Short Talks

13 thoughts on “Short Talks”

1. Short Talk on Grief

   Yesterday was a good day and I missed you.
   Today was a good day and I missed you.
   I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but I know that I will miss you.

   Short Talk on Love

   We have our hard moments.
   We have moments where it seems like we are against one another.
   But in between those small, ugly moments,
   We have moments where our souls intertwine.
   When two become one.
   When you finish my sentences,
   When you make my favorite soup when I get sick,
   That’s when I know.
   I love you as much as you love me.

   Short Talk on Money

   Someone, somewhere, at some point just made up the concept of money. We are floating on a rock moving through space. And somehow, we ended up living in the time period with credit scores. Money controls everything. How did we get to this point?

2. Short Talk on Moving On
   I understand sometimes it is best to let something go if it isn’t serving you anymore. I have rope burn. Tug of war. Let it go. Move on. Clenching it so tightly and holding on for dear life hurts more than letting go.

   Short Talk on Pool
   Someone in the house keeps stealing our pool ball. Maybe if I add more blue chalk I’ll play better, something about surface area. Something about watching someone draw back and aim feels intimate. We don’t even have an eight ball, when it comes time for one in a game we take the dark blue ball and spin it around and try to remember it’s eight. Eight not two.

   Short Talk on Growing up
   When we grew up we did stupid things. I should have had my internet access restricted. I thankfully didn’t eat a TidePod. That probably would’ve killed me. I did put ice and salt on my skin, it burned. My skin was fleshy and pink and sort of white. Why did I do that? I also ate a spoonful of cinnamon. It made my lungs burn, I coughed and couldn’t breathe. I imagine that’s what it feels like to be buried alive.

   Short Talk on Motion Sickness
   If I sit in the car and read I puke. If the air isn’t hitting me enough, or there is a strong scent, or I am too focused on the world passing by I will puke. If I don’t eat on the plane I wake up out of my slumber nauseous. I sat on a swing too long once and puked later that night. My stomach is too fickle. Too many conditions have to be just right, I wish I could just sit there.

3. Short talk on snakes
   I was born in the year of the snake and so I feel a certain kinship. I like the way, like shooting stars, seeing one swivel past you, never fails to elicit a gasp. Last night I dreamt of my father, holding a big black snake by the neck as its body curled into a variety of S-shapes, not sure where we were.

   Short talk on the tree branches looking like neurons
   Once, while on mushrooms, I lied, bare sticky skin on the forest floor, looking up at the branches of a tree, which were also the neurons in my brain, which were also the neurons of the tree, and the branches in my brain.

   Short talk on the kitchen table
   Long and granite and never quite clean. I’ve spent so much time here. It’s exciting when I find myself here alone, exciting when I walk into an elaborate dinner and table full of guests. It takes at least 7 people to move.

   Short talk on the smell in this stairwell
   It smells like the gymnastics studio I used to practice at as a kid in this stairwell. Thoroughly and unsuperfluously disinfected. I’m on the way to visit my ex. When did I stop doing cartwheels all the time?

4. Short talk on snow days
   So much is dependent on the command of others. Until the magic words commence you’re just sit still and vulnerable. You can prepare, but not fully. Maybe if heaven’s pixie dust starts to fall, but until then you remain in anticipation

   Short talk on stuffed animals
   As adults, this manufactured being is gifted to others as an expression of deep affection. As children, we treat them with the utmost affection every time no matter how many or few we obtain.

   Short talk on shoes
   Cherished until one bad stain, then they become beaters.

5. Short Talk on Mindfulness
   Journaling is just like doing the dishes, it never takes as long or as much out of you as you think it will and you always feel better when it’s done. You feel productive, like there’s no task you can’t accomplish. Then suddenly you have more dirty dishes. Suddenly it’s weeks later and you still haven’t washed them.

   Short Talk on Balance
   He looked like an ant up there. He’s doing something only a human could think to do. He’s tightrope walking between the two towers of the World Trade Center in NYC. He’s got guts. He has courage and strength. He most importantly has balance.

