Bienvenido al Ritual


Lost.
Lost.

Welcome to the most important place on the Internet: welcome to where you are.

I like the fact that the most important places where I am welcome, are usually the places I am.

The pages are a garden and maze of my writing, music, videos, songs, lyrics, links, blogs, tweets, photographs, and damaged goods.

Your Host,

Wendy Clark

 ***Ritual includes CREATIVE and FICTIONAL stories with a few embellished blogs and entries as well as some controversial essays and a blog or two mixed in as an entry. Or as a blog. Music is based on fiction and reality and copyrighted.

Updated 12/12/2029


The Space You Left Behind


The Space You Left Behind
The Space You Left Behind

Does one ever think that when one approaches the front door to answer it, the casual ritual often prevents us from employing our critical thinking - measuring and inductive reasoning - which may have spared us a new experience and not have ever impacted our conscious subjectivity and embedded an apprehension, or a logic, or a system of your interpretation of that moment forward; and you wake up and decide things and going to be different. Remember, you have options; you have three doors to choose from and millions of pages to reference. You are what you know, that's what page I am on this evening. I am writing them as quickly as you try to figure out why the hell you are trying to figure out what the hell I am talking about to you; you turn to face the same brick wall you built of systems and neurons - you flip the page over and it is blank; so you write... you write as a ritual - and you will not be anxious about the knock at your front because you don't want to answer it and your writing intensifies.

“Great to see you; you look spectacular.”
I didn’t tell her I had never jumped out of a plane before, or that I didn’t really think it was an activity that I had condemned long ago; in fact I had recently signed a petition to ban parachuting in our county, but I did look spectacular, so fatefully, I returned a smile and looked at her dizzy, unsuspecting gaze, her unawkwardness at my rigid side, she was breathing happily while the little propellor aircraft whipped us about
“What?” I knew she didn’t know that I had heard her.
I held my self perfectly still. I grimaced after a minute of this trying activity. The little plane shook and shivered. When she nodded at me I realized I could use this time to take the opportunity to stop this madness once and for all: My new life of urgent truth had to begin now! The little aircraft dipped frightfully through an air pocket and I began to get the heebie jeebies and slow quakes jolted my arteries. Meanwhile I realized I hadn’t many seconds to begin this new path in life, I had to plot my thesis after I jumped out of a plane, landed and recovered. My hand moved to my side pocket and I compulsively rechecked the presence of my ID and paperwork. The parachuting certificate I handed to the pilot was legitimate after all; the online class was quite expensive and I didn’t cheat. I just lied. Of course, last night at Trick’s Tavern, I realized that I would have told her anything. I needed someone to make me feel interesting, and I suppose that is why I tell so many stories to those I am sure I will never see again and I am beginning to think that is a dangerous self discovery.
To make matters worse, I was starting to be concerned about this and other self issued discoveries, and this was a rather bad time to start a rapid decline of self doubt.
“I heard you say you were adopted.”
“True, but please don’t forget what you don’t know.”
“I wish you didn’t listen so much.” Our conversation was confusing. I just started to talk about nothing.
“The sun isn’t going down any quicker. My sundown is high…. Have you ever heard of thought disorder?” I looked up at the ceiling of the airplane and recited the definition from Wikipedia, “ ‘In psychiatry, thought disorder or formal thought disorder is a term used to describe a pattern of disordered language use that is presumed to reflect disordered thinking. It is usually considered a symptom of psychotic mental illness although occasionally appears in other conditions. It is also known as knight's move thinking referring to the nonlinear way a knight moves in chess.’”
“What?”
The noise of the engine grew louder.
“I said the noise of the engine is getting loud.”
“Don’t worry, anyway.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“True.” She looked at me but I stared out the window at the gravity.
The pilot’s husky orders startled me but I stood up and waited.
The rollercoaster and the hash brownies experience was cupcake compared to what ever happened next. I have little but flashes of the freefall, I did everything wrong and the ride home was long and my whole heart ached in every part of my body.
When I woke up from my nap that evening, I called her and informed her that I couldn’t see her anymore and had to dedicate myself to a new religion - one that would make me a better self. Then I told her that she made me see that I was a liar and a thief and I thanked her and hung up the phone. Well, I actually didn’t totally hang it up on the cradle; it was crooked and I wonder if she heard me playing the blues on my harmonica for the next two hours. Nothing happened for awhile after that. I memorized the words to Ave Maria and took a shower with my cap on. I drank a beer and waltzed down the street to Mrs. Armstrong’s house, two blocks away.
My piano lesson was louder than ever before that Sunday morning; the expressive and impressive strokes brought my instructor’s maid to tears, I closed my eyes for minutes at a time, hoping to get the liquid to soothe my windburnt eyeballs, and I occasionally pause to flip my bangs off my eyelashes and as awkward as this was, I reminded myself to smile when my teacher would criticize my artistic profile and she would smile and nod at the keys as she told me to pick it up again; but I laid it down even more until my heartache broke and let the sunshine ease in, then I would totally stop and slam my fists down like a defeated classical pianist in a cartoon. Like Schroeder. I went to the window loudly when Ms. _________ had to pick up a long distance phone call, and her cat walked across the keys of the baby grand as traffic groaned down the slushy highway in front of her house. The cat was deaf, I thought while a tickle of a giggle hummed in my throat, and the damn thing had no talent. I wished that Ms. ______ would come back so that she was not speaking to her far-away friend about the crappy student playing crappy impromptu for no apparent reason. But the doorbell rang, the distorted volume of the cheap tone made me shove my hands in my pockets like a guilty thief, and the cat got away from the tune.

