The Whekau

Somehow, Emily knew that the Whekau in the woods was a Laughing Owl. She had learned that in school. But that was all she remembered, and she didn’t think her parents had heard of the creature and could give her any more information. But in order to calm herself, she had to be reassured that the devilish squeals in the dead of night when nothing else stirred came from something real, and not from the depths of her imagination. For the past two weeks her parents had not seemed bothered by the noise, but at the timeshare cabin they were never bothered by anything that did not revolve around fiddling with the bunny ears to find reception for the television, or the height of the invisible line on the vodka bottle, or the weather, because if it was raining they could not go into town to play tennis.

On one particularly dull and windy night she crept downstairs silently to fetch the unabridged dictionary from the dusty shelf behind where her father monotonously snored in the lived-in green recliner. His chest heaved steadily, although the wind rattled the many glass panels held together by wooden beams in the compact living room. Struggling under its weight, Emily brought it to the kitchen table and flipped the fragile pages open towards the end.

Whekau: An endemic owl found in New Zealand, but is now extinct. It was plentiful when European settlers arrived in New Zealand in 1840. Specimens were sent to the British Museum, where a scientific description was published in 1845. The species belongs to the monotypic genus Sceloglaux (“scoundrel owl”, probably because of the mischievous-sounding call).

There was a small outline of the bird, if that’s what it really was, next to the description; it was not too much different from any other owl she had seen before. But, she realized she was not in the native place of the bird and that the bird was also extinct at this point in time. These facts did not pacify her. Its name was one of those words that was constantly floating around in her mind, but was never really available to use in common conversation. Occasionally she had tried to bring it up at the dinner table during family gatherings, saying something like, “Oh yes, Aunt Rosemarie’s parrot sure does have quite the talking voice, but have you ever heard the vicious laugh of the Whekau?” This kind of comment would elicit blank stares or confused “no’s.” But she hoped one day someone would say that yes, he had heard the laugh, and it had rattled him to his core. In fact, ever since the night he heard the owl, he had never been the same again.

Her father’s deep sleep and her mother’s alcohol induced and apathetic state (conditions typical of her parents during their yearly vacation to the cabin) was too conducive to getting into mischief to pass up. She packed her backpack with a flashlight, a bottle of electric blue Gatorade, her digital camera, an extra sweatshirt, and a box of crackers. Then she ripped out the page in the unabridged dictionary that contained the word “Whekau”, folded it as many times as she could (the tissue thin paper allowed about fourteen folds) and slide it into her back pocket carefully.

The front yard turned into wilderness quickly, but she gulped down her fear like a bad milkshake and shown her light into the trees and emptiness and walked steadily forward. Periodically she propped the Whekau's picture in front of her nose so that she could be reminded of what she was looking for. The crackers played a duel roll; as she walked she left a steady trail of crumbs behind her, and when the creature made its appearance known to her, as she was sure if would, the crackers would lure him down to the ground.

It seemed as though she had been walking for hours, but her calculator watch indicated it had only been forty-five minutes since she had started her search. To her surprise, while the shrill laugh of the creature had been strong and clear from inside the cabin, somehow it seemed to be growing fainter the further into the woods she walked, until the cacophony turned into the weak squeak of a mouse. Unmotivated by the now dull calling and unsure of where it originated, Emily found herself running into trails of crumbs, presumably her own, and growing increasingly tired and cold. The flashlight no longer consoled her and the more turned around she became the more convoluted her head became. At this point she was not sure what would be more difficult to find, the Whekau or the cabin. So she sat and sipped her Gatorade, shivering, and recorded a video of her last moments on her camera.

“Dear Mom and Dad. By now, you must have called the police, who are probably too far away from this wilderness to get here in time to rescue me from…whatever’s out here. One day I went three days without eating, so I’m sure I can last longer than that with the rest of these crackers. Maybe if I never find a way out, at least I might find the Whekau, and maybe he can help me. Don’t worry.” She thought about saying “I love you” or “Goodbye, I’ll miss you,” but she had always felt uncomfortable saying things like that so she didn’t. Instead, she awkwardly waved and tried to smile, but the image of her face illuminated from beneath by the flashlight must have been hideously frightening, she was sure.

