HAPPY PIECE

__we walked across crushed
__white stones
__(though now i know
__they were stars)
_
_____a novel.










illusions, tommyoshima


(Unconfessing the Confession Email)

[when I was a child... in Africa this is, someone bought me a little electric car, a blue jeep. I drove it around the house. I ran over a rock, the car had a fit. I stopped, scared. I looked. There were two rocks, not one. I had snapped a rock the size of my head in two... I was invincible]

When I close my eyes... I see this dream I had in my teens. A savannah, an open field... maybe wheat, but probably long dried grass nearly waist high. The wind forming gentle moving patterns across the strands. I had been stabbed, I fell to the ground, but never hit the soil. An inch above the ground i floated, rocked back and forth by the wind... like a flip-flop being taken out to sea by the sunset-tide. It was silent. Slow... like slow lip kisses. It is the calmest I've ever felt. Life rocking me gently back and forth. At 25, I want to crawl into a mother-sunday's lap and put my arms around her waist, and have her rock me gently side to side.

[parts of the ground were illuminated, others dark. Secrets everywhere. I stopped, listened to my breaths... tried to hear which direction to move in next. Somewhere water moved. I walked that way, staring at the trees and their many arms. I thought I had stumbled inside an emerald. Somewhere some stones, I sat. Opened my prayer book. I know God's behind one of these trees. Shy. I looked up from my book, my fingers shaking, a little cold. I looked around hoping to catch a glimpse. Not this time. I prayed some more. These trees can teach me patience. If I know that I'll know everything.]

You still have bright eyes. When I first saw you you had them then too. It was January 19th, did you know that? We met on January 19th, 2000. I had enrolled for university that morning. I felt all man and no boy (though I was all boy still and no man). We first met in Lara's room. I hadn't thought anything of you yet, I was too busy fingering my university identification card in my pocket. Imagining futures. Later, in the main lobby, it went something like this:


"What did you study?"
"Film and drama... and english."
"NO WAY!"
(you were surprised by the enthusiasm. I was relieved you weren't a clone of everyone else I'd ever met)
"... yeah!"
"I have this theory on 2001: A Space Odyssey do you have a theory on it?, I have a theory on it, wanna hear it?"
"Sure."
(a new(er) smile on your face)

[I said my theory]

"well?"
"well what?"
"is my theory correct?"
"I don't know. Makes sense."
"There isn't a right answer?"


Later we went to Magic Mountain at Glenelg. I remember you grabbing my hand and pulling me behind you. I'm not sure I'd touched a woman before that. Also that was the first time for every invisible thing that can happen. The rest is all about the rest.
____Later still, I sat at my desk. It was white. Alex had built it for my room- it had lots of shelves. I sat there and you cried on the phone. You were worried the marijuana you had smoked a few weeks prior would ruin your chances of getting hired overseas. I assured you it'd be ok (I hoped to God I was right). Later all the rest happened.

The picture of me that _ _ _ _ _ sent back (it made her cry)... a littler me, in a yellow plastic tub. I'm in the backyard, blonde and white and nude, smiling in the sun. I looked at it recently, realized it's a photo of my soul before my body surrounded it.

I am a superstitious man, for all my scientificisms. My late night terror logiloquy sessions. I believe life speaks to me. Murmurs. I hear them. Invisible hands out of every shadow patting my back when I walk. When I pray the carpet rises just a little to stroke my leg. The universe loves me. I once wrote a poem that began:

The toys in this store were broken, battered and bruised.

I'd like to change the rest of it now to:

Gentle hands held them just together. Stitched them up partially,
brushed their hair. Kissed their faces, and put them proudly
On a higher shelf.

You once bit my ear. It will always remain the mystery of my life. A frustrated crossroad my youth was too early to navigate. Youth is its own excuse... its own grace... its own let-down.

