Lonny Lee's Blog

Artwork by Lonny Lee

Never has election day been so scary!

Today I am going to break one of my own rules.  “Never talk politics”  I always thought that politics was beyond my realm of knowledge as a layperson.  I never strived to be one of those loquacious individuals that probably live near Capital Hill, who probably wear glasses, and watch CNN as a must-have cup of morning coffee so they can talk politics like it’s the weather.  

I want to make America better again!  Is Donald Trumps slogan but how self-righteous is it for him to think that just one man with his aggressive go-getter entrepreneur attitude would work well for a country.  An individual who lacks diplomacy, political strategy, respect for women, respect for minorities and now even the majority of support from his political party.  I will say, I admire his tenacity!  Donald Trump has become so outrageous, he is now comical.  I want to make America better, he says, but rather than be an altruistic and selfless feat worthy of inspiring a nation with a communal belief of hope and patriotism, he simply is being egotistical and narcissistic. I am Donald Trump and without anybody’s help, I can make America better because I am that God-like person. He feels that entitled.   Is he going to grope the nation and make us better just like he would a Miss Universe contestant that got fat?   I would hate to see Donald Trump in the oval office dealing with a potential war or a domestic/international crisis the same way he dealt with a very public fight with Rosie O’Donnell.  Donald is always right and doesn’t back down in any fight, he hasn’t backed down from being a presidential candidate despite that being the best thing for the nation and his political party so that, a better candidate could step up to Hillary and perhaps win.

Hillary the other side of the coin.  I hate to be biased but had she not been involved in so many political wrongdoing scandals I may have given her my vote just because it would be nice to see a woman in a position of power and for her to be a role model of empowerment for women.  Sadly, though her campaign has deployed a negative and underhanded way of gaining the upper hand, not by being a great woman but by highlighting Donald’s little man status. Hillary has been so sly and sneaky she reminds me of my cat when he hides his poop under the carpet and then expects me to feed and pet him even though I am pissed. The funny thing about cats that most pet owners can attest is: the cat is secretly in control. These past couple of debates have demonstrated her ability not just to avert disaster but control a powerful opponent and making him look like a nincompoop.  Admirable indeed, but unfortunately not worthy of trust.

Hilary has been involved in numerous political scandals all of which there has been plausible deniability of her having knowledge.  Is it possible she can’t make herself accountable because she is a coward or is it simply that this is an ignorant candidate that chooses to be willfully blind so she can sleep at night?  I can’t believe that such an intelligent woman would choose to be blind or remain ignorant at the state of affairs.  It simply is daunting the amount of scandals that range from her international political practices to her personal e-mail use for state department affairs that has put in question the integrity of her character. With Hillary it isn’t just what she’s managed to get away with that is scary, it’s also what she’s hiding that is scarier.

I wish there was a third option for president that was strong enough to win. Unfortunately, we seem to be stuck between a hard rock and the wall, with no good options and this has inspired many including myself to be a non-voter, to close our eyes and hope for the best. Regardless of who wins, life the next four years will be scarier than a horror flick!

The heat is stabbing me.  If that could be such a thing. I don’t know what I am saying. I can’t put my thoughts together and if anything sounds too complicated I will just close my eyes, shake my head and turn away.  This is not a good feeling, especially when you begin to see black dots that look like little men crawling up on the sides of the buildings. Let’s pretend I didn’t just see that. I took a sip of my water bottle and moved over to the woman at the counter.

“What is a combo?” I asked the fast food attendant.  I furrowed my brows.  The woman on the other side of the counter looked at me as if I was making fun of her accent. This moment must have looked annoying to the man behind me who scowled with impatience. Now the woman attending the window looked flustered.  She probably wished she would’ve just called in sick.  A gust of heat blasted at us and I felt rather faint.

“A combo come with a drink and for an extra .49 cents you can add sauce,” she said  slowly with her thick accent.