Dew dripping onto her exposed face from the branches above awakened Emily at 5:37 am and the bright rays of the sun shook her to full consciousness soon after. The chill of dawn was unbearable, and although she knew she was lost, she followed the trail of the first line of crumbs she came across and walked so fast she practically jogged, bouncing up and down with her light backpack loose on her shoulders. The mystery and intrigue of the woods did not seem as interesting to her in the morning light, although it was certainly a lovely sight. She had almost forgiven herself completely for not finding her creature, and only wanted to find the cabin and her parents.

It took less time to find her way back than it had to become completely lost the night before. Emily was exhausted and relieved beyond any sense of relief she had ever felt when she began to make out the outline of the simple wooden structure of her parent’s cabin, the new light of the day reflecting off the window panels. Bursting through the door, she ran to her father, panting, and fell into his lap. She didn’t even notice that he was in the same chair she had left him in last night, the same position in fact. Her mother was in the kitchen, sipping coffee and absently staring at a newspaper.

“What are you doing?” He was obviously startled, more angry than concerned.

“I’m back, I found my way back.” She breathed heavily, excitedly.

“Oh. What are you talking about.” It was more of a statement than a question, and he motioned for her to get off of his knee.

“But I didn’t find it,” Emily said, realizing that her mission had failed.

But neither of her parents asked what she had not found.

August 2008

The Heaviness of a Light Conversation

{Note: This came out a lot more depressing than I originally intended it to be...oh well!}

I loved the tube. I loved the way its grimy, used smell was covered up by the chemical spray of bleach based cleaning products. I loved the perfect English accents of the automated announcers telling me each and every stop and the safety guidelines of ascending and descending the train. I loved overhearing trivial phone conversations, especially the ones filled with drama or juicy bits of gossip. I loved tuning out the wooshing noise of air created by the sudden movement of the train against the multi-colored tiles with my headphones.

I had a vague destination in mind but tried not to think about it as an end. The ins and outs of the city seemed to be exhausted at times while at other times I was surprised to find something new in the ancient petrified bodies of the mummies at the British Museum that I had visited more times than I can count, or a new joy in the wetness of my inappropriate footwear when the inevitable drops of rain fell from the sky expectedly nearly every day. Borough Market seemed to be calling to me even though my funds were running desperately low and I had no real need to purchase any more food, or unusual beverage, or bag of nuts. It was different alone though, and whatever reason compelled me there was worthwhile, no matter how useless the repetitive trip seemed to be.

While there is thrill in the unknown, there is also thrill in the known, in the something you think you know, but which catches you off guard in a fantastic display of change. I needed to ride the tube everyday, even if I had no where to go, because I knew the lines, I knew the schedule, and although sometimes it was late, it always came. But you were different, malleable, unexpected. And everyday I needed to go to the store, in a composed, impassive manner; I needed to shop and buy useless and kitschy things.

I took the St. Paul’s stop so that I could walk the half-mile extra in the chilling drizzle over the Millennium Bridge. My steps were slow and deliberate and all of the steps that passed me seemed clumsy and unconscious in comparison, as if no one else cared about anything at all. As if all of their minds were simply blank and clear, all with an unambiguous sense of themselves and their direction. The bridge expanded before me in perfect lines of white symmetry above the ugly grey water, and maybe my steps were not so much deliberate as heavy.

I suppose you, among others, picked me up when I most needed it. And I suppose that’s why it was so easy to accept it and the consequences it inevitably brought. Things were complicated by the new scenery, the new sense of independence in a city without limits and an indescribable feeling that my once subtle emotions were magnified beyond my control. But, like I said, there were consequences, one of them being the magnified crush and crushing of what I thought you held dear.