In the back of the Bahai Center... Edward St. (once I walked alone from the train station there after school- nearly cried of fear, I memorized the address) I stood in my hypercolor shorts. I had little brown hairs on my legs. 12 years old. I stood guilty because of these legs of mine. I was forced to wear shorts... this damned country, too warm to hide in pants. I was a pre-teen Sasquatch. My first time meeting my new contemporaries. In hindsight, it must have been harder for mom inside the building introducing herself all alone. Hi, I'm Sepi. We just moved here from LA (please don't ask me why). I stood in a corner. The children were at the back of the yard, staring at me. I stood by the faucet. Stared at it like it was the most interesting thing ever. A short boy walked towards me. I fixed my stare on the drops. Counting each one. Pretending I was Newton verging on some miraculous reconstruction of gravity, Q's Feather Test to Prove Variations in Gravity, an Inverse Proportional Relationship Between Heartbeat and Feet's Attraction to Common Ground. I saw an arm extend towards me, a youthful hand at its tip:

"Hi I'm Eman. You're Quddus, Farnosh's cousin right?"
"...y e ss." [thankyou for talking to me brave boy]

A new life was given to me in that moment. It's funny that one person can change a person's whole life. Isn't that funny?

*__*__*
_ _ _ _ _ wore grey tracksuit pants. A yellow long-sleeved shirt. When she wants to flirt she grabs her hair and holds it above her head- as though about to tie it in a pony tail. I saved this moment from the dustbin of faded memory by embedding it forever in these words: and ten thousand stars of the stardust of your hair. She stared at me. I didn't want to kiss her. It was the Monday night. We'd had our first date Friday, 3 night prior. She'd come over to watch Amelie. We were paying no attention to the television because we were talking. My yellow couch- the safest space in the universe. I was on the right, she on the left. She looked at me. I know that look.


"Don't look at me like that."
"What look?"
"The please-kiss-me look"
"Whatever! You wish"
"I'm going to kiss you."
"As if I'd ever let you"

Between lips and lips there are cities of ash, to Neruda I want to add:
and kingdoms made of blue sky, and honey colored eyes and moments passed lying still atop one another listening to heartbeats and the incessant beauty of mind's memory. Between lips and lips there's eternity. I hadn't known it before but,... the earth shook. I saw the lights dim and I'm sure somewhere I heard an explosion. (Gradations in the Field of Gravity). It's funny how moment's can change a person's life. Just... single moments.

When you came to visit me, in Adelaide, you had on these sunnies. You sat in my blue car (which would later drive me half to death) and stared at me: I look good in your car. That's what you said. I laughed. I felt proud (all man and no boy). I had just washed my car for you.

And of course there are stories about all these moments.
About all the smiles...
__about the moments you look at someone's face and feel the tenderness of them.
__about the times you hold out a hand to be certain of it.

There are stories about quiet trees whispering to us the answers we seek.

quiet stars shouting at us from all those years away: turn left! Wake up! Kiss her now you fool! NO! If you leave now you can make the late screening. Just keep reading! It's your stop. STOP. I'm so beautiful, look at me! and... their voices are soo quiet by the time they get to us. I look up at them whenever I can, cup my hand around my ear. no. nothing tonight either.

There are stories about yellow couches. About kissing on that couch. About falling asleep on it on Sabot Saturdays reading L'Éducation sentimentale. About the 20 years or so it sat in Mr. D's house, and all the people who sat on it and prayed and held hands and listened and were listened to. Later I woke up and bookmarked my book and went to Paris and sat on the Champs Elysee and read some more of it.

And even later still, at 2:16 in the morning of Friday the 4th of April, 2008... me and the echoes of smiles... the memories I've seen, the lips I've touched with my fingertips, or stared at and wished to touch, and the couches, the cars with windows down driving to Semaphore beach with Nava screaming at us... all these organs that I need to keep my heart beating... all these moments that life has given to me so that I might be all man and no boy (or partially)... I sit here and show them to you. to make you happy. To show you my happiest moments... to make you happy.

much love
q