“What?” I asked still not comprehending. The man behind me began to tap his foot.  I just couldn’t understand. I leaned over just a little putting my hands on the counter to steady myself.  I felt the ground move beneath me but there was no earthquake.  I closed my eyes and leaned onto the counter for support.  When I looked back the man behind me was dripping sweat.  The sun was high in the sky and it felt as if the heat emanated from the sun was throbbing or rather blasting at us in waves.  The man behind me began to look very pale, despite the fact that he was soo tan he was a reddish brown color or maybe he was just brown. It was tough to tell when I couldn’t see straight.  A couple of people spraying their water misters walked by saying the temperature was now 109 degrees.

I waddled back and forth trying to balance.  The woman at the counter looked like I grew three dragon heads and was breathing fire or something.

“You understand English?” she says to me with a very assertive tone.

Like a sloth, I tilted my head and said: “English is the only language I speak,” as I narrowed my small eyes trying to prevent the sweat from stinging my eye.

My clothes all were wet and sticking to my body from the sweat.  I turned around again to see the man. I could feel the weight of his angry stare.  He had a grimace on and was even paler than before.  He waddled back and forth like one does when you lose you try and balance.  I closed one eye to try and get a good look at him since he was very tall and the sun beaming behind him was no help to see him any better, it did, however, make him more menacing.

In very slow motion a quick set of events happened.  It was surreal. Every second that went by felt like time was suspended and everyone was suspended in midair. The man behind me leaned forward and began to go down slowly in three stages until his forehead hit the pavement.  A little pool of liquid began to collect around his head.  It was soo dark it looked like black ink.

A stranger from afar motioned a park attendant. He waved his hands and was emphatically pointing at the man on the pavement. The park attendant looked as if she couldn’t understand the stranger.  It was as if he had a delayed reaction or he just couldn’t see the emergency.  He looked over at the man on the floor and scratched his head.

I looked over at the fast food attendant.  She looked alarmed, she either was speaking very quickly for me to compute in my mind her words or she must’ve been saying something in her native tongue. Who knows? Her eyes were popping out and her hands kept motioning the man on the floor.  The more I stared at her trying to make out what she was trying to say, the more emphatic were her gestures until she started yelling:

“He needs help! Now!”

I tilted my head toward my right side and said. “Oh!”

The park attendant appeared to have gotten the message and she immediately got on her walkie and called for help. I leaned down towards the man on the pavement and lost my balance and toppled over him.  The stranger that had come from afar helped me lay on the cement and asked the fast food attendant for ice chips. My eyes felt heavy but I hadn’t lost consciousness yet.

Time moved even slower. I closed my eyes and felt the rubber from my sneakers drag against the pavement.  I sensed the shade and opened my eyes.  There was a lot of commotion around me. I heard voices of alarm. Half the people were running around with their hands in the air the other half were more bodies like mine laying on the ground.  There were water bottles scattered all around.

I heard the park attendant call for more help on her walkie but there was dead silence on the other side.

“Call 911!” said the stranger that dragged me.

“O.k!”

I felt myself drifting away.  I blinked my eyes.

“There must be something in the water!” said a voice in the background.

That was the last thing I heard before I lost it.

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A potential plot idea for a bigger story. 

I had a good husband.…

After the birth of our first child, we decided it would be best for me to stay at home and take care of the household. Our son was born with a bone malformation called hip dysplasia that impeded him from walking, so he needed more care than an average child his age. The grief of my child’s ailment was a constant battle that took a toll on our family and its unity, not to mention our finances. Our insurance was a never ending labyrinth of bureaucracy that usually ended in denial or on a good day a minuscule partial payment for services.

Keeping up an upbeat attitude was harder and harder for me.

“I need to pay the bills,” he said. So he began working on the weekends as a bartender to make more money. Day after day, my husband began to come home later and later and drinking almost every night he was actually home. He was always weary. When he looked at me, he usually darted his accusatory eyes that were hiding his true sadness. It seemed like he never wanted to be home anymore and I was always alone.