I thought today might be my last trip to Borough so I took it in as much as I could: the sights, the smells! Signs of the imminence of Christmas surrounded me, and while I smiled at the ten-plus piece jolly little band in holiday garb perched at the entrance, the realization that I had come alone suddenly struck me as odd. There was no reason for it, really. The vulnerability I felt even when surrounded by picturesque happiness, represented in steaming Styrofoam cups of mulled wine wrapped around the gloved hangs of cheerful middle class families, was unwarranted. I felt at any moment I would become lost in the twists and turns of the marketplace though I knew them well. The whole, pink carcasses of pigs and the half-plucked ducks that hung against the walls of the meat stands seemed menacing, and everything I knew seemed like one big question.

I guess you could say I thought you were the one. Maybe not the one but a one. One of the ones. With youth there is excitement, and with excitement there is an invincible power to find what one is looking for, then loose it quicker than in the blink of an eye, in less time than it takes to acquire it in the first place.

The nut and candy bins were usually where we stopped when we went together, but now that I stood contemplating the sweet taste of candied macadamia nuts before the colorful spectacle, I realized I had no interest in any of it. I don’t think I ever liked it to begin with. Unaware members of the crowd bumped into me without a second thought but my feet stayed glued to the ground. Sometimes others I went with liked the nuts too, it seemed like everybody liked the nuts, but I did not like the nuts. With some effort I managed to leave their sight and ventured to what I thought I really wanted, the exotic olive and smelly cheese stand.

Here I delicately sampled the wide array of pungent olives, some darker, some lighter, some more intense and bursting with tart flavor and some more mild and tame. I washed them down with blocks of cheese attached to tiny toothpicks, deciding that a firm Gruyere that was a bit pricy was the perfect one. Its flavor brought sparks to my tongue and tickled the back of my throat and would be the perfect complement to the wine and cheese parties that had been frequently occurring in my flat. I really just wanted it all for myself, but decided it would be best to offer it to others. Besides, wine was usually the feature of the event anyway and the cheese might go unnoticed.

Alcohol plays a central role in meeting and subsequent…meetings. The darkness of bedrooms and hallways and windowsills accompanied by the lulling factor of almost constant intoxication can lead to overly confident proclamations. Everyone in the world seems to know this, yet conveniently ignore it. Was my mind more genuine? To me everyone else was empty and false, lying their way through conversations in the hopes that it would all come true in the end. And it happened over and over again, sometimes working itself out in a tolerable ending, sometimes crashing and burning.

My chunk of cheese amounted to nine pounds, about 17 dollars. Somehow I was able to justify such a ridiculous purchase as I reached for my wallet that held the thick pound notes whose origin, I chose to ignore, came from my mother. My bag was a flowered sack, an endless pit of dark matter that held many objects that always strangely seemed to feel very similar. The woman selling the cheese became impatient as I searched with my hand through the contents of my life and eventually turned to another customer who kept inquiring about the various consistencies of Brie. Finally I decided to actively find my wallet with my eyes instead of relying on the touch of my fingers, but as I gazed into the hole using the waning light of the overcast afternoon, I still didn’t see it. I refused to believe it wasn’t there and in disarray began removing items by the handful and placing them all over the cheese display. Multiple tubes of chapstick, crumpled receipts, a mirror, an unsent postcard, my phone, change and more were spread out, exposed for all to see. Embarrassed, I mumbled to the woman that I had changed my mind, scooped up the loose items and moved away from the table, into a corner out of sight. My pulse skyrocketed, my bitter aloneness like a physical injury while I faced this highly unfavorable situation.

My flat seemed miles away, and I held no hope of finding my lost, precious item that was probably miles away by now. Adrenaline lifted my heavy steps though, and without thinking twice, I started walking back, knowing that it would take more time than I could imagine. I had no desire to figure out what happened; the patter of my numb feet disappeared over the bridge.

