Akrasia

  After he says that, the power goes out. The fire

  is dying down, so I pile the wood back up higher

  than ever, and Allie laughs as she uses the bellows,

  causing red coals to produce oranges and yellows.

  The flame returns quickly. The darkness disperses.

  Rain drums steadily, and suddenly Gram curses.

  She thinks she left her clothes drying on the line.

  Sam reminds her: I brought ’em in earlier. It’s fine.

  The wind blows harder. Close by—a loud crack!

  Bowser starts to go hide; I get him to come back.

  Allie wants us to put on a play or fake TV show,

  but Gram isn’t in the mood for that. She says: No.

  Why don’t we tell stories? Not terrible ones, Sam.

  I say: Can you tell us about the olden days, Gram?

  Allie & Sam & me: one little boy & two little girls

  who aren’t so little anymore. Outside: wind whirls,

  rain pounds, thunder booms. Inside: safe and dry,

  we listen to our grandmother convey days gone by.

  When your grandpa was alive, he’d get lightning

  inside sometimes. Ball lightning; it was frightening.

  I’d catch him up there in the attic during a storm.

  He’d open a window an’ it’d jump in. It was warm.

  I could feel the heat climbing up the stairs before

  I saw it. Little blob or clump light. I’d try to ignore

  it but once he even put it to his mouth, gave it a kiss.

  I asked him why, and he said he just couldn’t resist

  the silver light. Weirdest thing I ever saw in my life.

  Eeriest part—he said it was sent from his first wife,

  who died before your dad was born. She drowned,

  all alone, boating on up there to that…compound.

  Sunflower Lodge. It burnt down the same summer.

  Afterwards they said she was seeing a drugrunner.

  But she wasn’t. An’ your grandpa wasn’t neither.

  They came here t’get away from all those cheaters

  an’ mafioso who took the business over in the city.

  And then Sophia died, so he wallowed in self-pity.

  Then I met him. But ya heard all that b’fore, right?

  You kids want spookier stuff on this kind of a night.

  Know how lightning up the lake goes like a arcade,

  joltin’ between the clouds? Some say it’s manmade.

  All I know is that it didn’t always do that. It started

  after a couple strange customers finally departed

  from your grandpa’s inn. They checked in together,

  called themselves agents, asked about the weather

  and the Lodge up the lake. This was the same year

  when Sophia died. Some said the guys were queer,

  but they were FBI. They stayed in the same room

  and never slept that I knew. I brought them food

  because all the other help were too grief-stricken

  over the drowning. I saw the two men had written

  a ton of reports. That’s all they did most days,

  stay in their room and type reports, a serious gaze

  on their faces. At night they’d go out separately.

  An’ no one’d see ’em come back, but incredibly

  they’d be in their room again in time for breakfast.

  I don’t know where they’d go. We were impressed

  but didn’t understand what they were investigatin’.

  Some said there was a threat of a bomb detonatin’

  the town dam. Now, to go back to the 18th century,

  that’s like the way they made the lake originally.

  They dynamited a river to fill a valley with water.

  And some said it doubled as a Indian slaughter.

  I don’t know if natives were even in the land still.

  But did you know they say rushing water can kill

  vampires? That’s what an old man named Pierre

  used to tell us kids. He had a peg-leg and cut hair.

  He lived down the end of the road, in a lil shack.

  My cousins stole his leg once. He wanted it back

  but they wouldn’t tell him where they had hid it.

  So Pierre said, ‘It’s on the flagpole. Go git it.’

  Well they didn’t hide it there, but sure enough

  they found it perched on the pole, like it was stuck

  that way, balanced. Never bothered the barber

  again did any of the kids. And he didn’t harbor

  a grudge neither. He told us stories from the War

  and said what the forest was like in days before

  white folks. Peaceful but savage. He told us ’bout

  how the valley was real haunted. He had no doubt

  that the river was blown to scare away the spirits.

  The lake wasn’t the goal. That’s how he’d hear it

  when he was young, and that’s how we heard it

  from him. ‘Spirit vampires’ is how he’d word it.

  I never forgot that. And I know Sophia used to say

  ‘I’m visiting the mermaids’ when she went away

  up the lake to go to that Lodge. I know it’s crazy

  an’ I don’t know who started it—memory’s hazy

  —but it was said ‘Sophie’s mermaids have fangs’.

  At first I thought, 'Oh, bootleggers or drug gangs;

  “fangs” are their weapons.’ Then I started leaning

  eventually on a weirder, more nefarious meaning.

  ‘Like teachin’ a vampire to swim!’ Pierre’d say

  sometimes when somethin’ was in a difficult way,

  but not impossible. Well, Pierre disappeared a day

  before the FBI men left. They went on a foggy morn,

  first we had since Sophie died. There was a horn,

  which was the fire alarm then. I could have sworn

  the two men honked their fancy car horn goodbye

  right at the same time. It was the Sunflower Lodge

  burnin’ down. Way up on an island, it was gone

  by the time the firefighters got there in their boats.

