Kamikazes and Common Causes

A smoothie of first grade and college

¿There’s a whole lot of noise coming from your bias but aren’t we on the same team here and sometimes I don’t know which way the wind blows or why the meaning of events change but I’ll ask again because I really want to believe we’re on the same team here since our world is nothing more yet nothing less than particles of sand mesmerized by the sight of crashing waves that spend too much time anticipating the moment until they forget experiences are a highly competitive business and we learn that even the wolves won’t eat some of the most unhealthy moments and I’m kidding though but am I kidding?

I remember very little of my whereabouts in first grade. The stone I found in my soup gave our table group a sufficient amount of points to be rewarded with a pizza party on a Friday. When the hedgehog had been pet enough but we still wanted to feel something spiky, I volunteered my cranium and the other humans pretended my spiky hair alluded to the quills of a hedgehog. I went on a strike in my backyard and didn’t get to school until an hour before noon which caused my sixth grade buddy to have no one to mentor that week. My friend always offered me part of his lunch as a snack and one time we ate everything before lunch so our teacher suggested I share my cafeteria lunch with him. I recall feeling angry about it and possibly only sharing the corn which I didn’t like and I still regret my selfish behavior to this day if my memory isn’t failing me. I pulled out a few baby teeth over the sink by spinning them around with my tongue and then using a dry paper towel to pluck them out like carrots from a vegetable garden. My teacher was Mrs. Whittemore but I remember having Mrs. Delk substitute for us frequently.

¿It smells like they just finished painting out in the weeds of my mind and rumor has it they can’t chew their food while I observe them but a lot of what we say is not said through verbal interactions yet we still make hospitable attributions about a human’s motives while I risk never coming back if I go too far or if I try too hard to be a good human in the eyes of vigilantes because tiny details hold the greatest knowledge if you let them finish painting over what used to be the hell in help when you and I and us understand that values and principles should guide our actions but are fears currently driving them?

The diner is colored outside the lines and the waitress wearing quilted cotton armor asks me if I ever forget that I’m a human and my response is that I’d like a stack of buttered toast please and she looks at me with an expression on her face that’s congruent with the phrase, What’s his motive here?, and as I stare out the window I ask myself the same thing.

¿My dreams feel more real than my reality because I acknowledge clouds shaped like spinal columns that come with the territory and also create a perception that my muffled voice is being heard yet biological capacities dictate natural rights while music plays quietly next to a book with primitive art and they tell me that there’s no specific meaning to life but rather what you project back into it and even then my back still hurts sometimes and humans hurt sometimes and the words hurt sometimes but hopefully if we’re all looking for unifying moments and not just pulling the teeth out of biology projects that aren’t interested in basic factual information then maybe someday we’ll recognize an error or at least notice that aren’t we on the same team here?

When the cub scouts brought us magnets I really wanted to join them and got upset when my parents made me start soccer instead. I was seven and played on the Rockets with grey and green jerseys. It’s amazing to think that one of the best aspects of my life may not have happened if I had followed the fancy magnet. Pencils with potent smells were sold in the office five or six rooms to our left if my architecture isn’t wrong. I never bought a book from the book fair in the library but I think I ordered two or three from the monthly book magazine. I don’t remember how my shoe box was decorated for Valentine’s Day but I remember having one and humans filling it with themed-cards and candy. I suppose 9/11 happened in first grade but I have no recollection of it. I think my mom brought cupcakes for the class on my birthday. I later learned that the white spread was a combination of vanilla frosting and sour cream. I won my first cake walk at the Webster carnival in what would soon turn into a dynasty in the years to come.

¿I agree that emotions are full of sentimental value but have I been sold a false bill of goods about who needs to suffer first because if humans aren’t with them then obviously they’re against them right and I agree that divisions within my persona distort the visual entertainment around me and the resin it leaves behind is not easily buried like delusional fingers with dripping black blood writing messages on textile walls that are neither hidden nor center stage but these differences do not matter if the lives watching the words being scribbled can’t distinguish probable motives or live with a desire to understand future implications because the past is a broken engine belonging to an automobile with missing headlights that fakes smiles in the present while the grenades I throw into my mind never land with a bang so can’t you just try to agree with me?

¡Guilt by association happens from time to time and nothing is inevitable but sometimes I wonder if there’s more meaning to life than being an organism in an environment with no instruction manual because - BANG!

Perhaps my toast is ready now.

 

Author's Note

Thoughts are highly appreciated!

Reviews

[Chadvonswan]

I thoroughly enjoyed this surreal and colorful recollection of first grade. Its sad almost because the innocence of the memories are lost and replaced by a more brutally aware and a melancholy logical perspective. We partially share this same portion of life and I can only recollect certain events and superimpose them with the present and frown when I realize that those memories are constantly becoming more and more nonexistent and replaced by ceaseless tomorrows-- bangs and booms and ---- the microwave is beeping

[Gaston Villanueva]

Glad to see you on the cafe again! I always appreciate your reviews bro and look forward to reading new works from you!

[Rana]

This was quite delectable, with the two flavors neatly manifesting through the question-statement layers. One could see the past as mostly understood and facts; the present as something one was still in the process of affirming facts from. Fruitful to ponder how early childhood events could influence behavior. Soccer can make one experience "us" with amazing clarity, and goals and teams and common causes. I liked the spiky hair memory, the eccentric waitress, the metaphors "the past is a broken engine" and "chew their food", perhaps when you observe them, they become the food themself. And the title, the befitting homophones.

[Gaston Villanueva]

Highly appreciated as always :)