Day 2

Today is a Saturday and although I am not working, Salome is. She has been seated on her favorite eames chair for hours while she gulped down cup after cup of coffee with the usual tint of brandy. I am quite sure she is drunk by now but she is still working anyway. Doodling on her sketchpad, likened to a raving lunatic who claimed to have discovered a little island in the Pacific which was discovered centuries ago by the settler’s ancestors. I do not like her when she is like this. When she is drunk, not just with alcohol but drunk with rows and rows of ideas in her head, she has her own world. It is almost like she is building a wall around her and this kind of state makes it difficult for me to appreciate watching her. Her crazed eyes and wild, unruly hair scare me as they reminded me of the African witch who my nanny used to tell me about when I was little. I watched her rip the pages of her sketchpad whenever she is done with a drawing but decide that it was not good enough after all, while repeatedly stabbing her trusty chair with her charcoal pencil. At a time like this, I like to close my shutters and waste the day watching useless, irritating shows on television because I cannot bear looking at her like that. Like a rag doll in a ditch, all messed up and dirty. It was not the eames chair girl I have envisioned to get used to. Now, she is standing up and walking around unsteadily with her man shirt on and a pair of underpants to match. John Lennon’s God is blaring in her stereo and again, after an hour or so of being drummed with continuous classic rock music, the neighbors will call the authorities and complain. What else is new? She does this when she wants to clear her head and start all over again with fresh, new ideas. Any minute now, she will light a cigarette, fill her lungs with smoke and then puff them all out to form and deform circular clouds of O’s in the air. Salome, Salome, Salome, what are you thinking about? I want to pick on your brain and demand for answers while I tie you down in that chair of yours; so just, for a few minutes, you can hold still and do away with your restlessness.

Salome

There she was again, sitting on her Eames chair. I have been watching her like a nutcase badly in need of a heavy dose of tranquilizer. A typical stalker you might say. She does not know I watch her, that I have been burning her back with an obsession almost similar to a teenager’s raging hormones. I watch and watch and watch, day in and day out. She is my daily doze of hysteria while eating my breakfast. I eat my buttered croissants with her on my mind. I know at 6:15 in the morning, my little sun-kissed tease was still sleeping. I have observed that she was never a morning person, in fact, she can be quite a grouch when forced to wake up at a time she considers ungodly which the rest of the world considers the common start of the day. I remember a certain man knocking on her door one time to sell something and I saw her chase him away with arms flailing everywhere. She is not crazy, she just prefers to keep her peace at this particular time of the day. What can I say, she likes to sleep late and wake up late.

I go to the trouble of coming home for lunch too so I can watch her sit on that damned chair with her aviator sunglasses on. Legs stationed on the patio pillars, bare lotus feet broadcasted to all onlookers in the street, wearing a white bustier and a pair of torn denim jeans, splattered with paint.

I even hurry home after work, panting along the way, so I can just catch a glimpse of her lounging again on her favorite chair while reading her favorite book for the week. Last week it was Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love In The Time of Cholera. I love it when she pauses from her reading, to frown and look up. I like to think that my stares have ruffled her and made her skin crawl because when she is interrupted like that, she stops and takes a peek at my unlit window. She will be squinting her eyes just to make sure if there really was no one up there; then her eyes will unknowingly meet mine for a minute and that is all I will need for the night. I can go to sleep peacefully like an undisturbed rock.

My eames girl goes by the name of Salome and no she is not a bum. She is an artist and works most of the time at the comfort of her home. A certain convenience that, I will assume, we are all envious about.

How To

how to break
when you feel like breaking
teach yourself to stop
drive yourself to the airport
get on that plane
and leave

how to say no
when no is a word you will dare not utter
open your mouth
breathe fire
spit on their faces if you must
and speak

how to cry
when tears are worthless
burn yourself
pierce a dagger into your fattening heart
rub your eyes
and feel

how to fly
when hands are pulling you down
befriend a bird
talk to an angel
jump from the tallest building you can find
and die