August 2008

It's All Been Done

He could smell the mustiness flowing out of the ancient building from a block away in the breezy, morning heat, and as he crossed through its heavy, carved, paint chipped doors the feeling of old overpowered him as though he had stepped into a time warp. Suddenly the sound emanating from his tiny headphones (a very appropriate classical, and mysterious, Indian track) seemed to overpower the eerily grand and cold silence of the never-ending hallway entrance to London’s oldest library, flooding every crevasse and corner with its melodious wailing and jingling. Unlike the promise this place held, all of his usual study spots had become old and tiring, uninspiring and dead. But this old library somehow seemed new to him, full of untapped reserves of books, stories untold, and dust to be uncovered. Dr. Donough had sent him there after deeming the progress of his thesis “unsatisfactory;” really, it was less than that, for the words were there, but there was nothing behind the words. While a draft is allowed to be a draft, his piece was nothing more than several beginnings, a few middles and no endings. Trials and experiments with no “direction,” that screamed for some sort of organization and substance. He could already feel the gross ignominy that would come with an incomplete PhD, the explanation he would have to give to his great aunt, the funder of his daunting and noble pursuits. The summer that was supposed to have brought success and praise had turned into a spiraling decay of run on sentences and incomplete paragraphs, his plans gone awry and stale.
He stepped into the foyer of the Great Hall, which broke off onto two sides and continued several hundred feet forward; he presumed it used to be some sort of church as this central area resembled the recognizable shape of a crucifix. Taking the left turn, he wandered through the rows of huge mahogany desks equipped with yellowish lamps, some glowing and occupied with people whose heads cowered over thick volumes. Every so often he sneezed loudly from the dust, disturbing the fixated studiers and surprising himself each time. He wondered what they were all doing on this bright, hot Saturday in this gloomy darkness overtaken by unbroken concentration; but in reality he too wished to be hypnotized, locked in and undistracted. The right location for his work would come to him soon enough, and as he continued to wander, he discovered that there were more turns and hallways than he ever expected. At the first opportunity he took another right turn, then a left, then another right, and the further inward he journeyed, the less frequently he saw these monotonous, faceless patrons of the library. His sneezing increased, and beneath his thick-framed glasses, his eyes began to burn, itchy and watery, but he continued on, ignoring his typical inhibitions. Soon he came to a narrow set of spiraling stairs, a hidden entrance to the second floor, and began the rigorous climb, his out of shape calves and hamstrings cramping under the pressure. Deeming this area deserted enough to feel comfortable blasting his headphones, he turned them back on shuffle, enjoying the surprise of each random song. Each song meant something, not quite a sign, but more like an appropriate filter in which to view each of his situations; normally he was not a superstitious person in any way, scoffing at astrology, religion, anything of the sort, but music was different. Music actually meant something, it could be changed and interpreted and created and destroyed in any way any person or machine could think of; it was loud, quiet, slow, fast, heavy, soft, happy, sad, harsh, sympathetic…it could do things to people, and people could do things to it, but it never told anyone what to do. It did not predict the future, or tell its listener what to believe in, it simply asked, and that is what set it apart; it demanded nothing of him, a comforting partner to hold his hand amidst modernity.
As he marched upward to the irregularity of Explosions in the Sky, the walls took on different shapes, influenced by the new, reflective thoughts the music produced in his little head. The sight at the top of the stairs overwhelmed him, the ceiling reaching higher than the ceiling on the first floor, and he wondered what kind of church has such a monstrous second floor, determining that it must have been originally built as a library, or at least something other than a religious institution. Here he could tell the silence was even greater, as the sound in his ears was crisper and louder than he had felt before. The great red desks in this area were virtually deserted, except for in the far corner, where if he squinted, he could make out an old man hunched over several books, flipping the fragile pages quite frequently and violently. He chose to avoid walking near the only visible person and instead began scanning the titles in the oversized, parallel bookcases that seemed to go on for miles. Weaving in and around the shelves, letting his eyes freely move as high up as the wished or low to