“Hey, go home,” she cupped her hand and she spoke to the door at me, “Go home NOW.”
She reminded me of a dial tone.
I wonder who invented the dial tone. Did that same person name it? Was it named “Dial Tone”? I could probably Google it, but I knew myself too well. I did not care. All I cared about was the free association bullshit which prompted me to relate a tone to a human being.

Today was the day I decided to change my life. I also changed my phone number, got a PO Box, a puppy, and a laptop. I almost added a handgun to that list, but after dry-heaving in the alley next to Paul’s Pawn on 12th and Hell Street, I delayed that purchase for my next life change. I chucked my old cell phone in a dumpster, I admired the lack of contacts I didn’t have on my new one, and I slung my leather laptop case over my shoulder, gave a nice little blind kid two dollars, and strolled through the east side with my new dog in a cage on a Ryder I had bought from a teenager who seemed to be a legitimate salesperson.

Today was the day my life decided to change me.   

by Wendy Clark (3026)



Please help fund my software and rent.

Ritual vii


Today is the first day of the rest of your series of other first days of your life. You always can be uncertain whether or not you have this particular day to begin again. You always may be certain that you will always be uncertain. You start planning immediately; you have an unmeasured time allotted for this interpretation of the state of your fixation. You sit in front of whatever clever type of technology or paper or sticky-note system which provides you with the encouragement to begin your plan. But after a few scribbles and a change in barometric pressure, you decide that you have accomplished a decent amount of planning, just by the act of starting to think about planning. Then you walk into your backyard to see if there is enough gas in the lawn mower to do a few rows, and your phone rings.
"Hello?"
The silence on the other end of your line is intolerable, so you utter a short sequence of charming un-thank yous and you realize that you have to call your friend in Chicago who is sick and could be dying; meanwhile your guitar looks like it needs to be played. You can't figure out a chord, so you pick up the remote control, but nothing is on except your love's favorite show, which you can't watch because this is the first day of the rest of your year, and so you think about ordering a pizza but your debit card is downstairs and the cat just puked and the ice has already melted in your glass. 
"Hellooooo?"
You walk around in circles until you decide it's not worth it, and maybe the tag phrase should be, "today is the last day of your life" but that seems psychologically unhealthy and you need to sleep it off.
The challenges to which you shall open your sleepy eyes are self-imposed. For instance, you must own your own mind. You can't always control it, but you have got to own it. You have to obey or disobey its compulsions, and you have to accept its troubles and randomizations. You can't organize it, but you can know the danger of its capacity to scramble and ramble. You can tell yourself many things you want to believe, but unless you compromise with it, your intentions wont be articulated as obligations. You have to be consistent, impressionistic, reasonable, adjustable, and playful. No one can think for oneself without wandering about some madness, and at times madness may be the purpose, the map, the ambiguity that makes all challenges the exact electricity which makes your minds universe.
So! Before you retrace your steps, either find the nearest exit or forgive yourself for thinking that you are completely capable of withstanding any retrospection. We all have a certain level of faith and love for ourselves, but we hesitate to remember (time after time) that our minds love is unrequited at times.
I found myself today. I found myself yesterday. Don't worry about how or where or why. You need to worry about yourself. I am in good standing with myself. I don't know how you see me, but I need you to look at yourself instead of me. I am lost and found, and the circle will never be unbroken.
Ask yourself questions; but believe nothing you say is universal truth. Again, I don't know how you see me, I only see what I ask of you to see me as, and I ask you to see me without judgment, without pity, without expectations; I will in turn see you just as I see myself. I will see a conjunction of suggestion, a highway overlooking the inexactness which I gander and gather, and I will speak no evil, see no evil, nor hear no evil. I will tell myself to have an open mind, an unspoken heart, and a thousand broken souls unnerving me at every moment I let myself go. I will obey and deceive while I coincide and conflict. I will not hurt you any more or less unless I am hurting. But, thats me. I will listen, confide, retreat, capture, release, stalk, haunt, freak, steal, believe, deny, accuse, refuse, abuse, lose, win, practice, preach, reach, storm, mourn, shock, fall, get up, fall again, risk, gamble, promise, forget, relive, regret, write, ask, answer, explain, walk away, run away, stumble back, call, hang up, create, criticize, speculate, spit it out, move, stay, fear, hope, play, work, tumble, crumble, relive, revive, listen, whisper, break, shake, ache, take, fake, love, shove, test, quiz, examine, graduate, imitate, cringe, cry, die, believe, remind, reconsider, reconsider, reconsider, reconsider, prove, contend, mend, bend, reason, rationalize, agonize, plead, please, smile, agree, follow, lead, rock, roll, and rest. I will be on my own side of my mind, the inside of whats truly only mine, and I will have to be patient until you find me there: for you and I will celebrate your own story.

