Tuesday, March 15
Signal
Vic’s birthday is a thing she rarely celebrates unless forced to do so by the covert efforts of insistent friends. She’s not reluctant about her age. She just thinks we’ve got it backward when it comes to who did the bigger, braver thing in the delivery room. Vic thinks that mothers should be celebrated on the birthdays of their children.
At the moment she turns 31 (on a birthday which she has not celebrated except by the eating of cake), she is in her daughter’s darkened bedroom keeping watch as the little form under the blanket settles back to sleep. Vic is worrying, as she has been for the past few days, about signals.
Signal noun 1. An indicator, such as a gesture or coloured light, that serves as a means of communication. 2. Something that incites action 3. An impulse or a fluctuating electric quantity, such as voltage, current, or electric field strength, whose variations represent coded information.
Signals, specifically the vast number of them pulsing through the air and, by necessity, through the very space our physical selves are occupying at any time, first appear on Vic’s “things to be concerned about” list when she drives into her underground parking without losing the radio signal in her car. As she rounds the levels, circling deeper into the earth, putting more concrete between herself and the outside world, she begins to wonder at the strength of the signal that must be delivering the retro-80s pop music from across town down to her car radio.
When she puts the concern together with the idea that signals of this strength are probably gliding through her body at a regular rate of millions per second, she gets mildly sweaty-palmed with distress.
How are we affected by all these signals, frequencies, transmissions that slice into our physical structures? Is there anywhere in the world that a body could be free of these whipping, hurtling signals?
This thought turns over in her head for several days. When she confides her concern to Jon, he gives her the cockeye and says “I wouldn’t go around telling people that you feel signals.”
She rolls her eyes at him, signalling “it’s no big deal”. Still, she worries.
posted by Vic |
3/15/2005 01:13:00 PM |
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Wednesday, March 2
You
You are the reason, the why, the (remember) when. You’re thought of all the time, even though you might not know it. She holds you, hot against her heart, rubbing the image of you with her mind’s thumb. Polishing you. Keeping you alive.
Like you were just yesterday. Even when you’re today.
You pron. 1. The person being addressed.
Vic has a host of "yous", the people who changed her, made her hurt, hollowed her or made her happy. She loves all of them, differently, but purely. Without reason.
You are her heart, outside herself. Run off to live a life all its own. You are doughy legs, wide eyes, crazy hair. Cookie smeared on your face. You are her greatest love.
You are the unexpected grail of years of blind pursuit. You are tall, tall, taller than trees. You are softhearted and basic, but not simple. She realizes after living with you a year, that you were the one fate promised. This fact astounds her. You are him.
You are the one she thought she’d end up with.
You are her friend. Her most trusted. You are the only phone call she’ll answer without hesitation.
You are the uneven rock overlooking the atlantic on which she built her leaning house. You’re also the shifting sea that laps at her foundations. She thought of you as her exit strategy, that one day she’d just go ahead and fall in. You have many faces. She has kissed every one.
You, she’s afraid of. When she drives by you on the street, her veins seem to open too wide and she gets dizzy with fear. You are a very uncomfortable situation. A hard wooden plank for a bad back. She would rather forget you, but never will.
posted by Vic |
3/02/2005 11:37:00 AM |
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