  We never found out why. Your grandpa found notes

  left over by the agents in the room. Crumpled up

  in the waste bin. They were illegible. Uncle Gus

  even called Washington, but no one said they knew

  anything about those agents. The Hoodoo To-do

  we called that summer. Grandpa was still grieving

  the loss of his first wife. He thought about leaving

  but I convinced him to stay.

  You know that story already.

  The rain’s let up some but thunder pounds steadily.

  After her odd tale, Gram looks at us pleasantly.

  Bowser had fallen asleep as the story was ending.

  Weirdness creeps out Allie, but she is pretending

  otherwise. She’ll have great trouble sleeping later.

  Sam, gleam in his eye, says: Hey Sis, do us a favor

  and tell us the strange things that happened to you.

  Shrugging my shoulders quizzically, lying, I knew

  he’d want me to talk about this, but I aim to hide it.

  Whenever I’m confused by something, I deny it

  ever happening. That’s how I deal with a mystery.

  I say it simply doesn’t exist. It’s not in my history.

  Especially this one. Don’t want to worry my Gram.

  Don’t want her to know I am tainted and damned.

  Of all her grandkids, I’m her favorite of the seven.

  She should die thinking we’ll reunite in heaven.

  My first friend at school was a girl named Suzy.

  Her family was religious, which was alien to me.

  One day in the sandbox Suzy said:
Satan’s real.

  If you write 666 on a paper and bury it; it’s a deal,

  your soul’s lost. It is too true. My grandma told me.

  Smirking, I wrote 999 on a scrap, showed it boldly

  to my scandalized friend, and covered it with sand.

  Well, I dug & dug—couldn’t find that scrap again.

  Suzy was afraid for me. I told her: I should be fine

  —I didn’t write six-six-six, I wrote nine-nine-nine!

  Suzy was skeptical, and finally I was scared too.

  We never mentioned it again; nothing we could do.

  We drifted apart as friends, slowly and naturally.

  I thought of how to break the deal, imaginatively,

  to no avail. How can I ever know my soul’s secure?

  Just try not believing in souls. That’s how I endure.

  Allie’s actually sleeping soundly, and so’s Sam.

  Lying awake, considering a future without a plan,

  I decide some mysteries are better left unsolved.

  I don’t need to know all. Letting go, I’m absolved.

  Home seems like a theme town or living museum.

  School seems like a TV show, play, or coliseum.

  Home is a tame wilderness where nothing changes.

  And school is a zoo where we’re free in our cages.

  Home’s less real to me because it’s more natural.

  Talk of ‘going out into the real world’ (so factual)

  means finding a way to fit myself into a computer

  network, rent a new pad, and become a commuter.

  But that’s what I’ve gotta do, and what I wanna do.

  At home I’m myself… I wanna be someone new.

  My future’s not a dystopia—as long as you’re in it!

  That’s what the Valentine said. But I dismissed it

  and dismissed the sender from my life and bed.

  I don’t want to be obsessed over. I wanted a friend.

  My parents once told me of a guy called Dillon

  who they grew up with. He proved to be a villain

  but people loved him due to his singing voice,

  which could silence a barroom. A girl called Joyce

  wasn’t impressed. But she’s who Dillon wanted.

  He followed her west, hopeful, but it was obvious

  that nothing would come of it, and nothing did.

  Finally she put a bounty on him. He went and hid

  with my parents, and lived in a tent on their land.

  One morning they found him naked on the sand,

  murmuring that he had Lucifer trapped in his head.

  He went into fever dreams and by sunset was dead.

  And he had a voice as great as the grand canyon,

  but never would’ve made a good life companion.

 

  As strange as the stories were tonight, my dreams

  are worse: My sorority coerces me into a scheme.

  Shipped out, working in a salt and chocolate mine

  for an internship, turning into a donkey, doing fine,

  learning to lie all the time, to myself in particular.

  I win ‘most likely to suck-seed for extracurricular

  activity’. Making fun of me, they make me Queen

  of Pleasure Island. I’d much rather just be clean.

  Ugh.

  Then I wake up and remember that I do learn a lot

  of real stuff in college. I love learning; I just forgot.

  Our old Greek teacher told us of this word akrasia.

  He said it meant a fruitless endeavor or bad idea

  that brings no lasting effects. But just this evening

  I looked it up and got a slightly different meaning:

  The dictionary said akrasia meant willfully wrong

  action, a sin committed with ill intention all along.

  I like our professor’s definition better. It’s broader,

  and the way it fits everyday non-events is stronger.

  When you forget something once-so-important,

  —that’s akrasia. Many loves, true but inordinate,

  become ruins, castles abandoned before fully built,

  —those’re akrasia. Failed dreams bring deep guilt.

  But it’s not an akrasia if you can find some good

  in whatever happened (or didn’t), get it understood,

  recollect the sparks that first brightened an old trial

  (lost), and relight the spirit anew, with more style,

  content, and fuel. If certain history seems a waste,

  learn that happiness exists there, if only misplaced.