What are you going to do to make yourself feel real?


Then sometimes the stories tell themselves much faster than you can possibly imagine which is where the story begins. The story begins somewhere near the middle because something's got to be happening in order for a story to come in context of the conversation; what I mean is that I think you must have some reason to tell a story - a tale - an anecdote, unless you just are plain bored anyway, but my story starts because the time has come when I realized I had one to tell. Yeah, of course I have had many, just like we all have our stories, but this was one that made it even worthwhile to write.
Fact is that I love to write but not much inspires me these days to do the actual deed, I write in my notebook and it never seems to get typed therefore it is never really out there, except in a song or twenty, but any how, I would like to explain things in a way that aren't too abstract, so please stop if you get lost in my balderdash, if you can.
But you can't, so joke's on you, I s'pose.

Shakespeare in my lap under my bluish lighted lamp, I was on Act Two of The Tempest, trying to not only just read Shakespeare, but trying to enjoy it. This was a ritual of mine - one of many - I had these rituals that I practiced because I philosophized (being the philosopher who I was) that this was the delivery which would demand my sense of learning to enjoy the elements of existence which would make me virtuouso, a sultan, a reason for all to see that I have an itinerary - most of all a method.

I have a ritual. I was three days a college graduate, after five and a half years of university life, two majors and two minors (balance is important to me), I am able to write in present tense, say that I have been rigidly educated, and have my whole life ahead of me.
So, I write this as I say to you and the world, I am a philosopher. I make this decision because I strode off into the world just like that, the intentionally, and my screen door slammed shut, or whacked itself hard and the cat meowed and I headed up toward the outside off near campus in my new Converse, staring down at the un-kept sidewalk, grateful that that type of maintenance didn't bother me. I didn't look up and the sidewalk grooves moved beneath me at exceedingly faster lines of distance, which made me realize the physics of it all - but of course, as a philosopher, it may have mattered more or less, but that made me clearly apathetic philosopher, one who hasn't determined their actual "category" or "trade" or whatever; all I knew is that I wanted to study Ritual.
What in the hell does that mean?
I lifted my head as I approached Tennessee Street and some kids in a four door navy Taurus waved and yelled my name. I waved back, and couldn't figure out who they were. I am not foreshadowing here so don't get any ideas. Let me do the thinking. I have been practicing.
The coffee shop steps had been freshly painted and I had to go in there
"Why you look so down?' peaches asked
"Not"
"No serious-like - you're always lookin' at the ground."
"I-" I looked at the ceiling and laughed at the irony of the situation "Look at the ceiling, Peaches, the disgust, the mold, the cigarette-"
She made an indistinct snort and said, "People are talking, you know, you just have to look at more than them nice converse and sidewalks and cats and stuff. It's a shame we never see your eyes."
"Where's my coffee?" I knew I didn't order any.
"Do you just want some "grounds"", she laughed as she swayed away to some older chap, who looked like my Modern Lit professor.
"And what is a Ritual, anyway?"
The humming of the ceiling fans and the odor of the coffee and the ambience of the conversation found myself out the door and back up the hill, using my eyesight properly, staring ahead, then at the cloudless sky.