   Short Talk on The Solar System
   Around and around we go. We are forever looped together in a gravitational pull that cannot be bested. I find that when we are at our furthest distance from each other, the force between us is strongest. Reminding me you are out there, across the reaches of space.

   Short Talk on Silvia Plath
   She was my neighbor. She used to steal and hide things from my roommate. She must’ve gotten in through the walls. She’s a prankster that one. She deserves our gratitude. She deserves our thanks. She will go on to write books and poetry that resonate to this very day. She will inspire future generations. She will always come back to haunt me.

   Short Talk on The Collector
   Once I found a bowl in his bed that still had a little bit of milk and a spoon in it! Never would I have been able to get away with that. It took my mom years to get all the rocks out of his bed. Eventually, he was allowed a box inside(the porch). The ones put outside were “let go”. He still has a collection somewhere it may be back in the room now. Couldn’t be on the bed though his mattress is always falling off the frame.

6. Short talk on Indiana Jones
   Indiana Jones is a dog. What is known can become unknown. What is learned can be lost. What once was a life that shone so bright can diminish; even stars must die. Stars must shine until they can’t. One day the sun will explode. To some, it already has. Indie was a dog.

   Short talk on high school studio art
   Masters of their craft dotted the room. Each table an island defined by its master. Chatter on the right side, alliances made, and countries formed. Masters of their craft dotted the room, their islands rich with their art, their whole world contained on canvases and paper. An exhibition, a world’s fair, a room dotted with each masters’ achievements. Masters of their craft dotted the classroom, and in the middle a girl, in awe and in reverence.

   Short talk on bones
   A frustrated mother, a daughter on the verge of throwing up. By all accounts, bones should not be feared, bones in a video game world should not be feared. But to me they were real. To me they were everything and nothing at once. The colossal skull, mouth open, remnants frozen in a moment of agony born of a sudden death, are everywhere and nowhere. They are around me at every moment, daunting and terrifying, and they are restricted to the screen, smaller than the hand I lift it to the computer.

   Short talk on Aerospace Engineering
   The man on the kite failed to reach the sky. The work of a lifetime, one week of school, had failed to reach its lofty goals, creating a working kite from straws and newspaper. The girl in the kite had reached the sky. Only known to the kite for a day, she gave it its name. She left hers behind not long after. A classroom one life short, continued to try to reach the sky. I only knew her for fifteen minutes, but I hope she felt it when the planes we all made finally met the sky.

   Short talk on Sally Bowles
   The stage is ultimately and wholly a cruel place. When bows are done and curtains are closed, all is said and done for the audience. The curtain is closed and the story is over until it is not. The curtain rises and the tale repeats itself time and time again, a happy ending achieved and lost in a cycle of endless yearning ignored by all those who see it. Sally Bowles prays each performance that things will be different, the story over, a happy ending achieved and left to rest. “Maybe this time” she’ll “get lucky”, “Maybe this time” she’ll “win”. She never does. The curtains close and the curtains rise, the world is reset, and the cycle continues.

7. Short talk on senior year
   Who knows what they want 23 to hold? You can dream so far but how to get there is something different. To be stripped of all routine is to get to know yourself more than you might want.

   Short talk on first love
   Sweetness and naivete. Fitting into spaces you might not belong. Crying over matches from heaven because you don’t recognize what is hell.

   Short talk on sweatshirts
   Days on end in the same blue fabric. Wrapped in your own scent. Dorm room heat is unregulated and suffocating so cold air blows through an open window in December. Sleeves faded and cuffs torn. Sanctuary in stitches.

8. Short Talk on Dancing

   They were told I would never walk, yet I learned to dance. My debut stage performance was as a munchkin from The Wizard of Oz. Tapping my feet and singing along, I never imagined a miracle like this would someday be discouraged because my body dances differently than my mind.

