eyedreamism_vi magicforest I do not understand how Sidney and I can go from being perfect to nightmarish within hours. Last night it was her birthday. Sidney is now in her twentysomethingth year. I gave her a goldfish in a plastic bag filled with water and a few of those little flattened marble things and a piece of cucumber and she immediately named it Tamarind. She refused to leave it in the car and insisted on bringing it with us to the restaurant. She skipped as she walked, bag in hand. “I have a fishie,” she sang. “Fish.” I corrected, smiling at her fishnet legs. Tonight I would peel off the lines leaving the faint imprints in her skin. I like it when she’s worn fishnets because I can run my hands over her legs and feel chafed. Sidney smells like cinnamon. “Fishie.” I decided not to argue. The garçons glanced at Tamarind in the plastic bag a little askance but did not argue. We had a secluded corner seat, two chairs, one for each of us, and as soon as we sat down Sidney pooled into my eyes—can you even use pool as a verb in that context?—and suddenly I did not want to be in that restaurant where I was forced to follow grisly societal rules; I wanted to be at my home with her on the couch and a television movie playing in front of us and Sidney repeatedly interrupting our lovemaking to point out typical film clichés until I would finally either snap at her to focus on our conjoined bodies, or give up resignedly leaving the orgasm for a less sleepy, dreamy, drowsy night and and cuddle with her back, smiling into her dark hair as she would rant long-windedly about the actors, shaking her finger at the television set, knowing all the while that she was simply being ornery but that I would have it no other way. My sentences don’t usually run on unless she does the pool thing with her eyes. Sidney had stopped looking at me now; she was poking the bag gently and cooing to Tamarind, who responded by swishing her silken, feathery tail and turning to stare at me with little black unblinking eyes. I was happy Sidney was so taken with the fish. We looked up in time to see the garçon, watching us amusedly if not pleasantly, who said in a whispered voice away from Tamarind that tonight’s chef special would be their prized espadons grillés. We ordered. I had some kind of unusual chicken with a cream sauce that smelled like vanilla and Sidney had her usual spicy Indian vegetarian fare. More often than not, I found myself looking at Sidney instead of my dish which was peppered with garnishes of an unspecified food group, and Sidney was looking at Tamarind more often than at me as she ate absent-mindedly and quietly. Tamarind looked at neither of us but nipped at her hexagonal chunk of cucumber. Despite this offbalance it felt quite right. The night was hushed. I walked Sidney from the underground parking lot to her small uptown apartment. We had gotten away from the concrete and were on the nightlit road when there was a peculiar rustling, accelerating footsteps, and by the time we had turned around, the shaven man had already grabbed Sidney’s handbag. We both shrieked in alarm, the man swore, ripped at her purse with mangled veined hands, and then his fist flew out and hit Sidney in the jaw, causing her to collapse backwards to the ground. He was intimidated perhaps by our noise or my presence, or maybe he lost sight of the bag; he ran off without it, skidding around a corner away from the red streetlights. Sidney staggered up, holding an empty, flattened plastic bag in her hand, a question on her face, urgency. Then we both saw Tamarind on the road, flipping around erratically. Sidney started to scream. It was one long, hoarse roar, ending shrilly and in that instant I almost started to scream too. “Water!” She frantically looked around. “Ethan,” she begged, crying, “Do something!” Tamarind flipped near the curb. I didn’t know what to do, but there was no water in the cold pavement or the dry stars above us. Tamarind was flipping everywhere, tail and wings merging into a flutter of terror. Sidney looked at me, standing there with my arms outstretched slightly and a perpetual look of I-know-this-is-an-emergency-but-what-do-you-expect-me-to-do-about-it on my face and I saw the hope fade from her eyes. She stopped crying and screaming and went silent and stared at the fish, flicking itself all over the perfect square of sidewalk with it’s tiny downy gills softly breathing in, breathing out, flipping and it’s little eyes tremoring. It became terribly apparent that it was suffering. Sidney did something I would have