S.L.J.V. - Chapter 3

Chapter Three

An Ordinary, Everyday, Run-of-the-mill Evening

“Hey honey, after this game do you want to go for a walk?”  I hear my husband inquire, awaking me from my deep daydreams.  I looked up from the couch to see him in front of the television in his familiar place.  His old wooden rocking chair blocked the screen, but I could hear what he was playing.  It was a common console war game that all the kids at school knew.  The gunfire gave it away.  Gunfire…  I immediately wanted to return to Jade and my unconscious world, but my husband was patiently waiting for an answer.

“Sure, we probably need to get out of this house anyway.”  I replied. 

“Okay, it will be about 5 minutes and then we can go.”  He responded.  Then another explosion on the screen sent him in a discharge of bullets and expletives. 

Five minutes later and we were bundled up for the cold November evening and headed down the familiar street of our usual walking path.  There really wasn’t much to do in the town that we lived in.  I suppose if we were really outgoing we’d hit up the movie theatre or the bowling alley, but there’s only so much that you can do with just the two of us.  We have agreed on many occasions that the worst part about this city, besides the bad drivers, is that fact that we were caught right smack dab in the middle of an impossible generational gap.  Who knew that being in our mid-twenties would be the hardest adversity to making friends. 

On one side we have the older generation.  The closest to our age on that side of the knife is a couple we met at church that’s probably in their late 30s.  And they already have a daughter that’s going on her second birthday.  Besides them, all of the people we have met and got to know are old enough to be our grandparents.  Not that there’s anything wrong with some extra grandparents, but when you want to get out and go hang out with someone, having a couple beers with the elderly just doesn’t seem like normal.

Then on the other end of the spectrum, we have my students.  I hate to admit it, but I have a better time with them than I do with some of the people my own age.  But then again, there’s that student-teacher barrier that must be kept, at least until they graduate.  There’s a group of kids that just graduated last year that still hang around with my husband and I.  And though many people would frown upon that, the way I look at it is they’ve graduated and they are no longer my students.  So kiss my ass.  We’re 6 years apart and I really do consider some of them my friends (even if I did just recently find out that some of them used to cheat on my Art History tests).  Aside from that, the closest of our college mates lives over an hour away, and my best friend lives on the other side of the state.  What a sucky-ass place to get a job.  Nothing like being as far away from friends and family as possible, not mention having to drive an hour or more to anyone or anything that matters.  It’s no wonder life can be so boring.

“Is it just me, or are we quiet tonight?”  My husband asks, breaking the silence between us as we continue to make our way past the familiar gas station and across the street.

“Sorry, just the usual.  My mind is somewhere else.”  I reply.  And it’s the truth.  My mind is always wandering.  It never stops.  Sometimes I wonder if my brain works in a unique way.  There are many times that I ask my husband what he’s thinking about and he always replies with “Absolutely nothing.”  And he’s telling the truth, that’s the thing.  But my mind never stops.  There’s never a single moment when my mind is a complete void of darkness.  There’s never a thoughtless second that passes me by nor a dreamless night that caresses my subconscious. 

My husband and I continue on our walk with routine conversation.  Topics of bettering ourselves and bettering our future are always a big hit.  We make plans to eat better, workout, get motivated, so on and so forth.  The ideas last for a while but then plummet somehow, leaving us to start again with the same old plan.  As for bettering our future, we have big dreams.  We want to move to the east coast and live against the ocean in a big old house.  We want a dog.  Not a little rat with a collar, but a big dog, a real dog.  We want a yard and some land.  And someday we want kids.  If it weren’t for the fact that life was so up in the air right now, we may be planning for them already.  Life is just at a standstill for us at the moment.  All it would take is one big risk and we could be living our dreams.  But the risk is the problem.  We both have good jobs, and it took a while for that to even happen.  If we were to just get up and move, that risk would make or break our future, and we were just too chicken to leave the coop.

Our exciting evening ended with a couple hours of television and then off to bed by 9 o’clock.  We’re early risers and therefore, early to bed, though neither of us enjoys it.  He’s off to work at 5, and I leave by 6.  I envy the rest of the world that’s still asleep at that time.

The school day starts off in the same old routine.  At lunch, as I sit and eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I contemplate how extremely boring the day actually is.  I’m having this urge to do something, anything but nothing has struck as of yet.  The bell rings and it’s back to the grind, but at least it’s my favorite class of the day.  My Drawing course is full of some really great kids.  We all love to have a good time.  Whether it’s sharing a chocolate turtle cake amongst us or breaking into song with the random oldies on the radio, this class always seems to make me smile (most of the time).

Today we’re sitting around waiting for some students to finish up their last drawing assignment when that urge to get up and do something strikes again.  I comment to the kids that I needed something to do and of course they had an answer to my ordeal.

“How about we bust apart that old T.V. in the storage room?”  One of the boys jokes.  Okay, so why do I have an old television set in the back of my art room?  Simple.  I’m the type of artist that loves to incorporate found materials into their artwork.  And the kids love to see that side of the art world.  To them, they think that drawing and painting is really the only thing that could be considered art, and the best part about my job is to prove them wrong. 

So long story short, I agree to the demolishing of the technology box, as long as we all are wearing protection goggles – safety first. 

The smashing didn’t take long.  For some reason, teenagers love to destroy shit, but then again, so do I.  They begin to fight over the wires and boards; I however, salvage something much more intriguing.  See, in this old T.V., there’s a copper band of wires that wraps around the bulb in a very creative way.  As soon as I see it, I think of the human body and how this looks just like a pair of lungs.  Next, I discover what’s left of the bulb itself – an esophagus.  The human body was emerging from these random pieces of technology.  And as I began picking up the pieces to develop my work, I felt like I was picking up the pieces of the artist I had lost long ago in my fine arts courses.

The next day, the kids took part in my random act of creation.  I needed a human bust to work with and I had numerous volunteers.  We plastered a boy’s face with plaster wrap – like the stuff that’s used for casts.  Those pictures are going to be in the yearbook.  Yeah, word gets out that my class knows how to have a good time.  Finally, my creation begins to take shape.  A disk drive from an old computer tower suffices as the place where memory is stored and it’s placed perfectly in the side of his head.  Now if only to find some old floppies to add to the effect.  I’ll add that to my list.  I think the kids are excited as I am with this endeavor. 

That night it’s raining outside, no evening walk for us.  Not to mention it’s cold as hell out there, I’m surprised it’s not snowing.  Instead, we pop in some old anime and just settle in with hoodies and blankets.  There’s something about Japanese animation that intrigues, enlightens, and even inspires me.  Though some may say that it’s a childish interest, as blood splatters across the T.V. screen, I’m reminded that that just isn’t quite so.

When the movie is over, so is the night.  It’s already 9:30 and we’re late to bed.  As we tuck ourselves in for the night, I begin to tell my husband about the project I’m working on at school.  He thinks it sounds cool, but since he’s drifting off to sleep I don’t get much more than that.  I roll over onto my side and let my brain begin to wander.  I think of the project at school and how technology is taking over the human body.  Then my brain switches to how that underlying concept is too true in today’s world.  And then my mind is off into the world of Jade Vantishi once again and how her mission (at least in the previous plot of fiction) was to defeat the technology that humanity had already ceded to.  Funny that I’m sensing a bit of repetition in this inspiring theme.  And as those thoughts race through my mind, I hear the rain outside picking up again.  I finally let myself relax and surrender to the random thoughts of the day mixed with the subconscious stories of the night.