the ground at the very similar looking spins of the books. Most were a dull greenish, grey or red, and almost all seemed to be covered in a thick layer of dust as if they had not been touched for years. He had no idea what he was looking for, and since the library lacked a computer catalog and he could not be bothered to figure out the paper catalogue (he had not used one in years), he simply walked and walked, hoping something would catch his eye, but for some reason the further he walked the sleepier he felt, and the heavier his itchy eyes became. Eventually he made it to the end of the room and was faced with a dull red door with a beautifully intricate handle; his unusual wanton sense of adventure convinced him to open the door, and as an epic Radiohead song complete with overpowering strings played, he stepped into the nearly empty room. Like the other rooms, the ceiling, though not as high, was decorated with Grecian palm leaves and chain links, and four columns sat neatly against the four corners. The room was much smaller than whence he had came, holding only a few desks in the center and no portable shelves, just rows and rows of shelves built into the walls, with one of those old fashioned ladders leaning against each side. Immediately he climbed up one, covering his hands in grey dust, almost smiling to himself in a childish episode of mirth, and began rolling back and forth against the right wall. He had always wanted to do that. In this room the books seemed even older, as if picking one up would cause it to quickly disintegrate in his hands, but he decided to take his chances of damaging one of the library’s precious volumes and pick up the oldest book he could find. One book, a crème colored hardback, stood out with its luminescent brightness and overlapping proximity to the edge of the shelf. Grabbing it, he jumped from seven rungs up the ladder to the floor, landing with a thick thud on the parquetry floor. It seemed as if a tiny earthquake had just occurred and he half-expected a library official to burst in to reprimand him for disturbing the perfect stillness they had so specifically created.
But the stillness and silence were actually loud to him, unlike the bustling cafes and bookstores that had ironically become hollow, shallow dead-ends; in these places he was merely another face trying to find that one thought no one had ever thought before, discover that secret, or secret of another secret, that would cause everything to make sense. Here he was digging deep, alone, and uninfluenced by the Babel of his peers; the book he held was perhaps overlooked in the past, and held within it a secret that could emerge as a newborn part of his world, an experience in pedagogy unlike his previous years of study. Carefully placing the book on one of the desks, he expected cogitation and musings in epic proportions to explode from him, but instead found himself blinking uncontrollably and his sight becoming inhibited by the salty tears forming at the corners of his eyes. He opened the book at some arbitrary place in the middle and began perusing the lines, but in order to freshen his mind and give his eyes a rest, he decided to lower his head on the open pages for a few minutes so as to more easily grasp the messages that were soon to be sent to him, to be interpreted and become the spring-board for his next great writing endeavor. He quietly turned on the nonsense of Blonde Redhead and let his mind drift off into a light sleep, expecting to be roused by some harsh vocals in a matter of minutes.
Not to his surprise, he woke up to discover that the music was no longer playing, the two albums having long ago played through. But it was not the sudden silence that had woken him, but a creaking of the door upon which he had entered the empty room. Inside the frame stood, still hunched over, the old man who had previously been the only occupant of the larger room outside the younger man’s layaway. His thick white hair contrasted starkly with his bright red nose, and his glasses, similar to the young man’s thick black frames, rested well below his line of sight. The young man, roused so suddenly, stared with confusion at the intruder, who stared back at him with equal confusion and then mechanically flashed his gaze around the room furiously. The young man pulled his headphones out of his ears and thought about gathering his things and sneaking past the old man, but couldn’t manage to wake up his tingling limbs quick enough to make an unnoticed escape. He knew his sleep had been long and deep because the subtle flashbacks of his dreams suddenly came streaming through his disoriented head like a movie montage, complete with background music, highly pixilated color and dancing elephants. In fact, this old man could have very well been a figure from his dreams, an unconscious figment of his imagination.
The old man simply stormed in after searching the room and leaned over with his forearms on the table, bringing his red nose closer than was comfortable to the young man’s face and breathing out a rancid stench.

