Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,
Suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,
and once again I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before.
{prose excerpts from Guru Schmuru, Chapter 3}
The house where Margo lives is an oasis inside an oasis. In Texas, as y'all know, everything is bigger. And more Conservative Republican. She could do without ever going to Dallas or Houston. San Antonio was alright, in a weird, murky riverwalk, minority run sort of way. But inside the Austin city limits, the air changed. The frequency is of age-old hippiedom, liberalism at its finest, college kids and dredlocked dreamers next to old farmers and cowboys.
Sure, over the years there’d been an influx of Banana Republic wearing yuppies from California and their transplanted toddlers. But the overarching sentiment in Austin was one of immense pride and joy at their cozy, crazy town. Naturally, there are pockets of staunch good ol’ boys (and their dutiful women), even in the hippest corners of freewheeling south Austin. But Margo avoids them and goes on about her life. She loves her hometown and it loves her right back.
The house where Margo lives is the pearl inside the stinky clamshell that has become her professional life. Her work life has spilled over into her personal life and now the two are a muddy mix of anxiety and indifference. The house reflects this gradual but not subtle transition in the form of piles of junk, everywhere. Stacks of papers, old concepts never nurtured, scraps of fiction, pieces of poetry, back issues of The Chronicle, take out menus from Daily Juice and Mother’s Café and Chuy’s Tex-Mex. She has let the place go, and Eddie is worse than her. She can’t even open the door to his room without getting overwhelmed and disgusted at the swarms of dirty laundry and papers strewn about.
Margo’s bedroom is now her sanctuary. She has a makeshift meditation spot there, with a mustard yellow zafu facing the wall, zen style. Her queen sized bed was a gift from her parents, who spent thousands of dollars on a variety of expensive mattresses to suit her mom’s bad lower back. Each non-refundable reject had been passed along, and Margo had inherited a gem – a pillow topped, spring loaded, memory foam bed. It is her most prized possession. Usually Margo is a champion sleeper. She falls asleep within minutes of her head hitting the pillow and commands her body to remain unconscious until whatever hour of the morning she declares. For the past couple weeks, however, she’s been tossing and turning from the wee hours of the morning, often waking up at three or four with twisted nerves and a tight neck, unable to get back to sleep until ten minutes before it’s time to get up for work. This, come to think of it, is probably another of her rationales behind smoking the reefer yesterday at the office.
Margo’s bedroom is sage green and her bedsheets are raspberry colored jersey cotton, covered in a tattered, much-loved quilt handmade by her grandma. Next to the bed is a nightstand piled with books, journals, a glass lamp filled with seashells, pens and pencils and her lavender eye pillow. Inside the drawer of the nightstand are bookmarks she never remembers to use, condoms she has forgotten are there, a smattering of cough drops and aromatherapy oils, and a handful of misplaced postcards and snapshots. The only other piece of furniture in the room is a large, low, square table which is where her computer resides, and her Royal mechanical typewriter from the 1940s, acquired for $25 from a sweet, wrinkly eyed couple in north Austin who’d sold it on craigslist. More piles of novels and nonfiction and poetry anthologies that she’d flipped through but not read. She never reads anything anymore but ad copy and cereal boxes.
Margo’ kitchen is painted the color of sangria. It is a warm, square room with a stainless steel fridge, a gas stove, a porcelain sink and a dearth of countertops. She is neither a cook nor a gardener, so the eating section of the house is ruled by frozen vegetables, canned black beans, cartons of tofu, bottle of diet soda and ridiculously expensive pre-made meals from Central Market.
Occasionally, she’ll maniacally clean the living room: dust the bookshelves; vacuum the shapeless denim blue couch, a hand-me-down she’d not yet had the energy or gumption to replace; sweep and polish the beat-up hardwoods; scrub the windows with glass cleaner until they squeaked; rearrange the papers, DVDs, magazines and books into neater, more aesthetically pleasing piles. It’s been a long time since that urge has come over her. The place is a veritable pigsty, one that reflects the budding chaos inside Margo’s own mind. Unless she cleans it out, some things are going to start falling through the cracks. It’s only a matter of time.
copyright 2009. michelle fajkus.
from "We Had Him" by Maya Angelou
He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance.
Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived and did more than that.
He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.
We had him, beautiful, delighting our eyes.
His hat, aslant over his brow, and took a pose on his toes for all of us.
And we laughed and stomped our feet for him.
We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing. He gave us all he had been given.
Margeaux is high-powered. A clever, high-powered young woman sitting in her corner office on a Wednesday afternoon. Completely stoned.
In the neverending parade of weak days for salaried professionals with two weeks vacation per year, Wednesdays are the worst. “Hump day” is an ugly, little, litter-strewn island that taunts her with its equal distance from the surrounding oases of Saturdays and Sundays.
She daydreams daily about being fired but is too chicken to quit. She visualizes packing her potted fern, swiping a handful of fountain pens and waving farewell, never to look back.
What does she do, you’re wondering? For sixty to eighty hours a week, on average, she writes ads. Headlines that hook. Snappy copy. Slogans that reverberate in the target market’s mental space. Words strung together for a sole, soulless purpose: to sell. Taglines are her favorite. Short, sweet, terse ideas. Commands, usually. Just Do It. Snap! Crackle! Pop! Got Milk? Think Different.
But for the past six weeks, instead of accomplishing work-related tasks, she has been polishing her own prose and poetry, painstakingly stealing company time.
Children don’t dream of working in advertising when they grow up. Young Margeaux wanted to be a doctor, until she discovered that med students dissect cadavers and subsequently discovered the definition of cadaver. Though her top choice had been MIT (even though she doesn’t believe in calculus or temperatures below zero), she was coerced into attending a monstrous state university twenty minutes from her childhood home. Spitefully, Margeaux majored in advertising.
She’d landed a coveted internship at the third biggest agency in town, slaved for free for a semester, worked for low wages the rest of college and accepted a salaried position after graduation, lured by the corner office.
Her employer, TBD Advertising, recently revamped its corporate identity by developing a new bullshit mission statement and repainting the walls a nauseating combination of chartreuse and canary yellow.
She is a “Creative,” i.e., a member of the creative department. A whole other department has to deal with pesky tasks like appeasing clients and manipulating schedules and estimating billings. Margeaux is paid to think and to present her expensive ideas in sleek conference rooms where coffee, water and assorted, delectable cookies are served on silver platters. This pleases her ego to no end.
-------------------------------------
She leaves him, his room, his house, his street, his zip code.
Margeaux replays the episode over and over in her mind until the brink of insanity. She will get over this. It’s lust, not love. He’s no good. There are other fish in the goddamned sea. It was the sex she loved, to the point of blatant addiction. That’s all.
Seeing David again knocked something loose in her brain. In the dark of that night, she tosses in her own bed, alone, wishing she’d made more sensible choices at the beginning. There is no undo key.
What is to keep them apart? Neither has any integrity. Her will power alone is not enough. Obviously. With him she is too likely to backslide, to make a million more mistakes. Margeaux will falter in a moment of weakness. Even now, in the throes of despair, she considers calling him. Her integrity is perched on the windowsill, smirking evilly, threatening to take a swan dive.
Suddenly the only option is to leave. A change of scenery will do her good. She have nothing tying her to Austin anymore. She is sure of nothing except that she won’t be the girl who settles anymore.
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