8/11/1998 g.g.Ashbrook
She didn’t know why she was so nervous going to a funeral. Everyone else was so stiff and somber, a strange combination. One might let a coffee mug slip from their hand because they were so uptight and locked and yet scarcely be able to find within their lackluster selves the capacity to pivot at their waist swivel joint and scoop up the container. Bone, she thought. Bones are supposed to be hard. But we’re not all bones are we, she thought. Another exit sign raced by the window. She signaled the window to lower itself by whispering with her fingers into the car door’s slight ear which was attuned to only two words. With the window down she held her arm out, and making a fin out of her hand she coasted the air, riding the wake of the car and all the people in it who, though while they were not helping the car to maintain such a ghastly pace, their presence was somehow necessary for the car to be moving. It was, after all, their need, and not the need of the buffalo horse with glowing thoughts of dial-control and record. Or was ‘need’ the wrong word? She expected one of her parents to snap at her for opening the window, but no one said a word. It musses the hair, it creates ‘drag,’ though her brother was too young to have the fashion autonomy to wear a dress to the wedding, er… funeral. It causes one to be reminded of the temperature outside of their bubble of my-real. She wandered what it would be like to have a bed next to an open car window, to have a car window in her room; and for the alarm, to have it open. Then she could run down stairs with some freshness the local radio stations couldn’t relax enough to say things they didn’t understand. The wind had a way of knowing, or something, bits of time which hadn’t fallen yet. Perhaps she wouldn’t have been so nervous about the funeral if she’d had a car window to wake up to every day. Maybe she’d have had a foreshadowing, some lull or thunderous boisterous clapping hurrah. Or maybe she’d feel a little of the wind people feel after they die, a wind of cold crisp lettuce, and hot apple pie. A rain of traveling under clouds which remind you of your first drive with your first love in someone else’s car. If dead people don’t remember things like that, she thought, then they wouldn’t give a damn about new fashions arising, new art movements, musical explosions, and they wouldn’t feel a bit sad watching people when they couldn’t be distracted from that aching question.
"Mom, dad," she said, shutting the window. "What are you so afraid of? You don’t seem to be able to remember how to think."
There was a cloud cover over the road. From the ground it made the sky look low and flat and snug; but she remembered how from the height of an airplane the clouds form these wonderful floating flat surfaces, sometimes layers of them, but the sky goes on above them, and often there is up there a different kind of weather altogether. The stormy skies that characterize some areas keeps the sun out like the arid almost desert climates which get too much sun keep the clouds away, or that was how she thought of it. Perhaps there was a way to be less general and get lost in the details but she didn’t want either, whatever the reason was. She didn’t like the word "perfect" because you weren’t supposed to worry about perfection, and people would look at her weird if she mentioned living up to some kind of ideal. She always wandered how people would ever get to good ideals if they were afraid to start.
"I’m hungry," she said. Then her father said, "But we just stopped a few hours ago." And her mother said putting on the turn signal, "It is about lunch time, and I’m getting hungry myself." Jesar didn’t want food because she was hungry, but there was no need to explain herself in a car full of people who were only concerned with the appearance of a happy life without having to live. They should have said, "Don’t ask anything of me whatever you do. I’d rather starve to death then eat somewhere where I’d have to do something for food other then hand over money." But saying that would break another unspoken rule of conversations, never say what you believe. Then someone might criticize you, or if not, if they agreed, you might have to do some thinking to have an intelligent conversation that wasn’t repeating what you heard somewhere else. But perhaps the real risk is saying something which isn’t entertaining to people. The car pulled into a family restaurant chain with a marquee reading "Blue cheese hamburger patties 1/4 pound lean beef fries 5.99 with salad." Jesar said, "Do you think they’ll have anything here without meat in it?" Her parents got out of the car and shut the doors behind them. Wasn’t it called rude when you ignored what someone said? She and Hugg got out of the car looking at eachother and felt hungrier knowing there might be one thing on the menu without flesh added gratuitously. Their parents looked tired. She put her arm around Hugg as they walked up to the doorway and mussed his hair a little and he rested his head on her shoulder. She was sorry they were tired, but it didn’t make sense to her. They were tired and miserable because they continually made the choice not to pay any attention to what was going on around them. She called ahead, "Just because life isn’t easy doesn’t mean there's something wrong with it." Her father poked his head out of the door and squinted at her as she and Hugg walked in from the parking lot. "You don’t have to respond," she said. "Adults don’t seem to register criticism, it might give you a new beginning, we wouldn’t want that now would we." It might as well have been called the ‘Nothing’s Wrong Family Restaurant,’ she thought.
There were children all over the restaurant. Beautiful creatures under a compulsion they did not resist to spread their wings to cover the ungodly mess of the lives around them. The families held their children over their heads, and draped over their sides, pretending it was them that shined and not bothering to look past the child’s front of effortless flight. The children did not resist, but joined without hesitation. They were becoming dark inside with an ease and pleasure of unconcern, and she knew that they knew better. The children were holding over their own actions the responses of their families to what they did; just as their families were using the children’s actions as their own intentions. In this they were no different, no alien grace, but a revivified sweeping motion of deceit given a new strength. The new generation was born with the same disease of a wound. Jesar couldn’t help but wander what could it possibly have been that hurt all these people to such a depth that they could not rise even to give their own children a chance in hell. She wished so hard that she had pieces of light in her pocket that she could give to the people at the tables. Even if it dispelled some of the clouds the people believed to be the sky. The real sky would do, an unmistakable will. Will-do, have what you will, thaw a while, try a new style, some warm soup for the mindscape of tomorrow. Throw out the crutches, try out your new legs for size. Stretch out your new neck, and pry your new eyes. Wake up from that dream of whatwentwrong. Break out of the loop. The challenge is to know a door when you see it.