Sunday, August 22, 2010

Huzzah. Short Folk #30: Brand New Even the Molecules

Note: Wow, Finally. Last one. Its been interesting, at first these were impossible to write. I couldn't find ideas and I'd spend hours scheming. Then about day 10 I got into a rhythm and the ideas were pretty easy to come by then. I just learned to trust single line ideas more, and not having to have something fully worked out in my head really freed up some interesting pieces. But these last few days have been a real trial, mostly because I have ideas for other stuff to work on and don't really feel like I'm in the market for a bunch of new ideas like I was a month ago. So finally it wasn't 30 in 30 days, but 30 in 32 days. Close. Here's the last one. Thanks for reading. Drop by Bottomless lakes (link below and to the left) as James finishes up his 30 in 30 poems project. I couldn't have done this without his urging.

Short Folk #30: Brand New Even the Molecules

Made man sits alone in a low slung chair. The art of his successful friends hangs on the walls of his successful apartment. Like I said, he's a made man, comfortable. Has what he wants. Late 30's. And he's worked hard to get it too, worked really hard. Has a family, generally well behaved kids and a generally loving wife. And now he is comfortable in the low slung chair in his fashionable apartment.

He looks around the room. Its a quiet Sunday night and he's alone for the evening. His eyes roll over all the things he's accumulated. He gets up and goes over to a storage place under the stairs. He's remembered something just now in the quiet of rolling his eyes over everything. He opens the storage space and there's a bike inside. A nice bike he bought when he first moved to NYC. Ten years ago, when it was brand new, he covered the entire frame of the bike first in saran wrap and then in tightly wound black electric tape. NYC when you're single and starting out is all about making expensive things look cheap and cheap things look adequate. The black tape hid all the brand markings. The made man imagines that underneath the tape everything must be new, brand new, even the molecules, he thinks, must be shining with the newness of the day he wrapped it up in tape. He looks at the bike, the rest of it beat to hell and almost unusable. He wonders if there's any air in there from 10 years ago, anything under that black tape that remembers what it was like when he was not a made man, hungry, struggling, doing amazing things. Doing a whole bunch of hard work and some really amazing things.

The next thing he does is gets a razor blade out of the tool drawer in the kitchen. He goes back to the bike and slices a thin line in the tape of the top part of the frame. He leaves the bottom frame untouched. Then he so very carefully peels off the black electrical tape, the saran wrap shining underneath and the bright red Raleigh logo and dark green paint underneath it. All of it a different color than the rest of the bike. As if an old man had dipped his foot in a stream and it had come out like a baby's foot. He puts his nose right up to the bike and breathes in. breathes in deeply as he takes the saran wrap off. Then he just sits there, made man on the hardwood floor of his comfortable apartment, the top frame brand new again and the other frame waiting under the last of the black electrical tape. And under the last tape everything still new like the day, 10 years ago when he wrapped it up.

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