A Dream I just Had – Literally

Posted by Otto Robba in Prose on 28. Apr, 2009 | No Comments

I remember a camp, seemed like it belonged to the army – but not a regular division. We were young in there, we were nothing but teenagers, ours worries and our hearts did not lay with the training we were given. We were tasked to perform maneuvers with perfection, quite a few of us however would coreograph artsy dances and present it to our capitan, a stocky middle age lady who I’ve almost never seen smile. In the yard were we performed, there were a few buildings grouped together, almost an army-slum. There was a japanese man in one of them whom I’ve met – he was blind and while I can’t recall the exact reason, which is as odd as it can be, given the impact he had on my life, I knew that simply being near him saddened me a great deal. That man had experienced great losses and still lived, somehow I felt shame of myself for how I dealed with things.
There was a woman who lived in the nested building, she had curly hair and seemed to be in her mid twenties, maybe her thirties. She was pretty but had also suffered a great deal.
One day I was talking with the blind man about things of the world and she came to us and gave him a doll, a memóir from her childhood.
Like a knife cutting through my heart and making me tremble, my eyes filled with tears. The blind man touched the doll’s face, saying it was a pretty doll… he turns to her and asks “But what is this on her face?”
Tears.
Who had made a doll with tears? I don’t know, but by now my own tears rolled down my face. I had to get out, I had to not go through both of these.
I made a run for it – and became a deserter.

I wasn’t alone in my escape, a close friend, a special lady, joined with me – she knew how to give me new life and… I’ll be honest, I have no idea why she would do that, go to so many great lengths and sacrifice her own life for mine… but I was glad. Glad to have someone nearby, to be able to fall asleep in the car knowing that I would wake up to find her still there. It was as bittersweet as it could have been.

As we travelled, I remembered of events of the past as if they were happening right now – silly things, like trying to get someone a present… I remember going into a store, seeing things with a huge discount and phoning home, it was up to 90% off. I relived playing with friends – but it felt very lonely. I remembered an event that seemed important, the reason for me being a desertor… we were invited into a radio station, me, my folks and others. I was scoffed by the people there though as a mere ‘spectator’ and that I shouldn’t speak. I was angry, but more than that I was saddened – why did I keep getting that feeling that I simply don’t belong? I remember exiting the radio station and entering a shack in which I once studied. Took a look at the work laying there, grades were better than mine. I opened it only to film mind blowing drawings, strong reds and dark ink, just how I like it. It was a noir tale too. The characters are now vague figures in my imagination, but I’ll never forget the colors…

As we went from town to town, we discovered that every plan has flaws. We made a stop – a final stop, with this car at least. We ditched it in a parking lot, I took off my military helmet, finally rid of it, broke a piece of it a nibbled, as if chewing bubblegum. We walked the ramp out of that parking lot, avoiding the cameras. As we walked, we reached a side-door in an immense building, we heard incoming voices and panicked, pressing the doorbell button. As quickly as we pressed, we were taken inside – not in a hostile manner, but as if applicants for jobs. We were asked for different names than our birth-given ones and we nodded, those would be our new names then. We took an elevator with the two man who made us panick in the first place. Upon reaching the floor, we saw what apparently was an industry all by itself, making metallic parts, welding and all things concerned. I applied for a job as a welder, having had some former practice and knowing the geist, I could probably get through it. The place had an open-sky… I remember she hugged me, clutching her legs around mine as I spined her in the air – I’ll never forget her smile.
A young and very cute lady came to talk to me about the welder job, asking if I was there just passing by or to stay…
Turns out that place was more of a community than an industry. Things were not perfect, we would see giant rims and tubes, people pass on by train tracks – but damn it… it was better than the military – it felt like, more or less, I belonged.

Random Eloquence

Posted by Otto Robba in Poetry, Prose on 18. Apr, 2009 | No Comments

Drumsticks on your street, we go and we fly for that beat, we make it, make it so wherever we go.
Oh the beat, the song of joy, this isn’t just a ploy, so, please, don’t conspire when I say that you do indeed inspire
- great things, among chimeras and dreams, you build better illusions it seems.
I’ve lost my way only to find it in your chest, taken down the path of a deep breath, reaching a short sob but never stalled.

I stand my ground until this day, where I wait for you, only you know the way,
To break the shackles and set me free, to let me be with whom I want to be,
Running gooses and flying speed trains, acid artichokes and plasma grains,
Making no sense in this dream that you made me write.

Rally all the troops and strike for every right, we ought to take a bite,
Vampires in love we suck the blood out of what we’ve got.
Don’t be upset that I love that I hate that I spelt it all right.
God, how can you make the days so bright?

Coraline – An Interpretation

Posted by Otto Robba in Prose on 22. Feb, 2009 | No Comments

I went to see Coraline today with a few friends and, after the movie was done, I couldn’t help but try to see it from different angles of interpretation.