never expected of her, or anyone. She took off one of her red high heels, held it in her hand tightly, stepped closer to the fish, knelt down, and then with one swift jerk and as I drew in a sharp intake of breath, she impaled it. It writhed, speared through the abdomen with her stiletto, and then it was dead. Sidney dropped her shoe, Tamarind still on it. Sidney’s lipsticked mouth parted as though she were shocked at what she had done and but her eyes dulled with knowing defeat, and then she kept walking, limping with one heel high and the other foot bare except for those lines of fishnet stocking. “Sidney—” I said, hurrying to catch up to her. She did not look at me, didn’t even acknowledge my words. “Sidney.” “Sidney!” She said nothing. She did not even give me the dignity of a cruel remark on my uselessness. She simply said nothing, and that nothingness expressed the futility of that night, that my gift to her had been spoiled, that she felt awful that it was dead, that she felt awful that I had done nothing to help, that she had killed a living creature and that she was too frightened and angry to speak. I still followed her to her apartment, inside the lobby, up her steps and right to her door, where she finally turned around. She looked at me once with an expression that I couldn’t understand or recognize. Then, before I could protest, she slammed the door shut in my face. Perhaps it was my pride getting in the way of what I should have done, whatever it was I could have done, but I was too confused, and…no, I will not make excuses. I fucked something up awfully and I walked home immediately after, ate something I had bought the day before from the little Jewish delicatessen, read something like Chaucer which I did not comprehend, and went to bed. And the glass of water sitting on my night table, looking innocent and plentiful and eager, seemed only too smug. With one hand I hit it from the table and let it smash against the mirror at the opposite end of the room. I looked at myself, my inactive humble dormant self, my ridiculously good-looking male Ethan image in the broken glass for a minute, with all of my complacency and indifference, and then I turned off the lamp and slumbered. breathes 030929 ... Flowers from Safeway Thanks for gracing the blue with your brilliance once again. 030929 ... once again oh... so touching. so horribly real. so beautifully rendered. oh. 030930 ... magicforest thank you thank you thanks you 031001 ... smurfus rex vivid I kinda get the feeling that eyedreamism is what you'd see at the beginning of the movie and that ii through vi are providing background... Ethan seems confused now...I know I was, because I'm not sure how he can feel like he "fucked something up" when he doesn't walk around with an aquarium in his pocket, y'know? But that's the beauty of it. He DOESN'T carry around a spare bottle of water on the off chance the fish will spill out of the bag, but he's still torn up that he couldn't do anything... ...sounds like me sometimes :) is curious what vii will be like 031002 ... oldephebe this was amazing!!! and in answer to your question about using pool(ed) as a verb..sure you can..this is your universe you are creating..so you're free to innovate, reimagine the staid conventions of standard english. Talented writers such as yourself do it all the time. Again this was amazing! I'm glad you have brought back your wholly innovative and talented voice back to blather ... 031003 ... neesh to pool is a verb, and i don't think english is staid in the least. i would do a critical analysis of eyedreamism vi - after all i am an english student - but i'm in a really bad mood and i'm really angry. the best of combinations. so i'm off to have a really thoughtless friday night. maybe some other time, only got 8 essays to do this weekend, but it'd be more fun than most of them. 031003 ... oldEphebe the conventions of english..are staid..only a few can speak it, imbue it with the vitality of transcendance..I think DeLillo is a brilliant architect of nifty neologisms..preachers and poets and expemporaneous speakers filled with the fireseed of thier conviction (such as say a sylvia plath who yea used a thesaurus)weild the language with a wonder that brings me to a rapt and humble place of reverance..the prestidigitator..the lawyer in his transcendant perorations..becomes something more than even he can imagine..to be able to shape with the very staid symbols strewn across the brittle parchment page so many cyrillic symbols(sp) adorning the linguistic abacus...to take a soul and shape it into this writhing rapt reverant thing..it is like being a god..okay..maybe i sould calm down..but really..it's an incredible experience..