Setting Benchmarks

"Every Day is Like Sunday"


This was it.

I knew that this had had had to be it.

I leaned towards the judge and wanted to listen.

The sounds were not the same in the sense that I couldn't hear them. I wondered if my ears had made a choice and told my head to shut the olfactory section down..

I scuffled through the dusty gravel on the parkway and waited for someone's car to come pick me up, I was hoping they would call me and you would be there. They caught me easily, and I said I was tired of running away. I was tired of the games and the catchphrase no one caught without a few doubts getting there. But you were happy to be there, weren't you? 

I made some people happy. Others didn't matter. I made you happy most of the time. You left and didn't come back -- just as well, as I was better than you, and you were a sad sight thinking you were clever and confident.  

 

I shuddered, the steel coat of your boisterousness looked cold and you were avoiding my eyes and my words were spent..I knew you were not allowed to be that person to me, and you were aware too. It was far from you though -- I didn't mean you were sporting a personality or had a sense of humor or were attentive or were not smarter than I was -- I created a monster, and maybe you would grow up and learn who you are.

I was waiting for you to catch on.

I was there for quite awhile.

 

I raised my hand in Algebra one afternoon because I had solved the problem and my hand knew it. I stared past the boy who belted out his solution, then I threw my notebook out the classroom window.

 

Chances were that Sundays would be as much of a disappointment for me as they usually were.

 

Chances were that I would never break that doubt, not for lack of desire to mend a repetitious lifestyle of separation, but I wanted to quit being dichronous. That's what The Smiths would say, anyway.

I didn't make a break for it until I saw you, and I couldn't get far enough away to ever live with myself for being in love with a robot.

2017


Rebounding

Same Story Again
Same Story Again

Suddenly, I came out of the stupor and you gave me a blank look and told me that I listen to what you had to say and I should listen well. Next, I looked at your forehead and stammered. You looked at me tolerantly and clapped your hands in front of my eyes. You did this in several sessions of rhythmic outbursts, of these I lost count after three, thinking that I was going to break up with you; I didn't care if we we're dating anymore, or that we never did - I had to break up with you.

 

"You have a bee in your mouth," you told me.

 

I grinned at the prospect of being a bee and stinging her on her boob while she was on a date with someone fancy and she cries like a wuss.

 

The sound of the glass breaking would have scared the hell out of you, too.



Suddenly the truth of the matter was the simplicity of the suddenness I sought to seize.

I thought about calling you, then I decided to water the plants. I noted that I would have to let the dogs out soon enough, but right now my priority was that I endulged a session ofself-identificating, and subsequently maintained some aspect of photosynthesis.

I thought about calling you. I went back and forth with many items untouched on my To Not Do list, and I plunged into a guilty reasoning and borderline panic. As a result of writing it down in amanner which by no means eased my sense of autodestructionary mental esteem, I found that maybe you might find yourself online, wondering if I have updated this page recently, and then you wouldaffectionately realize that you were not mad at me, I felt bad anyway, so reading this may be just about the best means of communication I had to offer this Sunday evening.

I thought about calling you.

I still may. You never know.

February 1111, 2008




I’ll take it from here. 

Step off, I’m here to take it. 

It’s here, I shall take it. 



Photos of 2012ish

0 Comments

Audacity? part i


Dear Interested Reality Show Representative:

 

I am happy to hear from you - but what exactly is an "audition"? Is that when your doctor checks your hearing; estimates the frequency or levels, the results of 130 decibals every other night for three hours or so and the effects on your long term hearing?

 

Or is it a synonym for the act of auditing... or the state of being audited? Or maybe the state of one's audacity?

 

But I digress so I will just act natural and digress further. Quit digressing me with your eyes.

 

Thank you for the note! I am pleased to please you! And pleased to meet you! (I am on vacation and as my occupational hazards deny me time to write to random cool people - I teach high school English - who may fascinate me by some subjective means or another and make a long, shockingly introspective day just a bit better by being a part of it).

 

Anyway.

 

Please do buzz me so that I can figure out how to audition and/or captivate the uncaptivated...

 

Here are my stats:

Wendy Clark 

email: tqmbmusic@gmail.com

www.wendyclark.net

 

(Don't you realize how much I could barrage you with my introspective torment with the audacity of that unsolicited query?)