One thing struck me as being a possible interpretation and, while it might not be right, I think it is nevertheless interesting. It seemed a bit as if Coraline was almost a rape victim, or at least, and maybe more likely, was abused. Things that give me leeway for this interpretation are quite a few, one of them is the idea of promises of love and good things in exchange for her virginity, her soul, her childhood – to give up your eyes is to give away your soul (“Eyes are the window to the soul”). In an abusive relation, if the suffering part receives no help it ends up crushed, a empty shell of a person.

A highly manipulative, spiteful and downright venomous woman is, no matter what, part of her life. Oddly enough, I was reminded by the movie “An American Crime” when seeing the ‘other mother’. As time passes, intentions are revealed. And she will stop at nothing. She killed the otherwybie.

Speaking of which, when he removes his glove to show her that he is made of sand, it is kinda like her own mind telling her that “Sorry, he never did exist in here, he is merely a figment of your imagination – he exists in your new life though”.

This is part of her past, wheter she wants or not. She can move away with her new family into a place aptly named as magical and as childhood-esque as possible, such as the Pink Palace. Pink Palace, to me, this reminds of my sister when she was young, with dolls and a bunch of colorful (mostly pink) toys. Wheter we want it or not, pink is a color associated with the female sex, as thus, it seems as if the house was tailored to bring her away from her abusive past.

But the past has a knack for haunting us – and abused children rarely if ever get absolutely over it, it scars forever. And as her past comes back bashing through brick walls and passages that are not there, fears and nightmares come abound and, in twisted little games, with help from new friends and friendly faces, one can finally throw the past into a well so deep that it is impossible to look over. Like the ghosts said… “It is not over yet and will not be as long as you have the key”. The key to unlock the past.

When everything starts to breakdown and disappear in the otherworld, maybe it is a fragmentation of the dreams and desires, what she really wanted – she wanted a magical and warm place, alive and harmless. Tickling flowers, call me crazy, but flowers are essentially the ‘genitalia’ of plants, to let herself be tickled by them is to allow experiences to happen and to be ‘ok’ with it. To have a father that protects her and thus will ‘cap’ pretenders and bring them to dinner – no tickling before that. See how the othermother fed them and they all dined together. Those were maybe possible boyfriends.

Also, I know this is fiction, but the fact that her hair did not match her father’s nor mother’s hair gives a bit of leeway to thinking that maybe she wasn’t their real daughter, maybe they adopted her. Of course, this is farfetched but nevertheless, interesting.

Much of the movie plays as if she was having dreams – and maybe she was. Nightmares of an evil past. As she starts to create a new garden and sow the new seeds, new flowers can grow, with help from everyone that surrounds her, because she is finally out of an abusive environment, even if this one isn’t perfect – you know you can count on them to give you means to fight and when you can’t handle it alone, they got your back.

Kill the Lights

Posted by Otto Robba in Prose on 22. Feb, 2009 | No Comments

God bless the words, my eternal companions, the ones that understand my catharsis, that will heed me when I tell them that what is show in a certain song is not what really is there. The critics and comments don’t fly over their head – my words know me, from a to z. They know I’m deeply romantic, not the foolish kind that is blind and dull, rather the kind that dreams of adventure, conquest, the one that dreams with the Legion Étrangère, with deserts too big for the mind to conceal, romantic as in believing in love and… well, perhaps I’m blind and foolish, I’m not sure – glad that my words are. They know me.

They will be content listening and arguing metaphors and quasi-philosophical remarks of a movie I’ve just seen. We will have a conversation and I’ll not feel like I’m talking alone. Alone. That if the funny thing of words, no matter how many of them you have, no matter how extensive your lexical library is, you will always be short of something – maybe it is human nature, but they can never fill the blank left by missing hugs and kisses. The embrace of the words is a lone embrace, one done in a dark room while talking to oneself, where the only light is that of the computer screen, brightly in the shroud.

I guess it is just like the song says… Kill the lights, because these children learn from pain, danger, shallow and intoxicating cheap trash, it feels right so they dive in, they take the bite, self-medicated, asphyxiated, all they want is to feel alright, and nobody is there to show them the way.

I don’t want to be a dull ragdoll, I’m not willing to sacrifice my eyes, my soul, for button-eyes, making see a made-perfect world, because it is far from perfect, it is a hellish place where the only way to survive is to remove one’s eyes. Because if you see all the horrors, if you carry all that memory, you go mad, screams boil underneath your skin, your body aches without any injuries for only your heart has been hurt. The web they weave is yours to choose to walk or not – and if you find a key to lock their world, you and only you will have the option (and the choice) of locking it away forever. Find your own well, a hole so deep that you could look into it and see starlight, throw the key in with a heavy rock, bury it all away, their world won’t live past this day.

