Circular Motion Part 12

"Oh... I'm worried about your weight."

"Ya..."

"Your sister says you didn't look well last time she saw you."

"I'm ok."

"That's good. I was worried but your dad said that you had just woken up when they visited." My dad and my sister had visited me a little while back.

"Ya... I was sleeping."

"Have you been taking your medicine?"

"Ya, I think I'm better."

"That's good. You should finish it anyway."

"Ya."

"Do you have any snacks in your room?" I remember once my mom told me that walking barefoot in the morning on dewed gra.s.s and eating carrots would improve my vision.

"What?" I don't care if it sounds silly; I still believe it.

"Do you have something to eat there?"

"No."

"No?"

"Not really. I have some Cheerios."

"Really? That's good. Do you have any milk?"

"No..."

"You should get milk."

"I just eat it raw."

"What?"

"I just eat it plain."

"You should get some milk. You have to take care of yourself."

"It spoils quickly."

"So you should drink it quickly."

"Ya... it's expensive though."

"What?"

"It costs 2.50 for a liter."

"Oh..."

"Ya, 1.50 for a half liter."

"Oh... and you can only get two drinks from that size, right?"

"Ya..." There was a pause.

"Is there anything else?"

"No..."

"Ok. I'll talk to you later then." There was a pause. "I love you."

"Ok."

"Bye."

"Bye."

I try not to think of my parents. Sometimes I have bad dreams about them. Once I was at home playing with my little sister and then I remembered that she's getting older too. It made me sad so I just went to the den and watched TV and ate some cookies.

My sister is better looking than I am.

Dreams

I walked over to the dresser and pulled out a pair of socks. They were these gray ones I had bought the last time I was home. They weren't very thick but they were ok to keep my feet warm. I closed the dresser drawer and went to see how Lot was doing.

He was watching TV. It was the news. There was another bombing somewhere in Europe. "I took a c.o.ke, is that ok?"

"Ya, don't worry about it." They were my roommate's but I didn't think he would mind. It belonged to the one from Columbia. I saw the c.o.ke can in his right hand. He was holding the sandwich in the other. I always like the bottles better than the cans but I think everyone does. I remembered I had a French c.o.ke bottle back at home. I sat down next to him in a chair. "Anything important in the news?"

"No not really. Some actor died. I forget his name though. Lawrence something. I hate that. I'm so horrible with names." He was sitting on the couch. "I've been really bad with keeping up with things lately. The only show I ever watch anymore is s.p.a.ce Ghost."

I didn't what s.p.a.ce Ghost was. I felt like I should say something about the other night. "What have you been up to?"

"Not much. I've been working on my j.a.panese paper. I might need you to look over it later." Lot's a pretty good student. I guess I am too but he's a hard worker.

"Sure." I don't mind reading his stuff. Sometimes he'll repeat points in his essays and you have to tell him to fix it. "What's it about?"

He was watching the television. "Huh? Oh... Well there's this old legend of a Yamato prince. You see the people of the Yamato region were under constant threat of attack from emis.h.i.+, which were barbarian tribes. This prince goes out to defeat the emis.h.i.+. It's pretty interesting. He has a mistress named Princess Orange-blossom who sacrifices herself for him. I basically tried to extrapolate an idea of what the culture of the region was like from the legend. Cuz he's a prince and it's all symbolic."

"Sounds interesting." I didn't know much about j.a.pan. I heard the door open and turned and saw it was my other roommate. I never really talk to him besides to tell him to pick up the phone when he has a call. He had a girl with him. He's always in like Flynn. "Lot, I'm sorry about what happened last night."

Lot took a bite. "Don't worry about it."

"I mean, Job didn't really mean anything he said." I really did feel bad about what happened. It wasn't very nice. "He was acting kinda funny."

Lot didn't answer for a second. The news was over and he was watching one of the c.o.ke commercials with the polar bears. "Did I ever tell you about the time I was in Penn Station?"

"No. I don't think so." I didn't remember anything about it. He was still watching the television. "What happened?"

"Not much really." He looked at me real quick and I was watching TV but I saw him out of the corner of my eye. "I was going home and I wanted to make a phone call and tell my parents when I'd get back. I didn't have any change though. I needed some change to make the phone call. So I went to one store in down in Penn Station and the guy was like 'can I help you?' and I was like 'can I get change for a dollar?' and the guy puts his hands against the cash register like he's afraid drawer will fly out or I would fly in and looks at me and says he has no change."

"Ya?"

"So anyway I go to another store and the same thing happens except the girl didn't even look at me after I asked her like I was I beggar. And the person behind me in line wouldn't look me in the face either."

"I hate people like that." I remember one time I was trying to get registered for some cla.s.ses and the lady behind the desk that had to sign my form was rude to me cuz she didn't think I was anything special and wouldn't let me register. Well I guess it's a pretty pathetic antidote.

"That's the thing; I didn't feel hate. I didn't hate anybody. I realized I needed that. Ya see... I believed that I deserved better than to be treated like a beggar. Which is wrong. Do you know how stuck up that is?" He looked over at me again. "It reminded me of who I am and who I will always will be."

I didn't know what to say after that. Sometimes I think that Lot understands people a lot better than I do. Like he's Pynchon and I'm Camus, ya know? I think there are different kinds of intelligences.

But then again maybe he should have just bought some gum. Lot got up and started flipping through the channels. I sat down with my socks on.