   Short Talk on a Mother’s Love

   You have been there since the very beginning, quite literally. You believed in me before I was old enough to believe in myself. Without you, I would not be where I am today, writing this. Today, you told me you see me as a friend, which brought tears to my eyes. Thank you for everything, Mom. I love you.

   Short Talk on Staring into Space

   Daydreaming. Staring off. Getting lost in our thoughts. It happens to most of us. What if you couldn’t control these moments? What if they came at the most inopportune times? What if you didn’t remember what you were thinking about? It feels like you missed a chunk of time you will never get back. They may be epileptic seizures, but it seems I’ll never know for sure why I stare into space uncontrollably.

9. Short Talk on Thesauruses
   There’s always so much all at once, and that is how things must be to sustain themselves. Converging into each other, the same but the slightest element different. Layer on layer, developing convolutions, grown from the same stem.

   Short Talk on Palimpsest
   Don’t touch the glass at an aquarium, at a store, or in your house. The finger prints either have to be washed off, or they stay there, overlapping one another until nothing can be seen behind them. A blank piece of paper’s only purpose is to be covered. Don’t erase while you sketch. The art flows through you. There is a plan. There is a way. But which one was first?

   Short Talk on Drive Thru Shifts
   Hi-Welcome-To-Super-Subs-What-Can-I-Get-You? Mary Shelley at 10:00pm. Who wants a sub at 10:00pm. No one. But Mary Shelley’s with me. The Manager’s going to ask me to close. Or he will in a minute. We’ll-Get-Right-On-That. The weirdest order. At 10:00pm. Ten pieces of deli meat mashed between bread. Cutting through it is cutting through meat cake. They won’t be here to get it for another ten minutes. We’ve got time to laugh. Here-You-Go-Have-A-Nice-Day. My first “Can I speak to your manager?”. Mortifying. 12 dollars an hour. I don’t even like the food. The headset beeps. Coworker looks over at me, grabs the mop, wets the floor, smirks and shrugs. Last night was the same as any other.

10. Short talks (à la Anne Carson)

    Greek is the language of the dead, the future past – urgency, selfishness. Nothing is certain except that it is all made up. Films are the language of the unseen, and the constantly seen, and of seeing, seeing, seeing. There is language for peace, there is language for war. Films are σιγουσι, εσίγησε, σιγων, σιγαν.

    Short talk on free will

    American Psycho. Who doesn’t want to kill Jared Leto? Punishment, the reality of punishment. The Matrix. Who doesn’t want to wear tight leather and see the truths of the universe? Reality, the punishment of reality.

    Short talk on the importance of hands

    I have seen the 2015 rom-com Sleeping with Other People eight times, the first six times rented on cable until I finally sucked it up and purchased the film. Eight times I’ve sat through the horrible, invasive sex scene of Lainey and her daddy issues. Eight times I’ve stilled my breath as soon as Jake returns home to find Lainey on his porch steps, brings her upstairs, takes off her shoes and lays with her in his off-putting bachelor pad of an apartment. “I love you for free, Lainey,” he tells her. “I love you for free, Jake,” I whisper along with the both of them, taking their voices into my own.

    Short talk on the fairytale

    Recycled and reordered, constantly. Because we were raised with them. Because there is always something hidden within them. Like Attic Greek, fairy tales have lived so many lives. Like Attic Greek, you’ll never know who wrote them for real, who brought them to you. You will just love them – you must.

    Short talk on ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός

    We invented plays, books, films in order to invent god. To manufacture destiny. To become God. μηχανῆς in the feminine genitive – we invented plays, books, films in order to force god from women.

    Short talk on women, generally

    Every part of the body, excruciatingly detailed onto the canvas of time. Time like a prison, like the cold bars of the transport car taking you from one prison to another. Teen Vogue magazines, Van Gogh paintings. The woman with the look in her eye, that secret smile. The woman is never stuck behind the canvas – the woman runs. You’ll never see it.

