“Decorated Delights”
As the backdoor came crashing down, Joanie scrambled into the walk-in freezer, slammed the steel door shut and prayed any intruders would not find her. Installed only yesterday, the bakery’s new VORTEX-3000 Blast Freezer was empty but already biting cold. Joanie’s trembling hand still gripped her forgotten piping bag and marigold buttercream oozed onto her apron like mustard escaping a bottle.
Grey Like Sugar Grains
Having depression is like walking into Whole Foods to look for frosting, and you find the organic kind that spreads like chalk. The descent into oblivion tastes like vanilla, when you wanted chocolate, and have only ever tasted chocolate.
It runs like the treadmill you swore you'd spend hours on every day, the piercing summer sun breaking you into a million small fractures of despair. In the happiest situations, it is wanting to reach for the sharpest object in the room. It is endless forms, endless waiting rooms, endless time to think about what you've done wrong.
It is a slow progression of events, or perhaps a sequence of particular events. At some point, a depressed person know they have depression. For me, it took lying on a cement floor when I had a perfectly nice bed, unsure that I deserved to sleep there. I won't go into any more stories, it's pointless and sad and backwards and ultimately, nothing trumps just getting up and putting on your pants.
I have had depression for over a decade. It alienated my family, made my teenage years something of which we don't speak of. I don't have any regrets, really, and I don't feel any animosity towards the universe for this curse. I sit in cafes, writing dark poems, and simply wonder at the others: how they can save the world through their actions, and I am merely waiting for my next hospital visit.
I never developed an attitude, but I did reject God. Every day with depression is a lifetime of grey clouds, hovering and threatening total collapse. I certainly did.
I can tell anyone, everyone, that it gets better. But it doesn't. It gets harder, and then it gets better.
Perhaps one day I will find myself again surrounded by insanity in some hospital, counting my regrets on a pretend rosary. I can say I've learned something, but I haven't. Depression is stagnant, coarse like so many grains of sugar in organic frosting.
Dice With Saint Peter
Here is the situation: a man enters a bar on Jaun Tabo Boulevard in Albuquerque, New Mexico and, after losing $125 in a game of Texas Hold’em, wagers his soul, trying to bluff 5-6 off-suit against top pair. After losing the bet he exits the building and is promptly hit by a bus. This raises the question of what is to be done about the matter of his personal salvation, but also the role humans play in their own redemption, and the significance of responsibility and guilt.
Shattered dreams
I have always loved the eulogies. I have no clue why, I suppose it is something in my childhood, when I never felt like getting enough attention and esteem, even though it was a decent time, with its ups and downs, and my parents led a usual life, not poor, nor too rich, just a middle-class family from New York.
In my teenage, I decided to be an actor, and so went through a lot of hardships until finally making it, forcing my way into this cruel industry, starting as an extra on the sets in NYC, realizing soon that it will be a better option to move to L. Angeles and to get near Hollywood, around which my youthful, candid imagination would build fantastic dreams of success and wealth, all being set in the famous Hollywood Hills, where I would happily live a marital life with a charming, tender wife and a couple of lovely children, with whom I would stroll around and maybe show them with infinite pride and admiration the villa of Marlon Brando, the actor whom we used to idealise and ape in the ’90s, even if he was not anymore on the apex of his fame and beauty, yet still terrifically charismatic and not giving a fuck about popularity and acting.
The Sitting Duck
She stood there like a sitting duck, a girl alone in the woods with nothing but a layer of leaves between her and the harsh sky above. Exposed against any princes that pried through the underbrush looking for pretty women.
She was pretty, no doubt but though exposed she was not as vulnerable as this would suggest. Enclosed in her flowery garments she held a knife. She would find those princes before they found her.
As She Pleases
behind locked doors
a little girl sits,
words rolling from her tongue like bullets.
"princess," they tell her, "your words should be gentle.
like the petals of a summer rose,
or a ripple in the pond."
she scoffs.
"the thorns of roses leave scars,
and the pond drowns children.
nature births temporary beings, not gentle ones.
come winter neither will see the day."
