and then the country.

Are you in or you out?

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He asked me what I wanted the most.

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I said it was an earth-shattering second.

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Like the sound of glass breaking.

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Close your eyes and count to —

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does it ever get easy?

you mean life?

yea. does it get easy?

what do you want me to say?

lie to me.

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in time of daffodils(who know the goal of living is to grow) forgetting why, remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim the aim of waking is to dream, remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze our now and here with paradise) forgetting if, remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond whatever mind may comprehend, remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be (when time from time shall set us free) forgetting me, remember me — e. e. cummings

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Postlude

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Of certain memories, they are ingrained into our minds not because of the what-happened, but of how it made us feel when it was happening, and of how it changed us.

Of death of the physical kind, I will only say this much: death is certain. Its inevitability renders it a natural procession in life, and, as a result, I have come to accept its companionship through the thick and thins. Whatever may happen on this journey of mine and yours, death is a testament to the constancy of time. No matter what happens, things will keep moving forward, regardless of our rises and falls.

The only thing constant is change.

As for perspective, I propose that e. e. cummings said it well,

wholly to be a fool, while spring is in the world...

for life’s not a paragraph, and death I think is no parenthesis

†

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”长大以后我想要那个。“

”哪个？房子吗？“

”那个窗户里面，他们小小的幸福。“

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”长大以后我想要那个。“

”哪个？房子吗？“

”那个窗户里面，他们小小的幸福。“

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conversations with dead people

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