A couple of months after he started his new job we still struggled to pay our mortgage and were short $1000. Despite coupon clipping, we were also short on the grocery bill. I knew that money from my husband’s tips would not exceed $400. It never did. That weekend, however, my husband came home with $500 cash for the groceries and he also paid the mortgage. When I asked him how he paid the mortgage, he said:

“Don’t worry about it. It’s paid isn’t it?” He glared at me as he said this; I didn’t ask any more questions.

A month later, I got a traffic ticket in the mail about not stopping at a red light. It had a picture of my husbands’ car making a right at an intersection at 3:32 pm on a Monday when he was supposed to be at work. When I asked him about it he said:

“I’ll pay it. Don’t worry about it.”

I nodded politely.

“It’s just that it’s not your normal route home,” I said quietly expecting an explanation.

“I sometimes take that road home,” he said curtly. I nodded again and left it alone as he continued sipping his rum and coke. I thought it was odd to take a turn on a road to go south when you needed to go north to get home.

Three weeks after that, I was so immersed in going through the motions of what’s for dinner, how was your day, sitting on the couch watching TV, that I began to forget the ticket and brushed things off as a one-time incident. We settled into our comfortable routine, the one where we were really familiar strangers living in the same house and pretending that everything was fine.

Our son was still not getting any better and surgery at the time seemed like the only option, and for that, we needed to wait until he was five. We continued to grieve, each in our own way, him with the bottle and I keeping the home tidy.

One day after a regular doctors visit, our son and I were settling into the house when I was startled to hear a knock on the door at 3pm.

“Hi, is Brian here?” said a strange man asking for my husband.

“No. He is at work. Who are you?” I asked bewildered.

“A friend. Can you tell him that I stopped by?” He gave me a Mona Lisa smile and walked away.

The man was probably in his forties, dressed casually in jeans like any regular citizen, except his demeanor warned me. He knew something I didn’t.

Over the next few weeks, I did and said nothing about the strange visitor to my husband, because he seemed more agitated than usual, his hands began to tremble. His face was red and at times, the vein on his forehead throbbed into sight.

One particular day he said:

“If anybody comes by the house, it’s for work. They are asking questions to all the employees.”

“Ok, honey,” I said in a low, sweet, automatic tone.

I knew, he knew somebody came to the house with that comment but I also knew his office job was not the kind to send a stranger at 3pm in the afternoon.

I arranged a day where I had no obligations and had my mom watch my son for me. That day after my husband left I borrowed a car from my mother’s friend and I fashioned myself in an unassuming way as to blend into the background.

I followed Brian, and Instead of going to work, he turned onto the south side of town and got into a house whose door was opened by a dubious woman looking at both sides before letting him in.

My home is my temple and just as sacred and intimate in many ways as a personal chat with God.  When I pray at temple my shoes are at the door so that I don’t bring with me whatever negativity haunts me from the outside world.  I clean my hands and feet in a  ritual to purify as much as possible the path that I have walked or the deeds that I have done. When I go home my shoes are at the door, so that it all the roads that I have walked stay behind me and I can truly make my home a pure and sacred place.

The love of a craft can be very empowering.  It can be very diminishing.  You can go through a manic high to a deplorable low.

The starving artist is limited by his own illness, one called poverty.  His art can be good but the cup half empty syndrome takes over when he sees himself not being able to feed himself.  He starves in many ways.  He labors arduously never to see a payday or a modicum of recognition.

“Yes, my art is good, but it will never sell,” he says to himself.

He lulls himself to sleep with these thoughts. This mantra becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that is constantly devoted to a labor of failure.  The starving artist always works with one hand behind his back, the one he can’t see is impeding him from success.  His left hand can be just as good as his right, but the artist as open minded as he can be, fails to unrestrict himself from the dark nemesis that lies within his mind.

Grow… Evolve… Move forward, change your perspective, and don’t be a starving artist.

I had forgotten. How much? I can’t even begin to wonder. Things in my head were running amok.

I observed the others more intently, with a different perspective than before I spoke to the pigeon. We all looked nervous, impatient and with a certain sense of resignation.

