Set just before Adam goes over to Joan's to get her to read the letter to him, back in Season One. A POV from him, as he's considering reading the letter. I kind of like this little story, I think I quite got into the head of him, which is hard, btw. But, hey, that's what my faithful reviewers are here to tell me, so please review. Oh, and there's a Catch-22 (my favourite book) reference embedded in this story, which would totally kick arse if anyone actually picked it up. So free leftover gingerbread cookies from Christmas for the first reviewer who can pick it…and I hope that people get what my title is all about, mention in the reviews if you don't.
Ripeness is All
He's in the shit now. Patterns in life and patterns under his fingers, tracing, memorising, feeling the scars in the wood. Patterns in the wood like a curse mirror his patterns in life and he knows that he is in the shit now.
Jerky, offhand moments, filled with loud voices and emotions and sound and sadness but most of all sound seem so second-hand to Jane, like hand-me-down clothes from older siblings, holes worn into the cotton, embedded history of siblings, something never wanted but always around. Family life of passion (how he hated that singularly, descriptive, cheesy, beautiful, disgusting sound of those simple two syllables: pass-ion) and maybe it was because the Girardi's were Italian but maybe it had nothing to do with it.
He's in his toolshed now, because he's always in his toolshed and patterns in life are scratched onto our bones, habits pouring into our bloodstream.
"And what does he believe in so much that he believes in it more than his family? Than his loved ones?"
"I'm just making my art."
Hysterical voices of hysterical people but not his mother. She always said it softly and light, like the hypnotic sound of listening to one reading, the faint, repetitive beat of turning the pages. And what does he believe in so much that he believes in it more than his family? The signal of her entrance into the shed, a silent, personal doorbell. And his predictable, monotonous answer, I'm just making my art. He said it so lazily, he often wanted to add the word Ma on the end of it, as if he was one of those slow-speaking Italians from Queens.
"My Adam. Making his art. Paving the way of his yet-to-be famous artist life."
She said so defiantly. He was only eleven but she was sure she knew. My Adam.
He's in the shit now, he remembers again and keeps tracing the splintery wood of his table, the grooves forming circles under his touch. Broken chards of metal lay by his side, pieces of angel communications, legs of a cheerleader, particles of smashed Ascension. Belonging to nothing and everything and reminding him of life and pass-ion and Jane and…nothing.
His mother had a horrible memory. "Even though your father has fantastic memory, I don't think your eidetic memory came from him. I think it's just you". She'd say that, her fingers curled into the telephone cord, her nails scratching hard on the varnished table, he, for the thousandth time in his life, repeating the number for Chinese delivery that she could never remember. She was like Jane in some ways, or Jane is like her, he's forever not sure. Scattered words that make no sense, "You need good ripples", projects starting but always failing, loud, high, emotional voices with matching laughs and girly screams. Except Jane seemed not bothered by it, wore it like hand-me-down T-Shirts from Kevin that she says she sleeps in and Mom wore it like hand-me-down clothes that were too small, pants that uncomfortably pinched and blister-making shoes.
She was softer than Jane, fuzzy around the edges. Not that Jane was hard, or abrasive, a coarse surface that made you shudder with the touch. Like this unpolished wood table that he still traces, his unpolished wood table in his shed. No, Jane was the softest person alive that he knew, perhaps only after her mother. His mother was more like that, he realises with a warm, glowing feeling of recognition. A brutal combination of Jane and Mrs Girardi, the softest, loudest person he knew. And if she was like that, and his father was the typical, single-father, working-hard man, then what was he?
"My Adam."
He was her Adam. But she was dead. Man is matter, with the spirit gone, man is garage, rubbish, just plain ol' matter. That was Snowden's secret, the holy secret of life that he, Adam, realised at thirteen. Ripeness is all. So with her dead, his artwork dead, shattered by Jane and never more, what was he?
Ripeness is all and turntables playing scratched records of Bob Dylan and George Harrison is hardly ripe at all but it was what his mother always listened to, when she came to watch him fiddle with his artworks in his shed. Streams of Bob Dylan slowing getting the words of All I Have To Do Is Dream out, his mother whispering the lyrics along with Bob, "Whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream, dream, dream". Ripeness is all but he always replayed the memory inside his head, the shading of the light, the forever turning of the record, the floaty summer dress that his mother always wore on Sundays.
"I'm dreaming my life away".
Scratched sounds of the records sounded better than the clear, crystallised sounds of overproduced albums released today he secretly thought and he liked smashing records, using the grainy surface for his art, not that he did his art anymore. The communication barrier with his angels had been broken down, but then Joan broke his art and the reverse effect built the barrier back up. His shed was for nothing more now than listening to records and fiddling with the bumps and edges of his wood table.
The album was worn away, his mother had a habit of playing one song on repeat over and over again and his father hated that. "You'll never appreciate the album if you do that!" And his mother sure did play All I Have To Do is Dream on repeat.
He missed music. He missed thumping on a piano, practising the scales over and over again, the silly, satisfying repetitiveness of a scale. His favourite instrument was the drums, he liked the beat, the steady, unbreaking beat and more often than not, it was repeated, over and over again to make this fantastic…sound that no matter how simple completed the song, made the song. Patterns in life were hard to break and even now, his favourite band was The White Stripes for the clear, loud, undeniable beat that filled all their sounds and made The Hardest Button to Button his favourite song of all. It occurred to him that he liked patterns, he liked the simple, intricacies of them, the repetitiveness because his mother loved repetitiveness and so did he.
"Repetitiveness helps me remember, my Adam Ant."
She called him Adam Ant from time to time because she said he had the hardest name to figure out a nickname for and a lifetime ago, she "secretly loved Adam Ant's music". He wasn't sure why he liked repetitiveness so much, he didn't need help remembering thing and he thought that maybe it was connected to his mother, but he wasn't really sure. He liked seeing patterns in things, patterns in life, circles on his wooden tables, joining Jane's freckles on her left arm to create The Southern Cross, a constellation he had never seen as such, but knew existed.
"It's funny how things happen in your sleep. You wake up and entire countries have been eating breakfast and going to work and when we eat our breakfast and go to our work, other countries are staring at the stars, looking at constellations that we'll never be able to see, unless we go there. Entire worlds on either side of the International Date Line. That's when I think I'm kind of sure about G-O-D."
His mother mentioned G-O-D from time to time, never saying the name, always spelling, because "I'm never sure of things that I know I will never be sure of"". She seemed to have her own pattern, as if she made a promise to herself that she would only say the letters G-O-D once a year, because for the entire time that he knew her, he could only remember her saying G-O-D once a year. It was never around the "expected" time, Christmas nor Easter. It came out in funny outbursts, like talks about the Southern Hemisphere and time differences, or getting her car waxed. She wore it like old hand-me-downs that you wore only if you had to, as if it was laundry day and suddenly, you actually really didn't have a shirt to wear and all you had left was your sister's old Wayne's World T-Shirt. Something that you loved but for reasons especially unclear to yourself, you barely paid attention to.
She actually had an old Wayne's World T-Shirt from her older sister, holy elbows, tattered edges that she wore at least once a year, that made her more comfortable than she usually was and she spent the whole day saying words like "Chah!" and "Totally excellent", which made his dad laugh.
Patterns that spread to him, to the hummed sound of "Chah" and aching for his mother at the sight of Mike Myers.
Patterns in life. Patterns in the wood, patterns scratched onto our bones, the repetitive beat of music, the simple fact that man was matter and Snowden's secret was spilled to the world. Ripeness was all.
He was in the shit now. Faded ink on a perfectly folded letter.