  And that’s the task: to battle akrasia by redeeming

  as much badness as possible, beyond the screening

  & coverstories, such as school teaches me nothing

  or mom detested me. A pessimist’s always bluffing.

  The past hurts more when it’s denied its just due.

  The future takes hold once you gather what’s true.

  Mornings I wake up first and write in this journal.

  I want summer eternal though the heat is infernal.

  IV. ComaDoze

  Are you there?

  Ok guess not.

  Sorry i am like ten hours late for our conversation, but i can leave you some information this way

  In your last message you asked me about the coma

  And having to relearn my skills

  And what you called my indomitable spirit toward it all

  I dont know when youll get this

  But yeah ill tell you about the coma.

  It was a real lesson in life

  And it was a new bridge

  It was actually the same thing thats been happening with everything else ive been talking about with you

  A lesson believe it or not, not a tragedy

  I was coming back from the islands

  With my baby

  Flying to san diego

  Where we had a bigger studio already set up for me

  Which flying with my baby was really something else

  Because she hated it

  And even getting ready for the trip i should have known something was wron

  Wrong

  But thats another story

  So we left to move to the united states

  I believe it was may

  Yeah may 2000

  Ok, I grew up as a lover of juice, especially grape juice

  And it was hot in the airport so i had been chugging it

  Well i have diabetes

  Only i didnt know it then.

  Or at least i wasnt sure, but i couldnt resist grape juice

  So i go to sleep over the pacific ocean

  Somewhere near hawaii

  With my baby next to me

  And i dont wake up

  When i do wake up its a week later

  and i had lost 35 pounds.

  When you lose weight that quickly like that you kinda get disconnected to your muscles and your nervous system

  To fastforward for a bit, it wasnt till 6 months later that my doctor gave me the ok to start lifting weights again.

  I can remember lifting a light dumbbell with my right hand and doing some curls

  Just like two curls, cuz thats all i could do

  And all of a sudden my right hand felt like 200 pounds.

  And what it was was the nerves reconnecting

  So then i did the same with the left hand and thought ok now im even.

  But then my top half felt heavy because my legs arent connected

  Things like that kept happening till my whole body hooked itself back up again

  Which took awhile

  And thats not even going into how

  From the very beginning

  After waking up in the hospital

  My brain was disconnected from my memories

  It wasnt till 6 months later when i finally started to draw again that i realized just how fa
r my brain had gotten disconnected from my memories

  They said it was part of the

  Hang on

  Encephalitis

  It was a weird feeling cuz the only way i can describe it is that i could see all my skills and all my knowledge in my head

  But i couldnt grab any of it,

  None of it was connected to anything

  And whenever i would try to grab it mentally to draw it, then i couldnt see it anymore

  I could think of an arm but the bicep and tricep memories, i could see them but they wouldnt connect to ‘hey im drawing an arm so you should move over here with the pencil’

  I couldnt connect what was on the page to what i was seeing in my head

  Or what i was seeing in reality if i was drawing from a model

  But to go back

  I wake up in a hospital and for a whole two months after that i cant feed myself or even eat

  Im hooked up to a iv

  I never once asked my doctor what happened to bring me to that state. i didnt even have the sense that something happened or who i was really

  What i asked the doctor when i woke up was ‘can i see my baby?’ and she said no. ‘so then what do i gotta do? tell me. i wanna see my baby. my babys all i remember.

  Right then i was actually kinda franctic

  And she tells me in this calm voice ‘tomorrow, if you can sit up, well talk about it.’ so tomorrow i sit up, and she goes ‘tomorrow if you can stand up on your own two feet.’ so the next day i stand up.

  ‘Ok, if you can walk around the room is the next thing

  So she had me go through these paces, the tests, a million of them until most of my muscles and most my memories were reconnected

  Even though everything is still real real weak, physically and mentally

  Fragile

  Months and months and months go by and im what they call an outpatient

  They set me up in a little place there where i can draw

  I still cant dress myself

  Cant really do anything by myself

  And im alone most of the time

  But i can draw and they give me all sorts of tests

  Physical and mental and i guess what youd call emotional tests to see if i can recognize emotions

  Which i couldnt do very well for a while

  And im lucky that some of my family could manage my funds and come visit me

  But they wouldnt tell me anything

  And it seemed like they were afraid of me in a sense

  So one day i say to my doctor

  Ok, where is my baby? how much longer?

  And my doctor says ok, if you can draw her then you can see her

  So right there and then i draw a sketch of my baby and show it to the doctor, and im told

  You asked to see your baby. well, you can see her this way. shes there on the paper, see? this is the only way youre going to be able to see her.

  Because she doesnt want to see you.

  And ill tell you about that later

  So for that whole year i had only thought about getting better so that i can see my baby. thats all i had thought about, and thats actually what kinda saved me.