 

Take care, now. you hear?

you here?

 

After blinking involuntarily for the creeping recognition of the totally obvious, the most simplistic answers begin to noticeably affect our effect. This was the same lack of coping skills I was taught to overthink.

 

Fall: (noun) to pass from one condition to another.

 

“Tempting,” I said.

 

Sadly, the most unimportant events usually crept into my prominent speculations when ever my current situations(s) demanded my excruciating attention. Important events called for one's absolute focus, and  fortunately, I enjoyed a scale of mental substance consisting of various intense predicaments as well as an grounded awareness of my presence and depth of my semi-chaotic habitat.


Things were starting to be looking up, that is, when they weren't looking down.


The consequences of asking a blank sheet of paper to write itself.....

"Why do you ask so many rhetorical questions?"
Probably the same reason I write rhetorical emails.

The drive home from anyplace you go is going to be an unnerving string of fragmented images, sounds, smells, etcetera, but all you can do is drive, you have to get to your next destination; we all have to get somewhere, eh?
I wrote you a little song and the melody goes a little something like this... A one! A TWO! A ONE TWO THREE FOUR! 
The object of the game is to outwit everyone else, or maybe to out-think them, surpass them in the good looks or "I know how to dress" or something or other, after all, you HAVE to be good at something. If not, you aren't really much fun to be around, are you? 

The more you stay, the farther you go away, and love looks you in the eyes and you don't wait for the words you want to hear these days; you're friends find misery and become a bore, of course, you ponder if this boredom is really just a manifestation of your own loneliness.

Ah, looking back, we had dreams, big huge quivering coolness in our attitudes; smarter, luckier, more destined for greatness than all those random bodies rolling over the earth, heads down, miserable because they were blending in with the entire puzzle, those pieces of people.

"Deal me in," I say before I think about the consequences. I am currently existing on good luck anyway.

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance,
baffle them with gobbledygook." - Wendy Clark


Who Are You and How Did You Get Here?

What you see is who you are.
What you see is who you are and that should set you free.
What you see is what you know.
What you are is what you know.
What you know is you know what.

This rare evening I invite you to forget that what you see is who you are

and invite you to distinguish your sight and be blind for the sake

of

just

me
inviting you
for kicks

because I am trying to find the harm in forgetting

that what you see is what you get
and I want to quit believing that seeing is believing
and closing your eyes
doesn't mean I am closing what I see
and what I mean isn't who I may be

man, it is such a trip
that if you say to yourself
and forget to think about yourself
and remember why to laugh at yourself
like a complicated boob

You may start to believe that clarity
And see how many ways you can believe to see

I have to continue, because it is necessary:
What you see is who you are.
And it's better to know what is causing the drama than to wonder.
It is that simple. It is that complicated.

I tried to blend in more than I had ever tried to not be uneasy in the bloody jaws of uneasiness when Ellen, Stephanie, JE, Tara and some other stupid first grader first pointed out that I was not invited to step up in the tight circle and smile and brag about my new sundress. One of the lovely popular tall betches stooped down and said with a gag, "What do think YOU are doing here?"

I imagine I moved as fast as I could imagine so that they would forget that I ever existed. I still see myself there, though. What you see is who you are unless what you see is not.

So how do you finish an anecdote? How do you say instead, "I wish you could see me like I see you," and let yourself be invited to see whatever you want and be who the hell you are, and teach yourself to see.

This is not an exit.

WCB
Wendy Clark sings Blue to an Officer

Hello.

Here is the song that goes with the story below, titled "The Space You Left Behind". Someone figured it out. Thanks, you. 

 

http://www.jamendo.com/en/list/a99634/luck-and-trouble#

 

luck and trouble

i thought a shot another man in texas

i thought about the ones in tennessee

whats the use in doing so much thinking?

when all i do is think of you and me

focus on the forecast of your future

damn, these cigarettes are tastin sweet

whats the point in doing so much coca-iane? 

when all you do is run away from me

but - you were on my mind

cutie-pie  all of the time

but i never thought youd leave me

in the space you left behind

once upon a time or two in tulsa

the satellite sank into the sea

what's the use of having all this luck

when trouble just stays up late waiting for me

but - you were on my mind

cutie-pie  all of the time

but i never thought youd leave me

in the space you left behind

and so this anecdote is almost over

the lesson learned aint just a likely theme

what's the upshot luck just to fall back down 

then to get back up just to fall back down

when the story ends right here for you and me 

but - you were on my mind

cutie-pie  all of the time

but i never thought youd leave me

in the space you left behind


Rusty Clark
Rusty Clark

"I'll take it from here," I said and promptly stood to my feet right before the chandellier crashed down around me. I muffled my scream with my collar as the shards of glass pierced the silence it shattered, and I saw the red of my own fear and dignity. No one was waiting for me when I returned home that evening. The big oak door I had known since I was in day school was no more creaky then it had ever been and squeaking was still how I made my entrance. I took my time getting down the stairs to the parlour where you would have doubtlessly been waiting if you were still alive.