"I was talking to Marie for a while after you guys left last night."

"Really?"

"Ya." He kinda had this gazed look. Like I get when I sit and stare at a pencil in cla.s.s except he was watching TV. "Ya."

I kinda didn't know what to say here again but I didn't think 'I'm sorry' would fit this time. But then I came up with something. "She seemed like a nice girl."

Lot sometimes gets serious but it's ok because you know he is going to say something important. He sat back down on the couch. "Something was misaligned with her."

Don't worry; I had no clue what he meant either. I still don't really; Lot is a little above me.

"But she wasn't like me."

I didn't know Marie well at all. Maybe I said that already. "What do you mean?"

"I just realized why now."

I was sitting on his left side. When I looked at him I could see the lampposts in the dark through the window behind him.

"It's still hard to explain though. I believe it's because of religion." It was hard to concentrate with the TV on. I used to study with the radio on in high school but I thought I was ok back then.

"Hmm?"

"She... I don't cla.s.sify myself as religious; I never practice anything or claim to be anything, but sometimes..."

I think by then we were already watching King of the Hill. Conan O'Brian's college roommate works on that show.

"But I had strange dreams last night."

"About what?" He was jumping around again. With the topics I mean. He does it every now and then. Of course maybe it made sense to him though.

"I had a dream a where I was in the future or past or something. No, I was in a library for just a really long time. It's hard to remember. I was sitting on a red 60's style couch that had a hole in it so you could see the yellow foam cus.h.i.+on inside the seat. I felt like I just woke up and was sleeping with my mouth open. I believe someone was walking around and I felt embarra.s.sed about drooling on the couch. I had this book in hand. It was shut but my finger was inside between pages 56 and 57. I believe it was The English Patient by M.O. I remember reading about peeling plums and being reminded of scenes in the movie. I remember that but I'm not sure if it was The English Patient that was in my hand. Anyway the scene stopped and then I was standing up facing this rack of Chinese books. They were numbered. I took book 967.

"There wasn't any English in the book at all. I mean the inside cover said 'University of Pennsylvania' but that was it. I remembered you had to read the book back to front. There was this big red hanko on one of the first pages. I could recognize some of the symbols from j.a.panese but I couldn't understand what any of it was saying. I knew some basic ones but that was it.

"Then there was another s.h.i.+ft and I felt like I was locked in the library. I don't remember running around trying to get out; I just stood their holding volume 967 believing I couldn't get out. It was what I wanted though. I wanted to translate the writing, to understand it rather than sit around all day drooling and reading books. You know, all that adding purpose and meaning to life c.r.a.p.

"So I translated it. After a while I was able to understand the books and come up with a way to speak it as well somehow. I believe I used numbers or something but I don't remember."

"I think I had a dream like that once. I went outside and everyone looked like Frogger, I mean the Q-Bert guy, and I think the stop signs were ovular instead of hexigonular for some reason." I said it so I'm writing it but don't ask me what I was thinking when I said it.

"Uh... no." I guess Lot's dream was different. "The library changed and I was in some kind of s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. Maybe it was a different dream. It was all weird cuz I never dream like this. I'm usually one of those black and white dreamers, no Q-Bert people anywhere. Anyway the s.h.i.+p was really huge and I believe I'd been living there for a while without seeing anyone else. And then I ran into this bunch of kids near the outer hull of the s.h.i.+p.

"They were into this 'old technology' stuff. I believe there was some kind of apocalypse in the past and everyone forgot how to build s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps. The kids were like hackers and would try figure out how to use the old technology. They were all pretty smart and stuck up and treated me like a zero but they let me hang around so I did."

I kept on wanting to interrupt him when he was talking but I stopped myself from doing it. I guess I was getting fidgety.

"Then they had a meeting of some sort. I don't remember everything but at the end the speaker said their logs were still showing an unexplained resource drain. They were lower on power or air than they thought they should be I believe.

"And then I went down some corridor in the s.h.i.+p. There was a cube on the ground and I moved it and a hatched opened up beneath me. I'm not sure what I did or how I knew what to do but it might be because of the Chinese I studied earlier.

"I entered the hatch and climbed down a shaft and then there was a room with people inside. They looked at me like I opened a garbage can to throw my trash away and saw a bunch of squirrels. Like they were the squirrels.

"I pulled some lever near me. I don't know why; I just did. And then the room the people were in started to collapse. Like the walls would shrink. The people scrambled to the center of the room and then tried to come up at me, to escape. I told them not to, that it was dangerous. I don't know if I knew it was really dangerous or not but I was afraid of them coming after me.

"The shaft then split apart between the room and where I was. You could see stars in the crack. One of the people tried to reach me but his arm hit some kind of field which I believe stung him."

"It stung him?" I couldn't stay quiet any longer.

"Ya. He pulled away and there was a red blister on his skin. And then the room started to distort. I don't know what else. The room looked like one of those simulations of light speed travel.

"And then when I turned around to go back up the shaft the hacker kids were all there amazed at what I just did. Like it was some kind of miracle."

"Ya?" I guess I wasn't adding too much to the conversation. King of the Hill or whatever we were watching was over and I put on some local news. "That's pretty strange."

"But this one kid, he didn't fall for it. He knew I had no clue what I was doing."

The news talked about a bomb that went off in Ireland and killed some kids. There were all these women crying. "Ya?"