#SoCS

The Fixer Upper

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Linda G Hill’s  Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt:  “butter.”

When I was in my late teens  I went in for one of those makeovers at one of the high end department stores at our Mall.

I was pretty excited because I loved makeup, plus this was the late 70’s and the sky was the limit as far as colors and how to use them so I saw it as a chance to have a little fun with my awkward look.

I took my seat in the chair and there I was surrounded by lights and pretty people and I was this close to not looking like a turd in the punchbowl anymore. Needless to say I was very excited about that!

The salesgirl peered into my face.

She bit her lip.

She had the same look on her face that my Doctor had when I fell off my bike and bashed the side of face in and told him it didn’t hurt, but I couldn’t feel it or move it either-  and then she called over another sales associate and said:

” She has such a yellow greenish  complexion. How do we fix that? ”

I was pretty embarrassed, I mean. I sounded like a bruise.

But a sale is a sale and those girls went to work.

They ‘fixed’ my skin coloring by blending two different shades of liquid makeup and then slathering all over my face. When they were finished I felt like a little kernel of popped corn drenched in butter.

At the time I didn’t realize that what I looked like a cadaver that required a lot of ‘work’ because of decomp.  The difference was, if I had done that kind of a makeup job on a corpse, I would have been fired. I looked awful. I was a million times worse looking then before they had started.

In addition to that, I went from having a medium tan complexion ( I’m half Filipina ) to having a complexion that you could compare to an uncooked hot dog.

The result was: I was fixed. 

I was afraid to move my head for fear that everything would slide off.

But they weren’t finished. Oh no. Not by a long shot.

The salesgirls had a little conference and came back told me that I should probably dye my hair because it wouldn’t ‘work’ with my makeup.

I didn’t by the makeup, I didn’t dye my hair. I didn’t say that their sales pitch was a pretty crappy way to treat a person.

I just went home and put the mirror  on my vanity into the closet and the ones I had hung up for decoration in the living room into storage.

I still don’t have any mirrors in my house except for the one in the bathroom.

I am painfully aware of what I look like without one.

 

 

 

 

The Nerve of Her

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Linda G Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday Prompt: Nerve

I had the nerve to climb trees

ride motorcycles

to say what I thought, even though nobody was really listening

 

I had the nerve

to dress in clothes that didn’t make sense

and sometimes my socks didn’t match, but that was no big deal.

 

I had the nerve to listen to music

that nobody else liked and I read books with a lot of big words

it didn’t matter that I got laughed at for being curious about the world.

 

I had the nerve to fall

over and over again and to get up when there wasn’t any reason to get up

and to not apologize when I got in the way.

 

I had the nerve

and I still do have the nerve

clenched between my teeth.

Blue

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Linda G Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday Prompt: Above/Below.

Photo by stein egil liland on Pexels.com

Above

below

I sank under the waves

and watched the sky fall away.

 

Above

below

I swim towards the sky

with my eyes closed.

 

Above

below

I am sailing on waves

past fishes

who watch me with wide eyed curiosity as they swim by.

 

Above

below

I am flying by

birds who sing to me as they float away.

 

Above

and below

I am traveling

on waves that touch the sky

with blue.

 

The Dog Star

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Linda Hill’s  Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: The Beginning/The End

Photo by Greg on Pexels.com

The end rolled to shore, just down the hill from where I live, sometime after breakfast. I was eating a blueberry muffin.

Through my kitchen window I saw the sky flash and for one second, one little second  I tasted copper. My eyes itched a little and when I moved them to look up my face felt to heavy.

I saw the sky turn dark blue,  I saw it was streaked with purple- it looked like a giant bruise.

Did I try to get up? Did I try to run? I think I called for my dog, my star to lead me away from whatever was about to happen,  but there is no way for me to know if the words ever left my mouth.

After all.

When your world crosses paths with a magnetar you pretty much take your last thought with you before you die- because really- it is all over in the blink of an eye.

 

I was a ghost for awhile.

I drifted. I slept. I had dreams about the sky exploding over my head.

If I had a name I don’t remember it, I know I had a dog. Did dogs look like Maple Trees?  I remember what carrots tasted like. I remembered being warm, I remembered being cold. I remembered how good it felt to run.

Funny, I don’t remember liking to run.

But my thoughts, untethered always came back to carrots. Isn’t that funny?

I wonder what they looked like. Did they have legs? Did they bounce when they hit the ground?

 

When I wake up, when I think about carrots or blueberry muffins and what had legs and who had eyes, for just one moment I see the ocean- or maybe it’s the sky and it isn’t on fire.

It’s cool. It’s quiet. I’d like to touch it, but of course I can’t. So I try to remember it ,  just the way it is now before I fall back to wherever it is I go when I’m not here.

 

Yesterday. I know it was yesterday because I watched the Sunset and I saw it rise again, I remembered one thing- pools of dark gentle lights, a warm breeze, I could smell carrots.

I remembered carrots were orange, that they did not have legs or arms  and when you bit into them they crunched.

Do you know what else I remembered? Macbeth  liked carrots too. We used to sit on the bluffs and watch the tide come in and out and we ate baby carrots together.

So that was it! That was the last thing I said,  the the last thing I saw before I flew apart atom by atom into the morning sky, was ” Macbeth ” .

My dog. My companion. I used to call him my Dog Star.

My dog star, Macbeth.

And this is our story, this is what happened to us after the sky exploded.

We have been sailing together since the end,  parts of him, some of me, bound together by what  we saw,  the sounds we heard everyday of our lives.

Together we have been like a cloud hugging the top of a mountain or the branches of a tree.

I’m starting to remember before, who I was, that I used to do things like brush my hair and that I liked listening to music, that I used to have a family  but I’m thinking that is not important anymore.

So when Macbeth and I settle and I think it will be soon,  when the winds stop pushing us from the water to the land again and again, I don’t know who we will be or what we will be and that is okay.

This is, after all,  the beginning.