Some Truths

Posted by Otto Robba in Prose on 26. Dec, 2008 | No Comments

Some truths are just lies waiting to be told, wishing for us to let go of our honesty and for once, lie, lie with a straight face and a clean conscious. This was one of those truths, that knew that everything would go wrong as soon as it poised itself to come out from my mouth. Because humans will be humans, and until I can find a girl that is courageous, I’ll have to live with these omissive truths.
The more I live, the more I think that being upfront and honest is a surefire solution to being a loner, there doesn’t seem to be others like me, making me feel like an upside down tortoise. You see, it is quite simple really, there was this girl from college, whom was simply amazing. I mean, she was fun, cute, sexy, smart… I knew I loved her in the very moment that I wanted to keep chatting with her, listening to her voice… wishing that the sun would just take a wee bit longer before setting so that we could be together for just a wee bit longer. What is the use of hugs and kisses if time goes by so fast?
As I realised that hours had reduced themselves into seconds and that she was my first and last thought of everyday, I knew it, I had been bitten by the bittersweet bug of love. It is funny how thing works though, as this knowledge only gave more and more fears. “Will I lose her?”. That thought was in my mind every single day and let me confess that, it scared the hell out of me. You know what is even more ridiculous about truths that want to be lies? Is that they know, with total certainty, that things will go wrong if they are honest. I knew that she didn’t love me and yet… I went right ahead and told her, flat out how I felt.
To add insult to injury, as if my own knownledge and her own scared expression wasn’t enough, I had to heard from friends that, well, “You said it too soon”. And, as if that wasn’t enough, as soon as we took separated ways, one of them even had the nerve to say “Oh well, at least you made out with her, right?”. What in the holy tv dish name does that have to do anything? That is like saying “Oh well, at least you had a chance to play with your dog before he got run over by a propane gas truck which exploded moments after spreading pieces of your dog everywhere”. Ok, maybe I am being a bit drastic, but I just can’t get over the fact of how stupid some people sound in my head.
The question never was about chasing a pretty girl, the question, or rather, quest, was to find a girl in whom I had a lover, a friend and a compannion – I’ll just call that the holy trinity. I’m not talking about a perfect match, because I truly do not believe in perfection (I’m a deeply flawed subject myself), I’m talking about a compatible match, you know, someone to spend the rainy afternoons watching a movie at home, eating popcorn and laughing at commercials.
She didn’t make the separation any easier. She would call me by nicknames from when we were together, get jealous and, and I mean this in the absolute most concret way, tell me that I was “the perfect guy at the wrong moment”. How can the moment be wrong if I was the right guy? Her replies made little sense to me and seemed, many times, as simple escapism. But really, it would be rather arrogant of me to say so with certainty – so I’ll just assume that that is the reality, that seems to be ok with most people nowadays.
As any decent hopeless romantic would do, I fell into a chasm in life, confused and dazed, stuck listening to depressing (un)love songs, the echoes of thousands of broken hearts. And I did feel like many musics sang… At times I felt like my heart was a pit and that, slowly but surely, my love was drowning – but I was the one that felt like drowning. But the water level was just too low and I kept waiting for the undertow. Maybe out of rage I’d say that love can come and go. But no matter what… the one song that I could always agree was that which said… that one, one is the loneliest number – and that two can be as bad as one.
The more I look back the more I see the flaws of the sinking ship that was that relationship. I mean, really, I did want it to work out and I’ll be damned not to admit that I still love that girl, despite knowing that we wouldn’t and thus, shouldn’t, have a good relationship. The biggest issue was in the, what I’ll aptly name, love-scale. I loved her, she didn’t love me back, oldest story in the world. But the problem was there before I loved her. You see, it is tough to not suffer or feel that something is wrong when the like-scale is as off in focus as our seemed to be.  While I would openly seek her company, she would at times seem to be avoiding me.
I can’t help but be amazed at the irony of relationships. I always thought myself to be a smart guy with a decent look (albeit my depressive nature seems to cast me below the truth) and now, I feel like it must be the opposite. This is not the first time that a girl is interested in me, but not for commitment. I’m starting to feel like a piece of meat. Heh, you know what is funnier? I can already imagine the guys complaining and shouting “What are you crying about? So what if women don’t want long-term stuff? Are you crazy or something?”. You see, dear reader, despite what the hipotetical bafoons from the last quote might say, we, humans, are not all equal. We do not want nor dream about the same things and while there are some so-called universal truths, I’m wary of them. I mean, really, I don’t enjoy pain yet there are masochists, so I’m guessing that people really want different things.
Maybe I am one of those homely husbands-to-be, the kind of guy who is focused on raising a good family, with a strong core of values in the madness that seems to rampart in this crazy, crazy little corner of the universe. Maybe I’m seeking the darned holy trinity, chasing after a dream of finding eyes that meet mine.
But I guess that I’ll never be able to know that now, since I’m lying dead on this grassy hill. Buried 7-feet under, just an inch above my dreams, just an inch below my nightmares.