I tried hard to concentrate on my feelings like the pigeon said. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. The epiphany came. I felt regret. I felt I wanted to do something but stopped. Inaction. It was something that slipped away, and I didn’t do anything about it. I wondered what that could be? I wondered if I was reading too much into my feelings and making things up.

“This isn’t a place of logic or reason. The more you reason, the sillier you will feel.” I pouted at the thought of the pigeons words echoing in my brain.

I sighed because I didn’t want to be in this place forever. I wanted to do something more productive than just stand around and dwell on my feelings. Augh! Another surge of impatience. This place was torture, I thought, knowing that this still wasn’t considered hell, was scary.

A train came, and a woman that had just arrived to wait with us went right in. She walked on by with a cavalier smile and no hesitation in her step. I felt mocked by her stance as she walked by. Then once more I circled back to my feelings, this time adding envy and anger to the mix of regret, impatience and fear.

“What am I suppose to do with these feelings?“ I snarled as I spoke to myself.

My feelings kept circling back at me as if we were friends that had had a spat and were trying to make amends.

“Listen to the feelings in your heart,” the pigeons voice once again interrupted my thoughts in a whisper.

Suddenly, a man that was waiting with us lost his composure and jumped in front of the train before the train had a chance to leave. The woman that went in smiling got out. Her demeanor was pleasant and peaceful. She reached down toward the man and held her hand out to him.

“You are being silly. Why are you just laying there?” she said.

“I just want this all to end and never come back,” he said.

The woman cackled at him.

“What you are trying to do won’t work here, and even if it did, you would just come back here feeling worse than you do now. Come, hold my hand. Let me help you.”

When the man got up from the tracks, the woman embraced him with a sense of soothing compassion.

“I am just too afraid to go,” said the man with watery eyes.

“You can be scared if you want to, but I will hold your hand until you feel better,” said the woman.

“Don’t you have to go?”

“You can come with me if you like.”

The man looked at her hopeful, and with small, slow and deliberate steps walked with the woman onto the train. The train flashed the intense light from the inside once more and departed like a torpedo.

After seeing the man overcome his fear. It inspired me to be finally ready. I chose to do a personal mission rather than an altruistic one. Whatever sense of regret I felt I desperately wanted to solve it. As soon as my thoughts were truly felt in my heart did another train appear, this time, it beckoned me to go in. Each leg moved forward one solid step at a time.

‘We are waiting for you on the other side,” I heard familiar voices calling out to me. I was on the train with a few others, and as we were about to depart bright lights emanated from each of our chests. The light was so intense it was blinding.

In a flash of light, our train sped away to our destinations.

I was surrounded by liquid, swimming in mothers belly. I was waiting again, only this time, to be born.

I waited.  I can’t describe how long I waited for because there seemed to be no day or night.  What would normally be hours or minutes, just simply didn’t count, you could tell by the broken clock at the top of the train station.  It stood still spaced out in incessant suspension.  

I began to move back and forth like everybody else.  Maybe this quasi-pacing was our way to mark the passage of time. I tried to think but all I had was this overwhelming feeling of regret that echoed inside.  It was a feeling without a thought or a memory.  I couldn’t understand it but it still punctured the heart and made the wait even harder.

A pigeon managed to make its way down here. It was not a gray pigeon it was stark white.  Its feathers seemed more like fur, rather than plumage, making it look baby soft.  On second thought, looking back at it, maybe it was dove. It walked on the asphalt floor so nonchalant, bobbing its head around in observation of us all. The pigeon bobbed and pecked to the rhythm of our pacing but unlike our sad and robotic feeling it had a more graceful and curious style to it.  How it managed to move like that and flow to our rhythm was boggling.    The pigeon moved closer to me, and the closer it got, I began to perceive a low iridescent glow emanating from its plumage. It was almost like a halo.

I began to feel some relief in my chest; an inner peace I had not had since I can remember.

“Have you chosen your mission yet?” asked a female voice.  The voice was low and smooth like a jazz singer or a coffee with caramel. I looked around to find the woman who spoke but there was no woman to be seen. It was then that the pigeon looked at me intently in the eye and demurely looked away moments later.