That book there…the old man whispered astringently, looking straight into his eyes, and not glancing at the book to which he referred.
Yes? What about it? The young man’s voice quavered slightly, but he tried to mask his fear of this impassive face in front of him.
It’s not meant for you. Give it here, he demanded, flipping over the front jacket and slamming it shut, causing dust to escape and dance around their hands.

The young man tried to keep his hands gripped on the book, but before he knew what was happening the old man had it clutched between his fingers and was turning to go. He hobbled quickly out, not as if he were running away, but as if he truly believed the book belonged to him and that no one in his right mind would even attempt to retrieve it or take it back out of observance of the law.
As soon as the young man came to his senses he walked out the dull red door into the larger room where he saw the old man in the same spot he had been before, his tattered clothing that looked like it had once been new and expensive, in another life perhaps, blending into the neutral colors of the stakes of books surrounding him. There were five stacks total and several other books lying open around him, and on the highest stack sat his crème book, looking very unstable. For a few moments the young man could not manage to approach the desk, and was not sure if it was worth it; had he taken it away because he knew it possessed what the young man had hoped? He would like to believe that it was in fact worth something, a precious item holding information beyond anything he had ever known, but now, after he had woken, it did not seem so. He could not stand to watch the old man turn pages and pages of several different books at once any longer, occasionally scribbling with a stiff fist in a notebook, and at once had the urge to leave. Gathering his belongings, and once again sticking his headphones in his ears, he began the long journey back to the entrance, the gangway to the wealth of knowledge in which he was supposedly surrounded by. It took several minutes to locate the correct turns out of the library, so dark and stale it seemed now to be an underground cave, and when he walked out to the fresh, cool air he was surprised to find that the powerful summer sun was quickly descending and the polluted air had created a lovely, yet not picture-perfect, scene against the western sky which the library faced. Feeling more awake, he breathed deeper the scent of the city, in all its smoggy mess mixed with cigarette smoke, and women’s perfumes, and the occasional patch of flowers, and the homeless man crouched in a stoop. He took it all in, even took his headphones out, and looked forward to the lazy, predictable route home.

July 2008

A Clean Slate

A most unusual sensation, a surprise neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but invoking an unparalleled curiosity. Finding this layer of the onion, your soul with in you, not lying beside you, clutching to stay with you while you sleep. You and are I are tainted by muddy surroundings, choking on incense and stubbing our toes when we grow. This capturing act, solidified in glorious technology, I will not blame it on narcissism, not like staring at a mirror, a reverse of you, you as you want to capture you. I see with infant eyes, what not one in the entire universe could ever find, the ability to exit the body, but not transcend, not learn anything. I remember how the mirror is stagnant, flat and cold, abruptly placing mirror girl in an equally distanced, expected reflection, blocked by frozen eyes unable to catch a real glance, an unknown version of the embryo. Her eyes are those of a stranger, this person too close to be unfamiliar. It never got old, this educating video, her outline cut and pasted into a background normally ignored by the naked eye. Watching it was like standing in a room surrounded by hundreds of jagged mirrors, revealing strands of DNA and their progression to adulthood.

The anxiety that normally creeps behind the eyes in moments of pressure, the self conscious actions of the leader, all abated and fallen away when the subject is unaware of his subjection. Captured this way she was free to be a stranger, it made the viewer gasp; seeing her movements so different than how they feel to perform. One’s voice is normally heard from under rocks, or underwater, distorted by brain juice, other worldly reverberations. But today I hear with clearer sense, through the airwaves, but still do not get to the bottom of the secret. It is merely an opening up of the onion, a rare glance at reality, unfiltered by new and shining electrical eyes. To see for a moment with the eyes of god, each and every one of you, I am the result of factor after factor, a meatball with my foreign mannerisms.

May 2008