(i've melted the hard edges of animus out of eyes and with my staccatto storms of rhetoric shaped a new thing in thier hearts..it's not a facility i'm particularly proud of and it doesn't fit with my laid back persona...but if the situation calls for it..then i just shirk of the shackles of humility and become something more..some constituency of shared potentialities..siphoning out a souls core, sculpting it..there! i have you now..right..There! okay maybe i should like calm down a little..but still yeah poets and wordsmiths and demagogues, and preachers, charismatic women..yeah..we gotta keep our minds sharpened..I'm certainly no linguist, and ah I didn't major in english or rhetoric or anything..but i as everyone else here..am just in love with language..and yes by all means feel free to argue every side of any perspective that peers into ones insularity..argument and the exchange of ideas..pretty cool.. 031003 ... neesh let's take it elsewhere the_life_of_language 031003 ... oldephebe nah..you be for you and i will be for me and let's split the difference..I am sure from your subjective state of consciousness your argument (and a very well structured one at that) has merit..wait..that came out wrong..i read what you wrote..and some of what you have to say resonates with me..I think I've made this argument 3 or 4 times already on several blathe pages..i forget wich ones..but hey as long as you agree with your argument don't worry about whatever i may or may not think about it..i am certainly no linguist..not by a long shot..so..i won't pretend to tell your trade to you..umm..if you are interested go back through the posts date about 6 weeks ago..there are several of my rhetorical promenades actually arguing your position and the one I kinda am blowing my horn over now..darn that compartmentalized cognition. How the hell can I simultaneously argue antipodal aspects of an arguments inverse? I've got no idea..tomorrow I may be arguing another side of it..way out in left field..there's a chicken pot pie that is wafting its stale store bought redolence all through my duplex so...argue on.. peace.. 031003 ... oldephebe uh..what may be real for me..may not be real for you..okay that was an abhorrent aphoristic reductionist encapsulation..hmm..i guess it'll have to do..I'm all out of ...words ... later, ... 031003 ... oldephebe oh and when i said there..i have you right there..i was referring to an entirely theoretical context..me and my now rapt inerlocutor..umm..hmm toot turgid..ah..ahem..totally screwed up that explanation..so anyway my words on this page are not really directed at you..so..don't be distracted by me..sounds like you'e got enough on your plate this weekend.. god was that ever an inept argument..sometimes i swing and sometimes i miss..blech..sorry magicfrost for defiling your page with my prattle.. ... 031003 ... magicforest I will forgive you for your beauty-words but I remind you I am magicforest not to be confused with magicfront oldephebe 031003 ... me *magicfrost **magicforest 031003 ... ferret lovely, and blah! and it's off the hizzle fo' shizzle my kentucky fried, hair dyed, home fry, fo' rizzle 031003 ... oldephebe spells m a g i c f o r e s t 031003 ... User24 you tease us, forest, will there be more, or was that the end in more than one way? 031020 ... magicforest I accidentally wrote the last eyedreamism last night. So you are guaranteed at least one more, but I do not want to end it yet. 031020 ... Lemon_Soda I like to read your posts, Magicforest. 031020 ... magicforest Thank you. I like your name. It sounds quenching. 031020 ... Lemon_Soda Describes my overall attitude. 031020 ... User24 I don't want it to end either, but if it's already happened there's not much we can do about it, is there? :) 031021 ... reue hopeless hope? is that a redundancy? good while it lasted i guess 031021 ... Death of a Rose wake up there....poke...poke....you know you can't sleep here past five 031021 ... magicforest who? 031021 ... Death of a Rose I just reread this again. I think this is my favorite 031101 ... Whitechocolatewalrus Hmmm, there are no words to describe the wonderfulness of your writing. It makes me smile. 031115 ... ferret yes, when are you writing the next one? 031116 ... ferret and i aggree with doar, it's my favorite too. 031116 ... bensimon would have put Tamarind in his mouth 040104 what's it to you? who go blather from