Babbling Dixie

The short form of tomorrow is never the whole story. Abbreviations mean nothing when we are born to die and we all are aren't we? Being spoken for before birth is something we're not supposed to remember like some kind of karma after effect. Still here we are spending our lives looking for each other.

I like flying in my dreams but I don't like heights in real time so I'll skip the whole apartment dweller thing. I've never been one to compartmentalize. The rat race is always on and I wouldn't want to be caught in a maze. There's a big enough one weaving in the city streets. I don't walk much anymore so the rumba inside the soul is like a dancing rope.

People still cry over moments of the past, most people do except me. It's that mind like a steel trap thing, no pun intended. Some doors are meant to stay closed and tears won't get you anywhere. Mental control and discipline are two very different things. One keeps intuition intact. The other one, control, I don't understand at all. Not my format. Both blow hope away. I hate the parameters that the box of control presents. Funny, that's another thing that shouldn't be opened. No way. Ya way. The future happens either way.

I'm just thinking as I stare out the window and take a break from my day. I was never a loner. I just didn't hang out with those other guys.

Then there's a soft conversation at the end of the hall that I couldn't help but overhear, “I did what he said and gave it all to her. He said she'd be down in an hour. I waited four, went out there and there she was sitting up listening to music and working on her book. I couldn't believe it. I tried everything, nothing works. I think she's some kind of alien,” he said. The door closed just as softly and I couldn't here the rest. It barely sunk in, what I just heard. I stepped outside to go for a walk. The clouds blinked in the daylight. This isn't where the story ends or begins, just an interlude. Peaceful moments are worth a shot. I stared at the clouds.

We're all dice in a parade and those two things don't make sense together do they? Unless the contrivance is real. What's a gamble, what's a show?

I stared at the road for a moment just as a car was streaming by lazily in the hot sun. A woman wearing my favourite yellow was sitting sideways in the seat where the car door was missing and she smiled at me. Then she leapt from the car and did a little jog up the short dirt path up the road.

How much longer would I be here I thought while staring at the leaves, as if nature holds it's own kind of hostage. Dissecting damage can make it a wonderful thing in memory. Time to go back in the house.

*

Now, I'm living in a hotel room and it's like a temporary sacred space, binaural sounds and all. I had a better dream and this is what it was: “Sorry,” he said. I hate when people do that, apologize. I replied, “You don't have to be. You're like a vision that means something that I'm not supposed to know so I can't read it fully. You're just a dream." Then he showed me glasses on the end of his nose and ever so far away my nose started to wiggle, but does he know that? “You could set an avalanche on a watch and see it melt tomorrow,” he says with a wink. I have no clue what he meant by that but it made me smile.

At daybreak the mirror yawned. No time for thinking about dreams. I brushed my teeth with purple powder to make them shining and put my silver sneakers on and left for the day. The goal was to find a car to drive away in. The universe had opened up and gave me everything and I didn't have much to pack in a trunk. Little bits of psychic readings don't really give answers so dreams I shouldn't worry about.

What colour car should I get? Or truck or van? Whatever one fits beneath the bigger number of 10k or less. Think it's a challenge? Well it's not. You'd be surprised. Aren't all stories good? I always thought so. I never read a bad one in my life. Just like I'd never met a bad man.

I had no idea where I would drive to once I got it. Maybe I'd just drive in the direction that the birds were flying in any given moment. I like the idea of given moments very much.

There are some things that I should be mad about but that won't help me find a car. So I thought a little more about baby blue, or grey, or yellow. Cadillacs or something finer, never sporty, not for me. A Musk truck would be nice but it would never fit into even my daydreams so I'll stick to something that I can afford. I narrowed it down to three. After browsing online I paid a cab to see. There is an amazing reluctance to having to fork out 10 thousand for a vehicle especially when you don't have it. Therefore a payment plan was the most logical. I know nothing about vehicles so eyeing them suspiciously seemed the best stance.

I remember seeing the coyotes at night skulking up the driveway if the moon was out. Dismayed at the nonchalance around me of nature's thorns dragging on the ground where they don't belong. People aren't nature. We're just visiting on a short path. Humans don't resemble anything about nature and no one stops to notice that. The only thing with true freedom is the plants, everything else is animal and people aren't that either. Plants grow, they stretch, they yawn, the sleep but are perfectly provided for in their environment. Some are used but they don't need principles to service so in their existence they are living, breathing, and free. Even coyotes have to struggle in survival. Humans make everything worse or better. Some nights you could eve hear them on the deck, too close to leave or to run. Pitter pat, pitter pat, tap, tap, tap, across the deck.

The salesman rolled his fingers across the hood. A couple wearing yellow jackets walked by talking animatedly. They looked shivering cold with flushed faces and hands curled.

A bee hit the window. The car salesman grinned, “134 kilometres is not too bad, he said. It's not great but not the worst, he didn't say. I watched the bee drop on the windshield wiper, stunned. The reflection caught my eye and I started to gaze. Morning light, gotta love it.

A small group of petty scammers had gotten lucky a couple of times and fashioned themselves con artists now. Old school turnpikes. There was Curtains, no one knew why he was called that. Samurai, who was Irish and never knew a lick about martial arts but could fight like the wind had a course of its own. Dreamer, who was filled with tall tales and un-started ambitions. Serpentine who was driven by spite. Then there was Humble, who wasn't at all true to his namesake but spoke in opposites like the rest of them. I could never figure that out. Bad, bad, all of them. I never dated a one of them but fate had its own dice to throw and all because of the parade. Serpentine was the only one that was always around. The Dreamer wasn't really in the original circle of four, guess that makes it a square but anyway, once he was in he had not way out. Maybe. Him being the one with the worst temperament could be the one with the worse torment, could be that is. It didn't matter much to me as I was leaving.

That I was alone in this was a strange kind of alienation that had been contrived from the start but I didn't know that either then. They played me and over time I played them right back but they didn't know it then.

What the small and worthy (spit) collective pulled off was nothing short of a miracle but indeed it was short and God would strike them down for it I'm sure. I wasn't waiting around to see it happen, no siree. It was none of my business anyway. Unless...

The car salesman was holding the door open, “ You taking it for a test drive aren't you?”

“Yes, yes, excuse me just thinking there,” and he handed me the keys. It had been ten years since I drove. Trickling down like drops of the sun the sky sprinkled the lightest rain in the midst of sunshine and I liked the paradox. Turning the ignition was a vibe to my soul. Natural as the feeling that returned to me. I stretched the pedal across the floor and it was beauty all around me. I could almost relax in peace but it wasn't mine yet. I drove on and I could think for a bit, then turned before I reached the highway.

Had the Fabulous Five had stolen my money? I'm not a runner but a girl needs a place to live. Leaving shadows behind is probably a good start. For all intents and purposes it was civil. Non arrangements coming to a close, the agitation finally leaving my bones.

I took a cab back to the hotel. Fingers are still crossed that the financing goes through because my borrowed money runs out at the end of the month. I leaned back to relax and the sounds of tapping in the rooms around me started.

Finis

Books by Lisa Lachapelle