I shook my head side to side questioning myself.

“You need to choose a mission, otherwise, you won’t be able to get on the train. You can’t move forward until you know what you are doing,” said the same voice speaking again.

“How am I suppose to know what to do when I can’t remember anything?” I said in a low tone trying to avoid looking silly by apparently talking to myself.  The pigeon cocked its head and looked at me again.

“This isn’t a place of logic or reason.  The more you try and reason the sillier you will feel. This is a place of feeling.  If you had thoughts or memories of the past you would sit here and dwell on them forever; and here, that will feel more than infinite.  You would never start anew.  By not having any memories of the past you simply follow your latent being, so that you can see more clearly your patterns of behavior.  All those things you do with out thinking because they come natural to you.’

“The woman on the street, the homeless man on the floor, the man in the bathroom, they all represent their most basic impulses, without a thought as to why. They sustain a cycle, a pattern and this prevents them from moving forward.  Things are kept so basic here as to help invite recognition and the possibility of wanting to change what they’re doing because there is no reason as to why they should. There is no memory as to the why; so why continue? When they are ready, they will come.”

“Ready?” I asked quietly trying to piece things together, but she was right about feeling silly.

“When you get down here to this waiting station, you get tested one last time to see if you are ready. You will suffer from feelings of anxiety and fear. Those that conquer these feelings can move onto the train and leave, those that don’t are held in place by their own insecurity.”

“Where do we go when we get on the train?”

“You will go where you are meant to be.”

I nodded not really feeling satisfied by the answer, yet curious for more.

“The man that was here, he was ready?’

“He got on the train with his baggage didn’t he?”

I nodded to say yes. “I was surprised he took his baggage with him, even though he didn’t want it.”

“His mission was to resolve his baggage.  Of course, this is a painful mission no one wants. He was ready; he just refused to move from the platform.”

“A mission?” I asked.

“You need to decide if you wish to choose an altruistic path or if you would rather work on something relating to yourself.  There is no reason for life if you have no purpose.”

“I don’t feel I know enough to make a choice.”

“Uncertainty….” the pigeon shook its head.  “Logic and reason have no place here. What does the feeling in your heart say?”

“This is a very odd test, and I am talking to a pigeon!” I said shaking my head from side to side.

“Your holiness is humble in representation,” she said with contempt. The pigeon darted its eyes at me. “I will not come back but I will know when you are ready.”

And with that, the pigeon evaporated into the air.  The feeling of inner peace left me just as abruptly, and the fear, the regret and anxiety know filled me to the brim.

I looked at the wall and saw the tiles and the grout. I glanced away and looked back and there was a poster painted with an image of a dove with a bright light behind it soaring high in the sky.

“Nice of you to recognize me.” I heard a voice inside me say.

“Are you a woman or a pigeon?” I thought.

“I can be anything.” The voice said back

What constitutes something as a hobby?  That depends on who you are asking and how passionate they are about their hobbies.  Writing is a big mental challenge, and for those of you that are into fitness, it also is considered an exercise.  The mind is often a neglected part of the body that can get dull from an excess of information. We take our most precious organ for granted and fail to give it proper movement by encouraging independent thought or engaging those neurons.r

What do I mean by this?

Well, often we go through life wanting to press a button and let someone or something else do the work.  We press a button and the TV goes on, for example, and then images and speech feed our mind in collective thought. It is convenient and comfortable especially after a nine to five work day or other strenuous activity such as stay at home mom, etc.  I am not stating that watching TV is bad, it simply is not enough of an exercise for the brain.

What I am trying to get at with this post is that it is important to create good habits when writing. Exercise is important for the body but also for the brain and doing it regularly like with any exercise regime you start to notice results and improvement. Thinking becomes clearer and the manner of communication improves, for example.

If you commit to being a writer, know that a hobby is something you do once in a while when you feel like it and have the time but a real writer will make it a habit just like with any exercise regime consistency is what makes a difference.