    Short talk on the 90’s

    There is something about the 90s. Maybe I am having a brain aneurysm. No one has ever properly explained to me why we gravitate towards certain aesthetics. I don’t want to look like Katie Holmes and I’m not particularly attracted to her. There is something about the curve of her face, the chalky texture of her eyeliner, the stray hairs of her ponytail. Like an ancient curse. Like a glitch in the matrix.

11. Short Talk on Being an Older Sister and the Eldest Daughter
    Muffled sobs from the room next to mine. Yes, I will talk to her and see if she’s okay. I got straight A’s again today. She’s screaming over a math problem nobody understands. I don’t need help with my homework anymore. Someone said therapy would be good for me. You’re already spending too much on hers. Did you know that I was your daughter first? That was before. Now I am second.

    Short Talks on Lilies of the Valley
    Clusters of love and happiness nestled in damp leaves. Tiny bell flowers, poison hidden within innocent white. Sparkly dew drops and passing time glimmering in the limelight. Youth sitting in a clear jar on the classroom windowsill.

    Short Talks on Working Mothers
    She comes home with her brows already knit together. Day-old hair, hours painting dark circles under her eyes. Short greetings and silent death stares at the dishes in the sink. We don’t ask what’s for dinner.

    Short Talks on Street Samosas
    A man is sitting on a cracked plastic stool in front of a blackened metal vat of oil spitting over an open fire. Try to ignore the cars speeding past five feet away. I hand him a bill, it’s value less than a dollar. He hands me a steamy plastic bag with three oil-soaked samosas. I burn my tongue but the flavor makes up for it. Spices and herbs I can’t name in a mixture of soft potatoes and peas hidden within the crunchy shell. Food poisoning the next day. Worth it, probably.

12. Short talk on making playlists
    With each song, I add a sanctuary star to this galaxy gift for my future self.

    Short talk on sleeping
    When she was in high school, my mother’s car flipped–her in it, her at the wheel. Sleepless nights, sinking eyelids, slipping hands. Assignments completed, almost at the cost of completing a life. A story repeated to warn away the same sacrifice in two daughters. I’ll never pull an all-nighter.

    Short talk on Charlotte Smith
    She writes about her sorrows, a heavy mantle over her shoulders, the cold night pressing in to whisper hoarsely in her vulnerable ears. Her pen scratches over paper in flickering candlelight and she raises her head to hear if the children are stirring. No. Still quiet. Rhymes spill onto her page, love sonnets to stability and to solace. She writes to the darkness about her love affair with Hope itself.

13. SHORT TALK ON DDR IN THE SALEM ARCADE

    Quarter in machine, cascade of arrows; Dance Dance Revolution / Stumble Stumble Insurrection / Give Up Revolt, Resistance is Futile. Everything moves too fast and legs do not listen to eyes. I don’t know how the Denmans do it. Adam’s floor is arrows, his wall a fuzzy old TV, LEDs straight through to synapses.

    SHORT TALK ON A PAST LIFE

    Acme Jesus casts a soft glow, yellow aura on the walls of 217. “Look at the cat.” You are sleep talking, glasses off, mole-visioned, facing one hundred and eighty degrees away from the cat. I look at her. Sweet bastard. We are both nocturnal in this one, wide glinting eyes without target.

    SHORT TALK ON THE DIFFICULTY OF WRITING EXPERIMENTAL PROSE AS AN ASSISTANT

    I want to write the thing and hand it to you and ensure you cannot misunderstand me.

    Please let me know if I can provide any additional information or documentation.

    One of my jobs is called “internet chores,” (communications and research assistance) which includes making a corporate tutorial for the bosses once I am done resetting passwords, pulling grant reports, calling the IRS, live chatting with the manufacturer, navigating the interface, compiling receipts, reading the manual, emailing everyone everything ever.

    Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

    If I miscategorize a single bullet point on my end of day email, I will surely hear about it when San Francisco wakes up. Be didactic. Literal. Make too much sense.

    Here is the draft with the language edits you suggested. Please let me know if you have any changes or if I’m greenlit to send it.

    Thanks!