I will speak loudly-
each word a bullet.
permanant.
unforgettable.
... lethal.
Doctor’s Note
"I let you guys eat snacks in here as long as you do your work, but you still need to eat breakfast, okay?"
Sorry, I ride the bus and by the time we get here, I only have time to get the breakfast from the cafeteria and walk here before the bell rings.
"Okay. But you can bring food from home and eat something on the bus too so you can snack on the cafeteria food instead of eating your cereal in the middle of class, distracting people, and not doing your work. Okay?"
But I do my work. I already finished it, I'm just waiting for your next instructions.
"You're still distracting other kids and making a mess. You're allowed to eat snacks, not meals, okay? I don't want to have to ban food entirely from the classroom."
Okay.
__________
"Where's your doctor's note?"
I don't have one.
"Well, if you don't have one, then I can't let you make up the assignment."
I was sick. My mom will tell you.
"Without a doctor's note, how do I know you really were sick? And your mom shouldn't lie for you. You need to do your assignments like everyone else. If you miss the due date, then you miss the due date."
I do do my assignments on time. I was just sick this one time.
"Right. And if you had a doctor's note, I would give you extra time to get it to me, but you don't. It is what it is."
__________
"That's why the school is going to be loaning students a laptop to use."
No, I understand. I still won't be able to do all the homework online though. Can I get them in worksheets instead or something?
"Honey, use the computer. It's how we'll be communicating. That's why the school is giving everyone a computer to borrow until the end of the year, so that everyone can still do work." :)
Yes, I know. But the homework on the weekends and the due dates don't give me enough time to do them.
"Sweetie, everyone gets the same amount of time to do the work. Plan ahead."
The libraries are closed on weekends now, and during the week I can only be there for about six hours. That's not enough time.
"Then plan ahead. I'm not going to give you special treatment just because you want more time. You get the same amount of time as everyone else. I'm sorry if you don't want to work as hard as everyone else."
I'm telling you that I only have internet access for a limited time. Six hours over five days per week is not enough time for me to do the online research, do the readings, finish the activities, do the writing, and turn them in after the library closes even if I plan ahead. I'm trying to tell you that It's impossible for me to get the work done in that amount of time.
"That's why you do. work. at. home. like everyone else. What do you think we're giving you the laptop??"
I can't do homework at home. It's online work. I need to be in the library to do online work. It's all online work, and I can't get it all done. I'm asking you if there is any alternative turn in or any alternative assignments.
"The answer is no. I don't understand what's so hard about doing the work at home. The school is giving you everything you need."
__________
Public school is its own unique environment. All school is restrictive in some way, and every school gets away with some sort of suppression, bullying, and even disrespect. Even if you're homeschooled. It's part of teaching, of training.
I speak for my friends in Southern California, the closest regions to the Mexican border. My privilege keeps me from experiencing this my self, but I've seen it, heard it, and I know it exists and it happens. I know it happens elsewhere too.
For a country without universal healthcare, it's quite an expectation to have a doctor's note as part of standard procedure; especially for children who don't have control over it. You expect everyone to have a doctor's note every time they get sick, but how many times have you gotten a cold or a fever and known you don't need a doctor's visit? And for the kids and adults who secure some form of temporary healthcare through a school or organization, these are largely underfunded and don't always have the means to treat their patients and fulfill their needs. I won't get into big pharma, but don't forget about her too. Stop expecting a doctor's note.
Food and shelter and health take priority over internet access and wifi any day. You can hand out computers but you have to consider how you hand out wifi, how you hand out a desk and a chair, how you hand out peace and quiet, how you hand out a learning environment. If I share a room with three other people who are unable to leave the house because of quarantine, I'd be hardpressed for the same focus and peace a classroom or my own bedroom could give me. Just because we're home doesn't mean we have more time.
Stop punishing people for what they can't control. Stop insisting they're dumber or lazier or making up convenient excuses. No one's getting mad you're considering the possibilities and having initial judgements, but we're offended they're controlling your decisions and generalizations. Richer doesn't mean better. Richer means more options. Think deeply.