I just wanted enough to be on my way.  The sky was just clearing and most of us were all wet in one way or another.  The people passing by all wore their long faces.  Their square jawlines, sullen eyes and sunken cheekbones. It all spoke of some harshness that would not be mentioned out loud.

The birds in the sky all flew in circles.  I thought that was odd not because of their flight pattern but because of the feeling they gave me.  They seemed to fly together because they were afraid and uncertain.

The hooker on the corner, supposedly living the good life, did not have a smile.  Her bright red lipstick somehow seemed pale, even her feather fur-fru looked rather drab and gray.  She had her hand on her hip but despite her attitude of fronting, it was apparent she too suffered from the same moody virus that was in the air.

The homeless man behind her was not begging for charity but he was on the floor nonetheless.  He seemed sad but not depressed.  Whatever he was feeling or why he was feeling it was hiding under the darkness of his worn and dirty overcoat.

I walked down.  The smell was more nefarious the deeper into the ground I got.  It was a familiar odor.  I grabbed onto the banister because the steps were wet and I didn’t want to slip and fall.  The banister was wet too but unlike the puddles the substance seemed more gooey in texture causing me to frown with a mixture of disgust and uncertainty.

I walked towards the bathroom to try and wash my hands but even from the door I could hear the banging, so I paused.  It sounded was like a distress signal. Morse code.  There was silence, bang, bang then silence again, bang, bang bang.  Then the pattern would repeat itself again.  After a few minutes of hesitation I went in.

There was a man of a husky built that looked as if he had lost a hundred pounds overnight.  The skin on his cheeks and arms hung like curtains and denoted a certain translucent effect, like a sheet of paper held to the sun. He stared intently at himself in the mirror, and after maybe a minute maybe more, he banged his head against the mirror and stopped.  He was doing this over and over without breaking the mirror.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to state the mirror was shatterproof.  I tried not to look at him or interrupt him in any way and I slipped out quietly after cleaning my hands.

Outside of the bathrooms were a bunch of people with luggage waiting at the terminal. They appeared to be pacing in a circular pattern or bouncing in slow motion from side to side in an impatient demeanor, perhaps maybe it was just to kill time.

There was a man sitting on the floor rocking back and forth with his head in his hands.  He had five pieces of luggage around him.

“There is no time,” he said to himself in a low tone.

“What do you mean there is no time?” I asked.

“Were waiting, were always waiting but it’s like there is no time, no time at all to be waiting around.”

“What do you mean?”

“We go back and re-do it again and again.”

At that moment a train arrived and all the people that were waiting wanted to get on but only some could actually board the others simply could not move forward to get on and kept dancing around in their holding pattern.  When the train closed its doors a bright light emanated from the windows and then it moved as if at the speed of light and shot away onto its destination.

“Do you know where they are going?” I asked again to the man with the baggage.

“I don’t know.  I just know it is not my time to go.”

“Do you know why you are here?”

“No, I… I don’t know,” he said shaking his head.  “I… I can’t remember. Do you?”  This time he gave me a blank look but the wrinkles on his face spoke of an unmentionable past.

“No.”

There was a small pause between us.

“What’s with all the baggage? Are you going far?” I decided to try a new approach and see if I would get a different answer.

“I don’t want it. Do you want it?”

“I think I have enough baggage of my own but thanks,” I said.

Never accept baggage from anybody, there is no telling what’s inside, I thought to myself.

“How do you know when it is time to go?” I asked.

“You just do.  You came down here on your own didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“Well, that’s how you know.”

“So it’s my time?”

“Wait for the light to call you when the train arrives.  Don’t be afraid just go.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because the light called me and I was too afraid to go,” he said.

“You mean you missed the train?”

“No, I didn’t get on. I messed up.”

“What happens when you don’t get on?”

“Somebody else takes your place or something that wasn’t suppose to happen happens and then you have to wait for another opportunity and it may never come around again.”

“How long have you been waiting?”

“I don’t know.”

The man sighed.  He felt bleak and weary to me aside from his other disturbances. Then another train came and for the first time I saw the man smile or anybody else for that matter.  He got up grabbed his luggage and walked on board the train