I had lived my whole life and never known such a joy as that dog. She taught me a thing or two about how to love and be loved. Thank you, Rusty. 08-15-08


Redeem Yer Salvation

Riddle me this.

 

Riddle me that.

 

We all swaggered toward the massive megachurch in hopes of salvation of the purist of soul, body, mind, and hearts... among the many pure organs which we cherished and we denied would someday perish.... so we saw the parish or the cathederal (sp?) and we clutched our laptops, bibles, pocket tetris (tm); we marched forward and my friend Erik marched backwards - just to prove that marching forward in the wrong direction still was going forward - even though he was backward; he was always directionally persuasive in his own wayward ways; we moved to the gigantic complex and I really felt the urge to kneel down and scream but I was moved by another urgent reason to redeem myself.

 

Salvation.

 

The megachurch beckoned superstars like me and my eccentric friends. The whispering willows and the firecrackers and the corresponding angles were a bigger part of the grand scheme of the whole - we graduated from college under the umbrella of comprehension of all things must be the oil in the engine of the machine which is the circle of life and the cosmic solidarity of all which may or may not exist.

 

#$*&^!!@#% to hell with salvation.

 

Anyone from Detroit? No? Utica? Let's see... Clinton Township? Yeah. I went to Cedar Pointe every year. Rode the Gemini all day. Drinking age in Canada was only 19 and I had a fake ID at seventeen so you can only imagine the consequences. Yeah, my liver is okay. No, my brain didn't take to well a liking to that particular "compound". It's okay. I went to middle school at Liggett. I am experienced.

 

Often these times drive me crazy.

 

http://log.scifihifi.com/

http://jackcheng.com/stuff-i-love-muji-chronotebook


"Dogs' lives are too short...Their only fault, really." —Agnes Sligh Turnbull
"Dogs' lives are too short...Their only fault, really." —Agnes Sligh Turnbull

Beautiful shows the  WCB and Brian Blush and Jamon Scott!! http://youtu.be/8vxp8oGRGEU

Regret mountain!
Regret mountain!


Photos of 2012ish

0 Comments

111

"I was hoping someone would explain it to me." I expected much less. And as the old adage goes, what you expect of someone or something, is what you'll get.

 

Every day is my lucky day.

 

Well we played a gig outside the big Crush game to a huge crowd of people who really seemed interested, but it turns out that they didn't speak English.

Cuckoo

Read More


Colorado
Colorado

To My Biggest Mistake (yes you bitch)

Another rainy day,

beside myself,

without you.

 

Beats prison.

Photos of 2012ish

0 Comments

111

"I was hoping someone would explain it to me." I expected much less. And as the old adage goes, what you expect of someone or something, is what you'll get.

 

Every day is my lucky day.

 

Well we played a gig outside the big Crush game to a huge crowd of people who really seemed interested, but it turns out that they didn't speak English.

Cuckoo


CUCKO

The last point I made before the clock struck midnight and the stupid cuckoo popped out and reminded me yet again that I was doing the right thing breaking up with you because you had no sense of class and you would always be a person who thought nothing of it to display a cuckoo clock in the living room and minded not that this type of ornament was - at the least - tacky, but especially a reflection of the demise of a psychological connection between a couple. 

The cuckoo was not the problem so much as the problem was the words we exchanged while it cuckooed.

The last point I tried to make was for you. It was going to happen this time. In four days, we would get the news and the news would be what we want it to be and would change our lives and we would be happy again. The point was to make you believe that the streets we walked through tonight would be paved with gold and honey in four days. The pavement on which we strode this evening was smooth and familiar, but we would not miss it when it turned to gold. I felt myself smile as I thought of your disbelief. I handed you a shovel and asked you to bury that cuckoo clock if the phone didn't ring in four days. 

W Clark


Creative Commons License
The Space You Left Behind by Wendy Clark Hudson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://ritual.jimdo.com/.