Culpability
22 March 2011 02:34 PM Categories: Animal/vegetable/mineral | Writing prompts
The image: a cigarette boat, one of those pointy, sleek things, the motor powerful as 2000 horses, zipping along the surface of a lake (Lake Como?). So fast, so fast, a streak of red, the laughter of a bikinied woman, the smell of exhaust and bitters and coconut intermingling in the air. Who can make a mistake when they glide, almost hover above the surface?
The hot air balloon, an effusive spot of color in the sky, the separation from earth and green and tree branch. People stand in a basket – a basket! – like a bunch of easily perishable fruit, soft-bodied and wide-eyed. From up here, there are no mistakes, just smudges on the landscape.
I want to believe there are no irreparable mistakes, that messing up huge is a temporary thing, that the skimming across oil-slicked water or floating on a rush of hot air is what life is all about. Simple. Fixed with a kiss or a kind word.
Then I remember: murder. Accidental death. The off turn of a wheel, the gaze averted at the wrong moment. A boat crash. A tumble from a basket. A series of bad decisions that lead to something impossible to fix. A railroad track of stitches bisecting a skull. The grave, deep and black. The stiff and uneven gait of the failed suicide.
In my dreams, I sometimes float above the world. I look down at the streetlights, the people safe in their dollhouses, squares of light coming from the windows. Everything is neatly packaged and I am free of gravity, of other people’s problems, of my sadness. I pilot the cigarette boat, my cocktail in my hand, the wind pulling my hair back. I laugh at the blurred landscape, the lake empty of other people. I am the only one in the basket, looking down on god’s world from his vantage point.
Other people. Other people. Other people. It is only in connection with others that we can mess up, can mess up huge. Or they can mess up huge, too, take us down with them in the sad crunch of fiberglass against bone, in the plummet from too high. Even suicides leave victims behind.
As I've been getting this ready for posting, My Kingdom by Echo and the Bunnymen has been going through my mind. It's related, though it's also related to a lot of teenage angst:
For another Echo post from a very different time: Living proof at my fingertips.
From a prompt: You messed up! You messed up huge! originally written on 11 March. Just seems appropriate right now. Almost unedited from the original.
The hot air balloon, an effusive spot of color in the sky, the separation from earth and green and tree branch. People stand in a basket – a basket! – like a bunch of easily perishable fruit, soft-bodied and wide-eyed. From up here, there are no mistakes, just smudges on the landscape.
I want to believe there are no irreparable mistakes, that messing up huge is a temporary thing, that the skimming across oil-slicked water or floating on a rush of hot air is what life is all about. Simple. Fixed with a kiss or a kind word.
Then I remember: murder. Accidental death. The off turn of a wheel, the gaze averted at the wrong moment. A boat crash. A tumble from a basket. A series of bad decisions that lead to something impossible to fix. A railroad track of stitches bisecting a skull. The grave, deep and black. The stiff and uneven gait of the failed suicide.
In my dreams, I sometimes float above the world. I look down at the streetlights, the people safe in their dollhouses, squares of light coming from the windows. Everything is neatly packaged and I am free of gravity, of other people’s problems, of my sadness. I pilot the cigarette boat, my cocktail in my hand, the wind pulling my hair back. I laugh at the blurred landscape, the lake empty of other people. I am the only one in the basket, looking down on god’s world from his vantage point.
Other people. Other people. Other people. It is only in connection with others that we can mess up, can mess up huge. Or they can mess up huge, too, take us down with them in the sad crunch of fiberglass against bone, in the plummet from too high. Even suicides leave victims behind.
As I've been getting this ready for posting, My Kingdom by Echo and the Bunnymen has been going through my mind. It's related, though it's also related to a lot of teenage angst:
For another Echo post from a very different time: Living proof at my fingertips.
From a prompt: You messed up! You messed up huge! originally written on 11 March. Just seems appropriate right now. Almost unedited from the original.
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